Still Life

Part II

Sam resigns to give Dean a moment to collect himself, because he's blowing like a racehorse and shivering with what Sam assumes is some kind of panic-induced shock and if he weren't doing either he'd surely be pissed his brother was sitting so close, not to mention staring at him.

So Sam pulls upright, wipes dirt from his palms and moves to collect the things he'd dropped when he came sprinting out of the cabin to see his white-faced, too-skinny brother hyperventilating and rolling around on the dirt with a gun just to not only aim the weapon at Sam but actually pull the goddamn trigger. Sometimes payback takes a while to come back around, he figures.

"Hey," Dean summons him back, rough-sounding and like speaking is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. Sam's not sure how time works in Purgatory, but it seems like Dean has aged ten years since he's been gone.

"Yeah?" Sam hefts the straps of his bag over his shoulder and begins the search for the dropped car keys. He'd better find those but quick, because when Dean comes back to himself he's going to want to drive. He's going to want normal.

"You still got that hoodie? The gray one?"

The one Dean's spent years stealing at every opportunity instead of finding one of his own, the one that's been passed between their bags a dozen times over since they first reconnected a lifetime ago. Sam does a quick mental inventory of his belongings, then pauses, backtracks, and does a quick physical inventory of his brother.

He hasn't yet moved from his splayed position on the ground and is still somewhat shivering, shock or cold or some lingering combination of both. Lack of sleep, or hunger, even, because the night before Sam had stopped just short of pinning him down and force-feeding the stubborn ass dinner. Man can't run off whiskey alone, but Dean's sure making a hell of a go at it, just to spite his brother. Sam's not saying he doesn't deserve some degree of spite here, but not in the way of Dean's too familiar self-destructive tendencies.

Still clutched tightly to his chest, Dean's right hand is an angry red from Sam smacking the gun away, but he's not going to apologize for that, and he knows he's not going to be expected to. It might even be helping, some small sensation of physical pain that's HERE and NOW to bring him back from wherever he was and whatever he was seeing when he was waving the damn thing around. Sneaking a peek at the faded, barely-there scar on his own hand, Sam knows he can relate to such a need like no one else, and maybe that's something Dean should be reminded of, so he knows he doesn't have to keep hiding behind this stubborn and untrue mantra of I'm good.

Or maybe that's just something Sam wants to tell Dean to make him feel better about himself and whatever role he may have in all of this. But Dean was DEAD and how was he supposed to know otherwise? If he'd known…well, there's no way to say for sure he'd have been able to break Dean out of there. But there's no way to say for sure he wouldn't have. And that's what he's going to have to live with. He's got his brother back, so he supposes a little bit of guilt as an aftertaste can't really be that bad, all thing considered.

Dean finally, stiffly moves to sit upright, drawing Sam's attention. He raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Sam realizes the pause after Dean's initial question has turned into an extended, silent moment while he was lost in his own thoughts.

He clears his throat and smiles like the suddenly embarrassed look on his brother's face doesn't break something inside of him. "Yeah, I think. Maybe."

Dean nods and averts his eyes to the relative safety of the ground, absently brushing away dried leaves and twigs that have stuck to his collar and hair.

The entire tableau seems eerily familiar, like Post-Hell Dean all over again, but without the automatic, fabricated denial of I don't remember a damn thing. He was jacketless and shivering then, too. Sam turns and pops the trunk, digs through the bags there until he comes away with a wrinkled but only slightly ripe-smelling coat for his brother, who seems to need it despite the comfortable nature of the morning. He's not going to get a lot of opportunities to ask, but clearly there were more stark differences between this world and Purgatory than the violence, because Dean's been acting like someone who's just moved from a muggy, tropical climate to a more tepid one, and with the way he's been squinting, even in cloud cover, Sam's going to have to dig up some sunglasses for the guy, too.

The gun's gone now, resting safely out of play in a patch of weeds and sunlight, so Sam leans against the car and pulls on the kid gloves. "Was it hot there?"

Dean drops his hands to his lap, still rubbing his enflamed right one. "Like a fuckin' swamp, Sammy."

Sam should be concerned about how open Dean is being, but he knows it's a temporary side effect of the complete breakdown he's just witnessed. He figures when you're on the offensive for so long, it must be hard to reconstruct a proper defense.

So he settles once more on the ground next to his brother, hands over the coat, and continues to prod, helping him get there. "Yeah, you look like you spent a week at the beach," he comments, ignoring the visible scar that runs from just below Dean's left ear to disappear beneath the collar of his shirt and focusing instead on his sun-tanned face.

Dean blinks, stares at a spot in the trees. A spot far away, but still in this immediate area. Still in this world. "Yeah," he says steadily. "Yeah, a week." And just like that, the window is closed. He's got his fortress back up.

He doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to remember, and Sam was just given a front-row seat as to exactly why. And, yeah, he gets that. He's got things he doesn't want to remember, either.

But when something distracts him and he thinks of Amelia he doesn't come out of the memory waving a loaded gun around. Priorities, Sam.

Sam missed his brother. He did.

And he hopes to get him back soon.

Dean swallows and shoves all the way up off of the ground, looking around for his fallen pistol. "We should get going."

"Yeah." Sam tosses him the keys when he straightens and has the gun tucked safely away, and smiles when Dean's eyes light up.

It's a different story when he asks about the dog smell in the Impala.

"It felt pure."

Sam heart drops to his stomach, but Dean is still just mad enough to keep going. Or maybe he's just trying to distract from this moment of vulnerability. Trying to kick dirt over the fire.

"But I, uh, didn't have any girl keeping me warm at night."

For Chrissakes, Dean, didn't you turn to a girl when I was dead?

Sam bites down around the retort, because it's not the first time some variation of the thought has crossed his mind, and maybe that argument was another part of his justification of why he allowed himself to burrow into his own little corner of the world with her. But maybe more so because he can already hear Dean's reply, pissed and snappy and driven by exhaustion and hunger pains.

"I wasn't dead."

And Sam didn't KNOW that, and none of it needs to be said again. They have to find a way to move past this unending carousel of a dispute, because the last thing they need is to get into this fight, saying things neither of them means.

He slaps his thighs and stands with a sigh. "I'm gonna get some air."

Dean limps for a while when he first wakes up, in such an obvious, unguarded way that Sam's sure he can't possibly know he's doing it. If he did he'd hide it, because there isn't an ounce of acceptance or resignation in his ass of a brother, just fight and grit and a stubborn streak to beat even that of their own father's. He wouldn't be standing here otherwise.

Its reason is unknown, source unseen. Whether from some injury he'd received in Purgatory or just a now-permanent side effect of the plaster cast the idiot had sawed off of his own broken leg a week too early the previous year. A stiffening of muscle, a locking of joint telling his brother as gently as possible that he's not as young as he used to be, going by unacknowledged. And Sam is enabling it by staying just as silent.

"It felt pure."

"It was bloody."

It's not been much, but what little information Dean has volunteered hasn't done well to quench Sam's curiosity, has only left more questions. He's seen some evidence of bodily harm, a few unfamiliar scars and a handful of lingering bruises. A heavy sense of exhaustion his brother can't seem to shake. Dean should be listening to what the limp is saying to him; he's not as young as he used to be. One of these days he's going to stop bouncing.

Sam swallows, knowing there's no way to make what he's about to ask sound nonchalant and off-the-cuff. He tries to compensate with a casual lean against the counter, like the thought's just sprung into his mind while he's waiting on the slow drip of the motel's percolator, instead of festering quietly like a cancer. "You let anyone check you over since you've been back?"

Dean stiffens in the middle of his arduous journey from his bed to the bathroom, doesn't move or speak for just long enough that Sam figures he's doing a quick self-triage to determine what would provoke such a question. "Like who?" he finally asks, with any icy tone and a level stare.

Fuck, Dean. "Like anyone, jackass. I'm assuming you weren't having water balloon fights in Purgatory."

"I'm okay."

A variation of the same old song and dance, but not really.

"Yeah, I know." Frustrated, Sam sighs and grabs up his paper coffee cup one drip too soon. The drop of steam-heated liquid stings when it hits the back of his hand, but he figures it hurts a lot less than anything that happened to Dean.

Sam tears his eyes away from the thermostat, confirming once again that his brother's set the room to a balmy seventy-seven degrees, and stares across the small space at where Dean is perched straight-backed on the edge of one of the beds. Every sound beyond the walls of the motel room draws his attention, his head jerking left and right and left again so suddenly he's sure to give himself whiplash. Sam frowns, forcing himself to think how new and unfamiliar even the most trivial of sounds must seem to his re-acclimating ears. This is still Dean, the brother he knows and remembers and has always had…he's just a little rougher around the edges. A cherry ride with the smallest ding on the fender.

It's been a few days, and they're both still striving to reconnect and rediscover normal. He's happy to see Dean's anger has abated, but it's bringing into stark reality what the mask of anger was concealing, just how bad off he really is. There's a short list of things that are sure to lure the old Dean out of this twitchy, pale version. Sam's not about to go out and get a hooker for his grown brother, so he moves to the next item in line. "You want something to eat?"

Dean's head snaps up, eyes wide and childlike. "Oh, God, yes."

It's also good to see he's moved past the stubborn streak that so recently had him rejecting Sam's offer of dinner solely on principle. He nods, more than happy to cram some junk food down the jerk's throat. "Pizza, burgers, Chinese, what?"

"Just, yes."

It takes a moment for Sam to realize that Dean literally wants all of it, everything he's mentioned, and he swallows, thinking what an ass he's been focusing for even the rare moment on what he's lost. How it doesn't even compare, and how literally little he knows or could hope to understand of what his brother's been through.

He averts his eyes, searching every flat surface for where the Impala's keys have been dropped. "Stay here. I'll go."

It should concern him that Dean doesn't fight him on that, because he's not sure what he's going to have left of his brother when his fight is gone.

Sam opens the door of the motel room and before he can blink his shoulder blades are bouncing off of the wall and Dean's got the business end of a big ass knife pressed against his throat. The hand without the knife is flattened and pressed against Sam's chest with bruising force.

This is exactly the reason he'd pressed for a No Guns In The Room rule, but he still should have seen this coming. But Sam's finding himself incredibly ill-equipped to handle this situation. He's playing everything by ear, because it's not like his brother came back with any sort of operating manual. He doesn't need to pop into the local library to know there's no Idiot's Guide to Dealing with Your Traumatized Purgatory Survivor. Maybe he should have penned something himself, after the whole debacle with Hell.

Sam carefully releases the handles of the plastic grocery and takeout bags, allowing them to swish and thump to the floor so he can raise empty, threatless hands to his brother. His heart is galloping against his ribs but he makes no other movements, says very gently and calmly, "Just me, Dean."

Dean blinks hard, twice, and inhales roughly before he pulls the knife away and drops it to the thin carpet with a dull clatter. He steps away, turning his back to Sam and interlocking his fingers behind his head, gripped so tightly Sam can see the stark white of his knuckles from across the room. "God, Sam. Fuck."

Sam relaxes his shoulders and swipes at the stinging spot on his neck. "Hey, no harm, no foul." He looks down and finds a smear of blood on his fingertips. Damn, that mother's sharp. "Or, no foul, anyway," he amends, trying to smile at his brother but Dean won't look at him.

Dean continues to pace the small stretch of real estate between bureau and beds, steadying his breathing by striving to keep pace with his slow, heavy steps. He whirls on Sam. "Don't you knock?"

"Wh – Dean…no, you're totally right." Sam nods in genuine agreement of his complete incompetency. He stoops to gather the fallen groceries, wincing at the sight of spilled rice from the white paper container that had popped open in the drop. "Next time I'll knock."

Dean meets his eyes and nods, like they're both in agreement that the lack of knocking is the problem here. He unhooks his hands from around his neck, and Sam can't NOT see how badly they're shaking. "So…food?"

"Sure," Dean agrees, though they both know any appetite he'd managed to find earlier is long gone now.

All the same, Sam is not above the force-feeding thing at this point. "And then sleep," he presses, in a tone that doesn't invite argument.

"Uh huh." Though it's just as obvious that won't be happening, either.

Sam thinks he might be able to scrounge up some form of mild sedative from the depths of trunk, and realizes he's also not above drugging his brother. But they're not there yet. Close, but not there yet.

Sam can make some adjustments here. Can take his cues from Dean and eat when his brother is hungry and sleep only when the idiot falls down unconscious, and knock every time he enters a damn room in between, because he would love for this to be a one-time – or, two-time – incident.

Dean is dangerous under the best of times, and at some point here his scales are going to tip, reflex overtaking awareness, and Sam will be left with an extra hole, or a sliced throat and arterial spurt.

He'd like very much for it not to come to that.

Autumn is approaching, but there is a lingering heat and sense of summer at the peak of each afternoon, cooling slowly and steadily to a comfortable temperature in the evening. The kind of nightfall Amelia would have loved to sit outside and enjoy with a beer.

They've had a pretty good stretch of days, almost verging on that normal thing they're both so desperate to find and grab hold of, and Sam is feeling just nostalgic enough to give it a go at getting Dean to do just that. Sit outside and enjoy a beer. Maybe in Dean's case, several. But Sam knows now that he knows enough to not judge.

Dean grumbles but agrees. He says he'll be damned if they're going to sit out on the porch of their motel room like a pair of twittering old ladies, so they pack the cooler and drive out to a spot just beyond the lights of city, just like they used to. Park the Impala along an ideal stretch of two-lane that gives a clear view of the setting sun, streaking the open sky with bleeding colors like a watercolor painting.

When the sun falls away completely and the stars come out, and Dean starts his now-daily ritual of shivering despite a relatively mild night, Sam slides off of the hood and reaches through one of the open windows to retrieve his jacket. He hands it over wordlessly, along with a fresh beer.

They don't have to acknowledge it's happened, but the baton has been passed. At least for the time being, it's Sam's turn to do the taking care of.

End