Sam knew there were some things he and Dean had yet to talk about that there was a good chance they would never address. Honestly? Sam was okay with that. He remembered when Dean had first come to get him at Stanford, Sam was always the one wanting to talk stuff out or hash their experiences over a beer, the pair of them alone in the motel room. Unless it was about Jess. And later Ruby. The things that mattered most, the things that made him a monster? These were the things that Sam kept locked inside, perfectly happy not to hash out with Dean.
In Sam’s estimation? Enlisting Rowena, getting Charlie killed, unleashing the Darkness on the world. That qualified as something that made Sam a monster. He’d seen it when Dean had first become a demon and he made that poor bastard Lester sell his soul just to find Dean. Just to get a hint of where he might be or somewhere he had been- a hot trail. It was despicable and unconscionable. Without his brother he was nothing human. It was why they always threw themselves into the burning fire for each.
The guilt from the fallout was part of what kept them saving the world, and knowing they were the cause of that fallout was reason enough to justify what they did to keep saving it. Sam owed this to the world. He owed it to the billions on the planet to go to the Cage, but, Dean was insistent that he not. They were at something of an impasse. A silent one. Until he heard the buzzing of his phone.
[ S: In my room. Something up? ]
Being the older brother, Dean’s natural instinct was to try to put Sammy on the right path. Though the moppy-haired, puppy-eyed little boy was no more (it was a moppy-haired, puppy-eyed grown man), sometimes Sam still did things that scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Things that would get his baby brother killed. He wasn’t going to let Sam do that without at least trying to talk sense into him.
The reply sent Dean straight to Sam’s room, where he barely gave a courtesy knock before letting himself in. His lips tugged sideways in a brief lopsided grin as he murmured a “Hey”. He then took the liberty of perching on the corner of the bed, where he rubbed the back of his head in a bit of an awkward silence. It wasn’t like this Winchester not to come in with guns blazing; he was the brusque one with roguish people skills, but going straight for Sam’s throat wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere.
“So uh, I wanted to...Talk. We didn’t really get a chance to before that bitch started wreaking havoc,” he started, looking up at his brother. “Before you get all defensive, I...Woulda done the same thing. Did do the same thing, basically. Let whatshisface-- Gadreel -- kinda do his thing to save you. But...”
He fought to find his words. He wanted to choose them carefully to keep the conversation civil. “We gotta stop doing crap like this. Dude, you teamed up with Rowena and---...For--...After all I did. You could’ve died. I know you didn’t, but what if you did? You were the only one who coulda stopped me by other means.”
It wasn’t like Dean to fumble over his words or to sit submissively on the edge of a bed while he wrung his hands out. He found himself at a loss after he tossed his jumbled thoughts out on the table. As much as he was a smooth-talker, sometimes he still needed Sam to untangle the message he tried to get across. “I’m not here to lecture you about the past. We gotta start thinking about the future. So...What do you think?”
