in support of wildfire relief, @aspiringmehood donated $50 and requested past John/Dean, in which Sam finds out in the bunker era. Thank you for donating!
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When they finally make it to where Michael actually has Dean trapped—a bar, of course a bar, with cheesy neon and cozy wood—Sam feels like he can't catch his breath. There's something snarled and massive and thorned, wrapped around his lungs, his chest full of it. Dean smiles at him, at Castiel, pouring a beer and no shadow at all to his eyes, and Sam drags in air and can't—for a second, physically can't—say a word.
They worked their way through layers and layers of memories. Drowning. Hell. Sam heard Dean laughing, warm and vile, and Castiel glanced at Sam and said, that was in Alastair's workroom, and they didn't look at that memory, like they hadn't looked at so many others. Sam always knew that Dean had been through a lot, just like he'd been through a lot himself. It felt different, hearing it. Seeing it, occasionally, when Cas couldn't tell if the real Dean was trapped in the memory or if it was just an echo, and so they had to check, and the loneliness and the mud and the pain just kept stacking up. A lot Sam had known about; a lot he hadn't. Too much, that he hadn't.
After, when Michael's trapped inside Dean's mind and Dean's shut himself into his room, to rest, Sam goes back out into the bunker and walks past Jack and the refugee hunters trying to clean up the mess, and he grabs Cas, and he says, not quietly enough, "Did you know?"
"Know what?" Cas says.
It's the kitchen. Someone might come in, any moment. Sam stares at Cas for a few seconds and then jerks his head, and Cas follows him, down the halls and down the stairs until they reach—Sam can't help but think of it as 'the Dean Cave.' The den. Armchairs, foosball, cheesy neon. His throat closes up again, seeing the daydream of another life, and he grips the back of the recliner Dean said was his very tightly, and tries to articulate the question better. It's incoherent in the back of his head. Revulsion, horror, anger. Worse than anger.
"You—when we were looking for Dean," Sam starts. Tries to start. Cas is silent, behind him. The neon glows cheerfully. "When we—we saw—"
Jesus. He can't say it.
Cas touches his shoulder and Sam flinches violently. When he turns, Cas's hand is still half-extended, his expression regretful. "I'm sorry, Sam," he says. "I always assumed that you knew."
Sam lets out a breath. That he knew. Like it was just—something that was part of the family, growing up.
Cas searches his face. "It was assumed," he says, more slowly. "That the unusual relationship between you and your brother was a—natural extension of what had happened in Dean's past."
The heat in Sam's chest floods red. He's not aware of swinging until it's too late, and then Cas's head snaps back, and then his hand hurts, and he's dragging in air, desperate, and then he covers his face with both hands. He should say sorry—he almost is sorry—but he's also not, and he's also—out of control, like he hasn't been in years. Years, when he's worked so hard to tamp down reactions like this. The fury's roiling up and he realizes his hands are shaking when Cas touches his forearm, and then his wrist, carefully.
"Sorry," Sam says. Cas pulls at his wrist and Sam drops his hands, taking a deep, chest-expanding breath. Everything still feels too tight.
"No, I am," Cas says. He really looks it, his mouth tight. "I shouldn't have—I know you both keep very secret. I didn't realize Dean had kept more of it a secret from you."
In the face of everything, it's impossible to feel weird that Cas apparently knows about him and Dean. He should've realized that they couldn't really have secrets from heaven. It feels secondary.
The memory. Dad's voice, stern, the words barely audible. Dean had yelped and Sam had frowned, not sure what he was hearing. Michael was obsessed with his own father—maybe he was keeping his vessel trapped with Dad. Sam nodded—Cas's eyes glowed—and then they were there, in a motel room, and it was night, and there was Dean—thirteen maybe—stripped naked and pale in the darkness, sitting in the middle of the bed with his head bowed, and Dad in the bathroom, saying like it was a lecture from any other bit of PT, you know you're supposed to be ready for me, and Dean licked his lips and dashed the back of his hand over his eyes, and he said, sorry, sir, I'll remember next time, and Sam had felt frozen, standing there a foot behind Cas's shoulder, his brain somehow not putting two and two together until Dad came out of the bathroom bare-chested, undoing his belt, saying, I know you will, and there was—on the bedside table—
It turned out that thought-projections couldn't vomit. KY is still the brand Dean buys.
He sits in his recliner. Feels like his legs won't hold him. Cas hovers uncertainly, for some time that passes without Sam realizing, because it feels like an hour or an instant before the door closes, and he's alone, watching the wall, going over it, in his head. He can't help it. All these years, he's been trained—find the evidence, make connections, build a case. Cas took him out of the memory and said not there and didn't sound the least bit surprised, and Sam had barely helped after that, all of him locked into thinking—no. No.
He sleeps in his own room, that night. They usually do, when other people are around. He doesn't expect to actually fall asleep, but he does, and is surprised to find it dreamless. It's after nine o'clock when he finally drags himself out of bed, and when he makes it to the kitchen there's Jack, reading something on a laptop at the kitchen table, and he looks up and smiles at Sam like sunshine, and there, over by the griddle, Dean.
"Morning, sleeping beauty," Dean says, glancing at him. "What, did your alarm not go off or something?"
He's making pancakes. He looks tired. Sam smiles at him and knows it's half-assed, but a lot of shit has been happening and Dean lets him get away with it, just grunting and turning back to the griddle, and Jack says, "I made coffee!" and, christ, okay. Jack's coffee. Sam lets Jack pour him a mug and sits down at the table, too, and lets Jack tell him all about some potential hunt he's found in Jackson Hole, and Dean sits down next to Sam after a few minutes of excited babbling with two plates of pancakes, one of which he slides Sam's way. "Let the guy wake up a little, Jack," Dean says. His knee and hip and elbow brush Sam's side and Sam thinks, again, pointlessly: no. Dean says, "Eat, you look like crap," and Sam says, fulfilling his part, "You're one to talk," but Dean doesn't really smile like he ought to because there's an archangel inside him, and Sam can't—it's too much. He can't hold everything, all at once.
He eats a pancake. He drinks his coffee. He goes for a run, ten miles, the air cold but not cold enough to freeze the roil of feeling into stillness. When he comes back more of the refugees are gone until it's just Maggie, talking with Jack in the library, and Cas is sitting with them like some weird, awkward chaperone. Sam goes to take a shower, and leans his forearms against the wall and his head against his clenched fists while the hot water boils down, and he thinks about the times he'd be sent to stay with Bobby or with Pastor Jim or with Caleb for weeks at a time, and Dad and Dean were alone together, and the thing is that he can't remember. Nothing felt wrong. Maybe more correct to say that nothing felt any more wrong than anything else. When Sam and Dad would argue, Dean would take Dad's side more often than not, and if he didn't then he sat still on the far side of the motel room, and Sam had hated him for that, when he was a teenager. He'd thought, Dad's loyal lapdog. He'd thought, get a life, Dean, meanly, and when they had that last drag-out fight before Sam went to school, Dean had run outside to him, on the road outside that shitty ramshackle house, and he'd said, he doesn't mean it, Sam, and he'd said, don't go, and Sam had pushed away, had started walking right then, and Dean had watched him go, standing alone in the road, the house's dark windows looming behind his back.
A natural extension, Cas said. Sam shuts off the water, dries off. Wraps the towel around his waist and goes to his room, and when he opens the door Dean's sitting on his bed, with a bottle of whiskey on the bedside table, waiting for him.
"Long shower," Dean says.
"Long run," Sam says. The corner of Dean's mouth turns up but it doesn't look happy. It's noon, or near enough, and Sam doesn't even fake an objection when Dean pours them two glasses from the bottle, and when Dean holds out to clink Sam does, slowly.
Dean looks at him, and drains his glass. Sam sips at his. "I asked Cas to take the kids on that hunt Jack was telling us about," Dean says, and refills his drink. "Got the bunker to ourselves."
Sam takes another swallow. He didn't eat enough and whiskey's blooming hot in his stomach.
"You want to talk to me about something, Sam?" Dean says.
A beat. Sam's mouth feels dry, despite the taste of peat.
"Dug through my head, right? To find me? Cas let me know. Guess it took a while." Dean holds his glass in front of his mouth like he's going to drain it again, but then puts it down on the bedside table, and sits forward. His shoulders are hunched, purple bruise-marks under his eyes, and for all that he's springing a trap he just looks—like Sam wants to pull him down to the bed, hold him, sleep for a week tangled together with their skin touching like a promise.
The silence stretches. Dean closes his eyes and looks even more exhausted than before. Sam goes to his wardrobe, tugs on jeans and a t-shirt at least. He holds the wet towel between his hands and can't think. It's still hot and raw inside him, because it's been—a day. Less than a day. How long, he thinks, for Dean, and without his brain attached to his mouth he says, "When," and then wishes immediately to be struck by lightning.
Dean snorts. Sam turns his head and finds Dean shifted around, so his back's to the headboard, one leg extended along Sam's bed. He tips his head back against the wall, eyes still closed. "Suck my dick and I'll tell you," he says, matter of fact, and Sam's stomach flips even if the tone was perfectly even.
"Jesus christ," Sam says, and collapses into his desk chair. He hunches, can't help it—elbows on his knees, his hands in his hair. He keeps seeing it. Dean had been—not scared, but nervous. Like he knew what was coming. The dark, other than the light coming in from the bathroom, and his knees tugged up shyly to hide his nakedness, and how he'd been big-eyed and soft-mouthed and his skin looked—bruiseable. And of course he'd had bruises, all the time—they both had—and Sam had never, never—
"You don't get to be pissed about this, Sam," Dean says. Sam looks up and finds Dean watching him, his eyes tight. "It's nothing to do with you."
"You think—" Sam says, and closes his mouth before he says something stupid. He sits back in the chair and takes a deep breath. Of course Dean thinks that. "I'm pissed," Sam says. "And yeah, I get to be. But—god, Dean, I'm not pissed at you." He pauses, with Dean just looking at him, steady. "Okay, that wasn't true. Yeah, I'm kinda pissed at you. Because you didn't—" He shakes his head. "But I'm pissed at him."
Everything he ever accused Dean of, in his head or out loud. Everything in his head, stained now, like blood seeping through layer after layer of cloth, changing things irrevocably. He thinks, out of nowhere, of Dean's birthday, when he turned twenty and Dad gave him the Impala, and he tossed Dean the keys and Dean whooped and hugged him, tight, and Dad's hand cupped the back of Dean's head, and Sam hadn't thought anything of it, then. He holds Dean's head like that, he thinks. When they're together. When Dean's on top of him, and smiling down in that soft way he'll smile sometimes, and Sam will cup the back of his head tenderly, and bring him down, and kiss him.
Dean's still looking at him. "That first time," Sam says. "You and me. Were you—was it still—"
"What, are you jealous?" Dean says. Laced, just lightly, with acid.
"Just tell me," Sam says, and his voice sounds weird, and Dean's eyes dip, and slant away.
"Yeah," he says.
Sam closes his eyes.
The first time. Sam was eighteen with an acceptance letter in his duffle, and it was June, and Dad had disappeared for a month on some weird hunt. Dean had let him get drunk and he'd been—terrified and happy, nervous and needing, and he'd leaned in laughing against Dean's shoulder, and Dean had thrown his arm around Sam's shoulders and said you're such a lightweight, bitch, and Sam had been so full and glad and it had felt right, to kiss Dean's throat, and when Dean had gasped to lean up and kiss his mouth. Sam still remembers how it felt. Soft and wet, mainly, but with his whole body thrumming like a struck bell. They hadn't fucked for real that night but Dean had gotten him off twice, and Sam had jerked Dean off awkwardly, leaning over him and watching his face, and in the middle of the night he'd said don't freak out, and Dean had been quiet and then curved into his body and said, softly, who's freaking out?, and it had been—okay. Sam thought. It was okay.
If Sam was eighteen, Dean was twenty-two, and if Dean was twenty-two that meant that if Dad had still—if they'd still been—Dean was an adult, and he could've got halfway across the country if he wanted, and he didn't. Now, Dean's forty and Sam's thirty-six, and they've had about fifty lifetimes between here and there, and still Sam feels, in this second, about twelve years old, looking at his big brother and wanting answers.
Dean tongues the inside of his cheek, and says, inexplicably quiet, "Sam, can you—" He works his jaw— "Could you come here. Please."
Dean doesn't say please. Sam gets up, and walks the two steps to the bed, and Dean looks at him with his face drawn and sore and tired, and Sam sits by his hip, and tips forward, and lands with his back twisted painfully with his face in Dean's shoulder. He breathes in Dean's smell, and feels the tug when Dean's hand fists into his t-shirt. It's familiar, from all their years together. His brain flashes to them in bed—to pushing into Dean, his face tucked into Dean's warm shoulder, held safe and close—and then, cruelly, he imagines—their dad—his bulk tucked into the same warm closeness of thighs, Dean holding his shoulders, cupping his head, arching under him just like he does with Sam—
"I was—" Dean starts, while Sam's breathing through the roil of sickness in his gut. He hears Dean swallow. "It doesn't matter, Sammy. I was—it wasn't—" A pause. Sam licks his lips, and goes to sit up, but Dean's hand lands on the back of his head, keeps him in place. His fingers tangle in Sam's hair. He says, again, "It doesn't matter," only of course it does.
"I wish I'd known," Sam says, muffled against Dean's shoulder.
"What good would that have done?" Dean says. It sounds flat, exhausted.
Sam doesn't know. Maybe it would have hurt more. There's so much he doesn't know that's torturing him, now. Things he should've known. Things other people would've hurt Dean with—Azazel, Alastair, Lilith. Ruby. Crowley. Castiel, and all the angels, and Michael, fuck, Michael, crowding up inside Dean, telling him—the same cruelties Lucifer had told Sam, every second, filling him to the brim and saying, always, you're weak, you let this happen, this is your fault, everything is your fault.
They're sick, the questions Sam wants to ask.
"I'm gonna tell you one thing," Dean says. Sam shifts against him and Dean drags his hand down to Sam's neck, warningly tight. "One. And you don't get to ask anything else."
Sam nods, against his neck. Shifts his hips, so he's less cramped, and takes a deep breath.
"It was when you left," Dean says. "He was drunk. I mean, he got drunk a lot, right around then. We were in Colorado, at a cabin, and he got trashed, and he wanted—" A swallow. Dean's thumb drags up Sam's neck, rests soft under his ear. "I wanted it, too. Didn't want to think. It was rough. You know he used to hit me, sometimes? He hit me, during, and I—made fun of him. Said it didn't hurt, wasn't hard enough. Drove him crazy. I'd had a few, too. Parts of it I don't remember. Blacked out, I guess. I guess somewhere in there he broke my nose, and I know I got him, too, because he disappeared for a day and when he came back he had a black eye. He brought back a real ice pack, like a medical-grade one, and he let me take a bath and he patched up my nose, and for dinner we had like honest-to-god steaks, from some restaurant down in Boulder, and he slept in my bed that night, to stay close, and I just kept thinking about you."
Sam's breathing hard. Dean squeezes his neck, comforting.
"I wanted you back," Dean says. "He knew it. We started hunting separate more often, after that. I couldn't stand it but, you know, what choice did I have."
"I wouldn't," Sam says. He pushes up, breaks Dean's hold. His heart feels turned inside-out. Dean's resigned, spent. "Dean, I—"
"You're freaked," Dean says.
"Yeah, no shit," Sam says. He cups Dean's face, feels him warm, hard. Sam's. "But I'm not leaving. Okay? I'm not leaving, I'm never leaving again."
Dean looks at him, and puts his hand on Sam's chest. "I know you won't," he says, after a little while, and Sam takes the chance and leans in and—and kisses him, very softly, just touching their lips together. It's Dean who deepens it, after a few seconds. Selfish, licking and gripping Sam's hair, almost desperate. Sam lets him—of course, he lets him—and it feels like an age before Dean pulls back, his forehead pressed against Sam's and his breath coming fast between them. Sam cups his head, ignoring the nastiness that flickers in his belly. The past doesn't get to ruin this.
"Sam, you know I love you, right?" Dean says.
Sam laughs, shakily. "Yeah, I know that," he says.
They never say it. Not like it's necessary. Dean cards his fingers through Sam's hair and holds on, tight, his body tense. Sam wraps an arm around his shoulders, not knowing what comfort to give.
"Good," is all Dean says. He leans his temple against Sam's and sighs. Their bones sit hard against each other, but Sam doesn't move. He can feel Dean's heartbeat, like a pounding drum.