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Dean stopped in front of Sam’s bedroom. His brother had found shelter there after storming out of the War Room in the middle of their Mom’s explanations. Dean had never seen him this furious. Well, it wasn’t exactly true. He had had the same wrathful expression on his face than when he used to butt heads with their Dad as a teenager. Dean sighed. He would have liked to forget the time where he would join Sam in his room with a glass of water after a meltdown – fifteen minutes after exactly, otherwise he would push him away. Even better, he would have liked not to ever have to relive it again. But his brother needed him right now, so he wasn’t going to let frustration stop him from doing his job. He wiped his hands on his jeans, to dry his skin off the condensation of the smoothie he held as well as his sweat, and gently knocked on the door.
“Sam?” he called quietly.
Dean let his hand rest on the warm wood and leaned closer. No sound was coming from inside the room, which could either be a good or a bad sign. He took a deep breath, bracing himself for what he might see and pushed the door open as he repeated his brother’s name.
Sam was seating in the middle of his bed, hair falling in front of his face, hands buried between his crossed legs. In front of him, his Swiss army knife rested on the comforter. Dean’s heart dropped and jumped back up in his chest. He didn’t let the panic overwhelm him; years of practice had taught him that it would only make things worse. What was done was done. He approached slowly once his feet had decided they wanted to move and sat in front of his brother, putting the smoothie on the nightstand and the knife aside.
“Alright, show me,” he murmured. He stared at his own closed fist as he talked, unable to look at his brother. He knew he wouldn’t be able to watch him without falling apart, and he needed to be strong.
Without a word, Sam lifted his left arm and presented it to him. Dean gripped it tight and finally laid his eyes on it. His heart missed a beat. Except for the old brown scars stretching up to the middle of his forearm, his skin was clean. No blood running down on it, no new cut opening the tender flesh. Dean jerked his head up and searched for his brother’s eyes, in vain.
“I knew you’d come, that you’d be here,” Sam said nonetheless. “So I held on.”
Dean took his eyes back on his little brother’s arm. No, he wasn’t dreaming. A surge of love ran through his veins. He brushed the bony wrist and kissed the mark there, made by an eighteen year-old Sam with his pocket knife, kissed his way to the tip of his fingers, kissed each knuckles, until Sam wasn’t shaking anymore.
“That’s good, Sammy,” he said.
He let go of Sam’s hand, let it fall on the bed, only to interlace their fingers right after. It got Sam out of his torpor. He rose his head and his eyes, glistening with unshed tears, met Dean’s.
“What did she say after I left?” he asked.
“Nothing more.”
After Sam had left the room with a red face and white knuckles, Mary had gone on a little about how many people she had saved, about how she had made the Brits promise that they wouldn’t hurt him or Sam ever again. Dean had listened up to a certain point. He understood just right why their mom had made a deal with the Men of Letter, that wasn’t the problem and to be quite honest, he didn’t really care about that. The problem was that she had done it in the first place, plain and simple. Once Mary had figured out that he wouldn’t budge, he had left her in a strained silent to go to the kitchen and fetch something Sam would actually eat instead of the food she had brought back. He was better off taking care of his brother than listening to her pleas.
Sam looked down and rubbed his face. “I feel bad,” he whispered with a broken voice.
“Sam, you have the right to be angry,” Dean began. Heat rose in his body at the idea that Sam would, once again, blame himself when he shouldn’t be. “Hell, I am freaking pissed! If it wasn’t our Mom, I…”
Sam sneered. “Your Mom,” he muttered.
“Come on Sammy,” Dean murmured after a silence. It wasn’t very convincing, judging by the way Sam rolled his eye. Could Dean really blame him, though? Although he had tried to repress it in the dark place of his mind where he pushed away things that threatened to fuck him up more the he already was, even he had had to acknowledge that their mother had bounded more with him than with Sam. She listened to the same music, liked the same food, played online games with him but she didn’t even know that her other son liked getting up early to run ten miles, or that he fell asleep when listening to soft rock, or that he could have drank the whole ocean if it had been made of green smoothies. All those things that Dean knew, she just didn’t seem to care about. Dean had prayed for Sam not to notice but the kid wasn’t dumb – it didn’t take a genius to figure it out anyway – and it had only been a matter of time until Sam had enough. No, Dean couldn’t blame him. He could only do his best to comfort his brother and shrink his own guilt.
“Mom loves you,” he added tentatively. “I-”
Sam cut him off with a shrug. “You know what? I don’t care. I’m so done, Dean. With everything. And I’m mad at everyone, including you, and I don’t like that, I hate it.”
Dean closed his eyes and ran a hand across his face and his hair.
“I know,” he finally let out in a sigh. “Sammy, I know we had…plans that didn’t work out and that Mom coming back changed things a bit…”
Sam frowned. Dean bit his lips. The British Men of Letters and the return of their Mom had actually changed things more than a little. It was their whole plan of backing away from hunting together – which Sam had understood they needed long before Dean, who had only recently realized that he craved a domestic life with his brother just as much – that had been postponed.
“But whatever happens with Mom…I got your back. You come first for me, Sammy. Because you are my family. Alright?”
Sam nodded. He reached out for the smoothie Dean had brought. He still seemed to have a lot on his mind but they needed to take a break from these ruminations.
“Alright, drink that disgusting greenish thing and off to bed,” Dean said.
He took off his shoes and stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers before laying down next to his brother, who was staring at him like he was coming from another planet.
“Y-You’re gonna sleep here?” he stammered.
“Yeah, s’been some time.”
“But what if Mom…?”
“Sam. I don’t care.”
Nobody was going to stop him from loving his brother when he needed him to.