mimblexwimble

Jeez, longest title ever?

Title: and so i asked the light of the day, what's this rush for heaven?
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean
Word Count: 820
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He’s not going to let Sam down, not like this.
Notes: For

spn_30snapshots, prompt under the cut. Title from here. Set immediately post-AHBL I.

It was not meant to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on,
doing what you always do?

- Witchgrass
Louise Glück

He goes into the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands. The tap water’s dirty; he lets it run for a minute. He meets his eyes in the mirror.

There’s no one uglier than you, he thinks at his reflection.

-

Twenty-five minutes of sleep; they catch him by accident.

The Impala, windows gaping wide, and a cool wind whipping against their cheeks. Sam in the passenger seat, legs splayed wide, knee bouncing to the music. His hair’s all over the place and he keeps lifting his hand to push it out of his eyes instead of rolling the window up and Dean’s not watching the road anymore. Dean can’t stop staring.

What? Sam asks, eyebrows creeping together.

You were dead, says Dean. You were dead.

Dude, says Sam. His eyes flicker with amusement. I’m right here.

Relief floods through Dean, thick but cool, and it feels like icy water on a smoldering day and Dean could cry. His throat is closing up and all he can think is, Thank you, oh God, thank you, fuck, thank you. His hands are shaking on the wheel and he’s laughing at himself, thin and high and rapid, laughing because of course, how on earth could it have happened? Dean can’t imagine a world where Sam’s dead, where Dean gets there two seconds too late and is left with only a dying body to cradle, what-ifs and if-onlys scattered around them like rose petals. Of course not. Of course not. How stupid, how silly, how absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Sam’s smiling at him, amusement edging into concern, and his dimples are possibly the best thing Dean’s ever seen in his life. It feels a little like someone’s turned the contrast up in his head, everything too bright and too colorful.

You were dead, Dean repeats. He laughs again, and Sam laughs with him and then he wakes up.

There’s a dead body on the dirty mattress two feet from his chair.

Dean stares at it, coming out of the dream, and then he leans over and vomits and vomits and sobs and sobs.

-

Dawn breaks. The sky’s paling in the east.

Sam’s head rolls back and forth against Dean’s forearm, his throat exposed (no pulse pounding against the skin there), hair hanging away from his eyes. Dean tries to adjust twice, so that Sam’s head is on his shoulder or in the crook of his elbow, but it always comes back to the same thing and Dean doesn’t have the strength to try anymore, doesn’t have the strength to do it one more time without crashing into hysterics.

This is the first time he’s carried Sam like this since the day he ran down the stairs and out the door of the house his mother burnt to death in.

There’s a line of blood trickling slowly from the corner of Sam’s parted lips.

There’s a line of dead family members, following Dean down the muddy road.

-

He sits and watches Sam’s body cool and come out of rigor, brushing his fingers over Sam’s hand. The sun rises and sets and Dean doesn’t know what day it is or which state he’s in or how they got here.

No matter what he says afterwards, no matter what lullabies he sings himself to sleep with, there was not a single moment, not even a second after Sam’s heart stuttered to a stop, in which Dean didn’t know exactly what he was going to do.

He wonders where Sam is now. He wonders if Sam’s at peace. He wonders what Dad would have wanted him to do.

But, really, none of that matters. None of that matters at all. He’s not going to let Sam down, not like this.

-

He thinks he sees Sam’s chest rise fifteen separate times. He thinks Sam’s hand twitches, in his periphery, twice. The rustling of clothes behind his back makes him spin around, heart screaming prayers in his chest, only to find Bobby there, eyes knowing and understanding and everything Dean doesn’t want them to be.

He hears Sam’s voice more times than he can count. Bright, free laughter, just over Dean’s shoulder, taunting.

Look at what you’ve done. Look at what you’ve taken away.

-

Confessions fall from his lips and the cold air is laughing at him, laughing as Dean Winchester, fuck-up extraordinaire, tries to tell poor dead little Sammy how much he loves him, tries to get ears that won’t hear to understand what he’s doing and why (forgive me, forgive me), tries to get a mouth that won’t speak to give him some other option, still pretending (foolish little broken boy), still playing games.

He can already feel the devil’s lips on his, can’t he now, can’t he? Of course he can.

His lips, cold, and the rest of him already burning in the fires of hell.

-

“he fell in,
the mud and,
he became,
enlightened.
i wonder,
who’s laughing,
now?”