Reciprocity (13.02 Coda)
Sam finds Jack standing in the doorway of the room he’s borrowing, facing away and weaving like he’ll fall over any moment. Sam knows the feeling only too well, so he stops, reaches out a tentative hand to ground and steady the (much, much) younger man. Sam has had a whole lifetime to get used to how brutal the world can be. Jack has had three days.
He doesn’t deserve this.
“Hey… Jack? I just—”
Jack spins around, and in the moment before he wipes his expression clean, Sam sees anger and sadness and desperation and confusion and disgust.
But then he sees the blood and shredded cloth, and his words die in his throat. All he manages to force out through the sudden tightness is, “Oh, God. Jack.”
Fingers whisper over Jack’s shaking shoulders, over the precise, blood-tinged tears in the cheap t-shirt that can only come from a blade. “Jack, are you—geez, of course you’re not okay. Will you—fuck. Will you sit down?” His fingers find no wounds on Jack, but his whole body is electrified with adrenaline, his own hands shaking now with both the fear and relief of finding the young man unharmed.
Jack sits on his bed, tilting his head up toward Sam. Confusion and hope.
It almost undoes him, because the gaze is too bare, too honest: it says Jack thinks Sam has answers. Sam tries. He knows all the right words for when he meets people like Magda who have struggled and hurt. He knows their purity and their pain, can say with 100% honesty the words he can never make himself believe.
Jack is too close, though, too new, and the assurances taste foreign and fake on his tongue. Articulation and self-control desert him. “Please, Jack,” he starts.
“Please what?”
“Please don’t hurt yourself. You don’t–you shouldn’t have to hurt. You’re good, Jack. I swear you are. I can see it. You shouldn’t–God, are you okay?”
Jack blinks, frowns down at what must be at least twenty self-inflicted stab wounds. “It healed…immediately. I can’t—I can’t stop myself. I’m…” He looks up to Sam, and his eyes communicate what his mouth doesn’t. Dangerous, ruined, out of control, broken, unwanted, lost.
“Jack, you have amazing power, but you’re the one who gets to decide what to do with it. One of the first things you ever told me was–was that you wanted me to say sorry to someone for you. Dean is confused, Jack, but he’s also wrong. These powers are cruel and unfair–to you more than anyone–because they mean you’re going to have to try a lot harder for a lot of things that come easy to most other people.”
“People,” Jack scoffs, eyes shadowed. He whips toward Sam, eyes flashing gold, hand reaching out.
Sam flinches, stumbling backward a step, and Jack withdraws and sinks down onto the bed again, pulling his knees up.
“You think I can’t tell that you’re terrified of me? You’re the only person who says I can be good, but you’re more scared than anyone else!”
“That’s not it…” Sam starts, but his throat is dry and sore, and the words come out fragmented and unconvincing.
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