Work Text:
Sam barely hears the tinny melody of his ring tone above the din of slush and salt grinding under the Impala’s tires. His focus is on the road as he barrels white-knuckled down the icy, dark interstate, focused on getting Dean to Bobby’s before he bleeds out. If it weren’t for the flickering light of his phone’s screen he might have missed the call entirely. His sleep-weary fingers scramble to answer.
“Tell me you got something, Bobby,” he grits out. His eyes flicker to the rearview, to Dean’s silhouette lying motionless in the backseat.
“Yeah, kid. I think I did. Old contact of mine with some friends at the Vatican pointed me to a spell. I think you can pull it off but you need to get Dean to a church, Catholic preferably, and you need to do it fast. Where ya at, boy? I’ll find you one.”
Sam pulls off at exit 292 into Davenport, Iowa as Bobby hangs up, promising to call back with an address in a few minutes. He parks on the side of a brightly lit truck stop to tend to Dean’s wounds again while he waits. His knee bounces anxiously as he pivots in the seat and gingerly peels back the heavy, wool army blanket draped over his brother.
It had been almost twelve hours since the creature’s talons tore across Dean’s back but the gashes were still bleeding like they were only minutes old. Sam couldn’t risk stitching Dean up and trapping whatever poison the thing might have transferred into his wounds and the bandages only did so much to hold back the blood. The mattress of scratchy white hotel towels protecting the Impala’s seat was crimson now and the bandages Sam applied earlier were soaked through. He rips open another pack of heavy medical gauze with his teeth and peels the blood-soaked pads away, replacing them one by one with fresh gauze, pressing firmly into the wounds. Dean barely flinches as Sam works, he hasn’t spoken in hours.
Sam tugs the blanket back up over Dean’s shoulder covering the thick layer of bandages and runs his still-bloody hand gently through the side of Dean’s hair. “Bobby’s got a spell for us, Dean,” Sam says softly to the back of his brother’s head, his throat tight with worry. “Hang on for me, okay? Hang on –” He chokes back a sob, swallowing thickly as tears well up in the corners of his eyes. The phone buzzing on the dash pulls him from the edge of breaking down. Thank the Lord for Bobby Singer.
“Sorry, Sam. You’re gonna have to backtrack to Chicago but I found a church that’ll have what you need.”
“Holy ground, what else?”
“Yeah, holy ground and shelter. You’ll be making a poultice and performing a rite over it. It’s gonna take a while. You have to put it on his wounds and then you two have to stay put. Gotta keep him still while it works. St. Boniface is abandoned, lots of space for you to work with. Though, there might be some squatters.”
Sam nods and digs the notepad and out of his jacket pocket. Homeless junkies he could deal with, whatever it took to get Dean well again. “Alright, give me the address, tell me what supplies I need.”
Bobby rattles off the address and the ingredients Sam will have to scrounge up. Nothing too fancy. Bread, wine, iron shavings, an assortment of herbs Sam is pretty sure they already have in one of the lockboxes in the trunk. Doable. Still, the idea of backtracking nearly three hours in the snow to a derelict church on the west side of Chicago fills Sam with considerable dread.
“I’m losin’ him, Bobby,” Sam mutters weakly. “This has to work, it has to…” His voice trails off as his throat begins to burn with the threat of tears again.
Bobby’s as steadfast as always, providing reassurance with his certainty. “I’m on my way to you now, Sam. Call me when you’re ready to start the spell and I’ll walk you through it again if you need me to.” He pauses, sighing heavily into the receiver. “You boys have been through worse.” He’s not wrong and yet Sam can’t shake the anxious worry thrumming through every fiber of his being.
Dean groans a little in his sleep as Sam gets them back on the highway, heading east this time, back toward Michigan. It’s a pained sound but it soothes Sam’s nerves somewhat to hear this small sign of life from Dean as the snow intensifies outside. His knuckles are white again and the hot, dry air blowing steadily out of the vents dries up his tears. It feels like the longest three hours of his life.
~~~
Sam slings the duffle full of supplies from the grocery store and the Impala’s trunk over his shoulder and uses their bolt cutters to snip an opening in the chain link fence at the back of the abandoned church. It’s the only prep he bothers with before hauling barely-conscious Dean to his feet. He pulls the thick wool blanket around Dean’s shoulders and drapes Dad’s old leather jacket over the top before wedging his shoulder up under Dean’s arm, holding him close so they can hobble through the foot-deep powder blanketing the church yard.
From the outside, the old brick building seems to be in better shape than Sam had imagined it would be. A good sign. He has to set Dean down on the icy steps in front of the passage leading down into the rectory so he can pick the pair of industrial-grade padlocks holding the heavy metal door closed. The falling snow makes it eerily quiet as voluminous plumes of Sam’s breath cloud around them. It partially obscures the light provided by the bright, high moon and makes the skin of Sam’s face sting as the moisture refreezes on his nose and cheeks. His fingers are red and numb by the time he finally hears the tell-tale click of the second lock opening for his efforts.
The crumbling hallway he finally hauls Dean into smells like mold and rotting wood with the faintest hint of fresh smoke tickling the back of Sam’s throat. It tells him that the church isn’t empty, just like Bobby had cautioned, and why should it be on such a frigid night? It’s silent as a graveyard though and Sam imagines the pews and high ceilings inside the main part of the church would be more inviting to area homeless than the dank hallways below. He digs around in the bag for the flashlight, flips it on, and tucks it under his arm as he hoists Dean up as best he can to find some place to perform the spell.
The wooden floorboards are warped and piles of crumbling plaster crunch under Sam’s boots as he navigates the corridor leading to the priest’s quarters. Part of the ceiling had fallen in completely along the rooms on one side. Not only had the roof over the nave above partially collapsed, but it had broken through the floor, exposing the rectory rooms to the cavernous space above. As a result, moonlight filtered through broken stained glass in wide, colorful shafts of light down into the rectory below and a few fluffy flakes of snow danced in the icy air. It was hauntingly beautiful.
Finally, Sam finds a room with most of its ceiling intact and a small priest’s cot complete with moldering mattress. He can’t be too picky, Dean’s fading in and out of consciousness as it is, so it will have to do. He helps Dean onto the cot on his side and hauls his legs up, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Dean’s eyelids only flutter weakly as his face presses into the stiff, frost covered blanket, failing to open wide enough to flash Sam the hint of green he’s dying to see. He lets his cold fingers ghost over the side of Dean’s face, saying a silent prayer to a God he isn’t sure he believes in anymore before he goes to prepare for the spell.
The fire Sam stokes on a sheet of crumbling plaster beside the rickety bed isn’t much but it slowly warms the frigid air in the room. He rubs his hands together, holding them out in front of the tiny wisps of flame as he watches the ingredients bubble away in the brass basin he found under some rubble in the corner of the room. Dean’s blood is already running bright red over the edge of the rotting mattress, pooling beneath the cot and catching the light from the fire. There can’t be much left in his veins at this point. Sam pushes the dark thoughts away and presses the button on his phone again to illuminate the screen. He reads the words over and over, memorizing the Latin Bobby emailed him before embarking on his own eight hour drive to Chicago.
Sam waits as patiently as he can for the poultice to be ready. In the quiet he begins to hear movement in the church above. The shuffling of feet, the crackling of a fire, the clanking of tin. The savory smell of something cooking that isn’t the bitter poultice wafts into his nostrils as lilting voices are carried down to him on the frigid night air. This city like so many others had crumbled from the inside out, leaving too many of its residents hungry and cold, scratching and clawing to survive while the big, wide world just kept spinning around them, turning a blind eye to their need and pain. But tonight, Sam could hear their joy too, their thankfulness for small kindnesses like a roof to shelter them, no matter how decayed, a fire to warm them, and food in their bellies.
Tears slip down Sam’s frozen cheeks as their lonely carols fill his ears. He can’t make out the words, not really, but the joy and the celebration in their voices despite the pain of their circumstances makes him ache, makes his cheeks flush with anger at his own lot. It would be Christmas when dawn broke. Christmas fucking day and Sam might lose the only thing that matters to him, the only person who ever loved him the way he needed to be loved, the only person that ever could convince him there was light in the darkness.
He is pacing by the time the poultice is ready, cooked down enough to make a deep, thick paste that fills the entire room with an acrid stench. Sam scoops it out of the cooking vessel onto a scrap of freezing cold shingle, fanning it with another to cool it down quickly. He speaks the Latin as clearly as he can through his chattering teeth as he begins applying it to Dean’s back. Sam can’t stop the tears from falling now, feels them freezing over on the backs of his bitterly cold hands as he spreads the paste on Dean’s wounds. He drapes the bloodied blanket back over Dean when he’s finished and puts more wood on the fire, watching as the smoke rises and curls, black as a demon’s soul, out into the hallway and up into the church above.
Sam sleeps then, not meaning to. He’s slumped against the wall next to the bed, his fingers laced through Dean’s right hand, clutching it against his chest as he weeps silently. He hears a woman singing as he drifts off, clearer than he could hear the carolers before, her voice like a high, brass bell in the cold night. His lullaby is ‘Silent Night’ but the violent, red aching in his chest is anything but holy.
~~~
“Sammy?”
Dean’s voice crackles somewhere far off in the darkness. Sam’s lost in that dark, in the freezing inky black of it. It cradles him like a tomb, like some vast cave no light has penetrated in a millennia. And yet, Dean’s voice is calling to him, however weakly, pulling him back. A pinprick of light in the haze.
“Sam… Sam! Goddamn it we’re both going to freeze to death if you don’t wake up.”
Sam hurts everywhere, his muscles are stiff with the cold, his bones ache, and his eyes are crusted shut with icy tears. “’M up, Dean,” Sam manages, his voice hoarse and groggy. “I’m up.” He’s not. He’s disoriented and he can barely unfold himself from the position he’s been locked into for unknown hours.
“You’re not late for school, dude. Where the fuck are we?” Dean sounds even worse, his voice fading in and out like a radio station with bad reception. Still, it’s him. It’s Dean. Awake and alive.
Sam’s eyes finally open, finally register that he’s seeing his brother’s face again. There’s pale grey light shining in from the doorway, it’s dim, but it’s enough for Sam to see that Dean’s cheeks are pink again and his chapped lips are damp and parted, his ragged breaths are fogging up the space between them.
“Dean. Jesus Christ, Dean. I thought I fucking lost you,” Sam gasps, scrambling to his knees. He folds down over Dean, his trembling hands mapping his face and neck. He presses their lips together in a messy, desperate kiss, one that bears all the relief and love overflowing from inside him. Sam’s tears fall again in the aching silence of that church and he kisses Dean’s mouth until it’s pink again, until he’s sure it’s not a dream.
“’S that your phone?” Dean asks between hot presses of Sam’s mouth.
Sam feels the vibration where the phone is lodged against his hip, the ringtone barely audible. He reaches for it blindly, unable to take his eyes off Dean.
“Bobby’s on his way, Dean. It’s Christmas…”
Sam gets up to find more wood and call Bobby back. From the hall he looks up through the broken ceiling into the church above. The snow has stopped but the sky is still hazy grey where it peeks through the ruined roof. Sam shuts his eyes and dries his cheeks with the sleeve of his hoodie as he whispers, “thank you.”
He bear her off, he bear her down
He bear her into an orchard ground
Lu Li Lu Lay
Lu Li Lu Lay
The falcon hath borne my mate away
And in this orchard there was a hold
That was hanged with purple and gold
And in that hold there was a bed
And it was hanged with cords of red
Lu Li Lu Lay
Lu Li Lu Lay
The falcon hath borne my mate away
And on this bed there lyeth a knight
His wound is bleeding day and night
By his bedside kneeleth a maid
And she weepeth both night and day
Lu Li Lu Lay
Lu Li Lu Lay
The falcon hath borne my mate away
By his bedside standeth a stone
Corpus Christi written thereon