The Call for jaredsnuggles

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Title: The Call
Recipient: jaredsnuggles
Rating: G
Word Count: 1114
Warnings: none
Author's Notes: none
Summary: Sam called Dean from Stanford once.

His fingers are shaking so hard that it takes three tries to correctly enter the number he knows by heart. The anxiety that’s building inside his chest crescendos as he listens to the soft ringing on the other side of the line. If he wasn’t so drunk right now, he’d have definitely called it quits by this point. God knows if there’ll even be somebody there to answer, or if they’ll bother to pick up if they are.

“Hello?” There’s confusion in the tone that responds to the call but it’s so achingly familiar that Sam can feel the tears building up in his eyes.

“Dean,” Sam whispers past the lump in his throat. He’s barely keeping it together as he hears his brother’s breath hitch on the other side of the line. Dean wouldn’t have recognized the number initially because Sam had switched it out soon after leaving for Stanford, but Dean knew Sam’s voice as well as Sam knew his. “Hi.”

“Sammy. How’re ya doin’ kid?” Dean sounded overwhelmed and his voice trembled just slightly, but he kept the Winchester dialect that Sam had missed so badly among his classmates and professors, most of whom sounded straight out of a formal essay half the time.

“I’m good, Dean. Really good.” He wiped at his eyes and inhaled unsteadily. Any other time, he’d be ashamed of the fact he was already crying, but the part of Sam that could feel that embarrassment was broken by the alcohol and the catharsis. There was a pregnant pause in which the only sounds that passed through the phone lines were Sam’s poorly restrained sniffling. I thought you were dead, Dean.

“Sammy, is there a reason you’re callin’? Vamp nest? Shifter? Dad’s on his own on a case in Nebraska, but I’ll drive over and kill it if you’re not up to handling it,” Dean spoke hesitantly, clearly knowing what the answer was. Sammy was nineteen years old--and unless he had gotten real sloppy real fast, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t be able to handle alone.

“Dean…it’s just good to hear your voice, man,” Sam’s voice shook. He was pretty sure that if Dean hadn’t been able to tell his brother was crying before, he could tell now. But Dean had probably known from the very start: he’d seen Sam broken more than anyone else had, even Dad, especially as they’d gotten older. Dean had never judged Sam for being too sensitive. Not like his old man had.

“Sammy, are you drunk?” Damn, he knew it had been obvious. He choked back on something between a laugh and a sob. It physically hurt, but he managed to keep it at bay, for the time being, until he exhaled a little too sharply and it felt like a dam had broken.

“Maybe,” Sam sniffled. “I miss you, man. I miss you ’n’ Dad like hell.”

Sam could hear the hesitation in his older brother’s voice, probably trying to figure out the best way to answer to that. Sam didn’t care, though. He didn’t need an answer, he’d just needed to say it. Over the sound of his tears, Sam heard the other man say, “It’s okay, Sammy. Just calm down.”

“I c-can’t, Dean!” Even drunk, Sam knew he sounded pathetic. “What if I’m not made for this life after all?”

And for a while, silence fell on the other end. Only the little hiccups escaping the teen broke through it. But after a minute or so, Dean replied: “What do you mean, Sammy?”

Finally, they had gotten to the burning question that had been haunting Sam for weeks now. It was the reason he’d gotten this hammered in the first place. He’d fought so hard to get here, but what if this wasn’t right, after all? What if Sam never belonged anywhere? The weight of it all caused a pit in his stomach and made him want to vomit, but no matter how much he tried to retch the feeling out of him, it never went away. So he’d gone out with Brady and gotten himself plastered—hey, it helped Dad to forget—and still it remained. So he’d done the only other option he’d ever known and called.

“I’m just lost, man. I thought I belonged here, but what if I don’t? I try to fit in here, but it’s like there’s something inside of me…like there’s something dark inside me and I can’t get rid of it. And I can’t go back, Dean, I just can’t. And if I don’t belong here, but I don’t belong there, where else is there to go?” Another stream of tears fell from Sam’s eyes and for a moment he was eight years old again, weeping into his pillowcase, and the only one left was Dean.

“Dean, what do I do?”

Sam was a little boy, just waiting for his big brother’s reassurance to bring him back to peace. He was still barely more than a child, after all. So when that reassuring tone came, it was like rain after a drought. “Sammy, you can’t really think that, can you?”

“What?”

“You belong at that nerd school as much as any of those bastards. If someone is giving you trouble, you know how to deal with ‘em. And even if they’re not, you just gotta keep fightin’ through it, Sammy. And if you decide that it ain’t worth it, I’ll come over there myself and we’ll be a team again. But there’s nothing more important than you, Sammy. There’s nothing wrong about you. Hell, even I used to question where I belonged at your age. It’s normal. You just gotta find out your place, but when you do, you’re gonna do great, little brother.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh a little in spite of himself. “Chick flick moment much, Dean? You must be as drunk as me.”

“Don’t need to be. By the sound of it, you might not even remember this tomorrow. But that don’t matter, as long as you keep on doing what you’re doing and kicking life’s ass. Keep on fighting through it, okay?”

“I will.”

“And, just so you know, we miss you too. Even Dad. Now go get some sleep, ya little girl.” There was light back in Dean’s voice, and all of a sudden, Sam was home again. But the tiredness was, just as Dean said, beginning to wear on him, plus the exhaustion of having just unburdened his soul and of the crying.

“Night, jerk,” Sam said.

“Night, bitch.”