Fic: That Was The Year (Sam/Dean, R) Part 2 of 5

[smalltrolven]

Part 1
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In the morning the first thing he sees is his desk lamp, spotlighting the picture he’d printed out last night. He vaguely recalls making that wish before falling asleep. Now he regrets it, because he’s had some experience with hearing things people were compelled to say under a spell or magic of some kind. Not that a plain old wish is magic of course, but he still feels it down to his toes, that need to know for sure, one way or the other.

He remembers the Veritas truth compulsion spell thing, when he’d gotten Lisa on the phone and she’d just laid it all out there. He’s still got what she said memorized, word for word, “But the minute he walked through that door, I knew. It was over. You two have the most unhealthy, tangled-up, crazy thing I've ever seen. And as long as he's in your life, you're never gonna be happy.” He remembers it all these years later because it had been the truth, the literal truth. Except for the last bit, that had been her interpretation of Sam’s effect on his life. There she couldn’t have much more wrong. Because she didn’t know him. No one really did, except for Sam.

The very same Sam…who would be coming back today at some point according to the text message he’d just received. The picture attached of Sam and Jack grinning at a table piled high with old books in the college library might be another one to print out and frame. They both looked so damn happy.

After a quick breakfast and an entire pot of coffee, because Sam isn’t there to give him a hard time about it, Dean goes back to the computer he’d been working at last night. The SD card reader is still plugged in, and the card from Sam’s camera is still in the slot. He boots it up and settles in to copy over the contents to their picture archive that Sam set up in the cloud along with all their research on hunts. He remembers how confusing that had been at first, the pictures aren’t on hard media like this SD card, they’re floating around in a cloud that they can access anywhere, whenever they need them. Sam had said something about how if everything burned down, then they’d still have what was in the cloud.

Not that the bunker is burning down anytime soon, but it has been under attack more than a few times, and they’d almost died there when Ketch had locked them in that one time. Dean checks through the files stored in their dropbox account, and he sees that there’s plenty of room to upload this small file in comparison to the group of pictures and videos. These old style SD cards didn’t hold all that much. He creates a sub folder in the pictures folder titled: “Sam’s Sneaky Pics” and hits the button to start the upload.

As they all begin to flicker past as they upload, one after the other, he remembers that he’d gotten stuck on that one picture last night and hadn’t looked at the rest. He clicks through each one that comes after the Christmas picture, and they’re all pretty boring, as in they’re all just him doing various mundane things. But then there’s a series of Sam selfies, but his brother is out of focus. Dean looks more closely and in the background of each one he sees himself and it looks like he’s posing, like a model or something. Mostly he knows he was just standing around, leaning up against the car, waiting for Sam to stop fooling with the camera. He vaguely recalls being irritated about the camera back then. Why hadn’t he asked to get a picture of the two of them, like a normal person? Then he thinks a bit more, it would have been strange, because they never did things like that, they never stopped to memorialize or intentionally make a memory of someone or some place, because their life was always on the move and one moment away from being over. Only now when they’ve been settled in the bunker for six years he can actually see how much their life has changed. Their life—as in the one they live together.

That need to know roars up again through his whole body, startling him with the intensity of the feeling. He wishes Sam was back home already. Not like he’d be blurting out the question or anything, but at least the possibility of asking would be there, maybe Sam will even say something when he sees this new Dropbox folder. He stands up from the worktable abruptly, pushing his chair back, grating loud against the floor in the silence. It’s too damn quiet in here, making him twitchy with noticing he’s alone. He crosses to the record player and thumbs through his albums, settling on Led Zeppelin’s last studio album, “In Through the Out Door”.  Jimmy Page wailing away on the Gizmotron in the beginning of the first song, “In The Evening” always gets him going.

Then somehow he’s drinking whisky and flipping the album over to the second side, finally letting himself stand up and go full-on air guitar for the last song “I’m Gonna Crawl” mostly to do that epic guitar solo.

Of course that’s when Sam comes home. When he’s screaming and singing along with Robert Plant about my baby giving me good lovin’.

“She’s lucky,” someone says when the song is over.

Dean looks up in surprise to hear a voice, but it’s Sam, of course it is. He’s standing on the stairs halfway down. How long he’s been there, Dean has no idea. His whisky glass is empty so he refills it and slugs down a good third of it, trying to get himself together. He’s not even close to drunk enough to be ready for this.

“You’re back early,” Dean finally manages to say.

Sam restarts making his way down the stairs, approaching slowly, almost seeming to be wary. Dean can see that he’s focusing on the whisky of the situation. Oh here it comes, just what he needs, Sam mother-henning the shit out of him over his drinking habits.

“And you’re drinking kind of early,” Sam says, eyebrows raised in a question, like he’s not sure if he should be worried, mad, or laughing—or all three at once.

Dean ignores it, because probably all of the above would suit the situation, and he’s in no mood to get into the details of why he’s getting his drink on so early in the day. “Where’s Jack?”

“Cas picked him up when we were done at the school, they’re off on a possible vampire nest hunt up near Saint Cloud.”

“Minnesota or Wisconsin? Why didn’t you go with them?”

Sam doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, probably deciding whether or not to bring up the drinking subject again. “Minnesota, so I didn’t go with them because we were supposed to be taking a few weeks off from hunting. So, uh…I’m gonna go unpack, get some laundry started.”

When he’s almost out of the room, Dean speaks to Sam’s retreating back, “Glad you’re back, Sammy.”

Sam stops in the doorway, puts a big hand out on the doorframe to turn himself back. He looks Dean over, head to toe and back again, the first pass is the usual scan to see if he’s physically okay, the second pass…Dean isn’t sure what that’s for really. Then Sam smiles, slow and deliberate until his dimples pop out so clearly Dean can spot them from across the room. Are purposeful dimples a thing?

“Me too, Dean.”

****

After unpacking Sam discovers he doesn’t have quite enough for a load of laundry on his own so he does the brotherly thing and heads into Dean’s room to grab some of his brother’s stuff to add in with his. The desk lamp has been left on, and it’s shining on a picture in an ornate silver frame that he’s never seen. He drops his laundry basket in the doorway when he focuses on the photo instead of the frame. A sudden cold wash of fear courses through him so quickly he almost falls to his knees.

Dean knows—he’s got to know it all now, no wonder he was drinking at ten in the morning. How the hell is he ever going to explain this?

If Dean has found this picture, that must mean that he must have found the videos also…somehow. Oh shit…did Dean watch that video? Of course he has to have by now. Sam knows just how curious and incorrigible his brother is, never respecting his privacy no matter how many times he’s put up a fuss about it. Sam’s not too worried about most of the pictures and videos, but he knows that there’s one video that he’d taken, almost at the end of the year Dean had bargained for that will blow everything up. He knew he should have deleted it, but couldn’t make himself do it back then, he’d needed something to hold onto, and then he’d lost track of the damn camera.

He remembers how Dean had been passed out cold in bed, after a night of bar hopping. He’d come back to the motel room, and the worry lines on his face were still there, and it had made Sam’s heart just ache with the pain his brother was carrying on his own. After Dean had passed out for the night, Sam had made a video of himself crawling under the covers with Dean, holding him tight, spooning him like they were lovers, kissing the side of his face, whispering that he loved him. He never should have done something like that, much less filmed it, and now Dean knows what an absolute creep he is.

Before Sam has a chance to form a plan, or decide what to do, he hears the Impala start up in the garage and take off.

Oh god—Dean’s gone, he’s left him, just as Sam had always figured he would if he had ever discovered the truth about what Sam’s been hiding all these years. And he’s maybe too drunk to drive too, shit this is worse than he’d thought it would be. He crumples down, landing on Dean’s bed, trying and failing to control his emotions. The tears come and they don’t stop, he’s near sobbing, holding it in and gasping into Dean’s pillow, the scent of his brother making him even sadder at this loss, this rendering and tearing asunder of everything that’s ever mattered.

He wishes he could take it back, put it back in the dark where it belongs. But that last year they’d had, when they both knew Dean was going to Hell forever, he’d let himself take what he thought he’d need to survive the loss. They were only photos, moments in time, and the videos were only a few moments strung together. In the scheme of their life together, it wasn’t that big of a thing. And he knew, even then, that his big brother would give him anything, he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to make Dean sad by asking for photo-taking permission. That was how he’d rationalized it to himself back then and it still worked now.

He opens his bleary eyes and sees the picture in the beautiful frame again, lit up by the desk lamp, like an accusatory spotlight of all his internal crimes. He closes his eyes against the happiness and joy on his face in the photo. Having Dean in his arms like that had been Heaven, a memory he was planning to hold onto when his brother was gone. Just like he is now.

That starts the tears up again, he can’t help it, he feels so bad that Dean found out, he was never supposed to, not ever. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his brother, he just wanted to love him.

The bed dips behind him and someone sighs.

Sam rolls over in complete surprise, he thought he was still alone in the bunker.

“There a reason you’re on my bed, soaking my pillow?” Dean asks in a husky whisper that tells Sam he’s affected by his little brother’s crying, no matter how depraved or disgusting he might be.

Sam dares a glance at Dean’s face and sees only confusion and worry.

“I thought you left,” Sam manages to say.

“I did, to get groceries, I want to try out a rib recipe I read about online,” Dean says, all matter of fact, obviously trying to get them back onto normal ground. “Seriously, though, are you okay, Sammy?”

A warm hand lands on Sam’s shoulder and he’s barely able to stop himself from crying in relief. He glances over at the desk, the lamp highlighting the picture of them in the frame. “You’re not mad about the pictures and uh…stuff?”

Dean tracks where Sam is looking and seems to understand. “What, no, of course not,” Dean says in a rush. “I thought it was kind of sweet.”

“Sweet?” Sam asks, unable to process the word, it doesn’t match up at all with the depravity of what he’s done, with what Dean knows he’s done to him—to them.

“Sammy, I understand okay? I get it, all the pictures and videos of me. You were trying to make like a scrapbook thing, for yourself to remember me by, when I was headed to Hell. And it’s okay, it really is, I understand.”

“Even that one video though?” Sam asks, voice trailing off to a near whisper.

“Which, the one where I’m singing in the shower?” Dean asks.

Sam doesn’t answer, is that the “worst” one as far as Dean is concerned? Should he fess up? Maybe Dean didn’t watch all of them, could he possibly be that lucky?

“I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have…not without asking you if it was okay with you,” Sam says.

“I’m telling you, you don’t need to be sorry, okay?” Dean says, squeezing Sam’s shoulder gently. “I probably shouldn’t have been snooping in your camera.”

“Where’d you find it?” Sam asks.

“I was ripping out the carpet in Baby’s trunk, and there it was in one of the hidey holes.”

“Does it really still work after all this time?” Sam asks.

“Batteries are fully corroded, so I have no idea. But as you can see,” Dean points at the photo in the silver frame. “The memory card was still good.”

“That’s a beautiful frame, where’d you get it?” Sam asks, desperate to change the subject.

“It was in one of the storage rooms, in a box of miscellaneous household kind of stuff. I shined it up a little, thought it went with the lamp pretty well.”

“Why’d you print this one photo out?” Sam asks.

“I didn’t have a good one of the two of us, to go with my other pictures that I’ve got there…uh, I’m gonna go get started on those ribs, they take a while so I want to get them going,” Dean says, standing up quickly and heading out the door before Sam can say anything in response.

Sam gets up slowly, feeling like he’s been beaten and run over by a truck, crying like that is exhausting. He’s so confused right now, going from expecting the very worst, to being comforted by the person who he’d thought was gone for good is a little much to take. He picks up the picture frame, feels its solid weight and turns it around in his hands. There’s a carved inscription on the bottom. He can’t make it out so he holds it under the desk lamp.

He can make out some words that look like latin: cupio, voveo e precor. He quickly translates it to desire, and two ways to say pray for. He’s pretty sure this isn’t just a beautiful frame, but something that does something with desires or prayers. But what…grants them? Is it like wishing on a genie’s lamp? And at what cost?

Sam sets the frame back down and flips the switch turning off the desk lamp. He retrieves his laundry basket, fills it up the rest of the way with some of Dean’s stuff and heads off to get the laundry started like he had intended all that time ago. It seems like a lifetime, all that anguish for maybe nothing. He angrily sets the buttons on the machine and tosses in too much soap, wash it away, clean it away like it wasn’t ever there. Nothing to deal with, see? All back to normal, all the nastiness hidden away where it belongs, where it needs to stay.

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Part 3