Darkest side of black- Chapter 7
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What has happened so far:
With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper.
Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities.
Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare.
Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels.
The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests.
When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins.
In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal.
Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California.
Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body.
The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp.
Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa.
At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus.
The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it.
Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin.
This is what happens next...
THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK
CHAPTER /(O|O)\\SEVEN
"What are we doing here?" Dean voiced as soon as he took in the parked ambulances and the patients traffic in and out of the blue building where they'd parked. Even that early in the day, there was a steady crowd of people surrounding the entrance of the place.
Sam gave him a pointed look for asking what was, apparently, the obvious. "That thing broke your wrist. We're here to have it checked out," he said, talking slowly and as sarcastically as he could.
"I'm fine," Dean said. It came out too fast, too soon. It sounded more like a conditioned response than an actual argument to Sam's reasons.
Sam could see right through Dean's bullshit. He was pale and sweaty and his eyes seemed to have a very hard time focusing. Unless the Native American woman at the camp had supplied Dean with some very illicit dose of peyote, there was something worse than a broken wrist going on with Dean. Point of the matter was, he was far from fine.
"Are we gonna stay parked here all day?" Dean cut in, trying to look bored but being betrayed by the obvious pinched look of pain on his face.
"The car is," Sam said, opening his door and taking the car keys with him. "We'll be inside, having a someone look at your wrist."
Dean opened his mouth to renew his protests, but Sam didn't gave him time to say anything. "It's just an x-ray Dean... unless you have something to hide, it's pretty harmless."
It was meant as a innocent jib, but Sam was curious to see how Dean would react. Deep down, Sam was still looking for reasons to tell himself that he was imagining things, that Dean was, in fact, alright.
However, Dean's blank look and submission were not good signs. And even though he hadn't said a word as he got out of the car and made his way to the admissions' stand, to Sam it was the same as screaming out loud 'YES! I AM HIDING SOMETHING! AND IT'S BAD!
Dean was fairly quiet during the whole process of filling out the forms and waiting for his name to be called to radiology.
Sam kept giving him sideways glances, hoping to figure out what was wrong but, at the same time, not wanting to intrude too much. Whatever was going on with his brother, Sam currently had other priorities.
The piece of paper that Ahtuapu had given him was burning a hole in Sam's pocket. He hadn't had a chance to look too closely at it before Dean had joined them, but from what he had seen, Sam knew that the spell would require Dean's blood. How the hell was he going to perform a ritual like that without Dean being aware of it?
When Dean's name was finally called and his brother gingerly walked away, feet dragging on the floor like a petulant child, Sam finally had his chance. The list of things that he would need to acquire wouldn't be that hard to get. With some luck, he could probably get it all together in a day or so.
Most of the stuff that he was going to need, Sam was pretty sure he could find at Bobby's. A piece of oak tree, a pair of fresh fish' eyes, some iron, poppy seeds and, yeah... there it was, blood of the person who the spell was supposed to protect.
He would have to drug Dean. That was the only solution that Sam could see at the moment. Telling Dean anything about this was out of the question until the ritual was complete and Sam could make sure that the protection actually worked; and there weren't that many excuses that he could come up with to justify asking Dean for a spoon-full of blood.
Plus, there was the sigil. According to Ahtuapu's instructions, it had to be drawn once in the chest and once in the back of the warrior meant to be protected. Even though the instructions said that the sigil could not be seen by the naked eye, there was still the small matter of actually drawing it on Dean's body without him realizing it.
Sam hated the idea of tricking and taking advantage of his own brother like that, but there was no other way to save him from Hell. He was sure Dean would understand. Eventually.
Maybe the doctor here would prescribe Dean with some meds that Sam could use. From what he remembered, two beers and a Percocet used to pretty much guarantee that Dean didn't have a coherent thought for at least 24 hours.
It got boring fast in that waiting room. Sam had tried pacing for a while, but that got old quickly. Eventually, he was forced to sit on one of the butt-ugly, orange colored plastic chairs that composed all of the waiting room's décor. It was too small and too stiff to allow for anyone to be comfortable for any more than two minutes, but none of the sniffling red noses, or even the pair of guys sitting in one corner with what looked like some broken bones, seemed to be complaining about it. The only one voicing his complaints was the one kid who had tried to shove a space shuttle up his nose. A miniature, at least.
The kid didn't look one bit disturbed by the fact that he had a couple of jet engines sticking out of his left nostril - Sam supposed he didn't have to, the kid's mother looked plenty disturbed for both of them - but he kept on declaring for all to hear just how bored he was.
"Brian, sit still," the exasperate mother told him for the fifth time in a row. "You'll make it worse, honey."
"If I behaff really, really good," the kid lisped, hand dropping from his nose in a blatant blackmail tactic. "Yo'll tamme to thee ta movie, mommy?"
"Which one do you want to see, Brian?"
"Batman! I wanna thee Batman, mommy!"
Sam snorted, finally figuring why the kid had reminded him of his brother. The two of them shared the same mental age and the same love for Bat-
Whatever the mother's response to that was, Sam was no longer paying attention. His heart had just plunged from the middle of his chest to some bottomless and cold pit as the kid's enthusiastic screams of 'Batman! Batman! Batman!' finally connected the dots that Sam had been reluctant to connect.
He knew the reason why Dean had been able to kill something that they had never encountered before; Dean had seen it before.
Two days ago.
Dean had been drunk and still recovering from heat stroke but Sam clearly remembered him mentioning a bat-man. At the time, Sam had assumed Dean was referring to the Batman, given that his brother was a fan after all. But now that Sam had seen the thing they had been hunting... now Sam understood that Dean, in his drunkenness, was being more literal than fanboy-ish.
A bat-man. Literally a man with bat wings and facial features. Exactly like the thing that they had just killed.
The thing that Sam thought to be a Succubus but was impervious to holy water and exorcisms; the thing that Dean had killed with a knife.
Throwing a look around to make sure that Dean was still somewhere in the bowels of the clinic, Sam pulled his laptop from his bag. Crossing his fingers that the place came with free Internet service, Sam powered up his search engine. The connection established on its own almost immediately.
On a hunch, he pulled up the browser's history. Sam remembered falling asleep and waking up to Dean working on that same computer. Maybe his brother had stumbled on some obscure reference and had used it as a last resource. A hail!Mary that had saved their lives like so many times before.
The browser's history page stared blankly at Sam; not even one entry had been left undeleted.
The fact that Dean had gone to the trouble of doing something like that, given that the guy usually didn't even bother closing the laptop when he was shamelessly looking at porn, raised Sam's suspicions.
Sam opened up one of his usual research sites, a place where both hunters and amateurs shared lore and experiences, and did a word search using 'bat-form' and 'sexual assault' as his key words.
The name of the monster that he had salted and burned earlier that day appeared in Sam's screen with a disturbing swiftness.
Popobawa, a monster with African roots, that literally meant bat-wings in Swahili.
From there, Sam had no difficulty in reaching the Popobawa's connections with Djinns and figuring out how they could be killed. How Dean had killed it.
That hadn't been just some iron knife or a consecrated blade that Dean had used, as Sam had first suspected. That had been a knife dipped in lamb's blood, the only thing that could put a stop to a Djinn and any of its distant cousins.
Sam was glad he was sitting as the full implications of what he had just figured out hit him. Suddenly every single conversation, every single expression on Dean's face was taking on a whole different meaning. Dean knew exactly what he was dealing with and had gone in prepared because he knew what they'd been hunting... and hadn't said a thing to Sam.
It all made some sort of sickening sense now.
The spooked look in Dean's eyes; his reluctance to sleep; the drinking... God! the stench in their motel room... even that much Sam could now recognize as being the same thing he had smelled near the monster!
Dean had been in the presence of that thing before and had made a secret out of it, which meant that... that thing had...
Sam raced to the nearest bathroom, barely making it to the first stall before his stomach rebelled on him.
Sam couldn't even form the words inside his head. After all they had been through, after all the danger that they had faced throughout their lives, after all the things that could cause them harm, Sam had never even considered that Dean -strong, self-confident, cocky Dean- would ever be forced to deal with something so dark and terrible as this.
Sam opened the cold-water faucet, watching the running water without really knowing what he was supposed to do with it. In his mind, all he could see was his brother; listening to Dean's drunken rants about evil bats; running into Dean, innocently pouring toothpaste into his mouth and dismissing the fact as one of Dean's quirks. Now, Sam couldn't help but shudder, imagining what sort of dirt his brother was trying to wash away from his mouth, from inside himself.
"Sam Talbert?"
Sam turned around, barely registering that the man was calling out the alias he'd supplied at check-in. He couldn't, for the life of him, understand why there was a man wearing blue pajamas in the middle of the bathroom.
And then he remembered. The clinic. They were at the clinic because the monster that had raped Dean, had also broken his wrist.
Sam blinked at the man, noticing the nametag that identified him as Nurse Benton.
"Mr. Talbert," Benton insisted, his voice growing softer, trying to bring Sam out of his head. "Your brother has been taken care of. You're good to take him home."
It came out sounding more like a question than a statement. Sam wondered what he must've looked like for the man to be addressing him like he was the victim and not Dean.
God...
"Is he..." Sam began, not sure how to phrase what he really wanted to ask. They were at a clinic, with doctors in the close vicinity of Dean and this was the perfect -the only- chance that Sam might have to get Dean some medical attention. But how could he flat out tell these people, these strangers, to check Dean for any rape-related injury? What if he was seeing more to this than it really was, what if he was making the wrong assumptions? Could he really expose his brother to something like that based on nothing but a gut-wrenching guess?
Sam knew the answer to all of those questions all too well. He was right or he was wrong about what had really happened to Dean, but either way, Dean would never forgive him if Sam betrayed him like that. "Is everything okay with him?" Sam finished lamely.
The nurse gave him a long look, probably trying to determine if Sam was high on something. "Well, you can ask him that yourself," the other man started, "but yeah, other than the fractured radius, which the doctor was able to reduce and cast, he's doing okay. Anything other than that, you'll have to check with his attending physician, Dr. Margot."
Sam nodded. Of course they hadn't found anything wrong with Dean. Sam hadn't found anything wrong with Dean and he had been right there, in front of Dean, in the same room, probably right after it had happened. Unless Dean actually complained about any pain or injury-
"Look... this is off the book," Benton went on, going as far as looking in the direction of the door, to make sure that they were alone. "But is there anything that you want to tell us?"
That Sam wanted to tell them? The question seemed almost ironic, given that Dean was the one with the possible big secret. Sam was having a very hard time containing the nervous giggle that was ready to burst free from his lips. "No," Sam managed to stutter to the suspicious nurse. "Why?"
The man twisted his mouth, probably seeing right through Sam's lie. "Look, you seem like a nice guy and clearly it wasn't your doing, but from what we saw your-" he stopped, looking at Sam for the proper term to define his relationship with Dean.
"Brother."
"The doctor doesn't think it's enough to bother calling the cops on it, but your brother," he went on, "he might be in some sort of trouble."
The urge to laugh hysterically as getting ridiculous. That guy had no idea.
"The bruising on his wrist wasn't just from the recent fracture, we all could see that. Some of it was older, yellowing marks that went all around his wrist," Benton said, his voice dropping to a conspiring whisper, "in both wrists. Like someone had restrained him, you know? Add to that the break and the way he freaked out when we asked him to take off his shirt... I think someone might be abusing your brother," the nurse went on earnestly. "Try to talk him into talking to the police. It's the best thing to do in these cases."
Sam nodded, numbly. The words 'freak out' seemed foreigner when applied to Dean. In fact, Sam couldn't recall a single time in his life when he had seen Dean 'freak out'.
And the bruises...
He was trying to remember where he'd seen bruises in Dean's body after his mishap in the desert, but Sam other than the nasty bruise he'd seen on Dean's chest, he was pretty sure that there weren't any more. He was sure that there hadn't been any on Dean's wrists. After all, Sam had spent that whole night holding Dean's wrist, trying to figure out if his brother's pulse was too fast or too slow, worrying himself sick trying to figure out if he should get Dean to a hospital or not.
What ever had caused those bruises, it had happened after the desert. And Sam was pretty sure that the thing that had caused them wasn't exactly within police territory and that, if he was right, Dean had already taken care of it.
Sam's nod became a shake of the head. How could he have missed the fact that Dean had bruises on his wrists? They lived in each other's pocket the whole frigging day... how could he have missed that?
"I'll talk to him," Sam promised. The nurse didn't need to know that the topic of the conversation would be a completely different one, but one thing was true. Sam was going to talk to his brother about this. "Thank you for your help."
/(O|O)\\
Dean was conked out on pain meds. He zombie-walked to the Impala, propelled mostly by Sam's gentle guiding. He promptly fell asleep as soon as he was seated in the car and his head hit the passenger's side window.
Sam watched from the corner of his eye, looking for a clue, looking for confirmation of his suspicions. He couldn't find any. He wasn't sure he would be able to recognized it as a clue even he if saw one.
Other than the paleness of his skin and the bruises that Sam already knew about, Dean looked like any other time after a hunt gone wrong.
In the quietness of the Impala, with nothing around them but the familiar smell of leather and a stretch of road ahead, Sam wanted to convince himself that he was imagining things, that he was seeing fire where there wasn't even smoke.
Dean wasn't behaving like someone who had been through such a life-changing trauma-
Sam stopped himself. He knew next to nothing about the matter, his only information coming from daytime TV shows and late night bad movies. And those were mostly about women going through the aftermath of rape. Was it the same for men? How the hell was Sam supposed to know what to look for?
Sam had heard all those versions of the same story, the stories that those young men at the Cahuilla camp had shared with him. About how the monster would came at night, about how they were helpless to stop it, about what it did to them.
For a second, Sam tried to imagine himself in the shoes of one of those kids. Lying in the illusionary safety of his own bed, going through the initial denial of what was actually happening; then the slow realization that you're helpless to make it stop; the horror of losing control over your own body and have that power brutally transferred to a being that not only looks like a monster but also does monstrous things to you; the merciless invasion and the awareness that nothing will ever be the same-
Sam's breath caught in his chest and he clutched his fingers around the wheel. It was too big, too colossal to even begin to imagine and Sam could only hope that he was wrong about this, because he knew he wouldn't be able to help Dean otherwise.
But he couldn't ignore the evidence either.
The fact that the monster had gone after Dean wasn't even the part that had raised Sam's suspicions. Monsters went after them all the time, like they sensed that Sam and Dean were a danger to them.
No, that part was pretty much par for the course, unfortunately.
It wasn't even the fact that Dean had known how to kill that thing even though Sam had no idea what it was or how a knife was enough to finish it. No, they had had their lucky breaks before, thinking that they were hunting one thing only to have the floor flip on them and having to improvise.
Neither of them would be much of a hunter -or a even an alive, breathing one- if they weren't able to think on their feet and act fast with whatever the situations dealt them with.
No... it had been the look in Dean's eyes as he had plunged his knife over and over in that monster's flesh that had called Sam's attention. Dean had looked... unhinged.
If there was one thing that Sam had learned to respect about his brother was that he was one hell of a hunter. No matter his personal feelings about the fugly they were after or how badly he wanted to end it, Dean was always focused on the hunt and kept his head in the game.
What Sam had seen in that tent was not it. It was so far from it that Sam'd had trouble recognizing the mad man wielding that blade as his brother at all.
It hadn't been a hunt. It had been revenge.
And based on what that bat-thing had done to its victims, Sam had a pretty good idea what Dean was trying to avenge.
A car on the other lane hit them with its high beams, lights too bright that filled the front seat of the Impala with white. Dean stirred, a slit of green peeking from his barely opened eyes. Still mostly asleep, Dean raised his right hand to rub the crust out of his eyes, promptly bashing an eye in with his newly cast hand. "Shit!"
"Sucks, doesn't it?" Sam asked around a fake smile, milking his 'more-experienced one' status, on account of his own experience with a broken wrist the previous year.
Dean was eyeing the white cast that covered his arm from palm to elbow like he was considering cracking the thing open and throwing it outside the window. "Where are we going?" he asked after a while.
"Bobby's," Sam replied, the decision made in his mind just seconds before. He needed a place where Dean could feel safe and at home enough before Sam could even expose his questions about what had happened. Plus, Bobby could help him get together everything that he would need to perform the spell.
"Why?" Dean asked, suspicion in his voice.
"Can't tell you," Sam said in all honesty. It was sort of their silent agreement, a private code for whatever Sam had to do to get Dean out of his deal. Sam knew he was taking advantage of that, but it was for a good cause.
"Right," Dean muttered, leaning back against the window, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt to get his broken limb in a more comfortable position. "The cloak and dagger shit."
The answer made Sam somewhat relax. It sounded so Dean-like that Sam was sure that he was just making a storm out of a tiny bead of water.
"What do you think that thing was back there?" Sam asked.
The words hadn't been planned. The fact that they were out of his mouth was much a surprise to Sam as it was to Dean.
Sam, not daring to glance away from the road, felt Dean shift in the seat, legs suddenly too long for the small space.
"What thing?" he asked after a beat. "The smelly fugly we put down in the Indian camp?"
Sam nodded. "It wasn't a succubus," he went on, unable to stop himself. "It couldn't be. You killed it with a knife."
Dean sat up straighter in the Impala's seat, all pretense of sleeping gone. "Lucky break, I guess."
Sam swallowed. This was what he'd been afraid of. Dean was blatantly lying to his face. "So, you'd never seen something like that before?"
Dean's body was rigid by his side, eyes fixed on Sam's jaw. "What's with the twenty-questions late night show?"
Sam wanted to kick himself. He'd had no intention of doing this in the car, in the middle of the road. Why hadn't he been able to keep his mouth shut until they had reached Bobby's? On the other hand, Bobby's place had too many distractions, too many places where Dean could just disappear for whole days and avoid talking to Sam. That was a lesson he had learned the hard way after their father's death. He couldn't risk the same thing happening now. not with something like that.
Sam turned on the blinker and started to pull the car over to the shoulder of the empty road. If they were going to do this now, Sam wanted his attention on Dean, not traffic. "I know, okay Dean... I know," Sam said as soon as the car rolled to a stop. "I know that you saw that monster before last night, I know that you knew what it was before we went to hunt it and I kn-I need to know if it did anything to you."
/(O|O)\\
Dean had been tempted to ask the doctor at the clinic to have a look at his stomach. He had a morbid curiosity about finding out if that monster had managed to infect him the same way it had infected the other kids, but when Dean opened his mouth to ask for a full exam, he couldn't voice the words.
For one, Sam was waiting for him just around the corner, in the clinic's waiting room and Dean knew how easy it would be for someone to slip out the wrongs words about what was happening.
And second... just the thought of having the doctors cold, gloved hands touching any patch of skin in his body that wasn't covered in clothes made Dean's stomach turn.
It made no sense, Dean was well aware of that. It was a touch that was in no way intimate or personal, quite the opposite as a matter of fact, but the mere idea of taking off his clothes in that bright lit room and laying back while that man in a white coat touched him... Dean's skin crawled just at the idea. He was scared of what he might do.
So, no, the safest thing for him was to wait, bite down on his morbid curiosity and just get his broken wrist fixed.
Dean had come very close to losing it when the plumpy nurse had asked him to take off his shirt, even if it was just to better access his wounded wrist. Dean had started to sweat out of nowhere, his visions had gone kind of blurry and Dean was pretty sure that he might've even snarled at some point. Even if he had eventually complied, Dean was sure that the nurse and the doc had caught on Dean's odd reaction.
The looks his bruised wrists were getting weren't lost on Dean either. In a flash of discolored skin, he had gone from Mr. Talbert to 'sweetie' and 'hon', as the old matron nurse tried to make things 'easier' for him.
Dean could feel the shift in their view of him, from klutz to victim. He hated that.
Dean had truly believed that he had escaped those looks when they had left the clinic. He was wrong.
Sam's questions about what had happened had come too soon. Dean had figured he had at least until they arrived at, wherever they were going, to prepare some answers for his brother.
Apparently, the time Dean had spent doing X-rays, having his broken bones poked and prodded and having minor freak outs at the prospect of being asked to take off his clothes, Sam had been spending his time dissecting every little action and information of the past few days.
The fact that Dean was exhausted from not sleeping in the past 48 hours and riding the down slop of some very nice painkillers, didn't help.
Dean felt the car stop and his heart started racing. He couldn't do this now. He had no idea how to convince Sam that nothing had happened. This was something Dean feared, he couldn't protect Sam from.
Unconsciously, Dean pulled his shirt's sleeves down, trying to cover the dark marks that would scream LIAR as soon as Dean opened his mouth to say nothing had happened. He realized the futility of the gesture when he looked at the bulk of the plaster around his arm.
Sam was waiting, trying to look patience even if Dean could feel his agitation and concern across the leather.
"You saw what happened," Dean pointed out, hoping that his voice had the right mix of confusion and annoyance. "That freakin' smelly thing was all over m-"
Dean stopped, fearing his voice might tremble, as the words got too close to the truth. Sam was studying him, searching for every tell and every nuance in Dean's tone. He hated it when his brother did that. "What the fuck is this about anyway?"
Sam sighed, like Dean's demands for some clarity were a nuisance that he had predicted but was hopping to avoid.
"I did some research, Dean. There was no way you could've killed that thing unless you knew exactly what it was..." he paused, slouching down like Dean was some scared victim that might find Sam's size imposing and menacing. Like Dean hadn't been living with a Sasquatch is whole life. "And the only way for you to know that, based on the clues that we had, was if you had encountered it before."
Dean forced his sluggish brain to come up with a good explanation for that. There was a building anger growing inside his chest at the callous and intrusive way Sam was demanding explanations, like it was his right to know every sordid detail of Dean's life, but Dean wasn't really sure he should be offended by that.
Still, Dean felt like punching Sam for some reason, stop in actions only by some still sane part of his brain that informed Dean that punching your own brother because he asked a simple question might not come across as the product of the most stable of minds.
Dean knew his brother. He knew Sam had already reached his own conclusions, had already figured the problem out. This... this was only him looking for confirmation in order to start fixing Dean.
There was only one thing that Dean could do that would get Sam off his back and stun his brother into not mentioning the matter ever again.
Dean let his casted limb fall in the space between him and the door, hidden from Sam's eyes, and dug his fingers into the leather on the car seat. The force of his fingers' grip send waves of pain up and down Dean's arm. It was a better pain to focus on.
"Jesus, Sam! Are you- do you really think that I let that thing do to me the same thing it did those kids?" Dean blurted out. The words were razor sharp and would've cut right through him if it weren't for the detached feeling that was beginning to settle through Dean's body. This wasn't him; he wasn't talking about himself. "Is that what got your panties in a twist, Samantha? You saw me gank a monster that you had never heard about so, obviously, the only possible explanation was that your brother had gotten ass-raped by a fucking bat, because there is no way that Dean knows more about hunting than Sam?" Dean stopped for breath, hearing the gasp that escaped Sam's lips. Dean forced a twisted laugh out of his own mouth, one that was more hysteria than humor. "You're a fucking idiot, Sam."
The hurt in Sam's face was so sudden and intense that Dean actually thought that his brother was going to punch him. He could see Sam's fingers, clenched into a tight fist, white, resting against the blackness of the seat. Dean almost wished that his brother would just go ahead and slugged him.
It came as a small disappointment when Sam, instead of lashing out like Dean's mockery words deserved, did the opposite and left the car with a door bang.
Dean felt all air and strength rush out of him. He was shaking so hard that he feared the whole car would vibrate with him.
He'd done it.
He had managed to piss off Sam so unbelievably that his brother could only assume that Dean was too big of an ass to have been through anything remotely traumatic in the past few days.
"Get out of the car!" Sam's words were punctuated with a bang on the hood that sounded like thunder in the otherwise quiet road.
Dean jumped in his seat. It had been a while since anyone had been able to sneak up on him like that.
The road was deserted save for the parked Impala. The hood was yellow with dust, save for the small area where Sam had slapped his hand down.
Dean looked at the end of the road. Cut in between the asphalt and the horizon, there was a form. A human form. From that distance, it looked like smoke.
"Dean... come one man," Sam tried again, the frustration of before back to a more understanding tone. "I know that you're lying to me and I understand that you might feel like you ha-"
Dean wished his brother would just make up his mind and decide if he wanted to beat Dean or hug him.
The shape moved closer, cut against the horizon and becoming more defined and clearer when the slowly moving clouds allowed for the sun to cast its rays over it.
It was a kid.
Maybe five or six. Light hair, cut short, yellow shirt and the same stupid red jeans of before. It was the same kid from the alley, Dean was sure of that.
"... know, but I can help you," Sam finished.
Dean realized that he hadn't listened to a single word that Sam had just said, but from the look his brother was giving him, Dean was sure Sam was expecting some sort of answer.
He also seemed to have absolutely no clue about the kid that was standing at the end of the road, all alone.
They had to help him. The middle of nowhere was no place for a kid that small to be on his own. The world was a dangerous place, at best; it could be downright cruel if you gave it a chance.
Dean started to move towards the kid, each step bringing more and more details to his attention. The little brown coat with a hood that he was wearing over the yellow shirt; the metallic blue of his tennis shoes, the delicate shape of his face...
"Dean!" Sam yelled out. "What? You're just gonna turn your back on me and walk away, is that it?"
Dean looked back at his brother. The hurt look was back in Sam's face. He opened his mouth to explain to Sam what he was doing, that he had no intention of leaving, that he just wanted to help the kid.
The blare of a big truck's horn cut through the silence before Dean could even utter a single word.
Dean looked back at the edge of the horizon, certain that he would be too late to warn the kid, to get him out of harms' way.
The kid was gone. Again.
He had left nothing behind but Dean's heart, pounding against his chest.
There was nothing moving in the middle of the road but the long semi-truck with a refrigerated load that drove past them with a heavy gush of air.
"I'm not letting you walk away from this," Sam let out, reminding Dean of the here and now.
Here and now, Sam was still there, still pissed. And Dean was, apparently, hallucinating little kids in the middle of nowhere. Kids that always seemed to get killed right in front of his eyes.
"What the hell crawled up your ass and died?" Dean said, turning his back on the imaginary kids and facing his brother. Yup... Sam looked pissed.
Before Dean could say anything more, Sam grabbed his uninjured wrist and spun him around, pushing Dean against the frame of the car.
"What happened in that room when I was away, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice low with anger. "What possible half-assed explanation do you have for the line of salt around your bed, for the rumpled sheets, for the frigging smell all over the place? Some really rancid chick you managed to pick up in between unconsciousness and pucking your guts out in the bathroom?"
Sam punctuated each of his questions with a push against Dean's chest, each shortening the distance between them, each making Dean's world grow smaller.
The sun peeked from above the treetops on the side of the road and hit Dean's eyes. For a second, he was blinded by the light, seeing nothing but shadows around him.
The shadows began to move, like giant wings growing to cover his entire field of vision and Dean pushed back, trying to escape the dark, frantic to escape the bubble of nothingness and pain that was trying to eat him up.
The presence above him would not move. Dean was sure that if he were to look down, he would find himself staring at the grey, furry phallus of the Popobawa. He could feel it between his legs, could feel the steady throb as it taptaptaptaped against his thigh, eager to roll him over; seeking entrance; demanding entrance.
It was everywhere at once, tapping against Dean's legs, piercing through his body, perforating his soul like a red, hot, scalding rod.
The thing's breath was on his face, robbing Dean of any hope of ever breathing fresh air. He couldn't breathe; couldn't garner the strength to push it again no matter how much he tried.
Dean thought he had killed the thing, but he was wrong. Like he had been wrong about the salt; like he had been wrong about the goblins; like he had been wrong about thinking that he could survive this.
He couldn't; Dean could feel it now. He could taste death, pouring down his throat, lips stretched impossibly wide around hot flesh that smelled of wet dog and decay. He could feel his stomach stretch until his jeans' button popped off, until his clothes torn at the seams.
He was going to blow, filled up like a balloon. Dean could feel it; he could already see his insides spread around the desert like wet chunks of beef.
He was dying. All over again.
"FUCKING BREATHE, DEAN!"
Sam's voice sounded like thunder, echoing inside Dean's ears so close it had been shouted.
The smell of death was gone, replaced by human sweat, gunpowder and motor oil. Sam and his car.
Dean blinked, the sunlight finally clearing from his eyes and allowing him to look around. He was sitting on the gravel, the larger chunks of stone digging against the his ass cheeks like needles.
Sam was kneeling in front of him, both arms around Dean's shoulders, head hanging low as he panted.
Sam sounded like he had just run a marathon, and yet Dean was the one who felt like his muscles had all turned into jelly.
"I'm sorry," Sam whispered without daring to look up. "I'm so sorry."
Dean had an insane instinct to look at the floor and figure out to which ant Sam was apologizing so profusely until Sam looked up and Dean could see the tears whelming in his brother's eyes.
"I'm so sorry, Dean," he whispered his newfound mantra. "I didn't-I didn't know..."
The notion that Sam had just witnessed his whole freak out finally sunk in Dean's mind. He saw, more than felt or commanded, his hand reaching up, landing on Sam's shaking shoulder.
Dean wanted nothing more than to pretend that the past few minutes had never happened; in fact, he wanted that whole week to have never happened. But right then, he wanted that look out of Sam's face.
It hurt to see his pain reflected back in Sam's eyes; somehow, it made the whole thing more impossible to bear than it already was.
"I'm really tired, Sam," Dean managed to say, his voice raspy and broken like he had just screamed himself hoarse in the silence of his head. "Can we go now?"
The rest of the trip to Bobby's place was a well-rehearsed escape plan for them both; Sam pretended to believe that Dean was really asleep on the passenger seat; Dean pretended that the tears rolling down his brother's face weren't really for him.
AN: As always, my deepest thank you to jackfan2 for all of the beta work. Any remaining mistakes are mine :)