With Spit and a Prayer

Many thanks to Mary, StarFlow, AngelJade and Under the Willow for their kind words. I'm glad you guys are still with me on this one :).

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With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter Eighteen

One hundred and sixty-two days
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“How’s Dean?” Horst asked, and Sam leaned back in the armchair and pulled up his legs in front of him.

“OK, I guess,” he said, and then, “I don’t... I’m not sure.”

“You haven’t been speaking to him?” Horst was watching him, but Sam carefully didn’t look his way, focussing on a stain on his jeans instead. Dean called him every night, but he barely said a word any more, like somehow the fact that Sam knew where he was meant he wasn’t allowed to talk (or maybe he was angry with Sam), and Sam always had to stop after only a minute or two, because the pressure of having to maintain the conversation on his own made his throat feel like it was swelling up. After the second one, he’d thrown up, hanging over the toilet for an hour.

“Yeah,” he said, cautious, not sure what Horst wanted from him. “He’s... He doesn’t say much. I think maybe he’s mad at me.”

Horst nodded, wrote something down. Sam felt like he was sleepwalking sometimes (most of the time), but there were moments, now, when things slipped into place, and it was like just for a moment someone had ripped a hole in the thick blanket that was wrapped around him, and he could breathe, he could see. Sam had had one of those moments the day before, when he’d realised that Horst wasn’t actually writing anything relevant, just doing it for show. He wondered if he should tell him that he knew, or whether Horst would be mad at him, too.

“Do you think maybe Dean needs to talk to someone as well?” Horst asked, and Sam was brought back to the present with a jolt. He tried to make sense of the question, turning it over a few times in his head before giving up.

“He doesn’t,” he looked up under his eyelashes, trying to work out what Horst was getting at. “He doesn’t say much to me,” he finished, and he’d already said that, right? He was pretty sure he’d already said it, but nothing was ever a hundred per cent, not any more.

“I don’t mean you, Sam,” Horst said. “I mean maybe Dean needs to talk to someone like me.”

Sam breathed in slowly through his nose, concentrating on the passage of air. Horst was a shrink, he knew that, obviously he knew. Sam talked to Horst because there was something broken in him, in his mind, and he knew that too, now, knew that Horst and Dean thought that whatever it was could be fixed, and sometimes Sam thought they were right (and sometimes he didn’t). So if Sam talked to Horst because he was broken, and Horst thought Dean should talk to him too, that meant that Horst must think Dean was broken.

Horst thought Dean was broken. But Horst didn’t even know Dean, how could he know? How could Dean be broken? Dean was the strong one, Dean had always been the strong one. Sam was wrong, and Dean was... Dean.

Sam shook his head. “I don’t understand.” He figured he must have heard wrong, misinterpreted, something. He did that all the time, like his brain would only work for certain combinations of words and others just threw him off completely, so it was no great surprise.

“Sam,” said Horst, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees, “do you understand why you’re here?”

Sam stared. “Because I’m... crazy?” he hazarded, hoping it was the right guess.

Horst sighed. “You’re hurting,” he said. “And you’re hurting because of what happened to you in Biloxi. Because you were raped.”

Sam tried not to flinch, but he couldn’t quite manage it, looked away so he didn’t have to see Horst’s expression (Horst already knew he was weak, so it wasn’t like he would be disappointing him). “OK,” he mumbled, wishing this session was over.

“OK,” Horst said. “But you weren’t the only one who was hurt that day, Sam. Dean was too.”

Sam blinked (Jesus, Sam, you’re so good) and frowned at the floor. Dean was hurt. Dean smiling down at him (I’ve wanted this for so long), Dean holding his elbows down, Dean putting his hands around Sam’s throat (I’ve wanted this). Dean had left Sam, Dean didn’t need Sam (but he came back) and what, what, it didn’t. It wasn’t. Sam closed his eyes and tried, God, he tried so hard to make sense of it all, but before he could even get a grasp on the pieces, he realised something else, and maybe he was fucked up (crazy), maybe it was hard for him to think or to understand, but he knew that rape was a crime, and Horst didn’t say your brother, he said Dean.

“I,” he started, and choked on the words, panic curling in his chest, feeling like all his blood had suddenly coagulated and he couldn’t breathe. “It’s not,” he gasped, and suddenly Horst was pushing his head down gently between his knees, but Sam was shaking, they had to go, Dean had to get away before, before. “My brother,” he said, trying to salvage the lie, “not... Dean, not Dean.”

Horst crouched in front of him, his hand hovering but not touching. “It’s OK,” he said, and even now the voice was soothing, it made Sam wish he could just relax and let it carry him away. “I know Dean is your brother, Sam. I know it was him in Biloxi, and I’m not going to tell anyone. Even if I wanted to, doctor-patient privilege forbids it.”

Sam swallowed hard, trying to get some saliva into his mouth. When he stopped feeling like he was going to pass out, he sat up slowly. “You, you,” he shook his head, trying to clear it, and wanted to ask how, tried frantically to remember everything he’d said, whether he’d given it away. “How long?” he said finally, because actually, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how, if it was his fault, if he’d blown Dean’s cover.

“I’ve suspected for a while,” said Horst, rising to his feet and going back to the couch, and Sam closed his eyes because he didn’t want to see him sink into the leather, felt sick just thinking about it. “But that doesn’t matter now. What matters, Sam, is that we get you better. And I don’t think we can do that if we don’t get Dean better too.”

Sam kept his eyes closed. Dean doesn’t need to get better, he thought. Dean’s not wrong. And he remembered Dean smiling down at him like it was a game, Dean leaving him, Dean’s hands around his throat.

But after he got back to the motel, he remembered the way Dean had held the gun in his hands the day before he left, the way his eyes had been terrifyingly blank, and Sam had thought he could fix that, that it was his fault. And maybe it was his fault, but he knew well enough by now that fixing himself was hard enough, that he wasn’t even sure he could do that. If Dean needed fixing too (if, if), Sam was going to need help.

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One hundred and sixty-three days
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Dean woke up on the floor and had no idea how he’d got there. He wasn’t even on the floor next to the bed; he was sitting up, his back supported against the wall, and it seemed like every muscle in his body wanted to register its own special complaint. Fuck.

He struggled to his feet to check the time – it was dark outside, and he figured it was early in the morning, but the clock was blinking nine. Either that meant Dean had been asleep for eighteen hours or so, or it meant he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the day (again). Yeah, and he was pretty sure he knew which one it was.

He cursed himself and sat down on the rickety chair that he’d put in front of the window. He remembered now – waking up hungover and stumbling over to the window to make sure Sam went to his appointment, and Jesus, he’d felt like crap (he always felt like crap), and once Sam had gone he’d just gone to sit down in the corner because somehow it felt easier, to be near the ground like that. Less far to fall, or something. Which made no sense, because it wasn’t like he’d been planning on falling out of the goddamn chair.

And now, fuck, he had no idea if Sam had ever come back from the appointment, which made an unpleasant shiver run through his belly (because two weeks ago he’d looked away, and he could have lost Sam). He was screwing up again, and he’d promised himself, he’d promised Sam, that that wasn’t going to happen.

He rummaged for his phone, finding it finally under the bed (how had it got there?) and dialled Sam like it was nothing. This was the easy part. Waiting for it to get answered, that wasn’t so easy, but a moment later Sam’s hesitant voice came down the line and Dean relaxed, at least a little.

“Hey,” he said, and waited. It felt like he was always waiting for Sam with these calls, waiting to see whether Sam would be willing to talk, hoping he wouldn’t and hating himself for it. Sometimes he remembered how easy it had been to talk to Sam, not even six months ago, before all this; it felt like it was just a story someone had told him once, how his life could have been if he hadn’t fucked it all to hell and back.

“Hey,” Sam replied, and it was going to be long silences and awkward goodbyes again, but Dean was used to that by now, he was used to not really knowing who his brother was (who he was) any more. And then Sam said Dean?, and Dean frowned and gripped the phone harder, because Sam sounded frightened, and Dean suddenly was too.

“Yeah?” he asked, and counted the breaths before Sam replied. One breath. Two breaths. Three--

“Are you OK?” Sam said, and it was like he’d tried to think of another way to put it and come up blank.

Dean laughed. “Isn’t that meant to be my line?”

A pause, and once Sam would have had a snappy comeback, but that was then. “I, um. I mean, with, with. Dean, with B... Biloxi. Are you OK?”

Dean’s gut clenched, and he tried to sort through the words, to try and work out exactly what it was Sam was asking, but all he could hear was Biloxi, and in Sam’s voice it sounded like Hell.

“What’s this about?” he asked, trying to picture Sam’s expression and drawing a blank.

“I just,” Sam swallowed, the sound audible even down the phone. “I wanted to ask if... If you were OK. Because.” He trailed off, and Dean swallowed down an incredulous laugh, because there were a lot of words that he could use to describe his life (himself) right now, but OK was definitely not one of them.

“I’m fine, Sam, OK?” he said. “Everything’s fine. You just gotta concentrate on getting better.” And it was what he said every time they spoke, the only thing he could think of to say, get better, Sam, please, God, get better.

“OK,” Sam said, and a moment later they ended the call.

Dean lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He needed to make some more cash, but it could wait a day. Everything could wait. Right now, all he wanted to do was go back to sleep and not dream about anything.

After twenty minutes or so, he went back to the corner and curled up on the floor.

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One hundred and sixty-four days
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Sam took a deep breath. “I can’t afford it,” he said.

Horst looked mildly surprised, which wasn’t really weird, since they’d been talking about something completely different. “Can’t afford what?”

“To, uh. To pay for therapy,” Sam said. He chewed on the inside of his lip. “For Dean,” he added.

Horst nodded slowly, wrote something down. “But you think he needs therapy?”

Sam wrapped fingers around the hem of his shirt, twisting until the blood flow cut off, and remembered Dean’s voice on the line, sounding like he hadn’t slept for a week, Dean’s assurances, and every one of them in that voice he always used when he was lying through his teeth, and how had Sam not realised before? “He’s... not doing so good,” Sam said, and felt guilt burrow its way into his gut (but he couldn’t even remember, he looked back on the last six months and he could hardly remember a thing).

“I sometimes take pro bono cases,” Horst said. Sam looked up, because he’d been thinking about how he could maybe get another job, one with more hours, and trying hard not to imagine going in to work in a convenience store or supermarket because it made his chest tighten until he thought he was going to pass out.

“You’d take him?” he asked, and Horst nodded thoughtfully.

“I think in a case of this nature it would be prudent to have you both go to the same therapist,” he said. “I could waive my fee for Dean due to the unusual circumstances.”

Sam twisted his shirt even further, wanting to see if it would rip, but it held fast. “He’s... He won’t be easy to talk to,” he said.

Horst smiled. “And you think you are?”

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Dean was heading out the door to find a place to make a fast buck when his phone rang. It was Sam, and fuck, he wasn’t late in calling, was he? But no, it was only eight, and that fact made his fingers slippery with fear as he answered the call.

“You OK?” he asked, and the silence on the line was long enough for Dean to start moving towards his brother’s room.

Then Sam said “Dean, I think you need to talk to Doctor Horst.”

Dean stopped in his tracks. Shit. “What? What happened? He need more money?”

“No, I mean...” Sam stopped, and Dean squinted at the closed curtains, imagining Sam sitting behind them, shifting position, wondered what his brother looked like close up these days. “I think you need to talk to him. You know, like I do.”

Dean waited, but there didn’t seem to be anything else. “Wait, you want me to see a shrink? Hell no, Sammy, you can forget it.”

“He says,” Sam stopped, and Dean started heading for the car again, waiting, always freakin waiting for Sam. “He says you need help.”

Dean snorted. “You’re the one who needs help, Sam,” he started, and then stopped, because it had come out automatically, the sort of thing he would have said before, except now it was true, and he was a fucking tool.

“I think maybe we both do,” Sam said, but it was so quiet that Dean wasn’t sure if he’d even heard it right.

“Listen,” he replied, getting into the car and starting the engine, “this isn’t about me, OK? It’s about you. You just gotta get better.” The words rolled off his tongue now like he’d been saying them all his life, and he wondered if this was how Dad felt when he said watch out for Sammy, OK? “OK?” he said again.

“OK,” said Sam, and it wasn’t until Dean was halfway to his destination that he realised how defeated Sam had sounded.

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One hundred and sixty-seven days
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It was past three a.m. when Dean pulled up outside his room, and it was raining, icy cold drizzle that seeped down the back of his coat and clung to his skin like it was determined to cause the most amount of discomfort possible. Dean had a wad of cash in his back pocket, but he felt wrung out and empty, exhausted with the business of pretending, of manipulating, game face on. He almost didn’t notice Sam until he tripped over an outstretched leg, and then, Jesus, there he was, curled up and shivering outside Dean’s door, hair plastered to his head and water running in tiny rivulets down his neck.

“Jesus,” said Dean, “Sam, what the fuck?”

Sam looked up, eyes unfocussed, then stumbled slowly to his feet like he was half-asleep. “I called you,” he said.

Dean frowned, reaching to unlock the door so he could get Sam inside, but Sam grabbed him by the shirt. “No,” he said, “no, I said, I promised. I’m not, I’m not going back on it, OK, I know I’m not supposed to come here, but.” He blinked furiously, wiped the water out of his eyes. “Please, you asked me and now I’m asking you.”

“Asking me what?” Dean asked, and the door was open now, he was trying to hustle Sam towards it, but Sam shook his head and refused to budge.

“I’m not going in,” he said. “It’s yours, OK, Dean? I got it for you, so you could have somewhere. And I’m sorry, God, I’m so sorry, if I’d realised, I would have...” he shook his head, water spraying from the ends of his hair, not that it made any difference, and Dean was tired and aching and he didn’t understand Sam’s train of thought, but this was the most Sam had said to him for months.

“Sam, please,” he said. “Slowly, OK? What is it you need me to do?” Anything, Sam. I’ll do anything.

Sam dropped Dean’s shirt, put a hand on his chest for a moment then let that fall too. “I need you to talk to him,” he said. “Please, just... just talk to him, OK?”

Sam turned away then, and Dean stared after him as staggered back towards his own room through the rain.

Five hours later, he called Horst’s office and made an appointment.