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Dean’s twenty-one years old and his baby brother is about to leave him forever the very first time that he tells Sam he’s in love with him.
Sam doesn’t know that he knows. Sam thinks his acceptance letter is still a secret; that he’s the only one privy to the fact that he’ll soon be leaving to attend one of the best schools in the country. Dean tries not to think about how bad his eyes had burned trying not to cry when he'd found it.
It slips out unbidden, the confession. It’s not the sort of thing they do, verbalizing emotion like this, but they’re out by themselves, just driving under a starlit sky, Zeppelin on low in the background, and he looks over at Sam and sees the tiny smile on his face and he aches with it, his heart twisting up in his chest. “I love you.”
Sam’s not smiling anymore. Looks startled, and Dean almost takes the words back. Almost. “Um. Yeah, I know. I love you, too.”
But Sam doesn’t understand. He’s so smart, Dean thinks, but it’s the important things he doesn’t get. Not when they matter. “That’s not what I meant, Sammy.” A pause, just the engine and Stairway to Heaven and his heartbeat filling the space. “You know what I meant.”
He’s not going to say it again; doesn’t want to clarify because it's already too real out in the open like this. Glances over and wonders if the searching look on Sam’s face means he’s trying to find the hidden message in Dean’s words.
The rest of the car ride is silent. Dean thinks the stars don’t look so great anymore, and he wants to turn the music up; make it drown out the silence that's trying its hardest to suffocate him. Instead, he just drives, white-knuckled at the wheel and pretending he can't feel his brother slipping away with every mile.
Sam’s gone when Dean gets home the next day, nothing left to prove he was ever there, and only their father’s lingering anger to suggest anything’s out of the ordinary at all.
-
Four years later when Dad’s missing and Dean doesn’t have anywhere else to go or anyone else to turn to, and he ends up pinned to Sam’s living room floor after breaking into his perfect little world at some ungodly hour of the night, Dean is still in love with his baby brother.
It hasn’t faded, he doesn’t think, not one bit over the last couple years. But with Sam pressed close like this, seeing the recognition and irritation in his expression, it all comes rushing back, every thought and feeling and desire he’s ever harboured towards Sam hitting him like a freight train, and Dean can pinpoint the moment that Sam remembers, too, because his eyes shift and the walls go up and he shuts down and then he’s standing, offering Dean a hand up and trying not to look right at him.
When Sam introduces his girlfriend, Dean feels kind of like he’s been shot. He doesn’t show it, though; puts on his act for all their sakes. He isn't quite that stupid.
“Hey, I love the Smurfs!”
This is who he is. Who he’s supposed to be, anyways. Not in love with Sam. Never Sam; never his precious little brother. He puts the feelings in a box and locks them away, deciding that he won’t burden Sam with them more than he already has. It isn't fair to make someone else carry this horrible, twisted weight.
-
When Jessica dies, and Dean’s the only person Sam has left to turn to and get support from and be with, Dean tries not to listen to the tiny, selfish part of him that’s happy about it.
He really, really tries.
-
When a possessed truck driver slams his eighteen-wheeler into the side of the impala- when Dean’s knocked unconscious for the last time, when he hears Sam shouting for him as he goes out and everything blurs into a crimson mess of a world before going entirely black- he’s still completely, madly, painfully in love with his brother.
-
And then, suddenly, Dean's waking up and he sees himself lying in a hospital bed, pale and bruised and hooked up to all sorts of beeping machines, and he figures this is his chance to remove himself and all his fucked up feelings from Sam’s life altogether.
He doesn’t think it’ll be hard. Things have been different since he told Sam how he felt; things have been strained and awkward and wrong where they used to just be. Sometimes Sam smiles at him or touches him the way he always used to, but then there’s a moment of hesitation and realization, and he backs off. No matter how many times it’s happened, it always feels like a knife in Dean’s heart to watch his brother draw away from him like that. Always wants to grab him back, to shout "I won't hurt you. I won't touch you. Please don't leave me."
But it won’t happen anymore. Dean’s sure of it. Sam will mourn him and move on, and that will be the end of this problem for good.
He doesn’t consider the fact that Sam isn’t ready to let him go.
-
He’s been making phone calls. Dean just watches his brother as he hangs up again, seems to consider throwing the phone across the room in frustration.
“I’m gonna save you,” he mutters to Dean’s body. Dean’s a few feet to the left, but it’s not like Sam knows any better. “No way in Hell are you dying on me, jerk.”
Dean’s sure that the pretty girl with the heavy aura Sam can’t see is proof to the contrary, but he doesn’t really have a way to communicate that to his brother.
“It’ll be easier for the both of you if you move on,” Tessa tells him, voice soft and coaxing as ever. Dean doesn’t even look at her.
“He’s my brother.”
She seems to take the hint, because the next time Dean looks up, she’s gone.
-
The Ouija board is a surprise, makes Dean bark out a short laugh as Sam sets it down and sits himself cross-legged on the floor. “God, feels like I’m at a fuckin’ slumber party,” he mutters, but he sits down across from his brother all the same. It's silly and juvenile but it's not like he's got much better to do these days.
For a long moment, as Sam talks to himself- directs it at Dean, but he doesn’t seem entirely sure whether he’s going to get a response- Dean needs to think about how he wants to handle this.
He’s sure that even the slightest suggestion that he’s still here will be enough to spur Sam on into finding a way to save him. His brother is nothing if not a stubborn bastard, and if anyone can find a way to save his from an honest-to-God reaper, it’s Sam.
But. But.
What’s left waiting for him if he comes back? Tense silences. Sam flinching away because Dean’s touch may carry an ulterior motive. The relationship he ruined five years ago by admitting something better left unspoken and unacknowledged; he'd shattered everything they'd ever had with those three words, and he knows there's no way he can ever undo that damage.
Dean doesn’t want that. More important, though, Sam doesn’t deserve that.
So when Sam asks “Dean? Are you here?” Dean doesn’t let himself think about it too hard before he’s guiding the planchette towards no.
Sam seems startled, blinks a few times. “He… did his reaper come?”
Yes.
Dean hopes it’s enough.
Sam’s jaw tightens. “He’s still alive. He’s still here. I know it.”
In hindsight, he thinks he should’ve known his brother better.
-
Three days later, Dean is declared brain dead, a vegetable on life support, and Sam just about loses his mind.
“There has to be something you can do,” he says, but it comes out like a growl, pained and desperate. He’s got a doctor by the lapels of his coat, and the man looks apologetic, but unwavering.
“I’m sorry, son. Your brother’s gone. You don’t have many options left.” A pause. “I don’t want to have to call security, Sam. Please.”
A long, tense moment, and Sam lets go, but Dean sees the fire in his eyes, the determination there. He’s silent for a few seconds, staring hard at the wall.
“What are the options, then?”
-
Dean stands beside his brother as they both watch a doctor disconnect his body from its life support systems. The flatline sounds a smooth B flat until it’s unplugged, and for once, he’s grateful for the silence.
-
Sam should return to a normal life, Dean thinks. He should go back to school, maybe try to find another girlfriend. He should get an apartment, get a dog. Get himself the life he’s always wanted. Sam should get himself as far away from hunting as possible.
Sam doesn’t.
-
Dean wonders, sometimes, what he’s tied to. He knows he’s a spirit, now, a ghost of some kind, and he knows, as a hunter, that there are certain rules to which ghosts must adhere.
It could be his ring, maybe. Sam wears it himself, now, on the ring finger of his left hand. He’s got Dean’s amulet, too, doesn’t take it off for anything. Even the car would make sense, if she weren’t a wreck sitting back at Bobby’s place in the midst of repairs.
Dean likes to think, in a tiny corner of his mind, that maybe he’s just tied to his little brother. He could never let Sam go in life, so it only seems logical that he'd continue to cling after death.
-
Sam’s quiet, these days. Dean would say it’s because he’s got no one to talk to, but that’s not entirely true. Whether Sam recognizes this or not, he does speak, sometimes, out loud. Doesn’t sound like he expects a response.
“I miss you,” he says, and “come back,” and “for fuck’s sake, Dean, you’re better than this!”
It hurts to listen to, and sometimes Dean considers letting himself be trapped outside the room by the salt lines that Sam still draws, meticulous, at every door and window.
Sometimes.
-
For a while, it seems like Sam doesn’t really have a direction. Dean follows him all the same, because even though he’s determined to make sure his brother moves on, hell if he’s going to leave the kid to fend for himself.
It takes about a month for him to gather himself enough to set a goal.
“It was the demon,” Sam’s saying, voice flat and empty and matter-of-fact as he flips through a newspaper. “The thing that took mom. It was the one that hurt you, Dean.”
Dean thinks “hurt” is a mild way of putting it, but he doesn’t respond. It’s not the first time.
-
Dean doesn’t think anything of it when Sam keeps asking for two beds, two meals, table for two, please and thanks. He doesn’t even notice, for a while, not until a kindly young waitress sets her hand on his brother’s shoulder and asks if he’s waiting for someone.
Sam cries that night. Dean notices that he cries a lot these days.
-
It’s three months after Dean’s death before Sam hears from their father. The voice message is short, clipped. Not a whisper of Dean’s name.
Sam throws his phone across the room and it’s smashed to pieces against the wall.
Dean convinces himself that John sounded guilty and decides not to think about it anymore.
-
Sam’s hunting the demon properly, now. He still has the Colt, carries it on his person and sleeps with it under his pillow. He’s single-minded and ruthless on every hunt that comes his way. Dean isn’t sure when he crosses the line from protecting people to seeking revenge. It doesn’t really seem to matter either way.
-
They hear about John’s death second-hand, from Bobby the next time Sam stops by to check on the car.
“Sorry about your dad, Sam.” A clap on the shoulder, a comforting squeeze. Sam doesn’t react. “Least he went down fightin’.”
Dean feels the way Sam looks- numb, and after a moment of processing, indifferent.
-
The first time Sam visits Dean’s grave is on his birthday, and for a long time, he doesn’t say anything at all.
“You’d probably make fun of me for this,” he murmurs, glances down at the flowers in his hands like he needs to make sure they’re still there. “Actually, it’d be great if you did. I’m leaving flowers, Dean. At your-” He chokes on the next word. Breathes in deep before he tries again, softer. “I’m leaving flowers.”
In any other context, Dean might’ve been calling Sam a girl. Might’ve been elbowing him, teasing him about chick flick moments, about being a sap.
But this isn’t any other context and Dean’s not really here and his brother needs to move on, so he stays silent like he always does.
Sam’s shoulders slump after several long moments, he puts down his flowers, and he leaves.
He doesn’t say anything at all for a long time after that.
-
“You were the one who told me about the family business.” Sam’s voice is soft, and he doesn’t look up from cleaning his gun. Dean thinks that if he weren’t so hyperaware of his brother, he might not have heard it at all. “That’s kind of what this is, isn’t it? You’re my family. You’re my business.”
Dean wonders, more often than not, if Sam can feel his presence. It makes him feel a little guilty, that he’s the one keeping his brother so fixated on this, but it’s not enough to make him want to leave.
“And right now, finding that demon? Getting you back?” Sam smiles to himself, tiny and sad. “It’s business I haven’t finished yet. And I won’t stop until I do.”
It’s the first real verbal confirmation Dean’s gotten that his brother intends to bring him back. He can’t really decide how he feels about that.
-
Sam gets progressively more intense. The demon’s bumped to the back burner while he focuses on finding a spell, a potion, black magic, anything.
“There has to be something,” he whispers, and as hard as Dean tries, there’s nothing he seems to be able to do to stop his brother from burying the tiny box. He can only watch as Sam straightens up, looks around for a moment, spots the woman as she materializes, flashes the blood red of her eyes.
Sam doesn’t even get his mouth open to make his request. The demon laughs and laughs and laughs, and Dean’s barely close enough to hear the breathed words as she vanishes again.
“All hail the boy king.”
Sam’s left with a box full of bird bones and a fake ID, and a lot more questions than he'd had when he showed up.
-
It goes on for years. Sam goes through dozens of books, then hundreds. He talks to witches, to demons, to other hunters. No one gives him anything useful. No one tells him how to bring his brother back from the dead.
Dean watches it all as a silent observer. He’s waiting, still; waiting for the day that Sam gives up on him. That his brother finally accepts that there’s nothing he can do, that he finally moves on and finds something to do with his life. Something that's more than this.
Sam visits Dean’s grave twice a year- his birthday and his death day, ironically; bookends on the same shelf- and leaves him flowers, asks if he wants to talk. Dean’s silent every time, tries desperately to ignore the way his heart wrenches at the broken look in Sam’s eyes every year that he’s unsuccessful.
“I know you’re here,” he whispers on the five year mark. He scuffs his boot against the ground, won’t look up from the words chiselled into the headstone in front of him. “I can feel you. I’m not crazy, Dean. I’m not.”
True to form, Dean stays silent, and Sam continues as he has been.
-
It’s been ten years to the day when Sam finally breaks.
He’s doing like he always does, goes down on one knee to set the flowers down at the base of the headstone. He stands slowly, and Dean suspects it had something to do with his age.
Sam seems to be on the same train of thought as he is. “You’d have been thirty-seven now,” he says, voice a little quieter than normal. “Practically an old man, huh?”
Dean doesn’t suspect his brother knows this, but he hasn’t actually aged a day since his death, not physically. Though he remains intangible and invisible, Dean knows he hasn’t gotten any older. Not really. He’s still every bit the young man who was hooked up to all those machines. He wonders if Sam would prefer that or not.
“Ten years.” His brother’s speaking again, so Dean refocuses. “It’s been ten fucking years, and I’m still not over you. I still can’t let you go, Dean.”
That’s what hurts the most in all this, Dean thinks. Because no matter how much he’s begged and pleaded and prayed to some unknowable god, Sam won’t give up on him. Sam won’t move on, and it’s infuriating. Sam deserves better than this, deserves better than a life of mourning and revenge-seeking. It’s like watching their father breaking down and losing himself all over again; both of the people Dean loves lost to the same sickness.
"I’d do anything to have you back. I’d love you like you want me to. I swear. I just want you back."
Dean nearly misses the words entirely, but as soon as they register, he feels- he doesn’t know how he feels. Sick. Hurt.
Hopeful.
As if sensing the effects that his words are having, Sam presses on. “I will. I’ll love you like you always wanted. Just come back, Dean. Please…” He falters for a moment, takes a few deep breaths. “I’ll kiss you… you wanted that, right? You wanted me to kiss you. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”
Sam isn’t the only one who breaks that day.
“Don’t,” Dean whispers, cracked and desperate, and Sam falls to his knees, eyes wide, darting around, searching.
“Dean?” he whispers, sounds choked, and there are tears in his eyes, a desperate hitch to his breath. “Dean- Dean, please, just. Come back. Please. I’m not lying, I- I’ll do it. I will.”
Ten years of silence is just dust in the wind, now, so Dean doesn’t bother keeping his thoughts to himself any longer. “Don’t say that, Sammy. Don’t say that.”
Sam actually whimpers that time, fingers curling tight into the grass he’s kneeling on. “I mean it. Please… come back. Let me kiss you.”
That’s all Dean can take. With a thought, he’s becoming visible. Faltering with quick movements, but visible. He drops down in front of his brother; wants to touch him. Knows he can’t.
The sound Sam makes is grief incarnate, and he reaches out. Dean watches him crumble when his hand swipes through empty air.
“I. I can’t.” Dean’s whispering, moves forwards until he can feel Sam’s warmth, a moth to a flame. “You can’t. Don’t say that, Sammy. Please.”
“But I want you,” Sam whispers. Dean wants to wipe the tears off his cheeks, but he doesn’t let himself try. He knows Sam doesn’t mean it. Not the way he’s trying to.
“I can’t,” Dean repeats, sounds broken to his own ears. He tips his head forward, wishes he could feel the solidness of Sam’s forehead against his. “You know that.”
“I don’t care.” Sam’s past the point of rationality. Dean can’t blame him. “I miss you. Please.”
“I’m just making this worse for you.” Sticking around is what probably caused the whole issue in the first place, he thinks. Feels tight in his chest and unbearably guilty for weight his brother down like this for all these years to fulfil his own selfish need to linger.
It’s probably the worst pain Dean’s ever inflicted on himself when he stands up, moving slow. Sam scrambles to follow him, and he smiles, gentle and sad. “I’ll be waiting for you, baby brother.”
He tries not to listen as Sam cries out for him. He tries not to look when Sam collapses to the ground again, sobbing.
He pretends that he doesn’t doubt himself when he goes right to following Sam when he finally gets up to leave.
These days, Dean does an awful lot of pretending.