Forgotten Remnants by stripytights for <user site="livejournal.

[springflingmod.livejournal.com]

Title: Forgotten Remnants
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Any warnings: None



There's a litany that's served them well through most of their lives. Don't mix with witches. Don't ever take a witness at face value. Look after your brother. Shut your eyes to the way your family fucks up. Never take a joint from a guy named Don or a drink from a girl named Candi.

But really the one that gets broken the most is the one that should be the easiest. Don't touch that.Dean remembers hearing that a lot as a kid, first his hands and then Sam's in everything they could reach, curious and insistent. Don't pull the cables or bite the wax fruit. Then, as their father slowly eased into the swing of hunting, a more esoteric note was added. Don't touch the amulets, the statues, the cursed charms and rabbits feet.

It's not that they didn't listen, it's just an easy one to forget. Dean's touched all sorts of things he shouldn't have, felt all kinds of things that should have stayed unknown - the pulsing gush of Sam's blood on his hands for starters, the cold dampness of Sam's mouth under his fingers as Dean pushed his tongue down so he wouldn't choke when he rose again. He's long past master of knowing what the dead and the unliving feel like, even when he'd prefer to forget.

It's why there's a rule even now, at the end of all things (or so it feels like when the sun sets each day) that they're careful. There's not much mail - no-one left they really know - but every so often, Sam gets books or fat parcels he doesn't explain, and that Dean doesn't ask about. Dean would say they exist in a state of wary truce, but it isn't true, despite those days when Sam seems fainter and further away. Dean feels the inexplicable urge then to reach out and touch, drag Sam closer, held back only by the way Sam never reaches first. There's been forgiveness, but not forgetfulness. It feels mostly like a constant state of purgatory, not negative, but never enough. Pure, but not complete.

So Dean has nothing to blame but carelessness when he opens what he thinks will be junk mail, and lets the small silver coin drop into his hand instead of onto the table. It's kind of cheap looking, a reproduction of something older maybe, the sort of thing that had scattered the bunker, usually labelled with snide comments about authenticity. Really, he thinks nothing of it. Maybe it's Sam's, maybe it's a weird cart coupon for the store, and he tosses it in a drawer, meaning to mention it later.

Making dinner these days is a quick step of careful intervention, they know their places, but the distance between them seems greater when Dean can't pretend that he doesn't want closeness. It's not like Sam would flinch or move away, just that Dean no longer trusts himself to keep it right, keep it sane. There's been too much time for thinking, and not enough acting, and the darkness in his head has taken new turns. So it isn't until afterwards, Sam washing up, Dean passing him the silverware, that their fingers brush. It's just a faint whisper of sound. Hear me out. I can explain, okay? then even quieter, fading please. There's a scratched, desperate quality to the words, enough to make Dean pause even if it hadn't been Sam's voice. "Sam, I can't hear you." he says, hears the unsure quality of his own voice, false casual concern on top barely covering it. He already knows that Sam didn't say anything.

Sam's giving him a strange look, a little bit of thoughtfulness, mostly puzzlement.

The words gnaw at Dean. He knows he's heard Sam say them, the context eats at him, a silver flash of memory at the corner of his eye, the tip of his tongue. I can explain, okay. Please. He's reaching for a beer, when it hits, a wave of fierce, brutal failure, the feeling preceding the memory. He can see it in his mind's eye - Sam, there, trying so hard to be calm, the sick metallic taste of fear in his own mouth - not for himself, for Sam. Roy and Walt. They'd killed Sam, and turned their guns on Dean.

It's not only the vividness of the memory that shocks him - the sharpness, the clarity of it, every particle of it impeccably rendered, but the rawness of the shock, the doubled rendering of his own feelings and Sam's. There's a bit of them that isn't his, a shred torn away, and he calms his breath, feels the wet clamminess of the beer in his hand and tightens his grip so it doesn't fall.

He should say something to Sam, he knows that. It's part of this new existence, whatever it is, but he can't bring himself to open the words without the long-gone choke of Sam's own words climbing out of his throat. I can explain, okay? Please. He needs suddenly to touch Sam, to anchor himself right here and now, hates his own weakness that can't be content. Stares at the sturdy broadness of Sam's back as he bends over the sink awkwardly to do the dishes, head tucked down, feels a fierce tremor of want - self-disgust not overcome, but denied. He's trying not to lie to himself these days.

He's not an idiot, he knows it's the coin. Takes it out and looks at it all over again, but there's nothing special, nothing authentic about it, just a little Latin phrase, that tells him what he already knew - last words. It's a sick kind of curiosity that makes him bump into Sam in the corridor. It might have killed the cat, but Dean's never been one to learn from the mistakes of others. He thinks he's braced for it until he hears it. Shorter this time, but louder, like his mind doesn't want him to miss hearing this one. Dean It's just the one word, but he doesn't need to rifle through his memories for this one. He knows what comes next, Sam dying in his arms in the mud, and he wants to be sick, feels the uneasy churn of his stomach.

Last words, he thinks. It seems pretty rational to him that a charm like this is only meant to have one use. A normal person would use it to know the last words of a loved one. Maybe try and stop it. Only he and Sam have died too often, had too many final moments for that to be true. It freaks him out, but the thought is there, relentless and inevitable - that if he touches enough, cycles through the old deaths, then he'll know the real words, the ones that'll occur at the final end. He thinks of them both, slowly recovering, the weight of the knowledge that neither of them can hurry the process of healing the breach, and the step back it'd be to know something about Sam, that Sam doesn’t know himself.

He's impeccably consistent for the next few days about not touching Sam even accidentally. He doesn't know what counts as death really, how many times he's got, but he can't risk it, the heaviness of that knowing. It mostly works, though the loneliness drives Dean crazy. He'd thought it was bad before, having only a tiny bit of what he wanted, but this is worse by far. He misses the touch of their shoulders, being close enough to see the brief changes of Sam's face, even the casualness of touching enough to pass a beer. It doesn't go unnoticed, there's a darkness in Sam's eyes that looks like a tinge of hurt, and Dean has no idea how to take that. He opens his mouth ten times to tell, and closes it again, uncertain, unsure.

There's coffee in the morning on opposite sides of the counter, and Sam reading in the big chair, eyes intent and thoughtful, while Dean fills up the days with what feels like nothing and all too much. There's a restless, gnawing ache of energy in him, unable to think of anything else, final words playing over and over in his head, the brutal tenderness of resurrected emotion overwhelming him, things he'd thought he'd dealt with crawling back out of their box, an unwanted surprise. Sam, he thinks, more or less endlessly, but that's not really a change, except that maybe it's a spoken litany inside his skull instead of in his blood.

He tells himself it's not forever. Charms like that are kind of weak in his limited experience. Fade after a few days no matter how strong the witch. He ignores that he'll have to try touching Sam again to find out if it's gone. That particular point is made moot in the end, because Sam touches him first. Reaches across the too-wide expanse of the table and puts his hand on Dean's, a curiously tentative gesture, a restlessness to it that finds a brother in Dean. He turns his hand upwards automatically, unconsciously, and Sam doesn't pull away, even though it's incongruous and strange to be holding hands like this. Embarrassment wars with want in Dean, and the want wins out. All he can do is look down so Sam can't see his face, as Go whispers thinly through the room, a desperate warning to leave before Uriel destroys them, and Jesus there's a name that Dean hasn't thought about in a while. It's as sharp as the rest, the same overwhelming despair and grief at knowing Sam's dead, and Dean can't do this. There's not enough curiosity in the world to bear knowing all over again how Sam will die, this time with no take-backs.

Sam's hand is sweaty in his, firm and pressing back just as hard as Dean is unwittingly grabbing, and a crushed sick hope rises up in Dean, and he looks up from the table just in time to see Sam look away, lean back and let go. He sees Sam’s eyes for a split second, the self-doubt there as though this is something he’s pressed too far, the yearning for something, feels a sudden world-altering tilt shake his awareness. He’s been worrying that Sam’s never reached out for him, worried enough that he’d never tried. It’s not been an unshared purgatory, this house. He wants to crawl over the table if he has to, take a risk, make that look disappear, but reason holds him back. He doesn’t know exactly how many deaths are left - he can’t risk that the first time he touches with intent, it’ll be to hear the way that Sam chokes out the last words he’ll ever speak.

Sam fumbles in his pocket and fishes out a silver coin, presumably pilfered from Dean’s pant pocket, and Dean’s torn between horror and a vague indignation that Sam rifled his clothing. Sam clocks both those expressions with the ease of long practice. “I knew you were hiding something,” he says, and there’s an unaccustomed gentleness to it, no accusation, and Dean feels himself sag almost involuntarily from the relief of it. Sam rolls it in his fingers absently. “All of them?” he asks.

“Most,” Dean says. “Not the last.” He knows Sam will know what he means. It strikes him suddenly that Sam’s touched it as well. ”You?”

Sam shakes his head. “I think it only works for one person,” he says and his face offers no further commentary. Sam reaches out his hand again, deliberately, slowly this time. “Do you want to know?” he asks, and Dean knows without it having to be said that Sam’s offering him more than that, the chance to overwrite their past. The belief Dean won’t misuse that knowledge if he has it. A rope-bridge between them. There’s nothing Dean wants less than to know it, and nothing he wants more than what Sam’s giving.

He shakes his head numbly, but reaches it out until he’s within a breath of Sam’s fingers, a decision unmade and waiting. Sam’s watching him, and there’s nothing inscrutable now about what’s in his eyes, and Dean takes a leap of faith. He’s got nothing to base this on except years of formless crushed desire, and the way Sam looks now. He could be screwing them up worse than he’d imagined in his darkest nights, but he thinks they could find a way back from that as well.

He walks around the table, fast, before he can tell himself to stop, and he doesn’t have to cross the last few inches because Sam stands up to meet him, to pull him in closer. It feels odd kissing anyone at all, Sam most of all, but also it feels right. Sam’s solid under his hands, and Dean can’t stop touching him, the warm skin of his cheek, his neck, the rough rasp of his jacket. Sam’s touching him back as though there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing, and Dean can barely contain his heart in his chest.

It’s a shock to realise he’s heard nothing outside of the sounds they’re making themselves, but he can’t bring himself to care, to worry about the coin. Not with the ridiculous softness of Sam’s thumb brushing the space of skin where Dean’s t-shirt has ridden up, the way the touch of it is working inside him as though this is the first real thing he’s felt in too long - the end of a self-imposed stasis. And when he pulls back, sees the quiet way Sam’s lit up as well, he thinks he’s not alone.

There’s a lot of things Dean’s touched in his life that he shouldn’t have. Sam’s not one he regrets.