#result of hayden’s 12 am weecest craving

[thebrotherswholoved]

watch over sammy

When Sam was a baby, John would get pissed because he wouldn’t sleep in the bassinet he bought from a garage sale for a little more than five bucks; no, little Sammy with his cherub cheeks and big eyes would only fall asleep in his big brother’s arms. John’s were too brutish, too rough...too lacking of gentleness and that quality that could only be described as utterly Mary. So, Dean hardly ever let go of his brother and when he did, those green eyes hardly blinked because even though he was a child himself, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad would happen if his eyelids so much as fluttered closed for a second while supposed to be focused on Sammy.

Behind Dean’s boyhood glaze loomed the shadow of doubt and grownup reason ingrained in him by a father so focused on revenge he couldn’t see that his fist was beating its way through his eldest son’s skull. This voice whispered thoughts into his baby ears that Sam would be picked apart by vultures or washed away by an invisible river or mowed down by a speeding car despite being miles from the nearest busy road, and it spooked him so badly that he refused to let his eyes wander from the now-toddling, chubby-cheeked tot.

The nights were the hardest. John would try to pry his sleeping son from the child’s desperate and pleading big brother so he could sleep off the deprivation of rest that was undoubtedly causing this...paranoia. But Dean wouldn’t dare shut his eyes, too petrified of the sandman coming to drown him in the hourglass and allow some boogeyman to catch him off guard, and instead snuck back to little Sammy’s crib once the warden had tried to seal the kid’s fate to watch over him better than any damned angel figurine made of cheap porcelain could.

Eventually, Dean had to fall asleep. The first time it happened, the trio was in the car heading somewhere—even John didn’t quite know—and Dean passed out, slumped against Sam’s car seat and hand still in his lap. The dark and unhealthily purple shadows under the boy’s eyes made him look so much older than his sweet age of six, and John felt relieved when he looked into the back seat in his rear view mirror and saw that nature had done what he had failed to do: tape the torn pages back into Dean’s calendar. If only the sandy blond’s well-deserved nap didn’t end in a piercing scream four hours later that made John swerve, narrowly avoiding hitting a small shrub. The first thing the boy did was start crying followed by him desperately trying to wake up Sam to make sure his mistake didn’t cost the baby his life.

The circles under Dean’s eyes only deepened in hue and in intensity, the exhaustion crescendoing as the years dragged on. Had John cared enough to take his kid to the doctor, he’d probably have been diagnosed with an insomnia of sorts—but all the gruff widower cared about were the callouses roughening his palms and the wide, open, and dangerous road ahead of him. He tried everything: a small dose of Benadryl with their grub, some knockoff NyQuil in his 99¢ gas station apple juice, and hell, he even considered giving the kid a small whack upside the head once or twice to force him to pass out. What worked ended up causing Dean emotional agony as soon as he woke up and started screaming for his little brother, and what didn’t work almost seemed like it was for the best.

Dean’s devotion to his baby brother’s safety maimed him. It cheated him, lied to him, and almost killed him on several occasions. But no matter how much he suffered at the hands of a cruel system of checks and balances trying to steal the infant he dragged from the inferno from his scrawny arms, he can’t find it in him to care. Not when he sees just how happy the kid grew up to be on the good days and how strong he became when things could be better.

He sleeps now, whiskey being his sleep aid and the Die Hard movies his lullaby, but he wakes up every time he hears his not-so-little brother scream his name in his sleep, a desperate cry echoing from inside his nightmares. Instinct tells him to place a hand on his chiselled, heaving chest until his breathing evens out and sing some boyish variation of a Seger song to turn his bad dreams good again, so that’s what he does. For the rest of the night, his duty is to watch over Sammy and protect him from a new evil: the ones inside their minds.

And when he inevitably falls asleep next to his brother atop the comforter, hand still on his chest? Dean’s dreams are good then, because he knows that there’s strength in numbers and that with Sammy by his side, nothing is impossible. Even though he gives his big brother the best bitch face he can muster every time they wake up almost drooling on each other, Sam is grateful for Dean and his canine-like devotion to him. Though he couldn’t possibly know how many exhausted tears were shed and soaked up by the fabric of his baby onesies when he was young, he can understand that in order to make Dean happy, he has to take care of himself. That’s all Dean has ever wanted.

Sam has always had an angel watching over him, but the guardian never had wings to begin with. He wore a way-too-big, hand-me-down flannel shirt, had choppy dirty blond hair, and his under eyes were as dark as the unseen side of the moon. The boy with the demon blood’s guardian angel was, is, and always will be named Dean Winchester.