Title: Near

Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.

Summary: Wincest. When Sam is young, he’s scared of storms. Years later, Dean suffers the same fear. Oneshot from the Still Life ‘verse. Complete.

Feedback: Is loved and hugged tight.

A/N: Inspired by randomly watching the rain. :D Schmoopy angst coming right up.

When Sam is six years old he’s afraid of storms. In years to come he will learn that there are other, more dangerous things to be afraid of. For now his biggest enemy is the weather. He doesn’t understand why, but the noise of the storms scare him so much he can barely breathe. They can go for days, weeks, without a really bad one hitting, but whenever rain falls Sam starts to worry.

Especially when his dad is out.

One night they’re in a motel that feels like it might blow down. Little pig, little pig, let me come in... Rain pounds against the windows and thunder booms. The lightning cracking the sky open is the worst. It looks so big. Sam shivers and turns up the volume on the small TV until Dean yells at him, “Are you deaf? Turn that down or we’ll get kicked out!” Sulking, Sam turns it down a tiny bit and Dean mutters something he can’t hear.

It’s probably a cuss word. Dean does that a lot.

“It can’t get inside, stupid,” Dean tells him later, when they’re both lying in bed, all the lights turned off except the low-light lamp next to Dean’s bed, which keeps flickering as the wind plucks the wires outside like an untalented guitarist.

Sam flinches and buries his face under the covers so he can’t see the shapes of the tree branches moving against the wall.

“Dean...” he whispers.

“I’m asleep.”

“Dean...”

“Fine, be a girl. Come on.” That’s the signal that Sam’s allowed to climb into his brother’s bed. It’s safe there. He slips out of his bed and nearly jumps on top of Dean in his hurry. “Sammy! You’re crushing me!”

“Sorry, Dean,” he feels Dean shift over. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s at work; you know he’s at work.”

“What if...”

“The storm can’t get him. It’s just water.” Dean’s voice is full of meanness, but he’s not mad, not really. Sam reaches down and wraps his hand around Dean’s arm.

“But...”

“No buts, Sam. Dad is fine. And you got school tomorrow, so shut up and go to sleep already.”

“Why’s there gotta be storms?” Sam asks after a few minutes. He knows that Dean isn’t asleep.

“Because. Because otherwise there’d be no water. Okay? And if you don’t drink water you die.”

“But I don’t drink rain.”

Dean is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Ask your teacher. Or write a letter to the weather guy on TV.”

Sam sits up abruptly in bed. “Dean! We got the umbrella.”

“Yeah, and?”

“If we have it, Dad can’t have it. He’ll be...”

“He probably bought a new one. Ours has holes in it. Go. To. Sleep. Or you’re going back to your own bed.”

Sam lies down. He looks at the ceiling and jumps at every thunder clap, wondering if it will tear the roof off. If it does they’ll get wet, umbrella or no umbrella. “Dean?”

Now Dean is starting to sound mad. “What now?”

“Can we have the TV on?”

“Yeah, fine, whatever. Just don’t turn it up too loud.”

Years later, Sam is over his terror of storms. He has other things to fear, things that can really hurt him.

There is something reassuring in storms now. It’s just loud noises, strong winds and a lot of water. It’s just nature. In fact, he finds it’s almost nice to know that not all the things he fears are that scary – he can move on from things. Sometimes Sam doubts his own ability to adapt, to change. Sure, he has adapted quite a lot over the past few months, but still... if he was truly talented at change, he would do it with a song in his heart rather than a weight on his chest.

When it begins raining one evening, it takes Sam a while to connect that to how Dean is behaving – he is skittish at dinner. They sit on the living room floor, and Sam serves scrambled eggs, one of the few things he can make successfully. Dean is – was – the best cook, even though you’d be hard pushed to make him admit to it.

Dean stares at his plate, pushes his fork against the mashed up eggs around and spears them carefully. It takes him a couple of minutes to get the food to his mouth, and by that time more of it has fallen into his lap. Sam pretends not to watch, pretends not to ache. Dean lifts a forkful successfully to his mouth, frowning with intense concentration. Then the wind rattles tree branches against the window and he jumps, dropping his fork on the floor. Sam doesn’t respond straight away. He listens as a strangled, dry sob wrenches free of Dean’s throat, and that’s when he looks up at Dean sitting opposite him.

“Don’t worry,” he says, studied nonchalance in his voice, “that was really good.”

“Know,” Dean says thinly, “Dean know.”

“What do you know?” Sam asks softly.

“Know how,” he murmurs, “can’t... can’t...” he lifts his hand to show it to Sam, as if there’s anything there that is blocking what he knows how to do, but can’t. Sam puts down his own fork and takes his brother’s hand in both of his. He kisses Dean’s palm.

“You’re getting there,” he says, “remember a few weeks ago you couldn’t do this. Dean, you’re really coming along.”

Dean makes a strange noise – somewhere between someone crying and someone giggling – and pulls his hand away. “Noise.”

“You mean the wind? It made you jump, huh? That’s okay.”

The rain sounds like stones being thrown at the house and Dean cringes in on himself. “Sammy, don’t like.”

That’s when it occurs to Sam that Dean is frightened of the storm. He pleads with the elements for it to go away, because if there is one thing he can’t stand its Dean’s fear. Dean’s fear is the fear of a small child and a lost adult at once; and there is nothing so haunting as Dean crying when he’s afraid of something he can’t articulate.

“How about we eat some more dinner?” Sam offers. He wants to take Dean’s mind off the bad weather outside. “We’re safe in here, Dean. I promise.”

“M’not... not...” Dean pushes his plate away with stuttering hands. “Not.”

“You’ve got to be hungry. Come on. I cooked it,” he says, smiling, “just a little more? We have some chocolate pudding for dessert, too.”

Dean crosses his arms stubbornly and shifts slightly. Sam watches as one of his feet smashes egg into the carpet unknowingly. He doesn’t comment on it, just uses his own fork to get some from Dean’s plate. He lifts it to Dean’s mouth.

“Just a little,” he repeats, and Dean pouts, but he opens his mouth after a moment. Sam smiles and nods, observing Dean’s messy chewing with love coursing through him unexpectedly. “Thank you. It’s because I said ‘chocolate’ isn’t it?”

Shaking his head unconvincingly, Dean hides his face in his hands. Sam knows he’s smiling, too.

Bedtime is a challenge. Dean gets in compliantly enough but, as Sam is pulling on a t-shirt to sleep in, the lights cut out. Dean dives under the covers, shaking, and thunder echoes through the house. Sam sighs and gets in next to the trembling mass of Dean.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he says, putting his arms awkwardly around his big brother. This feels far too much like when they were children, except the wrong way round. Sam wants to leave his childhood behind, but that’s not an option for Dean. Some part of his brain has broken and he is stuck with all the irrational fears and helplessness and constant wonder of being a kid. Sam kisses Dean’s sweat damp brow a few times, calming him.

“Loud,” Dean moans unhappily, “it’s loud, Sammy.”

“It’s just water,” Sam says. He’s been telling himself that since he was very young, ever since Dean first told him. “Remember, you told me that? It can’t come in. It can’t hurt you.”

Dean shakes his head, disbelieving. “Loud,” he says again as lightning cuts through the room, illuminating it. The noise Dean makes nearly deafens Sam. “Sammy...”

“Shhh,” he presses his hands against Dean’s back, “go to sleep. It’ll be gone in the morning.”

“No go.”

“What?”

“No... go,” Dean says firmly, looking up at Sam. His hair is all over the place, eyes shining with the hysterical edge of terror, flooded with tears. “No, not go. Dean not go.”

Sam thinks he must be getting better at figuring out what Dean’s mangled words mean, because he understands almost straight away. “You’re not leaving me, you know. I’ll be sleeping, too.”

Dean clutches the front of his t-shirt. “No, Sammy, no sleep. Stay.”

Insane though it may be, no matter that he’s so tired he can barely keep his eyes open, Sam stays awake with Dean. He talks. He talks about the rain just being water even though you don’t drink it right from the sky. He talks about their old umbrella, the one that eventually blew away in the wind, the one that had holes in it. And how he cried when that happened, how their dad bought them a brand new one, and it was black and huge enough for them to share.

As the storm eases off, Dean whispers sleepily, “Dad... gone, Sammy. Gone.”

Why does he choose now to acknowledge their father’s death? He’s spent months denying it, asking: Where’s Dad? Is Dad coming home? Sam has come to accept that Dean will never retain the circumstances of the death. Sleep deprivation and a hurting heart make the revelation fall almost as heavily upon Sam as if he’s hearing the words for the first time, as if this is news. Sam buries his face in Dean’s hair and says, “Yeah, Dean. Dad’s gone. But that’s okay. You’ve still got me.” He holds Dean near to him and stays conscious until morning comes, just thinking, feeling Dean’s heart beating against his chest, predictable, the same as always. The rain drips down the glass of the window harmlessly and Sam watches it trickle downwards in the wet sunlight. The natural world outside, soaked and rejuvenated now the storm has passed, is almost exactly the same colour as Dean’s eyes when he’s happy in his innocence.

End