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“I just don't think I can trust you.”
Dean sits in the car waiting for a good five minutes, having left Sam standing alone, stunned, in the parking lot. Irritated and growing restless, he turns the ignition and guns the gas as a hint that his patience is wearing thin, and Sam can either damn well get in the car or find his own way back to the motel.
The door creaks open, and Dean keeps his eyes glued to the dashboard in front of him as Sam finally folds himself into the passenger seat. He doesn’t want to see the look on Sam’s face that he knows is there. He doesn’t want to hear any more apologies or half-assed ideas for stopping the Apocalypse. He doesn’t want to be subjected to Sam’s naïve optimism that there’s a damn thing they can do about any of it. He’s tired, they’re screwed, and he just wants to lose himself in a bottle and not think for the rest of the night. Preferably for the rest of his life.
The traffic light at the exit from the hospital parking lot turns yellow just before the car ahead of them makes it through and Dean stands on the brake to avoid running a red, cursing and slamming a hand against the steering wheel to emphasize his frustration. Between the junkless winged douche bags trying to turn him into Michael’s suit, stage four stomach cancer, Bobby being left paralyzed because Castiel can’t heal him, it’s just one more thing to cap off a stunningly craptastic day.
He inadvertently glances in Sam’s direction out of unconscious habit, catches the slumped shoulders and the miserable, downcast eyes, and turns himself to granite. Sam doesn’t get any sympathy. Sam let Lucifer out. Sam didn’t listen to him about Ruby, he went running around with her behind his back, and he let Lucifer out. It’s Sam’s fault the world is ending. It’s Sam’s fault Bobby’s in a wheelchair. Hell, it’s even Sam’s fault that they just missed the fucking traffic light because he wanted to stand around moping. No. Sam doesn’t get any fucking sympathy.
Dean feels a twinge in his chest as his brain presents him with a replay of Zachariah’s fingers aimed like a gun at Sam. The echoing cracks of Sam’s legs breaking and his cry of pain as he sank to the floor, his eyes going wide with excruciating pain. He shoves the memories violently aside and peals out of the parking lot when the light finally turns green.
Sam doesn’t say anything during the trip back to the motel, doesn’t answer when Dean asks him curtly if he wants anything at the drive-through, just turns his head away to look out the passenger window. Fine. Let the drama queen sulk. Dean orders a bacon cheeseburger for himself. He takes the car out of park to pull up to the window, then curses softly and tacks on a grilled chicken salad. Sam still doesn’t say anything when they get back to the motel, just sits with his back up against the headboard of a bed, long legs stretched in front of him, pushing the chicken around in the plastic container while Dean demolishes the burger.
When Dean reaches for his jacket and wallet to finally, finally go drink until he’s comfortably numb, that’s when Sam decides he wants to talk. Because of course it is.
“You didn’t really mean what you said,” Sam says quietly. “About giving up.”
Dean spits sarcasm. “No, Sam, we’ll just use the power of love and everything will work out in the end. ‘Cause the world works like a fucking Hallmark movie.”
Sam straightens up from his slump and ups the ante with his own angry huff. “So, what, you’re just quitting before we even try?”
“We’ve got the entire heavenly host of feathered dickbags on one side and every demon that got out of the gate on the other and, oh yeah, fucking Lucifer now, thanks to you. We’re just two people, Sam, and one of us is supposed to be Michael’s sock puppet and the other is a goddamned junkie.”
Sam’s face falls just like Dean intended and his voice is loaded with regret. “I don’t know how many times you need me to say it, but I’m sorry.”
“Right, you’re sorry,” Dean scoffs. “You think if you say it enough it’ll just magically undo everything?” Dean is spoiling for a fight, needing Sam to say the wrong thing, to pull the release valve that will bleed off the pressure before he explodes.
Sam doesn’t have the decency to rise to Dean’s bait, his tone turning conciliatory instead. “Look, Dean, I’m just trying to do what you said, keep my head down and go at it like any other hunt. I just wish—”
Already past his breaking point for what he can take in a single day, the dam bursts and words start pouring out. “You wish? You just sentenced every fucking human on the planet to death! You think you can wish that away? You know what I wish? I wish—”
Dean stops himself just short of saying something he doesn’t mean, something they’d never come back from.
A few seconds of tense silence pass before Sam says, “You wish what?” in a tight voice.
“I wish I could go drink myself blind and pretend the last two days never happened,” Dean finishes, shoving his arms into his jacket. “At least I know that one will come true.” Dean slams the door behind him on his way out, the stricken look on Sam’s face haunting him all the way to the bar.
Three shots of whiskey in, and Dean still can’t erase the afterimage.
He tries to shake it off. He didn’t come here for a guilt trip, he came here to forget, just for a while, that the human race is on the brink of extinction. He came to forget about his own role that he never asked for, to shut it all out and get away from reality. To get away from Sam.
When two more shots fail to drown out his conscience, Dean changes tactics. He spies a likely candidate, pretty and petite and blond, waits for her companion to head for the bar for another round. He makes his move.
Or he would make his move, if not for the wall of solid muscle stepping smoothly into his path.
“Trust me, that’s not a piece of action you want to take on.”
“Hey, a lady’s free to make her own choice.”
“And a big brother is free to break the kneecaps of a drunk asshole bothering his little sister.”
So Dean’s night of denial ends prematurely, a dismal failure in his attempt to expel the rising stress that’s been building inside him from the moment Sam set Lucifer free. He wanders the streets aimlessly, his frustration mounting at the hopelessness of the whole situation. He imagines a life where he never pulled Sam back into hunting, a life without the responsibility of an older brother hanging over him. A life without the constant worry of wondering how the hell his little brother was going to screw up next time. A life of freedom.
How happy he would have been.
Maybe he should just say yes to Michael.
But he can’t stop his thoughts from wandering back to Zacharia removing Sam’s lungs with a snap of his fingers. Sam’s mouth gaping open and closed, desperately trying to take in air, body going limp with the lack of oxygen. Sam going deathly still, like when he was lying on the cot in Cold Oak.
He knows he can’t go through with it, and he heads back to the motel in defeat.
The sun is flirting with the horizon as Dean stumbles up to the door, key in hand, the fog of his inebriation beginning to lift. The key makes it into the lock on the third try, and Dean trips over the threshold on his way in. He expects a mumbled, sleep-addled protest from somewhere in the dark, but the motel room is neither dark nor is Sam asleep. When he picks himself off of the floor, he sees that Sam is sitting on the edge of his bed, still dressed, eyes ringed with dark shadows. He’s clearly been up all night.
The anticipated accusatory look on Sam’s face is absent, a strangely serene expression in its place. Had Dean not been marinating in alcohol, he might have taken it as a warning sign.
He says irritably, “I’m a big boy, Sam, you didn’t need to wait up.”
“I just wanted to…” Sam pauses, and his calm demeanor is jarring, like playing a chord on a guitar with one string slightly out of tune. “I needed to tell you, I’m sorry. And please don’t blame yourself.”
Dean’s relaxed inhibitions fail to stop his knee-jerk reaction. “So what, I’m supposed to think this is all my fault now?”
Sam continues unperturbed, as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “I was thinking about what you said, about wishing this away,” he says, fiddling with something in his hand. “And I remembered this.” He holds up a coin, tarnished with age. “I held onto it in case things got bad enough, if we got desperate enough.” He shrugs. “I guess the end of the world qualifies if anything does. I know it’s a risk, but I don’t see how anything can get worse. If it means I can fix everything, I owe you that.”
He stands and walks over to the vanity sink outside the bathroom, which is filled with water, and holds his hand outstretched over it. It takes a few seconds for Dean to bring the coin into focus, and when the murky, low-watt motel light glints off of it at just the right angle for him to recognize it, his anger dies, and he sobers instantly as his blood freezes.
It’s the coin that brought a teddy bear despairingly to life, that made a woman fall obsessively in love with a man she would have never noticed otherwise. It’s the coin that gave a bullied kid superpowers, that killed Sam with a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.
It’s the coin that Sam said he had melted down.
“Sam, what the hell are you—” Dean starts, as he realizes belatedly that Sam’s apology wasn’t for what he’s done, but for something he’s about to do.
“I wish…” Sam starts, dropping the coin into the sink.
His alcohol-dulled instincts finally kick in and Dean launches himself toward the sink, frantically trying to get to the coin before Sam can finish his sentence, already knowing that he’s not going to make it—he’s off balance and he’s too slow and he’s too late, too late—and he has only a moment to wish he could take back all of the things he said, to wish he had told Sam he was just venting, that he’d be better in the morning. That he didn’t mean it. That he didn’t mean any of it.
The moment passes, and Sam says something he does mean. Something he’ll never come back from.
“I wish you’d never brought me back.”