Title: In These Broken Times

Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.

Summary: Sam/Dean Wincest. Part of the Still Life ‘verse. Dean wants to help and Sam needs him to. Oneshot. Complete.

Feedback: Is Love

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It’s what Dean doesn’t say that scares Sam, the long empty spaces between his words, when he’s not fighting with the barrier his tongue creates, when he gives up and sits in silence, staring at nothing, lies on the floor with his limbs tangled, breathing the dusty, close to the ground air.

Sometimes Sam just watches his brother, watches and tries to breathe in sync with him and imagine what’s running through Dean’s head. In the old days, it would have been an easy prediction, no psychic talent needed. At least, Sam always thought that, always imagined he understood Dean, how shallow he was.

Guilt has strong fingers to strangle Sam when he thinks such terrible things. Now he can feel his mistakes, rough and unfading as scars, covering the map of his history with his brother.

His precious brother.

“Hey, Dean,” today isn’t a day that Sam can just watch and imagine; observe Dean lying there all disconnected, removed from his own body, as if he’s just an experiment in how destroyed someone can stand to be, “come on. You don’t want to be down there. We haven’t cleaned that floor... ever.” That’s not true, not completely, because occasionally Sam just wants to clean everything in case Dean gets into it.

Some days, Dean will get in a mood where he wants to learn everything back, wants to know every single thing he’s lost right there and then, and if Sam won’t tell him then he tries to find out for himself by looking.

Sam doesn’t think Dean knows what he’s looking for; he just knows he’s searching for something that’s missing.

When this happens, Sam just wants to cry, he wants to scream: If it was something you could see, don’t you think I’d have found it by now?

Dean makes an incoherent, guttural noise.

“C’mon,” Sam says, and kneels down, gets to Dean’s level, “let’s get you up, okay?”

Shaking his head, Dean presses his nose against the thin carpet and breathes. “You... g... go, Sammy.”

Sam tries not to flinch. Instead, he makes himself put his hand on his brother’s back and ask softly, “Do you want some time alone? You know that’s alright, Dean. It’s okay to want to be alone.”

“No,” Dean can say that word easy as anything, quick and sharp and loud. He sits up and looks at Sam, eyes kind of bloodshot and definitely angry. Anger is something that Sam’s not used to seeing coming from Dean, not anymore. “No. I... you... go... and then I want you...” he narrows his eyes and concentrates. “Be?”

“Slowly,” Sam instructs, “think it out.”

Dean nearly smiles and says, “Stay. I want you... to... stay. Just,” he waves an arm and now he is smiling, shyly, “gotta...”

It’s agonizing, watching Dean try – and he tries so hard – to put the right words in the right order and construct a sentence that makes sense. Sam tries not to prompt too much because it’s important that Dean gets it by himself, at least kind of. Every day is unpredictable, one day can be harder or easier than the last, one day Dean can be talking almost fluently, the next it’s like all his words have vanished. Today appears to be one of those awkward, in between days.

“You live,” Dean says suddenly, “and I live. Together.”

Sam frowns. “What?” It’s not the most sensitive he can be, but this is one of those times that Dean says something that might make sense and might be meaningful and it’s just that Sam feels... stupid for not understanding. There are certain parts of Dean, the deepest parts; that Sam can’t seem to touch.

Sometimes he wonders if it’s just because he’s scared.

“I said wrong?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Oh... no, I don’t think you did say it wrong,” Sam says and smiles uncertainly, “I think you’re being kinda too smart for me.” He raises his hands as a display of helplessness. “Sorry.”

For a moment, Dean looks so incredulous it’s hard to believe that there is so very much of him missing. “Being too smart for you?” he asks with a voice full of doubt, and then he laughs unevenly, almost bleakly and says, “Funny Sammy.”

Sam doesn’t know how to take that, so he changes the subject. He wishes he were one of those people who can just take everything as it comes but... it’s hard. It’s so damn difficult to keep rolling along when all he can think is how terrible it must be for Dean, to be trapped inside himself.

Or else, how terrible it must be to be entirely and irrevocably broken – so much so that wholeness is a fairytale, a shadow in the corner and something only other people are. He almost can’t bear it.

“Do you want some lunch?”

“Want...” Dean scrapes his fingernails across the carpet.

“Do you?”

Dean looks up at him and asks, “Hep... help?” He says this very firmly and smiles, to show that he knows he’s got it right.

“You want to help me?” Sam can hear how disbelieving, how utterly awed, his own voice is.

Nodding, Dean whispers, “Never help... you say... sit. Be good.”

“I just don’t want you to push too hard. You need to go slow,” as he says this, it becomes suddenly apparent to Sam that in times like these, he should just appreciate how far Dean is coming along, not criticize and worry too much. He should let the brokenness – his own and Dean’s – fall away and just be proud.

But he can’t.

For a beat it looks as if Dean might retaliate with something sharp, but instead his eyes go damp and he bites his lip. “I... I’m... not stupid, Sammy.”

Sam’s shocked out of keeping calm. He quickly stammers, “Of course you’re not,” while he puts his hands on Dean’s shoulders. Dean takes this as a sign that it’s time to hold on tight – this almost makes Sam smile – and he presses himself against Sam’s body.

“You always said I was... I was...” Dean murmurs, his voice going close to the edge of crying. “You said I wasn’t smart.”

“When?”

“Always.”

Always... Dean’s referring to the past; that hits Sam almost violently. Which means that Dean remembers something more – more often than not it seems to Sam that his older brother only remembers the bad parts of their past together. All those times that Sam carelessly referred to Dean as being an idiot, as being slow, as being not quite good enough. Sorry, you don’t make the grade. Sam squeezes Dean and he doesn’t know what to say. So he says anything he can think of, lets the first and probably most honest thing that comes into his head fall off his tongue.

“I was bad,” Sam says simply, “I was bad to you. Do you get that? You are very, very smart. And you can help me whenever you want.”

Dean pulls back a bit, blinking, as if Sam might be lying to him, “Help Sammy?” He examines Sam’s face so carefully it starts to feel uncomfortable, and Sam finds himself wanting to look away. He won’t, though. He looks straight back into the confused, still-beautiful eyes of his brother and lets himself be seen.

“I need you to help me,” he says after a while.

“No...” The embarrassed smile is back on Dean’s face.

“Yes. Dean, listen. I always have.”

“But... left... you left,” Dean still looks completely perplexed, “how?”

Sam can’t answer that question. How could he leave when he needed Dean? He doesn’t entirely know, but how can he admit that? Now that Dean needs a reason, an explanation, for everything. And faith. He needs concrete faith in Sam. “I was stupid,” he confides, and lets himself grin, self-deprecating. “Now I’m smarter. I hope.”

A laugh gurgles out of Dean’s throat. “Yeah,” he agrees and touches Sam’s face with his clumsy fingers, “and Dean.”

“And me, you mean and me,” he corrects, out of some habit he hasn’t yet broken.

“And me,” Dean says automatically, nodding as if he appreciates the help as much as Sam does his progress, “and me.”

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End

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