Chapter Text
Universal Inconsistencies
Sam wakes from the dream in his customary fashion; terrified, hazy, guilty, resigned.
He’s face down on the bed, coarse cotton against his tongue and the thin duvet baring the breadth of his shoulders to the world, on account of the fact that it’s either that or his feet. Sam can feel the whole hotel room without looking; the sparse bed five feet to the left of his, empty because Sam would know if it wasn’t, the bathroom door opposite that, the small kitchenette crammed onto the west wall haphazardly. The front door is across the room, closed, locked, modest desk to the right of its hinges. The curtains are a dreary burgundy, the carpet ruthlessly fish-decorated and stained, complementary to the whale-centric wallpaper and lampshades. Sam’s skin itches where sunlight cuts through gaps in the curtains and falls onto his back.
He’s a little rustier on the general things; the month, the day, the state, the town, the time. Sam is all specificity, and Dean gets that other stuff.
“I know you’re awake,” Dean says from the desk, and only from carefully trained practice does Sam not flinch. His breathing thins, fanning hot off the pillow, wanting futilely to trick his brother.
Dean sighs. “I saw you wake up from the nightmare. Or dream. I wasn’t sure – you know, your happy face and pained face look a lot the same, Sammy. But I can always tell eventually.”
The grin Dean throws is hotter than any sun on Sam’s shoulders and Sam outright holds his breath this time, mimics the motion of breathing. He stretches lazily, a sleepy movement, intent on making Dean doubt himself for at least one moment.
“Maybe just found us a case, by the way, ‘bout freaking time too. It’s almost like the spooky stuff’s gone dormant, huh?”
Sam can feel the shape of Dean’s chuffed smirk on the nape of his neck, the soft, sensitive skin exposed to his brother and the world, and Sam turns over restlessly, keeps his eyes resolutely shut.
“It’s been, what, a month now?” Dean tsk’s a little, tapping one finger on the laptop keyboard. “I don’t know about you Sammy, but I’m gonna go a little stir crazy soon. Need something bad to gank, you hear?”
Sam snuffles lightly, ignoring his every desire to open his eyes incrementally and steal a glance of his brother, blurred profile in the morning light, jacket and overshirt likely shed because it was just them in this room, just them anywhere they went.
“All our skills and shit will go to hell, look at you, sleeping in already.” There is a considering pause in all of the noises that indicate Dean’s presence and Sam’s heart just barely hitches in rhythm, irrationally scared. “You’ll lose your edge and get hurt when a hunt finally comes up, and I’ll have to spend all my precious time worrying about your clumsy ass.”
That’s bullshit and they both know so. The standard defiance rises in Sam’s chest anyway, but he heard Dean’s real meaning, stop ignoring me, like a spoiled child being denied their favourite drink after having it dangled right in front of them. Sam lets out his most convincing sleep sigh.
Dean sighs too. “Okay, up and at ‘em Sammy. Come help me research.” Nothing for a few moments, and then, “Sam?”
Sam pushes his face into the pillow to hide the threatening grin, feeling unnecessarily accomplished and aggressively giddy. Dean grunts lightly and stands, paces over to Sam’s bed quietly, wearing just socks and not his combat boots for once. He reaches the side of Sam’s bed and looms there, his breathing deep and even. Sam steals slitted looks sideways and glimpses one calloused hand, the soft grey cotton of Dean’s sleeping shirt, a worried hole near the hem tucked up against the hollow of Dean’s hip.
“Sam,” Dean repeats but his voice is much softer, gentler. There’s a tickling on the back of Sam’s neck and then Dean’s palm is there, his fingers pushed smoothly into Sam’s hair. Sam’s breath catches in his throat.
Dean sighs again. Sam can feel Dean’s gaze trained on him and he feels arrested in place, pinned to the bed beneath Dean’s warm, rough hand.
“What are you dreaming about, Sammy?” He pets absently at Sam’s hair, fingers curling against the base of Sam’s skull. “It’s almost every night now, don’t think that I can’t tell. What’s eating at you?”
Sam and Dean are on a streak of some kind, weeks gone by without an argument or even a serious tiff and Sam supposes that’s how they got to this level of comfort, Dean’s big hand but not bigger than Sam’s curled on Sam’s neck. Dean would never do this if he thought Sam was awake.
Having accomplished his only goal of the day, Sam rocks onto his side, squinting at the light for authenticity. “Dean? What’re you doing man?”
Dean snatches back his hand immediately, takes one distinct measured step away from the bed. Sam stares, bed ruffled and a touch breathless at the sight of Dean’s hedgehog hair, already sliding one leg to the floor.
“Just.” Dean can’t quite shake the shock from his face, patently adorable in the wide tilt of his eyes and soft-shaped mouth. Sam removes his gaze before he grins and gives the whole thing up. “Just waking you up, man. Got work to do.”
“Right.” Sam grunts, heaving himself into a sitting position. “What work, you find a case?” Had to play the part – he’d only just woken up, after all.
Dean shakes his head, retreats another few steps into the centre of the room but his eyes stay with Sam. He looks more relaxed now, convinced he’d gotten away with it. Sam rubs over the back of his neck where his skin is tingling and reaches for his shirt with the other hand, absently watching Dean.
“Maybe,” Dean says. “Standard possible haunting. Spooky stuff’s gone dormant, I guess.”
Sam snickers, tugging the shirt over his head and down the rest of the way and then rubbing at his eyes, smoothing one hand through his hair. Dean’s face brightens at someone entertaining his humour. “Well then. Thanks for waking me up for no reason, jerk.”
Sam flops onto his back on top of the covers, wriggling to get comfortable and then watching Dean with lazy eyes. Dean is watching him right back, looking kind of struck at the visual. Sam smirks, then cocks his head.
“Hey, isn’t that my shirt?”
Dean glances down at himself, looking terribly surprised before his better senses take over, throwing out a leer. “Probably, it’s so fuckin’ big, ya sasquatch.”
Sam isn’t going to let him get away with that. “Why’re you wearing it?”
Dean’s gaze cuts back to Sam’s and he reads the bitchy determination there, realises he has to cough up a real answer or he will hear it for the rest of the day.
He shrugs, turning around to face the desk but not before Sam catches the fine red flush over his cheeks. “’S more comfortable than my stuff, I guess, ‘cause it’s bigger and shit.”
Sam stares up at the ceiling, smiling, his head rushing faintly and a surge like adrenaline but thicker burning in his veins. He likes working his brother, like a marionette. He likes knowing he can – it makes up for all the stupid shit Dean can make Sam do whenever Sam lets his guard down for one second.
“Oh,” Sam says, feigning disinterest. Dean’s relief is palpable. Sam has never gotten high before, one black-lined box of rebellious youth he’d never found the moment to tick off, but he imagines this is what it feels like. Heady and reckless and addictive, and kind of childishly stupid.
“Keep it,” Sam adds without thought, pushing up onto his elbows in time to see Dean’s gaze flit to his. He’s retaken his seat, always that much sturdier with something at his back, and he quickly says, “What?” as though he doesn’t know what.
Sam sits up, swipes a hand through his hair and draws one leg beneath the other on the bed. He smiles and the expression is at least forty percent mean-looking, fox-slanted and cunning, says, “The shirt, Einstein. A million laundromats can’t get the smell of you off my clothes.”
Dean looks quite perfectly floored at that, unsure how to respond or even how to understand Sam’s words. It only lasts a second, of course, the customary curled lip and polished glare finding their way back immediately, but Sam caught it, and now his itch is scratched.
Today is going to be a good day, Sam decides.
*
Of course, that all totally goes to shit when Dean is nearly killed at noon.
It’s nothing, a milk-run of the case that panned out, couldn’t be clearer if the ghost introduced herself and showed the brothers to her grave. That’s essentially what happened, local legends and wide-eyed street kids and typography scratched in blood on the haunted house’s walls all painting a red blinker to the nasty spirit. She’s the kind of pure evil Sam wasn’t sure existed anymore, no complexities or difficult timelines or plot-twists, just three drowned infants every ten years with their lips blue and their parents neglectful and their tiny hands grasping upward for air.
That was the main clue, actually, the broken horse-shoe imprint on the current two victim’s palms, a charm that dangled from the necklace of the ghost. Sam thinks that it was probably an accident, but it’s pretty much the most distinctive thing ever, and Sam can still feel the thump Dean had given his arm when he’d found the yellowed newspaper clipping of crying parents standing in front of the nursery house and the warden, black hair pinned tightly back from her face and the symbol of luck glinting from the base of her throat.
“Gonna get what’s fuckin’ coming to you, Miss Winifred,” Dean had muttered, shooting careful glances at the hovering librarians. Sam couldn’t help but agree; monsters that went for children were at the same end of the spectrum as things with black eyes, as far as Sam was concerned.
There was a familiar tightness to his shoulders when he stood up, furrowed brow and tense lines to his mouth that fought for their place just as much as his heartbeat. His eyes had flicked to Dean, something that happened every few minutes without conscious input, and Sam hadn’t fought the way Dean’d knocked their elbows together.
“We got her Sammy. Fuckin’ got her.”
They’d set out, supposed grave a couple blocks over but Sam and Dean knew better, ear to the ground and a dirty ten dollar bill crushed in the grip of some shady fifteen year old who had more metal in his face than Sam thought was legal for his age. Stories had it, Winifred wasn’t buried where they said. Stories had it, her stinking corpse remained in the cellar of her precious nursery home. Same place her own kid had died, an arm’s length big and only just crawling and so very vulnerable when playing in a puddle while no one was around.
Stories had it, Winifred never forgave herself, and she certainly wasn’t forgiving any other parents.
*
They’re in the Impala, heading out twenty minutes to the abandoned nursery and Dean is rapping his knuckles on the steering wheel, boyishly happy at his inner pyromania being indulged. The inescapable tag-along terseness at children’s lives having already been claimed is there too, setting the slight rigidity of his jaw, adding five years to his age. Always easier to act like it doesn’t faze them, though, and Dean is the precise balance Sam needs right now. Sam stares at his brother somewhat unreservedly, their surroundings bleak.
The place is barren, smacked in the middle of a colourless, shapeless landscape with a hulking black presence, towns a couple miles either side and it’s the weirdest thing ever, this creepy old nursery right here in the middle of nowhere. The patio that’s been rotting near on half a century, the gaping curtain-less windows of the second story showing only coal-like shadows despite the midday sun, and babies were murdered here, held under cold water with an oiled surface until their flower-sized lungs collapsed. Sam’s got a bad feeling icing through his chest but that always happens on a hunt, when he and Dean are isolated, more than a phone call from the nearest medical facility. Sam genially tells Dean to watch his ass, be safe, don’t be an unnecessary hero, cause the only one to save out here is Sam and he can hold his own.
“Okay, mom,” Dean says by rote, sidling Sam a smile as they pull in, but there’s a flimsy edge to the curl of Dean’s mouth that lets Sam know the spookiness has gotten to him, too.
Sam gives Dean another once over across the Impala roof when they get out, doors creaking and slamming, the just barely present heat making him imperceptibly uncomfortable inside his jacket collar. He doesn’t intend for either of them to come out of this bloody, but you never know, and Sam is cataloguing Dean’s current scrapes and bumps so he knows what to pay attention to later when Dean is a dirty rotten liar about how bad it hurts.
“You ready, kid?” Dean says and it takes Sam only a second to disguise what he’s doing, flash a smile.
“Don’t let Winifred hear you call me that, she might drown me next.”
Dean laughs, single hard push of air, but Sam can see the prospect become less funny and more legitimate in a matter of moments in Dean’s eyes. He sighs. The last thing he needs is for Dean to jump in front of him like an idiot when they both could walk away unscathed if they just manage to keep their heads about them. Sam knows this is an affliction he shares, courteously ignoring it.
Sam catches the flashlight Dean tosses his way over the hood, runs his thumb over the safety catch of the sawn-off in his other hand. Dean slings their arson bag over his shoulder and checks Sam as he begins walking to the patio stairs, seems mildly surprised to find his gaze directed that way when Sam meets his eyes. It’s an instinctive thing they do, snatching glances of each other, same as the reassuring white flash of Dean’s handgun tucked against his hip inside his jeans or the careful weight of a weapon in Sam’s big palm. It’s a habit that has the potential to be just as deleterious as guns but that isn’t something Sam has thought about in, oh, a couple of weeks now.
Sam tips his head back as faint wind brushes his hair into his eyes, scampering across the empty dry land, the sun overtop but greyed out through clouds, and they board the stairs. The wood gives alarmingly under their feet, bending like old cheese and the whole building seeming to strain forward over them at this new additional weight. Sam wants a hand on Dean’s shoulder and that’s a terrible thing, an awful distraction. They shudder at the same time, implacably spooked.
Quick three paces and Sam’s crouching in front of the door, Dean at his back and they’re simultaneously trying to shift around as little as possible, not keen on testing the durability of the blackened planks. Sam rests his gun and flashlight at his feet and pulls his lock-picking tools from his chest pocket, goes to work, breath held on an inhale and tiniest bit of lip between his teeth. It’s a maximum of five seconds patience before Dean blows out a frustrated sigh and turns, kicks the door in right off its hinges with the heel of his boot. The noise is tremendous in this wasteland, clattering wooden slab with a dent in it the size of Dean’s foot raising huge clouds of dust on the interior of the nursery, the sun barely cutting through.
There’s a sudden howling sound, and it takes Sam a second to realise it’s not from the wind, which is still ineffectually pushing at his hair. Too weak, and the howl splinters up rapidly in pitch until a bubble pops in his ears, abrupt abnormal quiet with a hollow ringing left in his head and Sam has a funny feeling that if they were to try and leave right now, they wouldn’t be able to lift their feet from the last stair.
He stands, glares at Dean immediately. His brother offers him an apologetic shrug, half-assed.
“You pissed it off,” Sam says flatly, not quite annoyed so much as hyper-aware, feeling his pulse incrementally beginning to climb. He can’t feel the breeze any more even though the evidence of it is clear, dust stirring around the Impala’s wheels. His words sound echoed, though he’s being quiet and they’re still standing outside.
Dean’s eyes are bright, delirium of the hunt and he says in an off-hand tone, “Yeah, well, this thing says hello by putting a kiddie pool in toddlers’ lungs. I think we’ve earned the right,” and that’s rich, we’ve, even though he’s the one who kicked down the door and pissed it off.
Sam shakes his head minutely and pushes past Dean, holds his weapon and light source up carefully. Dean’s instantly at his shoulder and they enter the foyer fluidly, two bodies in one movement, sweeping their thin beams of light first directly in front and then their respective sides. Sam can feel Dean’s back against his as he inhales, and Sam whispers, “Fucking idiot. Element of surprise, Dean.”
Dean’s quick on the comeback, knowing Sam’s heart isn’t really in it. “Right, right, Sam, because ghosts aren’t omnipotent or anything, she wouldn’t have seen this coming in a million years.”
Sam shocks himself by laughing, absurd out of character sound in this dark place where the sun can’t enter, hollowed out and shrivelled but moving, like the walls need to breathe or something. He grins to no one.
“Nice vocabulary there, Dean. What, have you been reading the dictionary or something--?”
“Hilarious,” Dean says heavily, before Sam’s even finished, and Sam itches to see Dean’s smile, “you’re a goddamn riot Sam.”
It takes Sam a minute to compose himself, hot snicker twitching his lips, but he finally manages it, nudges Dean in the ribs with his elbow so he looks when Sam inclines his head toward the twisting staircase. They’re back to being quiet, voices hushed in their throats the way they will be when children are dying, and somewhere distant-sounding the howling picks back up.
They trade a glance, mutual be careful, and then Dean is headed for what looks like the kitchen and Sam is headed for what can only be the nursery rooms.
There’s a terrible quiet in this building, broken only by the high wailing, like a woman crying half a mile off. Sam sinks half an inch into the soft wood of every step, scurrying mice around his feet lending some semblance of life to this honest to god horror movie. It’s preternaturally dark, flashlight wobbly and yellow but holding true as Sam ascends gradually, trying his utmost to not go plummeting through the planks. He hears a clattering that must be from Dean and that notches a warmth like something physical beneath his ribs, that kind of solid proof of life when he doesn’t have his eyes on Dean.
Upstairs is a bust, perfectly creepy baby cots filled with tattered blankets and rotted toys, the white stuffing bleeding from one teddy bear’s right eye and spilling onto the floor, game stations full of abandoned toys that have all taken on a reddish-black hue and a smell like death. There are drawings on the walls, which is even worse, leering scribbled faces coming at him from the darkness, cobwebs sticking to his hair and his feet clamouring over a toy train that immediately comes to life, lighting up and choo-chooing as it wheels itself toward the door despite its lack of a power source. All these things and yet, no ghost, so upstairs is a bust and Sam just stands for a minute, catching his breath against the dampness that seems to steal the oxygen from the air. It’s loud, his panting. He can’t wait to get out of here and laugh about it all later with Dean.
And then: a scream from downstairs.
Sam is moving before he thinks, shout of his brother’s name bursting from his throat and fear filling him completely, in hard buzzing jolts that make his joints feel weak. He flies down the stairs and the last few bow and collapse beneath his feet, fling Sam forward into the foyer stamping and half blind. He drops the flashlight and the beam arcs wide, rolls along the floor until it comes to a stop on Dean in the kitchen doorway.
He’s sitting up, mouth twisted and a stripe of gruesome red sickeningly bright across the front of his grey shirt, army jacket jammed to his left shoulder. He’s sucking in quick breaths as his eyes find Sam in the dark, back against the wooden panelled doorway to keep him upright and there’s a smear of red on the wood there too, thick and fresh. A hot sensation floods through Sam, boiling in his veins and setting his nerve endings alight in this fearsomely nauseating way, and he’s at Dean’s side in one second, crouching and trying to get a look at the damage in the next.
“It’s not that bad, not even bad,” Dean is saying through gasps, screwing his fist tighter against his shoulder and trying to muster a grin for Sam, dirty rotten liar just like Sam said. Sam palms dumbly over Dean’s wrist. It’s slick, his fingers coming away crimson, and a dull roaring has started up in the house, faintest trembling in the concrete foundations, and this definitely isn’t just in Sam’s head.
Panic pushes hard into Sam’s body. It clutches in his chest, spurs him to action.
Sam twists Dean into facing away from him, gets his arms underneath Dean’s and across his ribs, gotta get him out of here and inside the Impala and then Sam is gonna burn this bitch to dust.
“I c’n walk,” Dean says and Sam concedes to that, starts hauling him upward. “Rookie move, floated a knife and then threw it right at me, shoulda seen it coming, Sammy-” and Dean’s words die in a hiss of pain, mostly on his feet and Sam feels a thick wetness on his arm through his sleeve.
“What did I say, idiot, said you pissed it off,” is what decides to pour out of Sam’s mouth, harsh tremor in his throat, and Dean bites back, “I’ll buy you a fuckin’ medal when we get the hell outta here Sammy,” and his voice is just as strained, and then Sam sees a second knife flying at them in the corner of his eye.
He shouts, drops to his knees instantly with Dean falling back against his chest and the blade zings by, sharp snick and sting on Sam’s forehead and he can hear the metallic shing as it only just misses its proper target. Half a second to register that and then he’s dragging Dean back, palm hard on his chest and a century’s worth of dust exploding up around them as they shamble. The house gets angrier by steady degrees, rumbling like it’s going to stand up and shake the brothers dead itself.
“Gotta, gotta light her up Sammy,” Dean is repeating, “bag’s in the kitchen,” and Sam says, “Get you out first,” reflexively, pulling Dean back. Dean doesn’t like that plan so much, complaining with these terrible involuntary hitches in his voice and Sam tests his legs, gets his feet under him and ignores his idiot brother without much trouble. He kicks Dean’s feet into working gear and then they’re clambering backwards, Sam with an iron grip around Dean’s chest and Dean just trying to stop his shoulder from bleeding.
The shaking increases and now all the windows are juddering in their panes, the stairwell banister groaning and splitting by inches with loud cracks and the howling is a scream now, methodical and piercing straight to the centre of Sam’s brain. He curses, swings he and Dean full one-eighty when they enter the weak block of sunlight from the wide-open front doorway. He plants one hand in the centre of Dean’s back and shoves him outside.
Dean stumbles magnificently, finding his feet just enough to make it down the stairs without breaking an ankle and then he’s on his knees, hard whumph straight onto the dirt ground. He uses both hands to break his fall and Sam sees his brother’s lie, the ragged triplet blade marks tearing the flesh of Dean’s shoulder, and he knew it couldn’t have been just one knife from that amount of bleeding.
Sam swears colourfully at his brother and then points to the car, shouts, “Get in and get her ready,” because the building is quaking, inexplicably catching fire in one of the top rooms and the screaming is nearly wiping Sam of all thought, consuming ringing pitch that whites out Sam’s brain. He waits just long enough to see Dean stand, hand back on his wounds and stemming the blood, before he turns and bolts back into the house.
He holds his hands over his ears worthlessly, involuntarily, his lungs immediately retracting against the spill of grey billowing smoke pouring down from the second story, the gritty inhale licking red down his throat. Sam saves his cursing for when he can breathe and bends low mid-run, scoops up his sawn-off where he dropped it grabbing Dean. His hand is out for the flashlight too, fingertips nearly touching it and then the staircase is crashing down thunderously, near forcibly amputating Sam down a number in limbs as wood splits and smashes all around him. He thinks he hears Dean’s distant shout from outside but then he’s darting into the kitchen, spies the arson bag on the table and the trap-door entrance to the cellar swung open, uninviting black gape in the corner.
Sam cradles the gun and snatches the bag strap, and then he’s crying out as a blade slashes open the area above his right collarbone neat as anything, hot blood coating a small patch of his chest instantly. Sam catches the glimmer of another one, dives headfirst for the ground, trying to protect his eyes and tumbling terribly with the shaking of the house as a window shatters to the left of him. Open eyes just long enough to locate the trap door and then Sam is propelling himself forward with hands dug into glass and boots scrabbling against shattered wooden planks, rolling into the gap and dropping down the stairs hard, fast.
It’s pitch black down here, and the only part of Sam that’s not aching is his sawn-off, this beautiful weaponised extension of his arm. The roar is dulled in a minor way even though the earth walls are vibrating, flaking red clay chips, and Sam fumbles with the bag a second, draws out a lighter. He stands and flicks his thumb hard to light it up, triumphant chink as the flame blooms.
Winifred stands before him, smiling a black-toothed smile.
Sam shoots before he shouts, keeps that for the second after the rock salt bullets pelt the place the ghost stood, and the flame gutters out in Sam’s trembling grip. He flints it again, three feet circle around him lighting up and the warden is gone, she’s gone, just like Sam fucking wants to be – just like Dean will be if Sam doesn’t hurry up.
It’s a catalysing thought if ever there was one and Sam hisses a short, “Fuck,” before limping forward, overwrought eyes combing for the body. He comes up empty-handed save for a black and silver chest on the west wall, thinks spastically, surely not, before fracturing the lock with the butt of his gun and surely yes, the mostly decomposed body of Winifred Mortimer is curled up in there with some serious occult bacchanalia. About a hundred flies burst out too and Sam is blinded for five seconds, batting madly around his head and gagging at the smell, his stomach curling viciously.
The house gives a tremendous shake and Sam needs to not waste time, damn it, finds the lighting fluid and rock salt. He snaps both containers in half and throws them inside the box. Something bellows above him and he presses his forearm to the painful red seam on his chest, tossing the lighter down and pitching himself backward.
There’s an explosion, albeit not a big enough one to warrant his summersaulting but Sam thinks he’s earned the right to over-prepare, and then he’s tripping headlong up the stairs and bursting into the kitchen.
The table’s flipped and he half jumps over it, jolting disjointed pain in his knee when he lands and keeps going, and there’s a terrible roaring in the foyer, the vicious cracking of wood like bones and the building is swamped with smoke, choking Sam’s lungs and Sam’s never seen this kind of shit from a ghost, not ever. Square of light barely detectable even if it’s only six feet away and Sam’s hurtling, covering his head, last ditch effort at piety, please God—
--and he’s outside, blinking at the light and the rips in his flesh stinging anew. Sam takes about half a second to think that solidly, I’m still alive, and then he sees Dean in the driver’s seat. He must be screaming, Sam can tell from the wide twist of his mouth even though he can’t hear the words, but he gets the general idea anyway and limps across the patio and down the stairs and then he’s in the car with Dean and he’s safe, he’s safe.
“Fuck,” Dean spits, hitting the gas, “fuck. What the fuck happened in there? Ghosts can’t do that shit.” His hand is trembling on the wheel and his face is grey except for one large strip of red that hadn’t been there earlier, some other hidden injury no making itself known. Sam stares at him openly, carelessly, before reaching across Dean’s chest and putting his hand hard over Dean’s wrist where it’s still twisted in his jacket, jammed against the stab wounds.
“I know, I know,” Sam says, and then without thinking, “told you to be careful, damn it Dean, look at this-”
“Me be careful, what. What the, fucking, look. Look at you. Sammy.”
They’re speeding, rippling dust cloud torn up behind them and Dean is stumbling over his words as they rip down this desolate highway. Sam is worried, feels a powerful spike of it, this sharp plummeting of his stomach as Dean blinks aggressively, lilting eyelids and confused hike of eyebrows and his weakening hand beneath Sam’s, and Dean’s passing out, Dean is passing out right now.
Sam leaps for the wheel. Dean pitches sideways into the place Sam had been a moment ago and Sam is totally fritzing out, barely keeping them from crashing as he tries to haul Dean up and shove him over and watch the road and mind the accelerator.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, Jesus fucking Christ,” Sam says mindlessly, barely thinking anymore, saving everyone’s fucking life on autopilot. He clasps Dean’s shoulder and tugs him up, wincing at the pain that must cause and grateful Dean is out for at least that much of a reason. He gets Dean up and against him, so Sam can drive with both hands and keep pressure on Dean’s shoulder with his own. Dean’s nose presses into his neck and Sam keeps desperate check on each huff of warmth against his skin that indicates Dean’s breath.
There’s a gas station in the distance. Sam guns for it like hell is behind them.
*
Dean comes to when Sam clambers out of the car and slams the door shut, distantly slurring, “What. The fuck.”
Sam limps around the car and opens Dean’s door, gets his hands on Dean’s shoulders and sits him upright. He presses two fingers to the soft place under Dean’s jaw, searching desperately for the flutter of his brother’s pulse, that treading beat to which he’s so wholly attached. Dean’s already losing again, head swinging on his neck and eyes closed to slits. Sam slaps him.
It does the trick, his brother instantly surging forward with a half-formed snarl on his tongue, eyes white. Sam has been scared half to death over all this shit and he can’t wait to see Dean wrapped in white gauze, smelling of disinfectant and scrubbed clean, one of his favourite sights in the world, patched up Dean. It’s right up there with post-hunt drunk Dean and one little recurring dream of Sam’s.
“Hey, hey hey hey, calm down, alright.” Sam’s talking with a numb mouth, meeting Dean’s eyes. He looks marginally better, anger and panic better rejuvenators than anything they have on them. Sam just likes that he’s at least conscious. “Just need to see where you’re hurt, then we’re gonna fix you up in that bathroom over there, see, not that far a walk Dean, you’re gonna be fine.”
Dean pauses and then settles at that, awarding Sam a trustful nod. Sam’s hands are kind of unsteady and there’s a slowly collapsing flutter in his chest, like a trapped bird, the logical part of his mind imploring, do you actually understand what you just went through, and he just really needs Dean to know how not okay it is when he goes ahead and nearly dies.
Sam pins Dean by the shoulders against the upholstery and then puts one hand swiftly over Dean’s cheek, carefully tilting his head to the side. There’s a grisly stream of dried blood coming from somewhere covered by his hair and a purple knot forming near his temple, the skin swollen and tender looking. Sam takes in the barest of breaths and holds it, giving himself a minute.
“Can’t. Can’t hardly walk anywhere with you holding me down.” Dean swallows and Sam feels it against his wrist. “Can I Sammy?”
“Right.” Sam releases Dean at once, then immediately checks himself as Dean sways, putting one foot to the ground. He gets an arm around Dean’s shoulder blades and hoists Dean up, hard press of his brother into his side from chest to knee. They limp forward, Sam mostly dragging Dean, whose concussion is clearly already affecting him.
There’s only one attendant at the gas station that Sam saw and she’s manning the register, so they should be good as far as any police involvement goes. Judging by the street delinquents and bad parenting around here, Sam guesses that two bloody dudes using a truck stop bathroom to clean up isn’t actually all that uncommon in this county anyway.
It’s a short walk, just like Sam said, and he shoves the old green wooden door open with his free arm. It nearly falls right off its hinges and Sam hauls Dean in, takes a steadying breath before closing the door with much less force.
He’s jittery and sore, can feel it skittering and pulsing beneath his skin as bruises form, adrenaline dropping starkly in a way that makes Sam want to droop and count Dean’s pulse again. Sam locks the door, just in case of the attendant or anything else. Dean is staring up at the play of dust in the sunlight streaming in through the thin high up windows, his lips parted slightly, dazed.
Sam lets him be for the moment and pulls the shabby First Aid kit out from his pocket, having swiped it from the car, sets it on the grimy edge of the sink. He catches sight of himself in the small square mirror as he pops it open, the glass cracked and caked with indeterminable muck. There’s a stripe of red so clean it could have been painted down the left half of his face from the four-inch cut at his hairline, and the tear in his chest throbs when he sees it crossing diagonally over his collarbones. His skin in ragged and torn where the knife had attempted to get deeper. A fair spread of blood is slowly drying around it. The injuries aren’t the worst he’s ever had, but he’s gonna have some new scars.
The bathroom is sized only large enough for the door to swing inward while someone is standing inside, clearly not meant for more than one person, so when Dean absently grabs Sam’s elbow to get his attention and Sam turns, they trip over each other a bit, so close they’re in each other’s space, breathing each other’s air. The concrete walls are cold, slightest nuance from the minor heat outside. Sam’s grateful for it, his skin flushed and his wounds inflamed.
He catches Dean’s wide gaze, which is somewhat lost but distinctly pained.
“Can you lift your arm?” Sam says. His voice is harshly loud, unnecessary in this small space. Dean imperceptibly winces at its echo then pulls his jacket from the wounds, which have mostly clotted, tests moving his torn muscles.
He makes it through two inches before hissing, “fuck,” and Sam grabs his wrist, curls his fingers there and brings Dean’s arm back down. Dean doesn’t try to resist, the concussion deterring his usual bull-headed displays of machismo. He watches Sam’s face intently and Sam lets him, knowing it sometimes calms Dean down.
“It’s okay,” Sam mumbles, not really paying attention to himself. Dean’s eyes have this unguarded wideness to them that’s making it difficult to concentrate. “Okay, alright, Dean, I’ll just cut your shirt, gonna have to cut it if you can’t take it off.”
Dean nods, accepting of Sam’s logic. There’s a switchblade stashed somewhere on Sam and he locates it, flips it open and watches Dean’s throat bob at the dull gleam of the metal. “Gonna be fine,” Sam says thoughtlessly as he puts one hand on Dean’s ribs, turns him marginally before getting his fingers beneath the collar of Dean’s shirt and tugging it away from Dean’s collarbone, the material crumpling and half soaked with blood.
“Course,” Dean responds easily, and then readjusts his footing as he rocks faintly, sort of dizzy. He stands on Sam’s foot for a second and needs a balancing factor, quick grip on Sam’s bicep before his hand drops to the lip of the sink, ghost heat rushing down Sam’s arm. Sam wants to chastise him, he’ll get an infection from all that dirt, but he holds his tongue. Even concussed, Dean would call him on that.
Sam presses the blade down against the hemmed collar and it resists for only a moment before ripping, the flannel tearing seamlessly down the length of Dean’s torso. Sam tries to keep the knife from Dean’s skin but he’s pretty sure the sharp point touches Dean a few times from the faint shivers Dean gives.
Sam pockets the switchblade and Dean’s quick on helping out, shrugging the ruined shirt from his uninjured shoulder and letting it fall, baring most of his chest in one smooth reveal. He tries to do the same with his other arm and hisses again, mouth curling with repressed curses. Sam huffs tiredly and grips the material again, his knuckles against the hollow where Dean’s neck rolls into his shoulder, gently starts peeling it back from Dean’s skin.
“Idiot,” Sam says, “stop making it worse.” His hands are quivering and the dust in this tiny block of a building is irritating his nose, blurring his eyes. Dean tenses as the shirt pulls back from the stab wounds, sticky with blood and torn flesh, reluctant to pull apart. Sam does it like a band-aid, as quick and painlessly as he can manage.
Dean blows out a huge breath when the shirt falls to the floor. He gives Sam a faintly exasperated look, residual pain softened by the concussion. “Just. Trying to feel less handicapped here, Sammy. Being useful.”
Sam watches goose-bumps crawl across Dean’s skin as the chill hits him, his hands reaching secondarily for the iodine and whatever cotton ball thing is in their ill-equipped kit. Dean’s shoulder is a gory mess, three jagged rips in the muscle of his shoulder lined up like soldiers and his whole arm down to the wrist is near coated with red. There’s smudges of the same red on Sam’s hands and he swallows heavily, feeling very isolated in this small cold bathroom in the middle of nowhere.
“Last time you tried to be useful, as I recall, you pissed off a ghost and got yourself stabbed.”
Sam wets the cotton with disinfectant and shows it to Dean as fair warning. Dean gets a steely look in his eye but a crease to the corners of his mouth and Sam imagines he looks pretty much the same, prepared but realistic. It feels important that they keep talking, not let the heavy physical quiet press down around them.
Sam says with a crooked grin, “From now on I think you should just let me do the work while you focus on keeping yourself in one piece.”
“Right,” Dean says in a hard laugh, and then his voice is gone for a while as Sam presses the iodine against his wounds, his eyes screwed shut. Dean stays resolutely silent, clear agony in his expression with every quick swipe of the cotton ball. Sam closes one hand around Dean’s bicep because he knows that keeps Dean calm too, helping him through it. When Sam is finally finished and lets up, Dean releases a huge breath, panting in a slight way, says forcibly through the pain, “Right, right, ‘cause that’s a stellar big bro move, letting you take all the hits for me.”
Sam snorts, tears open the plastic of some wrapping gauze with his teeth. He puts a steadying hand above Dean’s collarbone next to the lacerations, nearly where his pulse is, and starts pulling the gauze tight across Dean’s torn shoulder. He turns Dean slightly again, brief press against the hot skin of Dean’s side, so he can loop the white bandage underneath Dean’s arm without Dean having to move it. Sam feels stuffy and overdressed, awkward with the skin of Dean’s bare chest underneath his palms.
Dean’s amulet taps into the side of Sam’s hand and Sam feels that familiar old fuzz in his brain, same as whenever he thinks about Dean still wearing it, warmth unfurling somewhere behind his collarbone absently.
“Only have to dodge hits ‘cause I’ve got an idiot like you around,” Sam says. He’s not really thinking but he keeps up the flow of conversation anyway, old habits dying hard and also maybe a bit of necessity coming into play; Dean still has this wide-eyed lilt to his expression and Sam is finding it increasingly difficult to find oxygen in the small space they’re sharing. Sam finishes wrapping, fumbles blindly to his side for some tape because removing his gaze from Dean right now is disconcertingly unthinkable. “But I’m no idiot, am I?”
Dean rewards Sam with the cocky curl of his top lip, cuffed smirk as he says, “Damn bitchy nurse is what you are, Sammy.”
Sam smiles wide, unable to stop it. He feels his lip split as he tapes down the gauze, making sure that it won’t worm out of place no matter how much picking at it Dean does. Dean’s always hated bandages but Sam will make sure he doesn’t mess it up.
Sam glances up from his handiwork to see Dean’s staring at him again, languid and somewhat considering, the glaze of a concussion still enforcing that widened child-like tilt of his gaze. Sam takes a deep breath, noticing things on Dean’s face that require closeness, a puckered scar on the bridge of his nose, the flecks of blood on his eyelids like freckles. Sam realises what he’s doing and turns his eyes down, starts ripping paper towels from the plastic dispenser as he observes that one of Dean’s boots is in between his own, they’re standing that close.
“Bitchy nurse who’s saving you a limb,” Sam says to break the mounting tension, gotta keep talking damn it. He wonders if he has a concussion too, judging from the way he’s noticing stupid shit, thinks back to the way that exploding window had knocked him on his ass and finds it likely.
Dean grunts at that, watches Sam wetting the paper towels in the sink. He doesn’t have a comeback so when Sam grabs the wrist of his injured arm he says, with his voice muted and kinda rough, “Yeah. Thanks for that, Sammy.”
Sam feels his face turn warm and keeps it turned toward the job, cleaning Dean of blood roughly and feeling the way Dean’s skin pebbles from the cold water. When he finishes, Dean’s arm is pink and raw-looking, and a tiny shivering has set into his spine.
Without thinking too much about his motives Sam strips off his red plaid overshirt, shrugging it from his shoulders and tugging his arms out of the sleeves. It leaves him in a plain grey tee, his arms mostly bare as he hooks his shirt around Dean’s shoulders and starts helping him get his incapacitated limb through the sleeve. Dean manages his other arm by himself and stands there biting his lip in pain while Sam bends his elbow, pushes the material past his wrist. The cuffs reach three quarters down Dean’s fingers and Sam tries not to stare, feeling perversely possessive. He likes the way Dean looks in his clothing.
“Thanks,” Dean says again. He’s back to staring at Sam and Sam figures he has a right, blood still covering both their faces and level ten concussions on the horizon.
Sam starts and pulls another few paper towels out, wets them down and makes himself say, “Well hypothermia is literally the last thing I want to deal with right now, can’t have you freezing up on me.” It’s transparently feeble but Dean laughs anyway, because he’s a good big brother. The sound gives Sam a bit of strength. He continues, “Okay, gotta clean your face now, you look like a damn horror movie.”
“Yeah, you’re one to talk,” Dean throws back instantly, boyish smile, and there’s this lightning flash memory of when they were kids and Dean would point out the ugly characters in every film, elbowing Sam with a grin, muttering, Look, Sammy, it’s you. “I look like I was in battle, but you just came off set from some shitty slasher fic, anyone would agree.”
Sam mostly ignores him now, just like he did back then, wondering how he’s gonna do this. He figures straightforward works as good as any other way, and he covers his brother’s cheek with the palm of his hand, tilts Dean’s head to the side and steps a little closer.
Dean reacts curiously to that, mimicking Sam in reverse like some funhouse mirror, tripping a half step backward so his back’s against the concrete wall, pressed flat and pinned with Sam’s hand on his face. Sam crowds in closer, his boots scuffing against Dean’s. Dean’s breath is warm against Sam’s wrist. It all feels perfectly disarming, slow creeping fog of artfully maintained lines that Sam is having trouble abiding by. Sam starts scrubbing at the trail of blood rougher than he means to, his fingers slipping on Dean’s temple.
“I feel like a million bucks,” Sam tells Dean honestly and his voice is hushed, why is it hushed?
He rubs away the blood in Dean’s hair, using his height and the fact that Dean isn’t protesting, and Dean makes a small falling noise in his throat, maybe from the pain. Sam curves his fingers to fit around Dean’s cheekbone, because it’s just the sensible thing to do, obviously. Sam pats the rest of the blood from Dean’s forehead and tosses the paper bunch over his shoulder. He wonders distantly why Dean hasn’t shoved him off and moved from the wall.
Dean turns his head to meet Sam’s eyes, donning a smirk that scrapes low in Sam’s stomach.
“Yeah, you look it too,” Dean says. His voice is just as quiet as Sam’s and Sam catches the smell of himself from the proximity, the twist of his shirt over Dean’s skin, Dean’s scent twined with his own and that’s terrible, their smells mixed together like that. His cheek scratches Sam’s palm. There’s about five inches between them. Sam’s half hard in his jeans.
“Jesus Christ,” Sam breathes, immediately pulling back and retreating to the other side of the bathroom. It puts two feet maximum between them but it’s enough. Sam presses a hand to the cold concrete, gathering his head, taking a deep breath of clean air. He allows himself fifteen seconds to gain composure before he turns toward the mirror. He starts ripping more paper towels out from the dispenser.
Dean finally unpins himself from the wall, putting some space between his back and the concrete and minimising the space between he and Sam. He watches Sam, casually fixated, as he starts doing the buttons of Sam’s shirt from the bottom up, wincing every time he has to move his injured arm. Sam flushes hot, glancing at the tips of Dean’s fingers, the too-long sleeves a degree of catastrophic, fumbling button through hole, covering up his chest. He wants to snap at Dean for hurting himself.
Sam cleans his face and chest of blood with coarse towels and hard water, shivering faintly when the tips of his hair gets wet and drops cool water down his neck. He’s pretty sure Dean can walk by himself now, so he unlocks the door and makes straight for the Impala, distantly infuriated when he can’t bring himself to put more than five feet’s distance between he and his brother without wanting to flit his gaze back and check on him.
Dean follows dumbly and Sam reminds himself, concussion, you asshole, gives himself a reason to keep Dean in his line of sight. He maintains his space though, watching from the driver’s side of the car as Dean drops into his seat and closes his eyes, a faint groan coming from his throat. Sam’s hands are shaking again, staring at Dean lain out like an offering in Sam’s own shirt. Sam appraises him a second, annoyed at his pathetic reactions, and then tells Dean to wait two minutes while he buys some painkillers. His skin itches.
The chick at the register is an easy kind of pretty, light brown of eyes and hair and skin. She visibly brightens when Sam walks in, more cute than sexy, but it takes Sam’s hyper-aware body all of five seconds to decide it is apparently interested all the same. She’s easy to watch as Sam files the shelves looking for snacks and pills. She’s got a black pleated skirt on that only reaches halfway down her thighs and a dark red shirt, baring a thin slice of midriff. Sam feels overtired and animalistic, like he’s been awake for a week.
He turns on the charm effortlessly when he throws two packs of painkillers and a bag of chips onto the counter, smiles and says, “Hey. How’s it going?”
He lets his eyes trail down her body the slightest to make his intent clear, knocks his smile up another level when he meets her eyes again. He hopes his slap-dash clean up job had actually rid him of most of the blood.
She smiles right back, clearly going for sultry but coming up with this half grin, half self-conscious giggle. “Well, I was goin’ outta my mind with boredom, actually.” Her voice has a pretty twang to it, drawl that suggests she’s never left this state. She rings up his stuff and Sam hands over the fake credit card, keeping up his smirk and pressing his gaze a little the way he learned he could at Stanford. Her hands flutter handing the bag over to Sam. She’s inclining forward over the counter without seeming to realise it.
“Not anymore?” Sam asks, leaning forward and letting his shoulders fill out in a way he usually reserves for intimidation, realising his proper size. The chick stares, lets Sam see it, and then her eyes flick to his.
“Not anymore. I’m Ellie.” Ellie points to her name card, which is also where her breasts happen to be straining out of her V cut shirt, and Sam feels his pulse ratchet up slightly, an archaic recklessness in his veins. She smiles again, her teeth straight and white. Sam imagines pulling Ellie’s shirt off, lifting her onto the counter. He imagines feeling her thighs around his hips.
“Sam,” he says, his dick heavy in his jeans, and then the Impala’s horn is blasting through his brain.
“Jesus Christ,” Sam spits for the second time, jerking backward. Ellie looks extremely startled, jumping in place like her parents just walked in. She takes a second, asks, “Who the hell is that? Friend of yours?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, staring out the window to where Dean is waving one hand. He feels stymied and chastised, faintly embarrassed at how completely hedonistic he had just been. Ellie’s evidently recovered, because she’s testing a new kind of smile, saying, “Maybe us three could cure our boredom, huh,” but Sam’s already out the door, a half-hearted sorry rushed from the corner of his mouth.
Dean’s bitching before Sam’s even settled inside the car and it washes over Sam like balm, the familiarity and routine of it neutralising his heated skin a bit. Dean’s complaining about his varying degrees of soreness and how he didn’t want to use the horn, because it hurt his head, but trying to open the car door hurt his shoulder even worse. He’s in the middle of calling Sam the world’s worst brother, stopping to flirt while Dean’s out here dying, when Sam tosses the painkillers at him.
The packets bounce off Dean’s forehead and he’s startled quiet for a second. Sam promptly says, “There, now shut up and try to not fall asleep.”
Sam starts her up and pulls out onto the road, heading vaguely east with a motel in mind, even though it’s only early afternoon. He figures that one near-death experience a day earns them the evening off.
He glances sideways and Dean’s grinning, rummaging around for a water bottle. “You’re the best, bitchy nurse Sam,” he says genuinely, concussion-stupid. Sam smiles but doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t quite trust himself to.
*
Dean is well and truly concussed, it turns out, so Sam has to stay up that night periodically waking Dean to make sure he hasn’t died in his sleep.
Sam had found a motel around six and dropped Dean off, swinging out for some take-outs. When he’d returned to their room he’d found Dean asleep on one of the beds, boots kicked off but still fully dressed in jeans and Sam’s shirt. It was a damning sight, that inexorable heat skittering down Sam’s spine as he’d dumped the food on the desk and indulged himself the tiniest bit.
Dean was lying on his stomach and his back was curved, bowing with the mattress and one knee bent up, his head resting on his folded arms. His mouth was slightly open. Sam stared for less than half a minute before smacking Dean’s foot, waking him up and forcing him to eat even though Dean wasn’t hungry. Concussions were sneaky.
Sam is reading presently, balancing an old lore book on one knee. Dean’s asleep next to him on the same bed, half snores easing just how often Sam needs to tilt his head to the side and check on him. Exhaustion weaves tight lines over Sam’s skin, makes his eyes feel tender and oversensitive every time they tick to the next sentence. It must be at least four AM but Sam’s damned if a measly concussion is going to be what fucks Dean up this week.
Dean’s under the covers and in his boxers now, though he’s still wearing Sam’s shirt. Sam hadn’t been able to get it off him before Dean’d fallen back asleep and Sam wasn’t going to undress his unconscious brother, for god’s sake. Sam flips the page, the cut on his chest burning dully beneath his grey sleeping shirt.
“What are you thinkin’?”
Sam jerks, snapping the book shut. Dean’s staring at him, looking faintly amused and excessively concussed, pushing up on one elbow. He grins blithely. His swathed shoulder looks huge with bandages.
“What?”
Dean shifts his good shoulder in a shrug and Sam’s throat tightens at the rustle of his shirt. “You look all concerned and shit, you gotta loosen up Sammy.” He rocks half onto his side and stays looking up at Sam, blinking slowly. Quickest flash in Sam’s mind of his hands on Dean’s shoulders, pushing Dean onto his back, bearing Dean down into the mattress, and Sam’s fingers clench on his thighs. “Yer worryin’ probably woke me up without you even having to.”
Sam musters a smile, short laugh. “Stop bein’ so damn clumsy on hunts then, maybe you and I will both get a whole night’s sleep.”
Dean flaps a hand, rolling back onto his stomach and pressing his face into the pillow. He’s favouring his arm. “Whatever, bitch.”
Sam considers giving into it, the simple appeal of sniping back jerk easy as breathing, already forming Dean’s responsive smile in his head. But he figures there needs to be some limitations to what he gets in this world and asks instead, “How’s your shoulder?”
Dean grunts. Sam kind of sighs, puff of exasperated air, puts the book down on the bedside table with a solid sound that manages to speak to Dean. He cracks one eye at Sam.
“What do you want from me? It’s peachy.”
“Sore?”
Dean looks at Sam properly now, widens his eyes a little for effect. It mostly works, Sam’s skin incrementally tightening, but Dean doesn’t need to know that. “Is this where I use my bum wing to con you into a beer run? Because if you’re gonna keep harpin’ on at me about these scratches then I’m gonna need to be drunk.”
“Dude.” Sam’s decently offended at that; like Dean has never lied about his injuries before. He feels inexplicably odd, staring down at Dean stretched out beneath the comforter with his face smooth and sleepily happy, sated kinda chuffed curling his lips. “Excuse me for not wanting you to lose the functionality of your arm. You know how much of a bitch you’d be on hunts?”
“I ain’t losing shit,” Dean says. He suddenly looks unreservedly pleased and Sam is defensive in less than a second. “In fact, I’m gaining something Sammy.” He waves his hand again, and Sam’s shirtsleeve flaps over his fingertips, twisted around Dean’s wrist.
“Oh yeah?” Sam says guardedly, going for taunting. He curls his lip, watching as it sparks something in Dean’s eyes. “What’s that, a brain condition?” He grabs the shirt sleeve without thinking, wrapping it securely around his fingers and trapping Dean’s fist inside. Dean appears unfazed, preening at Sam.
“Shirt, dumbass. What was it, something about my smell ruining your stuff? Well,” and Dean grins, pulls the sleeve until Sam’s knuckles graze his chest and Sam lets go all at once, “guess this is mine now.”
It’s an excellent turn around on Dean’s part. Sam feels as cuttingly speechless as Dean had looked that morning when Sam had first said it, brain floundering in hopes of a half decent reply. After a moment he draws up a sneer, says jeeringly, “Damn right, couldn’t pay me take that thing off you,” and it’s not totally a lie so it comes out rather convincing.
Dean’s shut his eyes, smug and tired. Sam considers jibing at him a little more, wanting to push that clean unguarded smile into more familiar territory, something more like a proud haughty smirk so it won’t disarm Sam quite as much. He quickly dismisses the idea.
Sam stands, tugs his shirt over his head and gets into Dean’s bed, seeing as Dean’s overtaken his. Dean’s quiet but not asleep yet, Sam can tell, and he flicks off the bedside lamp. The room is doused in darkness.
“You should be good,” Sam says into the dark, blinking so he sees kaleidoscopic colours swing wild. “Your concussion, I mean. But you know, wake me up if you start dying.”
Dean shuffles and snorts, and Sam takes distinct notice when he doesn’t hear the soft hit of material on the ground even though Dean tends to sleep shirtless. “Will do, Sammy.”
Sam closes his eyes. He thinks his brother’s name driftingly, Dean, and then recalls the gas station almost by compulsion, Dean shirtless and shivering, Dean against the concrete wall held only by Sam’s hand, Dean’s relentless staring. He could have easily pushed back, easily pushed Sam off, easily cleaned his own face.
Sam thinks carefully, he wants it too, cleanly blown away yet somehow also fundamentally unsurprised. It’s an elemental thing nowadays, biblical truth, the sort of thing writ in blood; in what ways is one Winchester brother ever fucked up that the other isn’t as well?
A warm fist closes in Sam’s stomach, spiralling light-feeling through his bones like all his parts are joined by dough, and Sam presses his face against the pillow. He thinks fervently, figure it out Dean.