#spn dean | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prentissluvr · 6 months ago

Text

sorry won't cut it — sam and dean winchester

pairing : sam and dean winchester x gn!sibling!reader ➖⟢ genre : angst, hurt/comfort ➖⟢ cw : set in season 8 LOL, sam and dean are kind of/definitely assholes to reader, swearing, arguments, crying, use of kid, kiddo, honey, and sweetheart to refer to reader, only light editing ➖⟢ wc : 4K summary : you meet up with sam to discover that dean is back from purgatory, and both have been keeping secrets from you.

when sam answers your call, it comes as a relief. a surprise, but more than anything, a relief. it’s been two and a half months, almost on the dot, since he’s answered a call. usually it’s just one month. he has a single burner phone just for you, but it’s off half the time, and the other half he never answers.

you’ve grown used to his distance, to an extent. it still stings when your phone rings till voicemail sometimes, but you’ve just been too tired to argue with him, to ask him to comfort you, make him keep hashing through the pain of looking for dean and finding nothing but trouble.

you want him to have the normalcy, the girl who loves him and makes him feel alright. you want to have faith that he’ll figure out how to factor you into it all eventually, but you still miss him, and you’re still lonely, so you keep calling, never getting angry or upset when he occasionally picks up. you just act like it’s normal, and you can tell he appreciates it, so you keep it up. in return, he asks you over sometimes, tells you each time how much amelia raves about you after you leave, hugs you tight before you go.

it’s been several months since he’s invited you over, and he doesn’t really talk about her anymore. you figure something must have happened, but you never push anything anymore with him.

this call is different. one, because he finally picks up. two, because he tells you to meet up with him, no explanation or normal talk about what you should bring for dinner. three, he asks you to meet at a random address in kansas.

he sighs deep, “just… get here as soon as you can. i’ll send you the location.” then he hangs up and it feels like the hunting life all over again.

⟢

it’s a seven hour drive, and you’re tired out of your mind, high-strung and worn out from leaving right after your shift at a diner full of sleezes who don’t tip enough. even though this whole thing is strange for the new, hunting-free sam, there’s relief coursing through you at the thought of seeing him, hoping he’ll let your tired feet carry you right into his arms. you pull into a driveway of sorts, no obvious entrance to the unremarkable building in front of you, but your years of hunting and meeting up with your brothers at strange places during strange hours after strange calls help you find the door. it's a bunker, one you've never seen before.

you were always a little bit more like sam, disillusioned to the hunter life and the way your father raised you. you weren’t a fighter like him, but you slipped away at eighteen to go to college and found somewhere near stanford so you’d be able to visit sam often. he loved that, always so glad that you got out too. but you were barely gone a year before dean came back to collect you and sam to look for your dad. you came easier than sam, less attached to your new place and always finding yourself missing dean.

that’s what you’d been doing this past year. missing dean, and painfully. so when you knock on the door, calling out, “it’s me, sammy,” you freeze when it opens several beats later.

because the person behind the door isn’t sam. but it is your older brother. just the one who’s been stuck in purgatory for the last year or so, the one you’ve endlessly searched for to no avail.

“dean?” your voice is small as his name slips from your mouth.

his eyes go soft, the way they rarely get, and the slight smile on his lips is half pained, half pure relief to see you after so long. “hey, kid.”

you launch yourself into his arms, and he catches you easy, right there in the doorway, and you have to fend off tears that you know wouldn’t put up so much of a fight if you weren’t so exhausted. but you were raised tough, and winchesters don’t cry all that often, at least not where someone else can see. so you swallow hard and tough it out, letting dean pull away from you and lead you inside. he moves through the house with a sort of ease he’d only have if he felt comfortable and safe there. this raises questions, along with the fact that he's here at all.

you’re speechless, but not for a lack of anything to say. endless questions stream through your mind, each one pushing to be asked, even more desperate to be answered.

but the only thing you can figure out how to say is “hello” to sam when he greets you in the living room. he pulls you into a hug, letting you linger for a moment before you know you have to ask all of the hard questions. something in his face is unreadable to you, which is rare when it comes to your brothers. if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was a hint of guilt. that rings alarms in your mind, but you brush your nerves aside when dean takes a seat on the couch.

you relax a bit when you sink down next to him, curling into his side a little. it makes you feel a bit childish, but you need it after everything this past year. he doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arm around your shoulders and pull you a little closer. sam sits down across from the two of you and you heave a sigh, wondering where to start.

opening your mouth and forcing words out is like a crack in a dam. everything comes out slow at first, but that lasts mere seconds before the flood.

“how did you… dean, how did you get out? i mean, i tried– i tried everything,” your voice breaks at that word, the weight of it meaning something only you understand. you look at him, brows taught and you’re confused by the surprise on his face, as if he didn’t expect you to say such a thing.

“what do you mean, you tried everything?” he asks, voice suddenly gruff and severe. you recoil from his side to get a better look at him. you don’t miss the look he shoots sam. this is already departing from what you expected, which is probably exactly what you should have expected. it’s just that, when dean hugged you back and he was solid and real and alive, when he sat on the couch instead of a chair so you could sit next to him, you thought that maybe, just maybe, you’d be able to stay tucked safe into his side as they told you what happened, as they asked you to stay with them.

“what do you mean?” you shoot back. “what, did you think i’d just kick back and call it someone else’s problem?”

“that’s what sam did. that’s what sam said you did.” his voice is accusatory and when you whirl to look at sam, utter bewilderment evident on your face, you can see him physically grimace. which means dean’s telling the truth.

“sam did what?” the question sounds like it’s targeted for dean, but you’re staring the younger down.

“listen, i– no, you know what, i’m not going to explain myself on this again. what do you mean you did everything, you said you were going to school?” sam looks irked and defeated all at once.

“that is completely beside the point, sam, you lied to me?” you ask incredulously, “but you’re not going to explain to me why? why you lied to me or why you apparently didn’t look for dean, i mean are you crazy?” dean’s hand on your shoulder prevents you from standing as your voice grows louder.

“listen, kid, sam and i, we’ve already hashed this out, okay? it’s uh– it’s fine, alright?” with the way he says the word “fine”, you know that it still bothers dean, so you can’t understand why he’d say so. “we’ve got things to discuss here,” dean tries to reason with you before sam can respond. he’s no peace maker, but a full blown fight between the two of you could have an ugly ending.

“things to discuss?” you repeat, in disbelief of the audacity. knowing them, that means they need something from you, which begs the question of why sam asked you over in the first place. you don’t even want to think about them having ulterior motives outside ofjust wanting to see you, so you brush it off angrily. “well, i’m glad to hear that you two have hashed it out, but i haven’t yet, so we can discuss whatever that is later.” you shrug off dean’s hand, trying to focus on the things you’re already angry about instead of asking the even bigger question nagging at you now. when the hell did dean get back that those two had time to hash out something that major? you turn your anger back to sam, thinking about what it was like when dean first disappeared. “you told me you looked. you told me you did all that you could, that you tried everything in your power. now dean’s telling me that you did jack shit?”

sam sighs heavily. “yes, okay. listen, i’m sorry i lied to you, alright? but i just wanted you to try and live your life for once. i figured if i told you i did everything i could, that, i don’t know, maybe you’d give up and try to move on? go to school, do something you love, have real friends, maybe find someone?” he throws his hands up in the air, a defeated gesture because he knows you don’t agree, while he still thinks he did the right thing.

you scoff, because, god, he really has no idea. arms crossed and face the kind of calm that says run to anyone on the other end of your anger, you nod in false understanding. “yeah, what good that did,” you say, your tone so sarcastic and dry that sam just clenches his jaw and dean’s face turns from concerned to full-blown worried. he wonders if he should ask what that means, because whatever it does, it’s certainly not “good.”

but you pick up again after a moment of thick, dripping silence. “you know, sam, you have absolutely no idea how this past year really was for me. i’m not saying it was easy for you, because i know it wasn’t. though now i know you also skipped the trouble of looking for your stuck-in-purgatory-brother and really, actually lived that hunting-free life you wanted.” sam cringes at the venom in your voice. “all i’m saying is that just about nothing has been all, i don’t know, rainbows and butterflies like you think,” your voice is practically scathing, a tone so rare to both of your brothers that neither knows what to say, “and you know what, sam? it’s looking to me like i’d be a lot better off if you’d just decided to tell me the goddamn truth.”

sam says your name, tentative like he’s testing hot waters, “i thought you said things were going well. you said you liked school, that you were making friends there? just explain to me what you mean so we can figure this out.”

“figure it out,” you repeat under your breath, sticking your tongue against the inside of your cheek to keep from saying something too harsh. “sam, things were going well! they were!” now you’re feeling desperate to make him understand, “but that night you told me there was nothing else we could do, nothing else to try and that i should just do my best to move on? i couldn’t, sam, i couldn’t do that. there had to be something more we could do, so i gave up on the things you said you did and i went further. i let you think i was fine, that i was doing what you wanted for me because you always sounded so tired. you always sounded like one more thing on your plate would make the sweet little life you built with a girl and a dog come crashing down, so i made sure you wouldn’t have to worry about me.”

dean’s voice is uncharacteristically soft when he does his best to make his interruption gentle. he doesn’t want to upset you more, but you can hear the tension in his voice when he asks, “kiddo? what do you mean by you ‘went further?’”

suddenly you shrink in on yourself, your lower lip caught between your teeth and your eyes shining with fresh tears. “dean–,” your voice breaks before you can even say anything else. his hand is on your back, meant to be comforting, but it only makes you feel worse about it all. you know how much dean would hate the lengths you went to to try and get him back. “i can’t–” you shake your head, “i can’t right now, but maybe… maybe if you’d told me the truth, sam, if i’d just started by reading through all of bobby’s books like you said you did, things would have worked out differently.”

“well, maybe if you told me you were going to keep trying, i could have helped you!” sam fires back.

you let out a strangled, frustrated noise as you stand, unable to keep sitting down. “would you? really? because i really don’t think you would’ve! you were so focused on moving on from losing dean that you distanced yourself from me, too! you barely picked up, never called, only talked about dean in three word sentences to tell me a lie about how you tried and failed to find anything to help! maybe if you paid any attention to me, gave any indication that you wanted to help or see me or be a major part of life like i wanted of you, i would have opened up to you!” it makes you even more angry when your voice turns teary, “and for once, i wanted to try to be the one to take care of you two. i kept my secrets, i never let on how fucking lonely i was, just so you wouldn’t worry about me!” a stunned silence falls over you brothers, sam’s guilt beginning to overrun his natural response of anger, and dean making up for that fading anger with his own. your chest heaves with laboured breath as you stare sam down.

dean’s tone is icy as he breaks the silence, “sam, is that really how you treated them while i was gone?”

sam exhales hard, ignoring dean in favor of looking at you, “i was just doing what i thought was the best for both of us. i didn’t know, okay, i’m sorry.”

“are you kidding me?” you exclaim, voice turning shrill and growing louder by the second, “people got hurt, on my account,” you have to force that part out through gritted teeth, “i got kicked out of school, and i spent three months running from hunters!” both sam and dean want to interrupt at that, but you keep going, your voice quieter now, but harsh and trembling, “but you were doing what you thought was best for both of us? try what was best for you. dean was gone, and i needed you, sammy, i needed you and the second you said you needed to get away, alone, i knew i didn’t have you.”

that shuts him up, has him deflating and his guilt taking over, and you can see it and you hate it. you almost wish he’d get angry instead because that means you can keep shouting at him to try and make him understand. but all you get are his clenched jaw, his sad eyes, and his guilty silence that tell you he knows he fucked up but he can’t figure out a way to make it better since sorry sure as hell won’t cut it.

it’s dean who cuts into the heavy silence again. “sam.” his name hangs in the air, weighed down with unspoken words. “we’ll talk about this later,” you guess is the message. you can feel how angry dean is without even looking at him. you know all he ever asked of sam if he was gone was to take care of you, and now dean knows he didn’t. then his attention is back on you. he says your name, clear and careful. “i’m gonna need you to tell me what you did, okay?”

you wipe at your face angrily as you whirl to face dean. trying to keep the ever present tears at bay, you tap right back into your anger. but it's more tired this time, less convincing with your voice taut from unshed tears begging to be released.

“all that, and that’s what you take away from this? really, dean? you’re gonna need to know what i did? i don’t need you to tell me to know that– that it was wrong and i don’t need you to make me feel any more shitty than i already do right now, okay?”

it’s his turn to wear a look of guilt on his face, but it only sits there for a flash before he keeps going. “kid, that’s not what i’m tryna’ do here, alright? i just wanna understand so i can keep us safe, yeah?” he puts his hands out in a peaceful motion, but something else unresolved floats back up into your focus.

“no. dean, no! because there’s something else here, something both of you have been avoiding this entire time!” there’s a sudden change in the air, like both of them are holding their breath, silently begging you won’t ask the question. “dean, how long have you been back?”

his hesitancy to answer tells you everything. “kid, listen, that’s not imp–”

“don’t you dare say it’s not important! did you hear anything i just said, dean? anything about how shit my life has been since you’ve been gone, how lonely i’ve been?”

“you’re right,” sam relents, forging on before dean can stop him, “he’s been back for three months now. it’s my fault we didn’t tell you. it’s all my fault, and believe me, i am so sorry.” you collapse into a chair with your head in your hands as he continues, “i know that does nothing to fix things, but i am sorry, and i promise i will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, kiddo. i’m all in now, and i did it all so this wouldn’t have to be your life, but you’re here now and we want more than anything to have you around, okay?”

you lift your head up to stare at him. “three months.” your voice is dangerously quiet. “you two…” your tired mind can’t think of words strong enough, “drive me insane, you know that? dean, you just– you just went along with that and decided, let me guess, that it was best for me? because i was at school, living a normal life and away from the danger of this one? is that it? it’s best for me not to know my brother’s alive? because, you know, that reminds me of something. hm, maybe the time sam hid from us that he was alive for a year because he didn’t have his fucking soul? oh, yeah, it must be that.” you let out a short bark of laughter, but it and your voice are completely devoid of any humor. dean visibly recoils when you mention that. he’s thought of it, and still decided to keep you in the dark. “come on, dean, you know how that feels and you go and do it to me again? really?”

you’ve beat him too. “honey,” he sighs, “i’m sorry. we were wrong to do that to you, okay?”

finally, you think you might be out of things to say, to be hurt about. your voice is quiet and fragile now, and the dam holding back your tears is fractured in a million places, more than ready to break. “i missed you so much. both of you,” you whisper. you meant to make a scathing comment about how “sorry” and “we were wrong” don’t even begin to cover it, but you find that you’re not in complete control of the things coming out of your mouth. you’re just too goddamn tired. dean is crouching in front of you in an instant.

“i missed you, too, sweetheart. so much. i’m so sorry.” he takes it as a good sign that you let him place his hand on your knee. you want to flick it away, maybe shove him away too.

“and i was so, so lonely. i was so scared,” you sob out, wishing you didn’t have to cry when you got angry. “and i’m so mad that you two did this to me.”

“i know, kiddo, i know. i’m sorry.” gently, slowly, he tugs you towards him and into his arms and you slide onto the floor and cry into his chest, shaking and unable to say a thing. you want to tell him this doesn’t make it right, but dean hushes you gently when you try. “shhh, it’s okay, just let it out, alright? i got you. i got you,” he comforts. it’s true that this doesn’t make it right, but it’s almost all you need in that moment.

“sammy,” you choke out, still so angry with him, but wanting him near anyways, knowing that he’s too scared to come close to you after coming face to face with all of the things he did wrong. his hand is on your back a moment later, hesitant at first, then strong and soothing moments later when you blindly grab for the fabric of his flannel to keep him close.

“okay. okay, i’m here. i’m sorry. i’m here now, i promise,” he whispers, silently letting a few of his own guilty tears fall.

utterly exhausted, you stay slumped on the floor in dean's arms when your tears dry up. you can barely keep your eyes open and your breathing is soft and slow.

“let’s get you to bed,” dean whispers, hoisting you all the way into his arms and up as he stands. “sam’ll grab you a glass of water.” you sigh an imperceptible sigh because you know that dean is still pissed at sam. rightfully so, you’re more than just pissed at both of them, but you’re too tired to care in this moment, and the last thing you want is for them to be angry at each other. that’s your job for when you wake up hours from now.

dean sets you down in a foreign bed pulling the blankets over you, and sam is back moments later with the promised glass of water and tissues for your face. you curl up and tug at the covers slightly, eager to fall asleep.

“see you in the morning,” you mumble, effectively dismissing them with your voice hoarse from crying. you close your eyes before either of them can say a thing, but your words are also a whisper of the beginning of forgiveness.

“goodnight, kiddo,” dean says, his voice full of a familiar affection that he only uses for his little siblings as he presses a kiss to your hairline, before disappearing out the door.

you drowsily register the sound of sam setting the glass of water on the night stand by your head. “i’m right across the hallway if you need anything.” a moment, then, “goodnight,” and a gentle hand on the side of your head before a kiss to your temple.

you fall asleep coming up with a list of petty ways you’ll have them make things up to you. neither sam nor dean will be pleased to hear that you’re calling shotgun in the impala for the next three months, minimum. sam for obvious reasons, and dean because he’ll know that means you’ll be taking your job as youngest sibling to annoy the living hell out of him very seriously.

604 notes · View notes