Fic: Sam wonders how long [PG] Gen Spoilers for 2.22
This is my first SPN fic. Just trying out a drabble for size. I'd love some feedback on this little Coda.
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He’d finally stepped out of the shower and was rummaging through his duffle for a fresh t-shirt and some jeans when he found the bundle. He’d been thinking about how clean he finally felt; making an mental inventory of all that he’d just washed off in that dingy motel shower.
Graveyard dirt, sweat, blood from Dean’s head wound (he didn’t think about the spray he might have received from Jake), god knows how many days of grime from that dusty old town….
….God knows how many was right.
Just as it occurred to him he didn’t really know exactly how long it had been between his abduction and first waking up on that boardwalk he looked down and realised what he was holding in his hands. The bottom of his stomach fell clean to the floor as he realised he had a more significant time gap of god knows how many for which to account.
He glanced over at Dean, who was passed out on top of the covers, face still covered in grime and blood. It struck Sam that half a bottle of whiskey probably hadn’t been the best idea on top of the probable concussion. But then Dean had had a few less than best ideas in the last day or so.
Sam collapsed in the chair at the table and gripped tightly around the bundle of blood soaked shirt and jacket. After a minute of staring at the cloth, he could finally unclench his hands a little and he spread the shirt out across the table first, slowly, reverentially.
His blood had soaked through the back of the shirt in a shape that incongruously reminded him of Barney. He absentmindedly wondered if he’d ever be able to flick past the children’s channel again without confronting his own mortality.
Once he’d spread the jacket out next to the shirt he paused. He thought about all the other wounds he and Dean had patched up over the years. How quickly had those wounds bled and stained their clothes?
How quickly had he bled on that dusty road god knows how many nights ago? Once his heart stopped pumping, how quickly had he stopped bleeding? Breathing? Had the dirt soaked up pints of blood under his body? Or had Dean held Sam somehow, perhaps spread across his lap, or against his chest, and blotted his own clothes with his brothers death. Perhaps Sam had lain, limbs akimbo, and Dean had stood over him, howling into the night.
He’d woken on a bed. Sam knew that. There had been blood on the mattress too. Dean must have carried his body - his body, oh god - inside. For all his wondering about how much blood and how he had fallen, he knew that much. Dean would not have allowed Bobby to help carry his little brother.
He stared at that shirt and that jacket for two hours, as if he could divine the answer somehow. Finally he admitted that he would never know and bundled up the shirt and jacket back into his duffle. He couldn't work it out and he could never ask Dean.
How do you possibly go about asking your brother how long you were dead?
END.