Rules for Hunting

Chapter IV: The Other Half of the Equation

He wants to blame it on the beer. Too many beers on no food, of course he'd throw up and make a mess of Lisa's bathroom after she was nice enough to take him in. She'd offered beer, weeks ago, and he had said yes now, yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes because Sam had said yes and now Dean had to say it too. To everything.

Dean wants to blame the beer. Except she hadn't given him any.

She is so fucking nice about it, shushing his apologies and unbuttoning his shirt and jeans because his stupid fingers shake, pushing him into the shower while she cleans up his mess, scrubs everything with bleach so it all gives way to perfect white.

He watches it through steaming glass, pictures pouring bleach on himself, scouring with Brillo pads, scraping off all the bits of skin that have ever been covered in vomit and dirt and blood and guilt until all that's left is perfect white bone.

Lisa opens the glass door and says something, something startled and a little scolding, turns the temperature down as the steam billows around her because his skin is red and raw. She pulls off her clothes and steps into the shower with him, and he should say something, something sexy or a joke or something and he opens his mouth to say but nothing comes out except a strange sort of hiccupping sound and he chokes on the water he hadn't noticed running into his mouth.

She pats him on the chest once, then she holds his hips, guides him around her until her back is to the spray and she can push him to gently sit on the weirdly wide ledge. Did normal people sit in the shower? Dean had never had the time. The longest shower he took, that steam shower way back when he'd just gotten Sam back, Sam banging on the door and saying they had to go, but they didn't, it wasn't like heaven was dragging them and hell was nipping at their heels. They hadn't had to do it, but they had, and look where Sam and Dean are now. Dead and wishing he were, respectively.

Lisa shampoos his hair, with something that smells fruity and it reminds him of Sam, of his stupid hair and the shampoo he bought on sale regardless of how fucking girly it smelled. Sam eating fruit and salads and girly stuff. Sam buying Skittles once and picking out all the purple and green ones, putting them in an M&M bag and offering them when Dean was driving and wouldn't look close, just to hear Dean swear in shock at the fruity taste. Sam, Sam, Sam.

Lisa bundles him into bed, holds him tight, stroking her fingers through the squeaky-damp strands of his hair and it's everything he thought he wanted.

Turns out, he doesn't want it at all.

It takes three days before Lisa insists he eat something, "anything, Dean, but you've got to have something." She makes him scrambled eggs, he forces down three bites, but they get caught on the lump in his throat and he runs to the bathroom to cough them back up.

She doesn't insist for three more days. She says she can't go to work if she doesn't know he'll be okay, so he wills his way through a bowl of cereal with Ben, Lucky Charms, like Sammy always liked, fuck, and he wills himself not to throw up. She kisses the side of Ben's head, then the side of his, and promises to be back early.

He takes Ben to school and doesn't realize they forgot the kid's lunch until they're already there, because Dean hasn't had to plan meals ahead like that since Sam left for college. He promises to bring Ben's lunch before lunch time, waves as he hops out of the car.

At Lisa's house, he thinks of Lucky Charms and Sammy and brown bag lunches and Sam, and he goes to the bathroom and puts his fingers down his throat.

And then he washes his hands three times, and makes the lasagna Sam used to ask for when Dean hustled a good night, all from scratch, and it takes him all morning because Sam used to chop the vegetables for him while he rolled out the pasta. But it's done and he puts a slice in a Tupperware and puts it in a brown paper sack with an apple and a cookie and he drives to Ben's school, gets there while the lasagna is still hot.

And when Ben tells Lisa that night about the awesome lunch he had and says "Dean is the best," Dean wonders why he can get all the unimportant stuff right, but he always failed at the one thing that mattered.

Dean fills out job applications, as many as he can find. He calls Bobby, asks for permission to write him as his employer for the last decade, give his phone number for a reference, because who the hell else would recommend Dean Winchester?

Bobby agrees easily, asks how he's getting on, and when Dean is done bullshitting him, Bobby asks to speak to Lisa. So Dean hands her the phone, doesn't even explain who it is, and goes back to stirring the chili he's making for tonight's dinner, half-listening to Lisa's end.

"No, he's…yes, exactly…not a lot, he goes days without eating…really? I had no idea…I'll keep an eye…yes… I'll tell him…okay, bye."

"Fuck!" Dean grunts and jumps back, chili sloshing over the side of the pot because he's a fucking idiot and he zoned out, stirred too hard, and how fucking difficult is it to make a pot of chili? He swipes the hot liquid off his hand and onto his shirt, wincing at the blood colour of the scalded skin.

Lisa grasps his hand gently to take a look, peers at the burn, and pulls him to the sink to run water over it. His hand still in her grip, eyes completely on her work, she says, "Bobby says I need to make sure you eat."

Dean mumbles something noncommittal, retrieves his hand and reaches to turn the heat down on the stove.

She doesn't push it, but she watches him during dinner so he forces down half a bowl of chili, half as much as she eats, but it's something. And after dinner, she suggests they watch a movie, and the three of them crowd onto the couch, Ben at one end half-watching the movie and half playing with his phone, while Lisa and Dean take the other end, Lisa curled into his side. She trails her fingers over his stomach, over his ribs, over and over.

Dean goes to bed with his belly warm and full, his heart so empty he thinks it could burst. It hurts, more than he can stand, in this soft, comfortable, padded life when he's all broken, jagged edges.

Dean changes the oil in Lisa's car, fixes her garbage disposal, cleans the corroded showerhead, snakes the clogged drains. One memorable weekend, he slices the palm of his hand open changing the filters on the heating system because it's almost winter and those things were fucking nasty, and Lisa freaks out when she finds him stitching the cut closed with a fishing hook and dental floss. She doesn't understand why he didn't ask her to drive him to the hospital, and he tries to explain about no insurance and disinfecting with whiskey in rundown motel rooms.

She reminds him that his construction job gave him health insurance, says he doesn't have to live that way anymore. That things don't have to hurt so much.

He says okay and promises not to do it again, but he doesn't understand, because it doesn't hurt, not like it should, not like everything else does.

Dean smiles and fixes things and cooks dinner and he never says what he's thinking: that he wishes all of his problems could be solved with six floss stitches and some gauze.

It's been so fucking cold out, snowing sometimes, and he had to buy a new coat. He doesn't understand why Lisa keeps tutting over the amount of his laundry, why she hums in worry as he strips off three t-shirts and two flannels before climbing into bed with her. She runs nimble fingers over his jutting ribs, makes love to him slow and careful like she thinks he's going to break.

There are fingertip-sized bruises on his bones in the morning, across his ribs and the knife-edge of his hip bones, along one collarbone. Lisa presses a gentle kiss to each one, and he feels a couple of tears land hot and guilty on his neck.

Dean makes them all breakfast, and he eats just for her, plans to throw up as soon as she leaves, but then she says her first class was canceled for snow. So they all bundle up, Lisa find a scarf to wind around his neck, and they take Ben to school together, but then she doesn't turn toward home.

She takes him to a doctor who listens as she talks about how Dean lost his brother, he hardly eats, barely sleeps, symptom, symptom, symptom, all while Dean knocks the laces of his boot against the edge of the table just to hear the tiny click of the aglets on metal, and he uses those black plastic cones to poke holes in the paper table covering.

He can't quite engage in this world. He's never been in this kind of doctor's office before, the kind with a waiting room not full of people gushing blood or clutching broken bones. There's a poster about diabetes on the wall, something about vaccinations. Sammy made him get all new vaccinations when he got back from Hell, somewhere between the third cold and the second flu, when they realized his immune system was a whiny bitch now.

The doctor gives him a bunch of prescriptions, don't drink alcohol, come back to see how you're doing, useless, useless, useless.

He doesn't take the pills. He pretends, pockets them for later disposal, but he starts to forget to even pretend and so Lisa takes over. She gives him his pills every day, watches him swallow.

She doesn't see him throw them up later, capsule still intact. She won't understand that he doesn't want to feel better. His brother is dead, he has no purpose in life, and he doesn't want some fucking chemicals to try to rewire his brain around that. It's a cop out, a cheat to not feel the consequences of failure and he doesn't deserve that.

Lisa doesn't deserve to deal with him though, so he tries harder. More smiling, more cooking, more working, more fixing, more more more. He spends so much time with Ben, teaching him about cars and food and girls, helping him with his homework and sneaking him extra cookies. Ben is the age Sammy was best at, when he was old enough to be fun and young enough to still be Sammy. And Ben has that same curiosity, that little bit of hero worship in his eyes like Sam used to have before Dean fucked everything up. He knows he doesn't deserve it, but he works that much harder to earn it.

Dean wants to be their world, Lisa and Ben, be everything they need. He knows he can't. He's not enough. Never has been. Not enough for them, and definitely not enough for Sam.

But this is all he has left, and he gives it all to them.

Dean calls Sam on a Tuesday at the beginning of May. The number is for a phone they've had forever, one of those prepaid ones that only gets a certain number of minutes, but they bought it cheap somewhere and forgot about it. They both had three and four phones at a time and it was hard to keep track. Dean had tried every number he had for Sam, and one still worked, and stupidly, when the call went through to ringing, he actually thought for a second that Sam might pick up.

"This is Sam. You know what to do." His voice. His fucking voice, all automated but alive and deep and strong and waiting for him to speak.

"Hiya, Sammy," he murmured past the lump in his throat. "This is stupid, I don't know why I'm calling you. It's just. Your birthday. It's your birthday, and I was thinking about you."

He pauses, gives himself a moment to ponder just how truly pathetic this is, and then forges on. "Anyway. I know you aren't much for this stuff, but I did get you one thing. I did what you asked. Lisa took me in. Ben is great. I got a job and I went to barbecues and I've even got health insurance and shit. Real apple pie life, right?" He forces a weird sort of high-pitched laugh.

"Actual apple pie. Lisa's making it because she knows it's your birthday." She's actually making it because Dean is way too fucking skinny and she thinks maybe he'll eat this. "'S like all those times we drunk dialed each other's birthdays when you were gone, right, Sammy? It's just like that. 'Cept I'm not drunk."

He's a little drunk. He's got a bottle of Jack stashed under the sink in the guest bathroom and he's sitting on the floor with only an inch left in the bottom of the bottle.

"Anyway. I just wanted to tell you happy birthday. And I did what you asked." So what do I do now?

"Miss you, little brother." He clicks to hang up before Sam can hear the weird sort of hiccupping sob that forces its way out even though he isn't crying, hasn't cried, not once. Even though Sam wouldn't have heard it even if he hadn't hung up.

They eat apple pie, and Dean notices that Lisa set an extra place at the table, right next to Dean. It's strange but it helps a little, to imagine that Sam might just be running late, but he's going to be here. Dean offers to clean up, listens as Lisa and Ben watch a movie in the living room. Before he goes to bed, he carves out an extra slice of pie and puts it on a plate at Sam's spot. It feels stupid, because he knows, but it feels absurdly better too, like he's offering this to Sam. Just so he knows he's welcome any time.

When he sees Sam for the first time, he thinks he's actually lost it. And then Sam is hugging him tight, crushing him and he smells like Sam and that stupid fruity shampoo he always buys on sale and he's warm and strong and so fucking alive Dean feels dead in comparison.

And Sam's been back for so long, probably actually heard that stupid voicemail and he didn't even call back. He left Dean to his fucking apple pie and his antidepressants and his health insurance like Dean didn't matter anymore.

He stays with Lisa and Ben. Keeps the pie and the pills and paperwork like it means something to him, but the second Sam calls, he's gone.

Because Lisa is the life he always wanted, but Sam is the only life he can live.

End.