Carcass
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: K-12
Summary: and when the only thing left is the freedom that comes with losing everything, Dean returns.
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Sam's mind becomes the enemy he can not kill.
He can't trust it. The moments when he's least expecting, it shoots him in the back. First time it happens, Sam it sitting in the Impala. It's the first time after Dean's death and Sam feels like an intruder. He starts the car and this is when he realizes, he can not trust his mind. He can not trust his senses. The Impala smells like Dean and the loss hits Sam so hard he can't breath.
His mind is the enemy so Sam becomes everything he wasn't before. His movements become mechanical and when he doesn't recognize himself from the mirror anymore, he isn't scared, only relieved.
When Bobby calls, Sam talks only of work and ignores the compassion and hurt in Bobby's voice. It would've bothered Sam before. He would've tried to say something to help, something to ease the edge on Bobby's voice. But nothing bothers Sam anymore. He's movements are mechanical and he wants nothing.
There are moments when his mechanics shatter and for a second Sam remembers that this was not always his life. There was a time where his gesturers, they meant something else then revenge and rage. Vaguely he knows this. He gets a glimpse of a memory, of bristly hands on his skin counting bones and scars. Sam is determined on forgetting but he can't exercise his mind and when he sleeps, the images come back; cold morning, another shady motel somewhere where nobody really wants to visit, the stubble burns below his navel and the smell. Smell of iron and salt and sweat. Smell of the Impala. Smell of Dean.
When Ruby arrives, Sam is confused about his own excitement for a moment; how good it would feel to slash Ruby's little throat. Sam can hardly restrain himself of doing so. He thinks about the girls he used to go to school with and the body Ruby has stolen, it's one of the same kind of girls. Same young face, the sort of girl who had everything at the age of sixteen, perfect body and the bright future of total oblivion and bliss ahead, bound to live the life of some football player's bored wife. Sam thinks again. Maybe the girl is better off with Ruby.
Ruby offers her help to Sam and in return Sam offers her a shortcut to Hell. What he doesn't say is that he would give anything to come with. Anything for a chance to get to drag his brother back. But Sam has already tried every bargain, every threat there is to make so now he stays quiet and waits for Ruby to leave.
His mind is the base of all phantom pains and when he sleeps he draws the bloody map of his brothers features in somebody's corpse. In Sam's dreams his laughter is strange and unfamiliar, black eyes staring back at him and only as he draws the knife out of the heart of the black eyed creature, does he recognize his brothers eyes. This is when he wakes up.
His mind is the enemy and his dreams are the weapon of choice.
Ruby doesn't know her own good so she comes back and though half of the time Sam imagines the bloody death of his own private demon whore, he finally accepts the help anyway. They fight and kill, countless bodies filled with rotten souls from beneath. When Sam finally throws Ruby on the bed, he tightens his grip on her wrists and waits for the sound of small bones breaking until he closes his eyes. He thinks of nothing. He thinks of everything. Ruby's sighs and moans annoy Sam. He presses his hand on Ruby's mouth and tries to empty his mind, drown his own body in heat and rage but his body is as much of a traitor as is his mind and Sam remembers.
Dean's hands on his back, his teeth sinking in the back of Sam's neck, fingers tracing the outline of the tattoo. Dean laughing at the sound Sam makes unwillingly at his touch. Sam, lust and irritation, throws Dean around and they fight, pride and laughter and the traces of Dean's knuckles on Sam's chin the next morning. Eventually Sam always wins, his size giving him an advantage Dean wants him to have, forcing a very willing Dean to stay put under him. A small grin appears on Sam's face as he hears the wince Dean makes as Sam breathes in his ear, slowly pushing himself inside.
Afterwards Sam lies still and looks everywhere else but never towards the woman lying next to him. Ruby whispers one more time and Sam tells here to go to Hell. The days become an endless row of blood and dust and although Sam's movements are mechanical, his lungs continue to breath this air for some reason Sam can not begin to understand.
Morning after another he watches the shadows shifting on his face. He catches a glimpse of black in his eyes and wether the vision is true or false it makes no difference. He and Ruby, they drive, tie the bodies of the people hosted by demons down and Sam pulls the black smoke out, hears the screams and tries to tell himself that he's not enjoying himself. In the background, Ruby smiles and later in the dark of the motel room, Sam beats the grin from her face, his knuckles painting Ruby's face from white to red and blue, blood running down her back she just laughs.
Days turn into months and slowly Sam starts to forget, the smell of salt and sweat and his brothers hungry look on Sam's body. He doesn't smell Dean in the car anymore. Mornings are no longer hollow cries for Dean, there is only the relief of forget, the taste of iron on Ruby's lips, the rage Sam channels into the exorcisms he performs, the countless anonymous bodies who's real owners no longer mean anything to Sam.
Sam no longer remembers, his enemy has surrendered his mind back to him and when the only thing left is the freedom that comes with losing everything, Dean returns.
Sam doesn't understand it. He stares at his brothers figure in the doorway and as he lunges towards him, ready to fight, he already knows it's really Dean. But Sam is not yet ready to believe so for a moment they wrestle and Sam thinks he no longer remembers, that Dean's smell is strange and still familiar, his skin a memory he can't quite place. Ruby is standing too close, doesn't belong in this picture or maybe it is Sam that is the outsider in all this after all. Maybe he is finally dead in this is only a mixture of earth and Heaven and his piece of Hell.
But the image doesn't change. Dean it still there - breathing, living, blood and and bone and bristle. Sam searches for scars but finds none, only Dean's tired grin and the look he's throwing at Ruby, undressed and smiling at the door. Ruby puts on a great act of confusion, throwing out little innocent remarks like she doesn't have a clue, asks Sam if the man is his boyfriend. Sam shakes his head. He's my brother and for a moment everyone goes very silent not daring to say out loud the thought they all share.
That night Sam and Dean, they don't know how to look each other in the eye but they can't look anywhere else. They talk lightly, like months hadn't passed, like Dean hadn't died and Sam gotten numb. They talk about nothing important, carefully try out each others new limits like it's not a big deal because if they recognize how huge this is, it's bound to crumble and the thought of going through all this is again is too much to bear.
Everything is too strange and fragile and Sam is terrified he will wake up soon. Finally it's Dean who takes the first step. He asks about the girl at the door in her underwear. So what was that, he asks and there is a hidden tone in the question, the accusation and hurt and jealousy hidden in the way Dean grins and comments Ruby's underwear but doesn't look at Sam. What was that and Sam doesn't say that it was you who left me by myself, you who fuckin' died, you who left me. Not the other way around.
Instead Sam shakes his head, it was nothing and it's almost true. It felt like reality, it felt like forgetting, it felt like the opposite of Dean. It had been nothing, a substitute for Dean's skin and how Sam had laughed one night, drunk and a dangerous, he'd cut Ruby's skin, the trace of the knife leaving a scar baring Dean's name on it. Ruby had been so mad and Sam had promised that he could burn the scar off if Ruby asked nicely. Ruby hadn't asked but later Sam had held her still, watched as his brothers name turned to blood and the smell of burning flesh. It was nothing. And even if it was, it wasn't anymore.
That night Sam throws Dean straight into the thin wall of the motel room. Dean's eyes are serious and dark and nothing has ever terrified Sam as much as this moment. Dean had told him once that he'd wondered if Sam came back from the dead somehow different. Sam knows Dean did. Sam refuses to think about it. He holds Dean against the wall, salt and stubble, fingers finding the small spot in Dean's neck where Sam once in another life pressed his lips. The moment that started it all. They had been fighting that day, Dean had already given Sam a black eye and when Sam had finally gotten his brother on the ground, he'd accidentally touched Dean's neck. He still remembers the moment. Dean's skin burning under his touch and that's when Sam knew and everything that ever was and would be changed. One touch and their universe had gotten so small in just a second, consisting only of the two of them and what became important was the way Dean tilted his head or the way Sam said Dean's name in the morning.
Without that moment, they wouldn't be here. Without that Dean wouldn't be serious and feel like a stranger. Wouldn't be burned and wrecked. Without that moment, Sam wouldn't have lost his mind, over and over again from grief and rage, on his knees begging a demon bring him back. Without that moment, they would be intact, human, just brothers not parts to a two pieced puzzle they couldn't solve.
Without that moment Sam could've chosen other roads, other people or opportunities. A million lives he left unlived. Without that moment there would be left not only the carcass of their souls that ran only on the gasoline that was Sam's hands on Dean's neck, Dean's lips on Sam's thighs.
All of this they knew and when Sam threw Dean against the wall, searched for that memory over and over again from the soft spot in Dean's neck, Sam was convinced that there never was another road, another choice for him. A million meaningless lives he would've never chosen. And so what if there were only the carcasses of their souls left and sacrificed on this altar of sweat and skin and endless lust they refused to call love.
Sam wouldn't change it for anything. He couldn't even if he wanted to.
