Chapter Text
It’s called dissociative disorder.
Sam’s pretty sure that’s what Dean has, anyway. He spends hours on the cabin’s snail-paced Internet after Dean goes to bed that night and it’s the closest thing to an answer that he can come up with. Unfortunately, if it is dissociative disorder, then all the literature advises the same thing.
Professional therapy.
As if Dean is going to agree to that without someone holding a gun to his head.
“No way. Absolutely not.” Dean says it before Sam has said more than ‘psychia-’. He doesn’t even bother looking up from his cereal.
“Dean, you said you’d let me try.”
“Yeah, you, Sam,” Dean answers as he pokes around in his bowl with a spoon. “Not some fucking shrink-job like Ellicott. Christ.”
“That’s not fair, man—”
“Tough shit, dude. Life’s not fucking fair, deal with it. I know I have.”
The bitter ache in Sam’s chest sharpens into anger. “You’re not dealing with it, Dean,” he points out, pushing away from the counter. “That’s what dissociative disorder means.”
Dean finally glances up at him. “Just because you found a bunch of fancy words on the Internet doesn’t mean I’ve got disatopia—”
“Dissociative.”
“—disorder.”
Sam can feel himself jutting his lower jaw out, which Dean always says makes him look like an orangutan with indigestion, but he could give a crap about his appearance right now. “When I touch you,” he says, “How does it make you feel?”
“Like fizzy champagne,” Dean deadpans. “Bells go off when you take me in you arms, Sammy. Oh, the magic.” Then, leaning forward, he shovels another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
“I’m serious, Dean,” Sam snaps, but his brother just continues chewing and enough is fucking enough. Striding over to the table, Sam reaches out and grabs his brother’s bowl.
“Dude!” Dean protests, making a grab for it.
Sam evades him easily—Dean’s reflexes are a little slow first thing in the morning—and carries the bowl over to the sink. “You’ll get it back when you answer me.”
Glaring, Dean says, “Fine. I don’t know how it feels, okay? Now give me back my Boo Berries.”
Sam nods grimly and sets the bowl of cereal down on the counter. He wasn’t really expecting any other answer from his brother—Dean has almost no self-awareness when it comes to his emotions—but he figured he’d give it a shot before taking drastic measures. His stomach moves uncertainly at the thought of what ‘drastic measures’ actually means in this instance, but he steels himself and says, “Come here.”
“What? No. I want my goddamned cereal, Sam.”
“Come over here and get it,” Sam challenges.
Dean’s chair scrapes against the tiles as he shoves it back and stands up. Sam watches his brother come closer, so predictable, and then feints to the right. Dean, who was expecting him to do something of the sort, cuts left and runs into Sam’s chest as he corrects from his feint. Before Dean can regain his balance, Sam pushes him backward. There’s a brief struggle where they’re both trying to establish a hold on one another and then Dean’s back collides with the wall and he lets out a surprised grunt. Taking advantage of his brother’s momentary distraction, Sam catches Dean’s wrists and pins them to the wall.
Dean fights the hold, but Sam is more determined to keep him there than he is to get away. After a few minutes of struggling, Dean seems to realize that he isn’t going anywhere and slumps into the hold. His pulse is racing just as much as Sam’s and they’re both breathing hard, but Sam is pretty sure that he’s the only one with a hard on.
“Okay,” Dean says. “Okay, you got me here. Now what?”
In answer, Sam transfers both of his brother’s wrists to his left hand and reaches down inside Dean’s boxers with his right. Dean stiffens minutely and then relaxes. His mouth quirks into a slight, humoring smile. That smile feels like the goad it’s meant as, but Sam does his best to ignore the challenge as he wraps his hand around his brother’s cock.
After the way last night went, he thought that touching Dean like this would make him ill, but the trembling excitement inside Sam’s stomach is as strong as ever. Loosening his hold on his brother’s wrists, he starts to jack Dean’s cock—strokes firm and smooth, the way he likes it himself—and after a couple of seconds feels it start to fill.
“You feel that?” he asks. He means to sound clinical, but he can’t quite keep the arousal from husking his voice.
Dean’s response, on the other hand, is flat and colorless. “Your hand’s on my dick. That’s kinda hard to miss.”
“So describe it for me,” Sam pushes, and rubs his thumb against the sensitive head of his brother’s cock on the down stroke. From the way Dean’s breath hitches, he seems to like that particular maneuver just as much as Sam does. His brother’s eyes have started to glaze—everything Dean in them has started to drift away—and Sam says his brother’s name sharply.
“Dean.”
Dean blinks, clearly struggling to focus.
“Describe it for me,” Sam repeats.
“You’re jerking me off,” Dean mutters and then, when Sam continues to watch him expectantly, adds, “What? It’s a fucking hand job, dude: what do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me how it feels. In here.” Releasing his brother’s wrists, Sam rests his hand against Dean’s chest. It’s odd, watching the blankness in his brother’s eyes war with unease.
“Tell me.”
“I-I don’t know, okay? I can.” Dean’s breath hitches as Sam switches up the stroke on his cock. His hips roll: encouraging. God, Sam wants to fuck him. “’S like floating,” Dean finally manages. “Like I’m. I’m here, but I’m not—I’m not here. I can—I can feel you, feel your hand, but I c-can’t—S-Sam.”
The emptiness in his brother’s eyes fills unexpectedly and abruptly.
“No!” Dean yells, dropping his hands to shove Sam away. Luckily, the signal Sam’s brain sends to his hand to let go gets through all right and he manages to avoid wrenching his brother’s dick. From the look of things, though, Dean wouldn’t have cared anyway. Not so long as Sam stopped touching him. He’s shaking—pacing with jagged movements and cradling his head in his hands.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not fucking okay,” Dean spits. “What the fuck kind of question is that?” But he looks a little calmer now that Sam gave him something concrete to be upset with. He stops pacing, leaning on the wall with his left hand and rubbing his temple with his right. Rubbing that hooked scar.
Sam gives his brother a minute and then, fighting to keep his voice steady, he says, “It’s called depersonalization. It’s a type of dissociation disorder. It’s treatable, Dean. With therapy and medication, you can—”
“Medication?” Dean laughs hollowly, glancing over at Sam without ceasing the worrying motion of his fingers. “Why don’t you just commit me and get it over with?”
“Taking medication doesn’t mean—”
“No, Sam!” Dean breaks in harshly. Then he catches himself, takes a deep breath, and straightens. “No,” he says again. His voice is calmer, but his tone just as firm. “The equipment works, you can use it if you want, let’s just leave it at that.”
“I can’t just use you, Dean!” Sam shouts. Christ, Dean can’t honestly expect Sam to be able to do something like that, can he? Sam gives his own temple a quick push. It’s starting to ache in sympathy from all of the rubbing Dean is giving his own.
Then Dean blinks over at Sam, confusion clear in every line of his face, and asks, “Why not?”
Sam’s chest constricts as he looks into his brother’s puzzled eyes. His ribs, pulled close by grey bands of desolation, press painfully against his lungs. Anger throbs through his skull, alternating with waves of shocked disbelief, and tears burn behind his eyes. It takes him a moment to sort through all that before he can even begin to figure out how to get his voice working again.
Then, finally, he shouts, “Because I love you, damn it!” He’s crying suddenly, and Dean still hasn’t lowered his hand but he’s starting to look more alarmed than pained. “Because you’re worth more than that, and you don’t even—you—you’re everything, and you don’t—”
He flinches at the brush of his brother’s hand on his shoulder. Didn’t see Dean’s approach through the hot flood of tears. Dean’s hand lifts slightly at the flinch, but it returns again, steadier—a solid, grounding weight. Dean is touching him—Dean is comforting him when Sam should be the one who ... he should be ...
“Hey,” Dean says. “Sammy, hey. Don’t, man. Don’t, okay?”
Sam wonders, suddenly, whether Dean is gripping his shoulder with his left hand, or with his right, and a mindless wave of revulsion washes through him. He doesn’t want his brother touching him with the same hand he was just using to massage his temple. Not with the same hand he was just using to rub at that goddamned scar.
Shoving his brother away, he chokes out, “You said you’d try. Fuck you, Dean, you said you’d try.”
“Sammy,” Dean says, and through the near-blinding wash of tears, Sam can see him reaching again.
So he does what he does best.
He runs.
It takes him a couple of hours to get himself under control—to bottle all the rage and the sorrow and the futile, frustrated despair back up—and when he returns to cabin, Dean is dressed and waiting for him outside on the steps. Sam regards his brother for a moment and then walks up and sits down next to him. Their shoulders rub together and Sam half expects Dean to pull away but he doesn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Sam says eventually. “I was an asshole.”
“That’s okay, I’m used to it.” There isn’t any actual inflection in Dean’s words, but he bumps Sam’s shoulder as he says them and Sam knows that he’s forgiven. His eyes sting and he stares across the front walk at the forest, blinking rapidly until the crisis is averted.
Then he clears his throat and starts, “I don’t know what to—”
“I’ll see the shrink, but I’m not taking any drugs.”
The unexpected compromise sends a pulse through Sam’s chest. He shuts his eyes, which are burning again, and leans into his brother’s warmth. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Dean is quiet for a moment and then, with a hint of a smile in his voice, he says, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to have to deal with your whining. Figure Mr. Feelgood’s gotta be less of a pain in my ass.”
Sam surprises himself by letting out a weak laugh. “Jerk.”
“Bitch.” There’s a pause, and then Dean stretches and stands up. “Come on, man, I’ll make you breakfast.”
Sam hesitates, reluctant to ruin their tentative peace with nothing more than a vague, groundless suspicion, and then says, “Dean.”
“Yeah?”
“How did you get that scar?”
“What scar?” Dean sounds honestly bewildered by the question, and when Sam twists around and looks up, the confusion in his brother’s voice is mirrored on his face.
“The one on your forehead.”
“Oh.” Dean blinks. “I told you, dude. Poltergeist. Fucker tossed a clock at me and I didn’t duck in time.”
Sam’s stomach twists. “Oh. Yeah, I remember now.”
Dean gives him a smile. “So, you want pancakes or eggs and bacon?”
“You pick,” Sam tells him. He hopes that his own smile looks as genuine as his brother’s. That it isn’t full of the foreboding that’s pulsing through him with every beat of his heart.
“Okay, pancakes it is,” Dean says, prodding Sam with his foot. “Up and at ‘em, Sammy. I’m gonna let you measure the flour.”
“Just, uh. I just need a minute, okay?”
Dean peers at him for a moment and then nods. Sam can tell from his brother’s slight frown that Dean knows something is wrong, but isn’t going to call him on it. He’s going to trust that Sam knows what he needs.
Sam waits until his brother disappears inside and then stares out at the forest, unsmiling. Dean’s voice echoes in his ears.
I told you, dude: poltergeist. Fucker tossed a clock at me and I didn’t duck in time.
Only that isn’t what Dean said when Sam asked him about the scar in Hibbing. That isn’t what he said at all.
Sam sits on the steps and stares at the dark line of trees and wonders what happened to his brother. He wonders why Dean won’t tell him. And he prays that that’s all it is: Dean refusing to tell him.
Because he can’t even begin to guess what it would mean if Dean can’t.