Work Text:
That guy is dead, and Sam didn’t even know his name. They don’t even know what’s doing the killing around here or how to stop it. He couldn’t save Ava or her fiance, he couldn’t save that town in Oregon, he couldn’t save Dad. He can’t save anyone.
Dean is downstairs, outside. He’s working — talking to witnesses, examining the crime scene, and Sam is up here in this creepy room and he can’t help. Dean keeps talking about quitting, about taking a break, because Dad couldn’t finish the job himself and put Sam out of his misery, but Dean is still working the case. He’s even excited. Just some creepy haunted house in New England with creepy dolls and creepy butlers and creepy little girls. Nothing earth shattering. No demon viruses or killer psychics or rogue hunters or disappearing secretaries. No demons at all. Just Sam and Dean trying to figure out what’s going on in the fog and rain. And Dean’s out there trying to figure it out, and Sam’s up here. He can’t do it. He can’t even do his stupid job.
He drinks. He’s a bad drunk in that he’s bad at being drunk. But his stupid family with their stupid job always did the same thing when shit got too real and that’s drink. He’s drunk enough to acknowledge that, the kind of thing he used to tell Jess when he got hammered enough, but back then it was always: No one I know drinks to have fun. It’s even a little bit fun right now. He’s pretty warm, even though this hundred year old inn is drafty and it’s below freezing outside, and as long as he’s drinking he doesn’t have to think about Ava, about her fiance slaughtered while he was sleeping, her engagement ring lying in a pool of his blood. She’s probably dead. He makes a little game out of it: one shot for every time he think about Ava.
And then he’s just standing in the middle of this room starting at the wedding dress, thinking about Ava, but he’s out of alcohol and he’s thinking about Jess and the ring he was saving up for, squirreling away his work study paychecks and working extra hours just so he could propose to her on her birthday. They’d talked so much about it — about their life together, about what she was going to do after graduation. She fucking died. Ava’s fucking dead probably. Ava would have just another four weeks until she was going to walk down the aisle. Sam would have waited forever for Jess. She was so fucking beautiful he couldn’t stand it. She would hate to see him now, fucked up and grieving for a father he spent his whole life resenting, and a father — who apparently knew about him, about how he’s bad. About how he’s cursed.
He’s sitting, but he doesn’t remember sitting. Dean comes in, making a plan for tomorrow, his back to him, talking at him like he always did when they were kids and Dad left Dean in charge. Every time, even after Sam had started staying alone. If they were alone together it was always — Dean’s in charge. Mind your brother. It annoyed Sam, like Dean’s tone is annoying him now, but maybe it was a blessing. With Dean always breathing down his neck, Sam couldn’t get all fucked up like the other psychic kids, start murdering people because he had attachment issues. Maybe that’s why Dad didn’t want him off away at school — too many things could go wrong, too many things did go wrong. Still it’s annoying, and he doesn’t care if Dean knows he thinks so.
“You’re bossy.”
“What?” Dean stills, confused, tone sharp. He’s so casual with the way he moves, like he’s completely in control of the situation — this situation, the situation with Sam being Evil Incarnate. He can’t really be, Sam knows, but it’s kind of nice sometimes, to let Dean pretend.
“You’re bossy,” Sam repeats. Dean’s a big guy, squaring his shoulders to look at Sam now. Sometimes Sam forgets, because he spends so much time looking at the top of Dean’s head. “And short.”
“Dude, are you drunk?” Which is a fair question, because Sam is not a good drunk, in that he’s bad at drinking, in that he can get pretty drunk off of very little, and he has far surpassed the “very little” threshold.
“Yeah,” Sam confirms. “So?” Because last time he checked, it’s not a crime to drink, and all the hunters he knows are barely functional alcoholics. Including his father, who’s dead and who wants Sam dead, wherever he is. “Stupid.” And yet — Dean deserves to know. To know that Sam’s dangerous. “I couldn’t save him.” That guy who hung himself. Sam’s not sure if the words are all coming out in the right order, but Dean knows in that cocksure belligerent way he always knows everything.
“You couldn’t have done anything.”
“That’s an excuse.” It’s an excuse. He should have saved Ava, he shouldn’t have sent her home to be with her fiance, because he would have been with her to see what took and he wouldn’t have let it. He should have saved Jess. He did know, too. He knew about Jess. Ava drove to Indiana to try and save a guy she half thought wouldn’t exist on a bad feeling and weirdo dream. Sam knew — he knew — about evil and demons and he just let Jess die. Everyone’s dying. If he’s not evil himself, then he’s at least bad luck. “The more people I can save the more I can change.” Dean asks what and Sam says: “My destiny” but what he really means is himself, the way that he feels like he’s not even human half the time, the way he feels like any second now he could snap in two — Sam before, Sam after. Sam who saves, Sam who kills. And like everything, habits save lives. It’s the one thing he ever really agreed with Dad about. He can change himself, who he is, who he’s meant to be, if only he’s good enough. If only he saves enough people, he can stop it, stop whatever it is that’s happening to him and all the kids who were born with stupid, psychic powers.
Dean’s lifting him up. But Dean’s still not getting it and it’s important. It’s important. “You have to kill me.” Dean’s face is set in stone, a hard refusal, but Dean doesn’t understand. It’s the right thing to do. Dad knew that. “Dad told you to do it, you have to do it.” The one thing they always knew to be true was that Dad had good instincts about these kinds of things, even if Sam spent his adolescence hating him for it.
“Yeah, well, Dad’s an ass.” Dean’s voice is as cold and sure as his face. Sam has never heard Dean talk about Dad like that before, never, not once. And he’s wrong, at least about this. Dad was right, he was right. He knew about Sam about what he is about what he might become, and Sam argues about it, the whole time Dean is maneuvering him onto the bed. He can feel himself getting upset, irrationally upset, frustrated that Dean’s not getting it, that Sam’s not evil right now, but tomorrow he might be. But it’s more important. Sam now, Sam today, Sam Before, the Sam who Saves People, doesn’t want to be the person who kills them, who hurts them. Does Dean get it?
Yes. Finally. A reluctant, small little: “I promise.”
Thank you. His hands on Dean’s face, warm skin and soft stubble. Sam’s a bad drunk, but in a fun way, Jess always liked to tell him. He’d never really drank before he got to college, only once or twice with Dean. He was clingy, liked to hold her hand at the bar while he would order them drinks, and wrap his whole body around hers while she fished her keys from her purse. She said that he was lucky she liked him, and he said that he was so lucky. He’s lucky he has Dean, because Dean always does what has to be done, even as he knocks Sam’s hands off of him. The world spins just a little when he closes his eyes, buries his head in the pillow, but he’s asleep before he can think about anything else.