#love dumping all my problems onto a random convenient angel who refuses to die

[zmediaoutlet]

They ended up south of the hospital mainly because Dean had to pick a direction when they pulled out of the lot and, considering the day he’d had, a coinflip was as good a way to make a decision as anything. A motel even if it’s two in the afternoon, and two beds because it’s always two beds, and he drops his bags on the one closer to the door and wants to flop face-first straight into the ugly brown comforter but he feels like if he falls he’ll never get up again. His shoulders and low back and the arches of his feet all hurt. He hardly even had to fight, today. Go figure.

Sam’s flicking the light in the tiny closet, checking the mini-fridge, casing the bathroom. “Huh,” he says, for no reason Dean can tell. Drops his bag on the luggage rack and shrugs out of his jacket. Absently pops his neck. Says, then, “I could eat, you want—I don’t know, delivery something,” like he didn’t almost check out on Dean, like he didn’t disappear in the middle of the night like every one of Dean’s worst nightmares, like in the middle of driving about ninety through too-crowded city streets Dean didn’t get a call on his cell from an unknown number and about have a heart attack when the woman on the other end said Mr. Smith, you’re listed as the emergency contact for Mr. Sam Smith. I’m afraid—  Like the world didn’t just crackle out to static right then.

He’s standing there, though. On two legs and with his back up. Going for the yellow pages under the room phone, flipping to the back. “Number One China Palace,” he mutters, and glances across at Dean, and is alive. Alive and walking around and his brain where it’s meant to be. He frowns, the phonebook dangling against his thigh. “You okay?” he says, and Dean says, “Yeah,” and then he says, “God,” and then he sits down hard enough on the bed that he almost bounces, and he plants his hands on his knees and has to breathe, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Acid roiling up his throat. He wants a drink so bad he could kill something.

“Dean?” Around the bed, crouching. Alive and compos mentis and hovering a hand over Dean’s leg, like he’s worried Dean’s hurt somewhere he can’t see. Except, no, that was Sam—that was Sam all this last goddamn year, or longer, all this time Sam’s head was crumbling or boarded up but still crumbling behind or trapped in hell with a shark-smiling sociopath wearing his face or even before, when he thought he had to die to prove something to the world, or when he had to rot himself to prove something to Dean, or when—Dean takes another deep breath and blows it out extra slow, his heart doing something weird in his chest, and Sam stops with the hover-hand crap and grabs his thigh, frowns up at him, says, “What—hey, hey.”

“I’m not having a panic attack,” Dean says.

“Looks like it,” Sam says, but sits back on one heel, and the death-grip on Dean’s thigh turns more into Sam just—keeping a hand on him. Heavily warm. “You good?”

Dean fishes in the inner pocket of his jacket and finds the flask, takes a pull. Sam’s eyes tighten but he doesn’t make a comment. The whiskey’s crap and it burns all the way down but he feels like he breathes better after. Sam watches his face, his hand sliding a little up the side of Dean’s leg. Like he hasn’t—god, since before Cas pulled that shit-ass trick with Sam’s wall. Dean wants to pull Sam up by the wrist and fall backwards on the bed and sleep for a goddamn year, Sam laying heavily over him like the worst sweaty-nasty suffocation torture Dean ever accused him of being, when they’d share beds sometimes, and Sam would roll his eyes and pull Dean in by the small of the back and Dean slept better than maybe he ever had. Why did they ever stop that. What would it take, to go back.

“And it’s really all just—gone,” Dean says, picking up the staggered confused stupid back-and-forth they’d had back in that awful hospital room, while Cas moaned shaking on the bed and Meg held him grimly down. “Just like that.”

Sam’s cheek sucks in on one side. “Not just like…” he starts, and then looks at Dean’s face, and his chin drops. “But—yeah. I’m okay. Not even that tired, for some reason. It’s just you and me in here, I swear.”

It always was but the way Sam says it makes Dean’s shoulders ripple, like someone’s standing directly behind him, watching. He shudders totally without meaning to and Sam’s head picks up and he shifts forward, kneeling, his hands going to Dean’s knees, gripping firm. “Don’t get hit by a car again,” Dean says, and Sam huffs and says, “I’ll do my best,” and Dean reaches forward and grips Sam’s shirt and feels Sam’s skin warm under it and says, “I mean it,” and Sam looks him in the eyes and doesn’t say that Dean’s being a dumbass and doesn’t even seem like he’s thinking it, really, and he says, “Yeah, Dean,” and, “Okay?” and Dean doesn’t know the answer to that. It has to be yes because Sam’s alive and here and that makes it a ranked good day, by Dean’s usual metric, but the time when he wasn’t isn’t far enough in the rearview for Dean’s taste. That white hospital room and the white bed and Sam sitting there like he didn’t care so much about the difference between alive and not. When the difference there, for Sam, was the only thing in Dean’s life that had ever mattered. When it was pretty much the only thing he was hanging his hat on, these days, and if it came to it, if any time between now and the shitty future Dean could see, the answer flipped from one to the other, Dean didn’t know if he’d be able to make it in the world that was left, after. He just didn’t see how that could be so.

Sam watches him, quietly. Tightens his grip on Dean’s legs and then stands up. “I’m ordering Chinese,” he says, steady. “Gonna take a shower. Find something to watch, huh?”

Dean blinks, wipes his hand over his face. “Yeah,” he says.

“We should’ve gotten a king bed,” Sam says. He half-smiles, when Dean looks up at him. “So you won’t bitch about kicking.”

“Wouldn’t have to if you weren’t Chuck Norrising in your sleep,” Dean says, and Sam really smiles, then. Goes for the phonebook, and the Chinese. Ordering extra broccoli, the bitch. Dean grips the edge of the mattress, and manages to stand up after all, to deal with his bag, to find the remote. Sun coming in through the gaps in the curtains. Sam, smiling at something Dean can’t hear. The rearview feeling, for a minute, a little less crowded.