Chapter Text
Family dinner.
Family. Dinner. Dinner where Sam will sit down with his family at a table big enough to fit all of them and eat food that one of them (Dean) cooked and they'll talk to each other. Dinner with Mom, who is alive and currently somewhere in the same building as Sam and knows he's her son.
Sam's going to throw up.
The food thing, as Sam thinks of it most of the time, isn't really a big deal. He's been coping with it for longer than he hasn't, and he knows how to handle himself. He'll help Dean in the kitchen, so he'll know whether he can eat the meal or not. But if he can't, Mary's going to be there. Mom is going to be there, watching him not eat.
Here is what Mary knows about Sam: two days ago, Dean had to drag him out of a barn where he'd been drugged and tortured because he let someone get one over on him. She sold him to a demon without knowing what the consequences would be. He's a hunter, even though she wanted out of that life, wanted her kids miles away from it. And whatever she read in Dad's journal, which, from what Sam remembers, contains a long list of possible signs that Sam was going to turn evil at some point. Adding "oh, and somehow he's 6'4" even though he doesn't eat anything" isn't going to go over well.
Sam is okay with the way most people prefer Dean to him. Understands it, even. Agrees with them on his worse days. He doesn't know if he can be okay with Mary feeling the same way.
And that's not even getting into the other problem. Two days ago, Sam was drugged and hallucinating. Mary was dead and if Dean wasn't dead then he was on a death march, and Sam was living a life that made sense at the time.
The thing is, Sam knows how to tell what's real and what's not. Dean was right. Real pain, with nerves and everything, has a different feel to it than the stuff that's only in your head. It's not very convenient to draw blood every time he's double checking, but he's gotten good at doing it subtly. His hand isn't any good anymore, but he's worn a scarred spot on the inside of his cheek from biting it. He can taste blood right now, he's been worrying it so hard.
His mom is real. She's real, and the blood in Sam's mouth is real. He can't make himself believe it.
He bites harder.
Dean waits until Sam's been in the shower for over an hour before he come in after him. Sam's sitting naked on the bench by the door, spreading vaseline over the burn on his foot. He's scrubbed himself pink all over, raw skin everywhere, sometimes so raw it's bleeding a little bit.
Dean hates that he knows what this means. Whatever happened in that barn, it wasn't just torture.
But Sammy'll just clam up if Dean tries to talk to him about it, so instead he says, "You gonna help me peel potatoes, or was all that talk about helping me make dinner bullshit?"
Sam hums and scrapes the excess vaseline back into the tub without meeting Dean's eyes. "Gimme a minute."
Shit.
"You've been in here for ages, dude. It's after five thirty."
Sam's eyes snap to meet Dean's at that, surprised. "Already?"
Double shit.
Okay. Okay, it'll be fine. Sam's had rough days before, and he's always pulled through. He spent most of the past few months looking at the devil wearing their best friend's face and he only lost about ten pounds. So one of those British fuckers did something (you know what they did. Say it.) to Sam. He's a tough guy.
He also gets pissy if Dean hovers too much. For all he's a proponent of talking it out whenever Dean has a problem, he clams up whenever he's the one dealing with shit, and they've been good, the past year. Dean doesn't want to start anything.
His eyes skate to Sam's ribs without his meaning them to, just checking. Sam's shoulders are so big, it's hard to tell how much his clothes hang off him just because he's huge, and how much is because he's losing weight again. Dean tries to give Sam a once-over as often as possible when the kid's undressed, just to make sure. The outline of his ribs shifts as Sam moves, visible, but not more obvious than the last time Dean saw Sam shirtless.
Dean's been trying to fatten Sam up for most of his life. One of these days he'll figure out a way to make it stick.
"Wanna tell me what's got you spacing out?" Dean asks, prodding Sam's unburned foot gently with his own booted toe.
Sam shrugs. "Torture." He smiles up at Dean wryly. "You know how it is."
Yeah, Dean does. "Want a drink?" Dean offers. He knows it's not Sam's preferred method of dealing, but it can't hurt.
"Maybe after dinner," Sam says, unsurprisingly. He pushes to his feet and grabs his boxers off the neat pile of clothes he left sitting on the bench. "I'll be down in a minute," he says, stepping into the boxers. "You can get started without me."
So Sammy can space out up here for another hour? Yeah, fat chance. "You're not getting out of potato peeling that easy, dude."
Dean crosses his arms and leans against the wall, watching Sam pull on his pants. They sag around his hips, and Sam' belt is tightened to the last hole. There's a little fold in the waist from where there's too much fabric. Dean tries to remember if these are old jeans that Sam's had since the last time he put a little weight on. He's not sure.
Dean counts Sam's ribs under the skin. It's something he's been doing since childhood, first with his fingers, when Sammy was little, then with his eyes, as he grew up and got twitchy about Dean's mothering. Still all there. None broken right now, but there's a bruise spreading across them, ugly and dark.
"Why hasn't Cas patched you up yet?" Dean asks.
Sam blinks, taken aback, with his shirt halfway on. "Oh. Uh. I dunno. I'll ask him later, I guess." Sam yanks his shirt down and asks, "Is he gonna be at dinner?"
"Nah," Dean says, keeping it casual. He'd actually told Cas point blank that this was going to be weird enough without adding an angel to the mix so if he could scram for a few hours Dean'd appreciate it, but what he says is, "He said something about bees."
Sam's smile this time is fond. "Of course he did." He shrugs into a hideous gray and blue flannel and leaves it unbuttoned, then raises his eyebrows at Dean expectantly. "Potatoes?"
Dean shoulders off the wall and leads the way downstairs.
Dinner is… weird. Sam doesn't throw up, which he counts as a major success, and he does eat a decent sized portion of Dean's scalloped potatoes, though he doesn't touch the steaks. He also manages to keep from chewing a hole in the inside of his mouth, asking Mary if her childhood was as bad as his, or reaching out to strangle Dean with his bare hands.
That last one is the hardest. It usually is. When Sam isn't busy loving Dean so much he thinks he'll choke on it, he usually wants to kill him at least a little. Tonight, Dean's crime is heaping food onto Sam's plate, when they both know Sam won't eat it.
Sam makes the effort he always does, when he's around someone who might be hurt at the way he and Dean close in around themselves like a single unit. He hasn't had to worry about that so much with Cas lately, since Cas knows what they're like, but he remembers how to do it, still, from Adam, from Bobby, from Charlie, from Kevin. (They're all dead now, and doesn't that say something about the wake he and Dean leave behind them). He keeps his body turned a little away from Dean, looks at Mary after he or Dean say something, and doesn't knock his knees with his brother's beneath the table, certainly doesn't let Dean's feet hook around his. He does shoot Dean a pretty poisonous look when Dean serves him seconds of the potatoes, but that one's not something he's ready to let Mary in on.
Mary has questions, obviously. They try to keep it light, and she's obviously trying, too, but there's only so much that they can say about anything without brining the mood down.
"Don't like the steak?" she asks at one point, and Sam brushes her off the way he would any casual question about his food:
A bashful smile and then, "I try not to eat too much red meat. Heart disease." It's not even untrue.
"He's kinda particular," Dean says, smirking at Sam. "Bit of a health nut, Sammy is."
Sam rolls his eyes. He knows how to do this, he does. "Some of us care about our arteries."
"Hey, my arteries are fine. They're lubricated." Dean grins at Sam and shoves a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
Sam kicks him hard under the table and says, "Gross, dude."
"I know you are, but what am I?" Dean sing-songs, mouth full of food.
Sam might throw up. God, he put that in his body. It looked like that when he was chewing it, even if it was hidden because Sam keeps his mouth closed when he eats like a civilized adult.
Mary chuckles. Sam remembers that she's in the room, and it doesn't make him less nauseous. He forgot. He tries so hard not to let the world narrow down to him and Dean in moments like this, but sometimes it happens anyway, Dean the north star only light first best solid point that Sam has built his world on, and it's so easy to forget about everyone else when Dean is being so thoroughly himself.
"I'm glad you're so close," she says. "I worried, you know? I never had any siblings, and I heard all these horror stories about brothers who tried to kill each other."
Sam laughs a little. "Oh, there's plenty of that, too," he promises her. He smiles fondly at Dean. "Especially when we were younger."
"Excuse you," Dean says, mock-defensive but ready to get actually upset if Sam doesn't play this careful. "I took care of you."
"Sure," Sam acknowledges, because it's the truest thing in the world, that Dean hovers and worries and smothers Sam. He allows his smile to turn teasing and says, "When you weren't hotboxing me."
Dean snorts. "I'm not the one who gets bean farts."
"Onions," Sam says. And Mary's still there, right, Sam remembers her, so he looks up and says, "He, uh. He did good."
"Good," Mary says, eyes soft. "I'm glad that—well. From the journal… it seemed like maybe John was gone a lot. I'm glad you had—someone. Taking care of you."
"Yeah, well," Dean says, rubbing his neck. "It's my job, y'know?"
Sam pushes the potatoes around on his plate and doesn't think about all the things he wishes he could say to that.
"I always wanted a sibling," Mary says.
Sam looks at her, trying to ask for more without pushing. "Yeah?"
Mary smiles. "We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Well, you get it, right? I thought a brother or sister would be… a friend I could keep, you know?"
Sam smiles softly. "Yeah."
"And you did," Mary says. She smiles at them. "Keep each other. I mean, you live together."
Sam laughs a little, softly, and thinks about other ways he'd like to keep Dean, and feels a little more nauseous, because he can't, won't, refuses to have that, and he's been shoving it down so long that not even demons have called him on it.
"We're what we've got," Dean says, and he's looking at Sam as he says it, the look in his eyes that he gets sometimes, that reminds Sam of Dean at twenty-six, coming as close as he could get to begging Sam to come back on the road with him.
Sam can't bear that look, especially not around other people. He can't bear knowing what his own face is doing in return.
Mary glances between the two of them thoughtfully, says, "Huh," and takes a bite of steak.
Sam mentally recites a standard exorcism forward, then backwards, then forwards again, and does not think about anything else, does not let himself want.
Cas is waiting outside the bunker the next morning, when Sam goes for his run.
"Cas," Sam says. He tries on a smile. It fits okay. It's Cas, not Lucifer. "What are you doing here?"
"I have not healed you yet," Cas says, and reaches forward.
Sam jerks back, then steels himself. Cas. It's Cas. "Sorry."
Cas tilts his head, squints at Sam thoughtfully, and says, "It's understandable. Do you not—"
"No, no, it's—" Sam holds himself still. "I'm okay. Thanks."
"Sam," Cas says, "I am sorry for—"
"Don't," Sam cuts him off. There are things he can forgive Cas for, and there are things he has to shove in a box in his mind because he's too tired to be angry all the time. Letting Lucifer out has gone in the box, but Sam doesn't know if he can keep that one there if Cas stirs things up.
"Very well," Cas says. He moves slowly, and presses two fingers to Sam's forehead. Sam feels a lot better, and it's Cas, the feeling of being healed, the taste of his grace familiar and almost safe. "You are underweight, as well," Cas says. "Would you like me to—"
"No!" Sam interrupts again, because he can't, he doesn't know— He swallows, asks, more calmly, "What—what would it be made of?"
"Muscle tissue and fat, primarily," Cas says. "Although your bone mass is somewhat lower than ideal for a man of your height."
Sam chuckles, something coming loose in his chest at Cas being so himself. "No, I meant—When you miracle us healed, how does it—do you pull it out of nowhere? Do you make it out of something else?"
Cas frowns thoughtfully. "When I heal your injuries, I am manipulating that part of your body's relationship to time in order to move it to a point when the injury is not a problem. For something like this, I would need to transform something, yes, most likely."
Sam swallows. "What—what would you transform?" He thinks about Dean, stuffing an angel into Sam's unwitting body, about Lucifer repairing Sam from a bullet wound from miles away, about all the things that make up his blood and bones and sinews that he can't catalogue, that are tainted with someone else's touch.
"Carbon from the atmosphere would be easiest," Cas offers. He's squinting thoughtfully at Sam again. "This bothers you."
Sam gives Cas an apologetic smile. "I'm—I appreciate the offer, but I think I'll pass."
"Very well," Cas says. "The offer stands, though."
Sam swallows, thinks about leaving it there, and then decides that, no. Cas is his friend, too. He likes Dean better, but he likes Sam too, these days, and Sam can't— "Cas," he says, biting the bullet, "If—if Dean asks you to—to do that. You need to check with me first, okay?"
Cas keeps squinting at Sam. It's pretty uncomfortable. But he says, "If I can."
"I mean it," Sam says.
"I know," Cas agrees. "But if it is a choice between your life or—"
"It's my life," Sam cuts him off, getting angry now. "Mine, Cas. Not yours, or Dean's, or whatever angel or demon has decided they get a claim on it this month."
"Do you want to die?" Cas asks.
If he'd asked it like an accusation, Sam would stay angry. If he'd sounded sad, Sam would console him, promise that of course he didn't. But Cas just asks it like any other question, so Sam says, "Not really. But I'm tired of not getting a say in how I stay alive."
Cas thinks about it for a second, then says, "Very well. I will ask you first, if it comes to that."
A weight lifts off Sam's bones, and he smiles at Cas. "Thanks."
Cas nods, then steps back. "I am keeping you from your run."
Sam runs. His body does what he asks it to. It's pretty great.
Later, Mary leaves. Mary leaves, and Sam knows it's not his fault, and he doesn't even blame her. This is…he's come back from the dead before, and it was hard enough to adjust to a world that moved on while he was gone, and he wasn't dead for anywhere near as long as she was. Of course she has to leave
But God, does it hurt to watch her go.
She calls and texts sometimes, and it's better than nothing. It's a relationship with his mom, which he never thought he'd get, never even hoped for, rarely even let himself daydream about.
It's also really, really weird. They know nothing about each other. He thinks he likes her—she's enough like Dean (or Dean's enough like her) that he's sort of automatically fond of her, and she's enough like Sam that Sam understands her in a way Dean doesn't, really. But they don't know each other, and everything he thinks he could tell her is all bound up in the things he hates about himself, about how hard he's trying not to be that person anymore, or bound up in Dean, and he has no idea how to navigate what he and Dean are to each other around Mary.
He had no idea how to deal with that around John, and John turned them into this. He dealt with it mostly by yelling at his dad, and that's not fair to Mary.
So they text. She calls once in a while. And Sam and Dean try to track down Lucifer, and deal with the British invasion, and Sam counts calories, and it's fine, right up until it's not.
Sam is aware that he's not coping very well. He's also aware that what he's doing is a desperate attempt to regain some tiny bit of control over his life. He's read all the literature. Sam is an expert in all of the psychology that explains his broken brain.
The problem is that knowing why his brain is like this doesn't actually fix the fact that his brain is broken. It's like having Lucifer in his head again, knowing it's a hallucination, and still not being able to ignore it long enough to go to sleep. He knows he's obsessing over his food choices because everything else is spiraling away from him. He knows. He still can't make himself eat Dean's meatloaf.
"Sam," Dean says, pulling Sam's book away.
Sam looks up, mildly annoyed and turning it up to hide the fact that he knows what's coming, and he really doesn't want to have this conversation. "I was reading that," he says.
"Yeah, you've been reading it for hours. Dinner's getting cold, man."
"I'll eat it later," Sam dismisses. He won't. He can't. He doesn't know what Dean put in it. What if—
Dean wouldn't.
Probably.
"Yeah, no," Dean says. "I saw the new hole in your belt, dude. You're losing weight again. So eat. The fucking. Meatloaf." He nudges the plate closer and closer to Sam's elbow with each word. "C'mon, man, I worked hard on this."
"What's—" Sam tries to make it casual— "what's in it?"
Dean shrugs. "Got some meatloaf blend. I think it's beef and turkey? Maybe pork." He squints at Sam, suspicion turning into realization. "Pork?"
Sam was right, he was right, Dean forgot, or didn't care, and he was going to—
"You didn't notice?" Sam asks, because Dean couldn't eat pork for a while after Hell, himself.
Dean shrugs. "Put enough ketchup on it, and it all tastes like salt."
"I'll," Sam grimaces apologetically, "I'm gonna pass, dude. Thanks, but—"
"Yeah, okay," Dean says, and he's being good about it, because he's got a reason, one that isn't that Sam didn't read the ingredients, didn't watch Dean cook. "Want me to make you something else?"
Sam rolls his eyes, says, "C'mon, man. I'm thirty-four. I can make my own sandwiches."
"No, I fucked up," Dean says, generous and kind and it makes Sam's empty guts curdle. "Lemme fix it."
"I've got it," Sam says, pushing back from the table. "Don't want you to get too close to my kale, you might have an allergic reaction." He's playing it right, teasing, little smirk, ha-ha, Dean doesn't like vegetables and Sam does, it's not a big deal, nobody's fighting off panic attacks about unknown ingredients in their food, everything is fine.
Dean follows Sam to the kitchen.
Sam shoots him a confused look as he gets out the blender. Dean didn't even pretend he was coming here to put the dishes away. He's just leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching Sam dig his ziplocks of chunked fruit out of the freezer.
"You got enough of that yogurt shit?" Dean asks.
Sam opens the fridge, pulls out his tub of plain greek yogurt, and waggles it at Dean, eyebrows raised. "Are you going to micromanage the whole time?"
"You need protein," Dean says, which is as good as a yes.
Sam gnaws on the inside of his cheek. He's not going to point out to Dean that he's been managing his eating disorder for over twenty years now, that he's a full grown man who knows how to take care of himself, or tell him where Dean can shove his mother henning. Because, much as it chafes Sam, he gets why Dean is worried.
The blender is loud enough that Sam has time to get control over himself. It's not Dean's fault. Dean's having a rough time, too.
When the blender stops, Dean says, "How long's it been since you ate something I made you?"
Sam bites down on his cheek so hard he tastes blood. "You made me a chicken salad the other day."
"How long's it been since you ate something you didn't watch me make, then?" Dean asks. He shrugs off the wall and walks farther into the room.
Gadreel. Three years ago. The proof that Sam couldn't trust Dean not to put things into Sam's body that Sam didn't want there.
"A while," Sam admits. He eyes Dean. "I'm doing okay, I swear. It's just—with Mom—" he waves his hand around vaguely. He tries on a smile. It feels okay. "Wanna talk about your drinking?"
"No," Dean says, walking closer. It's amazing how Dean manages to loom, despite being shorter than Sam. "I wanna talk about why you won't eat my food anymore."
"You tried to feed me pork," Sam snaps, because Dean is too close and Sam is a cornered animal lashing out. "Maybe you've forgotten what it tastes like to be force-fed your own flank steak, but I still haven't."
"It was an accident," Dean says, calmer than Sam expected, too calm, Dean should be pissed and the fact that he's not sends nausea churning through Sam's gut like a warning.
"This time." It's mean. Sam tries so hard not to be like this; it makes him feel fourteen and helpless again, and usually Dean is pretty good about Sam's food rules, even if he pokes fun at them. But Dean is still right up in Sam' space. And Sam still has days where he has to check his watch religiously to make sure he hasn't lost any time. And most of the time he's made his peace with knowing that it's more important to Dean that Sam be here than that Sam be happy, but sometimes Sam wishes he could shake Dean until he understands what it's like not to know what someone else has been doing with your body.
Dean pulls back a bit, shocked, then gives a decisive nod. "Right."
He's going to hit Sam. This is what it looks like when Dean loses his temper and punches Sam in the face because Sam said something Dean didn't want to hear. He's going to turn away, then use the momentum of coming back around to hit harder. Sam braces for it.
Only Dean… doesn't. He sees Sam tense up, and he steps back, hands in the air, odd expression on his face.
Maybe Sam's hallucinating again. It happens sometimes. Worse when he doesn't eat, and he hasn't really been eating.
"Drink your smoothie," Dean says, and he leaves.
Yeah, either Sam's hallucinating, or something's wrong.
Someday, Dean'll do something that Sam can't forgive. Intubating him while he's asleep is probably crossing the line. Dean's still tempted.
He can count Sam's fucking ribs, is the thing. The kid's clothes are hanging off him, there's new notches in his belt that Sam definitely poked through himself, and other than that smoothie yesterday, Dean hasn't actually seen him eat in days, at least, if not weeks.
And before their little chit chat, Dean had suspected, y'know? He'd had an inkling that Sammy didn't trust him anymore, and he'd hoped like hell he was wrong, but Dean didn't make it to thirty-eight (with a few stumbling blocks, sure, but he's back now) without learning to trust his gut. And his gut said Sam didn't want Dean's food.
A big part of Dean is pissed. He's worked so hard to take care of Sam for decades, and Sammy won't let him feed him now? Dean's done his best, okay? And everything's been to take care of Sam, to keep him alive and here and walking and talking and not fucking starving when Dean has cooked a perfectly good goddamn meal.
The rest of him, the part that kept him from flipping out at Sam earlier, gets it. Dean had fucked up. Keeps fucking up.
It's not lost on Dean that Sam is, in some ways, less than he used to be, and that Dean may have had a hand in keeping him that way. Even if Hell hadn't broken Sam in some pretty irreparable ways, the Mark did a number on the two of them, and Dean's… well. Dean's never been the calmest person. So maybe he gets that Sam is maybe having trouble differentiating between the guy who tried to beat his face in a year ago and the brother who let him have the last of the lucky charms.
Sam thought Dean was gonna hit him earlier. Expected it. Flinched when Dean was backing down from the corner he backed Sam into, and Sam thought Dean was faking him out. And the shittiest part is that Dean can't blame him. So. That sucks. And Dean doesn't know how to fix it other than to just… not hit Sam again. Ever.
Dean's not great on self-improvement.
On the other hand, taking care of Sammy is Dean's primary motive in life, so he's gonna have to fix this, is all.
"Yo, Sam! C'mere!" Dean's a genius. Or he will be, if this works. If it doesn't, he's going to feel like an idiot, and like he put himself out there for nothing.
Sam pokes his head into the kitchen a minute later. "What's up?"
Dean kicks one of the chairs out and says, "Sit."
Sam sits, eyeing Dean with some confusion. "Why?"
Dean plunks his tray of ingredients in front of Sam.
Sam blinks at them, then up at Dean. "Am I… do you need help with dinner?"
Dean gestures at the pile of stupid health food in front of Sam. "I figured—" he waves aimlessly. "You need to see what's in it, right? So. Here's what's going into dinner. So." He gestures again. "Read the ingredients or whatever. Tell me if I've gotta toss something."
Sam watches Dean warily for a second, then picks up a packet of turkey bacon (Dean is the best brother in the world and Sam owes him big time). He flips it over and starts reading the ingredients.
This had better work. Sam's lost a shitton of weight in the past few months. Dean doesn't know what he'll do if he can't find a way to get Sam to eat. Knock him out and intubate him, maybe. Have him committed? They have programs for people who won't eat. Dean gets a bit of a kick out of the idea of Sam surrounded by anorexic teen girls. Sam would probably spend the whole time trying to gently parent them out of their issues while he wasted away.
It's not as funny, then.
Sam hands Dean the bacon and says, "It's kind of high in sodium."
"It's bacon, dude."
"Yeah."
"Can I use it, or are we gonna be having LTs for dinner?"
"You… yeah. It's okay."
"Great," Dean says. He grabs a knife to cut the package open and turns on the stove. He eyes Sam. He shouldn't push it. For all Sam pretends to be a fan of caring and sharing, he hates talking to Dean about his own issues.
"I thought you were doing okay," Dean says finally. It's not pushing. It's just saying something. "You've… I thought you had a handle on it."
Sam shrugs, eyes on the ingredients list for the fancy bread Dean bought. Dean knows for a fact that it's the right one. "I told you."
"Yeah, yeah, Mom's back and then she's not, you're stressed," Dean says, like it's nothing, like Sam didn't rightly point out that the same thing's been driving Dean to the bottle more nights (afternoons) than not. "You've been stressed before, Sammy."
Sam starts picking at the sticker on the tomato, not really pulling it off, just sliding a fingernail underneath the edge and running it from side to side. "I…you remember when I was hallucinating?"
"Yeah," Dean says, because how could he forget? Sam pointing his gun at thin air and talking to nobody, flinching at nothing and driving his thumb into his own palm in a desperate bid to ground himself that Dean pretended not to notice. He eyes Sam as he lays the bacon in the pan. "Why?"
Sam opens his mouth, shuts it, says, "Never mind."
"No, c'mon," Dean prods. "What's that got to do with food, Sammy?"
Sam laughs, no humor in it. "Nothing. None of anything has to do with food. It's just what I do instead of drinking."
Dean drops the last of the bacon in the pan and turns to look at Sam head-on. "That's… a weirdly self-aware way of talking about something you know is killing you."
Sam shrugs, quirks a half smile at Dean. "I know what's wrong with me, dude. It doesn't make it not a problem."
"You can't just… make yourself eat?" Dean asks.
Sam shrugs. "If I wanna spend the next few weeks obsessing about my heart rate and all that shit, sure." Another pathetic attempt at a smile. "What do you think I do for hunts?"
They should've had this conversation ages ago. But Sam doesn't like to talk about the food thing any more than Dean likes to talk about his drinking, and Dean really did think he had a handle on it. He was worried putting it out in the light would make it worse, somehow. Shake Sam out of his careful equilibrium.
"Right," Dean says. He starts flipping bacon. Turkey bacon cooks different than the pork stuff. Not nearly as much shrinkage. Once he's done, he asks, "Do you really… think about that shit all the time?"
Sam laughs, soft and tired but genuinely amused as he says, "Dean. How the hell do you think eating disorders work? You think I'm doing this 'cause it's fun?"
Dean shrugs. He's read up on it, obviously. "I don't know what's going on in your freaky genius brain to make this make sense."
"Eating disorders," Sam says like he's reciting something, "are usually an attempt by the person to maintain a semblance of control over their environment. Orthorexia nervosa is characterized by a fixation on keeping the food one eats 'clean' or 'healthy,' to the point where it interferes with the patient's ability to function normally. Often people who present with the symptoms of orthorexia show signs of obsessive compulsive disorder or perfectionism, or have had another eating disorder in the past."
"OCD?" Dean asks. "Like, the germ freak thing?"
Sam snorts. "Sure, Dean."
"Yeah, that tracks," Dean agrees. Sammy's always been a persnickety little bitch about cleanliness.
"Look," Sam says, "the point is, it's always there, even on good days."
"And you don't trust me to take care of it." Dean tries to keep himself from sounding bitter, but he doesn't think it works.
Sam doesn't say anything.
Dean doesn't punch a wall, doesn't even clench his fist on the spatula. He stands very still and breathes and reminds himself that Sam's trying, here, too. Dean can't trip and fall at the first hurdle. Sam flinched, he reminds himself, and that shit has to stop.
"Right," Dean says. "So here's how it's gonna work, Sammy. You're gonna be in here with me, at least twice a day, and you're gonna sign off on everything I use. You don't like it, I don't put it in. And then you're gonna sit your ass in that chair and you're gonna eat."
Sam takes a deep breath and doesn't say anything. Dean glances at him surreptitiously, and Sammy looks pissed. Like he's bursting to tell Dean not to treat him like a child. He doesn't say anything. Dean almost wishes he would. He misses when Sam bit back. The kid's been so determined to control his temper for the past few years that he's managed it, and sometimes Dean is itching for a fight, for a reminder that all of Sam is still in there, no matter how small he's trying to make himself.
On the other hand, the Sam who's in control of his temper glares at Dean and says, "Fine," and the prospect of getting some food in Sam's stomach outweighs how much Dean is itching for a fight, so Dean'll take it.
For a bit, it seems like things are getting better. Sammy's eating. He sits in the kitchen while Dean cooks and watches Dean's hands move, and it seems like, maybe, he's doing it as much because he likes to watch Dean work as because he wants to be sure he knows every ingredient Dean uses. Sam used to do that, when they were younger. He'd sit on his bed with a book and not read anything for ages, his eyes on Dean cleaning guns or sharpening knives or melting silver, and Dean felt like he was glowing with the fascination in Sam's eyes. Then he hit his teens and it was like Dean was poison, so Dean's not going to complain if Sammy's decided he thinks Dean's good with his hands again. Dean's always liked having Sam's eyes on him, even better if it's because Sam thinks he's the coolest older brother ever and wants to spend every second of every day with Dean.
It makes Dean ache with a longing he's buried for years to press against Sam and catalogue every inch of him, learn his body by touch as well as he knows it by sight. And Sam is relaxing, smiling more, and Dean thinks maybe they're back on a track he thought they'd fallen off years ago, and maybe this time, if Dean can keep from fucking it up, they'll get to the end.
So, yeah, for a bit things are pretty good.
Then Lucifer has them arrested. And they get out and they're alive and Dean thinks they've managed to pull it off again, but Sam is flinching at every noise or touch or flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, flinching at things Dean can't see or hear (Dean hopes Sam's just noticing shit that he isn't, but he has a suspicion that's not what's happening), and Sam starts nixing Dean's ingredients.
"You were fine with this last week!" Dean protests, brandishing a tub of low-fat sour cream.
"It's got 20 grams of sodium," Sam says. He shrugs. "You can put it on yours."
"Sammy," Dean says, because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I'll find a low sodium one," Sam offers.
"Don't bother," Dean mutters. "You'll just find something wrong with that, too." Dean doesn't hit a wall or slam the fridge or raise his voice and he does not hit his brother.
"Dean—" Sam starts, then stops, takes a deep breath. "I'll eat the enchiladas. Just… no sour cream on mine."
Sam's enchiladas consist of whole wheat tortillas, dried beans that Dean had to soak overnight because Sam's decided canned food might have BPA, Dean, you can't be sure, and some tomatoes that Dean blitzed into something like sauce. They're pretty fuckin' sad. No cheese, even. Dean's making himself a separate batch because he'll make sure Sam eats, sure, but he's not putting that cardboard into his mouth, thanks.
"You wanna talk about it?" Dean asks.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean glares at the pathetic enchiladas until the urge to punch Sam fades. It's kind of a while. He's pretty proud of himself for managing it. He serves Sam his tray of sadsack enchiladas.
Sam eats one and a half.
Sam's trying, okay? He is, and he knows he should try harder, but he's just—everything tastes like blood and sulphur, and he's gnawed a hole in his cheek trying to remind himself where and when he is.
He doesn't think Lucifer came to visit him in prison. He doesn't think that was real. He doesn't know, but he—he'd know, right? It would feel different, if it had actually happened. He was alone for six weeks, completely alone, and that's all that happened. Everything else was made up by his bruised brain to try to deal with the situation.
He knows he's freaking Dean out, but, well. He doesn't know what he can do, other than keep hunting.
He pushes himself up from the table to grab another book, and his vision goes black. It's been happening for a few weeks now, and normally he waits it out, but right now he's busy. He can take three steps to the bookshelf and his vision will be clear by the time he gets there.
He steps forward, trips, and goes down hard. He has just enough time to curse himself before he blacks out for real.