SPN Fic: The Other Side of the Story 4/4
A/N: And the conclusion. Thanks against to geminigrl11 (on her birthday!), sendintheklowns , and a very awesome lurker. And to all who have read and reviewed, I hope this conclusion is worthwhile. I'm glad that after five years of fandom, there are still people who like this kind of fic :)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
CHAPTER FOUR
Sam hadn't had a good night's sleep since he was eight years old.
After all, who could sleep in a world like this? In a world where monsters took the mothers of little boys, in a world where ghosts haunted and killed on a regular basis? In a world where people died horrible deaths, and no amount of rock salt or iron or incantations could save them all.
Sleeping with the light on didn't help. Sleeping with to the hum of the TV didn't help. Sleeping under the covers with a flashlight tucked in his hand didn't help. Sleeping with a gun under his pillow and a knife on the table by his bed didn't help.
Sam knew, because he'd tried them all.
Having Dean around had helped, but in those few, awkward years when Dean was old enough to go and Sam wasn't, he'd slept in salt-lined motel rooms and locked cars, just praying for daylight.
When Sam did sleep, it was plagued with nightmares. Fantastical creatures that were no longer far-fetched. Blood-sucking vampires, crazy-eyed ghosts, snaggle-toothed monsters. Coming for his mother, his father, his brother, him.
Even at college, where he couldn't lay down salt, where he could only pray each night for Jess' safety and mark ancient sigils in the corner of each room, the uncertain and dreams followed him. Only, more personal now. The happier he got, the darker the dreams. More personal. Of Jess, learning the truth. Of Jess, dying. Of Jess, burning alive on the ceiling.
When it came true, he tried to give up sleeping altogether.
The long days on the road made it hard, though, because his eyes grew weary staring down the dotted center line, mile after mile. And sleep would catch up with him, no matter how much caffeine he drank or how loud his brother blasted his music through the speakers. Sleep always found him, and in sleep, all the vestiges of safety that life with his brother brought, were stripped away again.
This was another nightmare. White and pain-filled, it was different from the rest, but a nightmare all the same. There were no monsters that he could see--there was no one, except himself. Trapped and helpless, unable to move and unable to wake. Unable to do anything.
And that was the most frightening thing of all. Being immobile, being weak. Being incapable, being not enough. A dream of wanting to move, wanting to act, wanting to do anything, and being denied volition on every level.
This dream would allow no tossing and turning. It would allow no strangled moans. It kept him effectively silenced and still, despite the screaming desperation in his mind.
Because, he had to move. He had to do something. This was too dangerous, this was just wrong. Something was off, very off, and he couldn't remember what and he couldn't figure it out. All that college training and he couldn't even seem to put together the most basic stuff. Like where he was, where his brother was, and why it hurt so much.
The pain encompassed him, settling over him firmly and unwaveringly. It had power over him, controlling the ebb and flow of his awareness. He was its captive, and every time he wanted to fight against it, it flared up, stronger than before, and pushed him down with a force that made him want to cry.
There was movement, but it wasn't his own. Something outside of him, doing it for him, without his consent. And there were voices, sometimes many, sometimes one--intermittent and foreign.
And touch. All over him. Probing, not harsh but not gentle. Pricks and pokes and pressure.
Worse, though--it got worse. Every time he tried to open his eyes. Every time he tried to do anything, his progress was thwarted with a blindingly strong need to breathe. And he labored and he worked and his chest screamed for it and his throat gagged against it, but he couldn't breathe. He couldn't do anything but try, try, try--and fail.
The despair was overwhelming, dark and desolate, thrumming through him more powerfully with each passing minute. Even time had no meaning--it never did in dreams. It was as long as an eternity, even if as short as a single moment.
But that was all it took. One moment. One moment to destroy his life, again and again and again. Finding out monsters were real. Being told if he left, he could never could back. Watching Jessica burst into flames.
He couldn't fight it. He had never been able to. Maybe it was time to stop trying altogether.
Giving up was easier. For everyone. Letting himself drift, he let the nightmare take him as it would, and when the pain rose, he let himself drown in it. Just a little longer, he knew. Just a little longer and then it might be over--forever.
Then he heard it. A voice. Clearer than the others, more familiar. Stronger.
Dean.
Sam couldn't make out the words, couldn't make sense of any of it. But he didn't have to. Even after those years apart, even after their resentments and their misunderstandings, he didn't have to. Dean was his brother, and they spoke a language that didn't need words. They were brothers, after all. Brothers born of parents and blood and a lifetime of having no one else.
Even when there was nothing else--even when his mother was dead, even when his father was gone more than he was there, even when Jessica had died--there was Dean.
It didn't change the nightmare--nothing changed the nightmare--but it was all he needed to hold on for just a little longer.
-o-
Three days.
It had been three days.
Three days, holed up in the ICU. Three days of watching Sam's skin turn puffy and translucent from all the extra fluids. Three days of watching his brother's blood pressure hover at dangerous levels. Three days of watching the respirator push the air in and out of his little brother's body. Three days of hearing doctors make vague prognoses and watching nurses clean the cuts that crisscrossed Sam's body. Three days where the only solace Dean had was the beep, beep, beep of Sam's heart monitor.
Three days to memorize every inch of his brother's face, to recount every memory he could of Sam's life. Three days to tell Sam stories about when he was a baby, stories about their mother, about their father before he went all drill sergeant on them. Three days to think about how badly Sam had wanted to get away from here. Three days of hearing Sam at Stanford say not normal: safe and wondering how the hell Dean had ever missed just what that might mean.
Sam hadn't safe at Stanford, Dean knew that. Sam had been vulnerable--alone and isolated and horribly unprotected.
But, after three days of watching his brother struggle to recover from his massive blood loss, Dean realized that Sam wasn't safe here, either.
Because it only took one hunt, and one overlooked fact, one key misstep, and his brother was half-dead in a hospital. The bleeding was under control, of course, the doctors tried to explain, but the damage had already been done, and it was taking Sam's systems time to reboot on their own. Like Sam was some kind of damned computer that they could shut on and off at a whim.
And the risk of pneumonia or infection, they said. Still very high. Sam ran a low-grade fever that spiked once to 102, but the doctors thought it was all part of the way Sam was trying to get back into the swing of things.
Cheesy cliches and weak platitudes and all Dean could think was how he'd viewed Sam the same way. He'd just wanted to get his brother back with the program, to help him get his bearings again. As though Dean could just do enough right things and make his brother forget what he'd had, what he'd lost, and, more than anything, what he'd always wanted.
Three days, and Dean realized that maybe every story had two sides. That maybe for everything he loved about the hunt, there was something to hate about it. For every time he relished offing a werewolf, there was risk of something worse--something like this. And just because he wanted to focus on the positive didn't mean that Sam was wrong for focusing on the negative.
He didn't know why his brother always felt that way, why Sam needed to get away from this so badly, but finally, maybe he could appreciate it, just a little. Because, after three days, Dean's nerves were frayed and his soul was deadened with fear and worry and the possibility that Sam could still die was almost more than he could take.
It wasn't worth it. All the hunts, all the cool weapons, all the hot girls--none of it was worth this. Hunting was one thing; family was another. He'd always thought he could have both, but right then, for those three days, he knew without a doubt it wasn't hunting that he wanted: it was his family.
Him and Sam and Dad. The three of them. As complete as they ever could be, as they ever had been. Dean wanted that chance--more than anything. He wanted to find their dad, he wanted to keep Sam with them. He wanted all the fences to be mended and just be Winchesters again.
He just wished Sam would wake up.
Funny thing about wishes. Dean had wished for so hard and for so long, saying prayers to gods he didn't believe in and cursing even more that he did, just wanting it to happen, that when his little brother's eyes opened, he really wasn't ready.
In fact, by the time Dean realized that Sam was awake, Sam could have been awake for five seconds or a minute, Dean just didn't know, but he did know his brother's eyes were wide with fear.
Scrambling, he got out of his chair, ignoring the pang of his aching muscles. Three days and he'd refused to leave. He'd been threatened with security, but Dean had called their bluff and sat with his butt glued to the seat.
"Sammy?" he asked, relieved and terrified and exhausted all at once. "You awake?"
It wasn't his most brilliant question ever, but after three days, Dean had slept little and been so hyped up on caffeine that his brain basically stopped working. Instead, he existed in a half-daze, aware enough to keep up the senseless patter of conversation to his brother's comatose body, but certainly not by much.
It was an even stupider question, because Sam's eyes widened even more, looking panicked as his lips moved and a cough grated in his throat.
Nice. Trying to talk to a kid with a tube down his throat. "Easy, easy," Dean tried to soothe, deftly hitting the call button. "You got a tube down there, so you really can't say much."
Sam never was one for orders, though, and Dean felt his own panic rising as Sam continued to struggle. A monitor bleated out a warning, followed by another, and Dean was torn between holding his brother forcibly down and stepping clear away to try to keep his already obvious intrusion at a minimum. It was just hard, though, seeing Sam labor like that, seeing Sam so scared, and to not be able to do a damn thing about it.
And then, there was a nurse and then a doctor and he was being efficiently pushed to the back of the room. He could still see snatches of it all--Sam's legs flailing weakly, the doctor's steady presence and the nurse's constant movement between the doctor and Sam--and he could still hear--the doctor's orders, the nurse's friendly acquiescence, and Sam's struggling breaths.
It just seemed like too much. Three days was one thing, but a lifetime of this crap was another. A lifetime of wanting such simple things and haven't it all taken away from him. Sam wanted normal and safe and Dean wanted family and together and what was it about Winchesters that they could never have what they damn well wanted when everyone else in the entire world took it all for granted?
And where was his dad? And was Sam going to be okay? And what the hell was up with their were-ghost that had started this mess in the first place?
Dean wasn't sure what happened, wasn't sure if things were going well or if things were going really, really ly, but one second, he was watching them work on Sam and the next, he was staring at the ceiling.
Cecilia, the pretty Hispanic nurse he'd managed to flirt with once or twice (or hourly), was standing over him, shaking her head and frowning at him. "You, right here, are proof of what is wrong with men," she said.
Dean blinked, swallowing hard as he realized his throat was dry. Then he wrinkled his nose, trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered Sam and waking up and three days and all that but none of it explained what he was doing here, even if the view down Cecilia's scrubs was rather nice. "Um, what?"
She shook her head again. "Men are so one-tracked. Focus on one thing to the point of exhaustion when all you have to do is just open your eyes and see that there's a whole world around you full of other people. It's why so many women are miserable with their husbands."
Dean wasn't sure when he'd asked for marriage advice, but he kind of hoped that the answer was never. Either way, his brain still wasn't putting the pieces together. "Uh. What?"
She licked her lips, rolling her eyes. "You should have taken care of yourself," she said. "You passed out cold, right in your brother's room."
That was the missing piece of info that Dean needed, and it brought his dignity and masculinity back to the forefront. With a jerk, he tried to snap to sitting position, regretting the action as it made his stomach turn.
Cecilia laughed at him this time. "See," she said. "The problem with men. You have to think about more than one thing at once, and right now, you really ought to be thinking about how to get your strength back and not how to pick up women who are way out of your league."
Dean shot her a look. "Hey."
She cocked her head. "At least you're following along this time," she said.
Dean took a breath, clearing his head a little more. The room wasn't spinning anymore and his stomach had died down to acceptable levels of nausea, which, if he were honest, probably had more to do with hunger than anything else. "Where's my brother?"
She raised her eyebrows. "I was waiting for you to get there," she said. "Your damn macho pride kept you at his bedside for three days. I bet Rhonda five bucks that it wouldn't take you two minutes to ask about him, no matter how exhausted you were."
That was when Dean took in the IV winding from his hand. Well, crap. He flushed red. "I need to go to my brother."
With a sigh, she picked up a BP cuff from the nearby table. "Your heart rate is fine. If your BP checks out, I'll let you go, if you promise to drink a bottle of water."
"I have to know how he is," he said, a little insistently, trying to give her his best ladykiller looks.
She remained mostly unimpressed. "You're the one hooked up to the IV here."
"And he had a freakin' tube down his throat last time I saw him."
To that, she had no comeback. She wound the cuff around his arm. "Well, if you hadn't been so blindly stupid and passed out, you would already know that he doesn't anymore."
Dean scowled, and a retort was on his tongue, when he realized what she said. "Wait, so he's okay?"
With a mild look, she shrugged. "Relatively speaking."
The cuff tightened around his arm. "Relatively speaking?"
"Your brother suffered from severe blood loss and was on a respirator for three days. Okay, at this point, can only be a relative thing."
"But he's going to be okay, I mean," he said. "He's better?"
She released the pressure. "He's been asking for you," she said.
And that was all Dean had to hear. He pushed up, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed.
"One sec, one sec," she said, a restraining hand surprisingly strong on his arm. "Your IV?"
Dean glanced back it.
Deftly, she plucked at the needle, removing it. A small amount of blood welled up and she pulled out a Band-Aid while Dean shifted restlessly. "You're fine, by the way," she told him. "It was the emotion that made you faint, much more than anything else."
"I didn't faint," Dean muttered at her.
"In that case, I may have to hook you up to the machines again to see what's wrong with you."
"Fine, fine," Dean grumbled. "I fainted. Happy?"
She smiled wanly. "Ecstatic," she said, and handed him a bottle of water. "Drink that. Your brother's still in the ICU but the doctor expects to upgrade him to a regular room sometime tomorrow."
It was good news--such damn good news--that Dean almost didn't know how to believe it. How to understand it. After three days of all of it, Sam being okay was all he had wanted, and now that it was almost real, he almost didn't know how to grasp it. "Seriously?"
"One-tracked, all the way," she said. "You're wasting time. He's already asked about you, so at least we can be sure that you both, in fact, suffer from that fatal masculine flaw."
She was begging to be flirted with, that much Dean was certain of, but she was right about that. One-tracked mind. Dean was focused on his goal--sometimes it was a girl. Sometimes it was food. Sometimes it was a freakin' werewolf hunt.
Sometimes it was his brother.
Maybe it was time for him to realize just what that meant. That it wasn't just about a hunting partner or having the family back together. Those were Dean's fantasies, and as much as Dean wanted them, they weren't the whole story. Sometimes, it really did just need to be about Sam. Not what Dean could get from Sam, not just what Sam could do for him, but Sam.
Sam's fears and Sam's needs. Sam's pain and Sam's dreams. Dean wanted to hunt together so badly that it was hard to accept that Sam didn't feel the same way. That hunting might mean something different to him, something worse.
After three days of watching his brother struggle to live, Dean was beginning to think Sam had a little credence in that viewpoint.
But Sam was okay. Sam was awake and asking for him and would be moving to his own room in a day. Which mean that Dean could still make this work. He could still talk to Sam, let Sam know that all the werewolves and ghosts didn't mean anything when compared to what really counted: family. If Dean saved everyone in the entire world, but lost Sam, what good was it?
Nothing.
And Dean wasn't about to forget it.
-o-
It seemed like a nightmare.
As visceral as most of them were, and as dark and twisted and painful. The lingering memories were mere faded horrors, just enough removed to make him feel like there was nothing he could do in response to them, but still clear enough to make him wish there was.
But most nightmares didn't put him in the hospital.
He swallowed, wincing against the painful rasp of his throat. Apparently, three days with a tube down his throat really did a number on it.
It was vaguely amusing to him that that was what bothered him the most. An irritated throat when his entire chest was a mess of cuts and gashes and that, when he looked at it all, he seemed to be barely stitched together.
He felt barely stitched together. And, just like the stitches that felt strained and awkward across his torso, he felt like his entire psyche was barely held together by his meager resolve to make everything seem okay.
But nothing felt okay. He felt alone and empty, scared and vulnerable. There wasn't even any guns here, no knife by his bedside, no salt lines around the room. And his dad wasn't coming back and the bad guy was still out there and if it came back, Sam would have no way of stopping it. Just like he had no way of saving Jess, of getting his life back.
And damn it all if he didn't feel like he was twelve years old again, pinning all his hopes, all the angst of being alone, on his brother coming back.
Anything to just not feel like this. Like the entire world was a second away from collapse, like his entire life was shoddily constructed on lies and darkness.
Then there was a quiet knock at his door. Sam turned just in time to see his brother, slipping through.
Even now, Sam could tell his brother was a little pale. There were pronounced bags under his eyes, and his stubble was further along that his brother usually liked to let it go. But, even with that, his brother's face was lit up--a smile on his face and something like hope glowing in his eyes.
"Dude, I know you're tired of motel rooms, but hospitals, man, they're not that much better."
The joke was lame--classically and pathetically so. But it wasn't about the joke. And it wasn't even about motels or even hospitals.
It was about Dean. Dean being here, Dean telling his bad jokes. In a world where Sam had lost everything else, that was a pretty good thing to have. It didn't make the nightmares any less horrifying. But it made them a little easier to deal with.
He grinned as his brother approached. "So, why'd you try to earn yourself a stay here, too?" Sam quipped back.
"Your nurse digs me," his brother said with a flippant shrug of his shoulder. Then Dean paused, shifting, licking his lips, and looking Sam over tentatively. "They say you're feeling better."
"I guess I don't really remember what I was feeling like before," Sam admitted, which was mostly true. He could remember the pain, even when it was barely held at bay. And he could remember the unwavering hold of sleep that neither let him come to awareness nor settle deeper into dark.
Dean nodded a little. Then, he hesitated. "What do you remember?"
It wasn't an unexpected question, one the doctors had probed him with during his examination. He'd mostly lied to them--since he didn't know their cover story just yet--but there was no need to lie to Dean. Not about this. "The werewolf," he said, his throat still scratching painfully. "Or the ghost of the werewolf. It showed up out of nowhere and next thing I knew, I was out."
Dean sighed a little, the weariness creeping back into his features. "Yeah, guess we got that one wrong," he said. "I mean, a ghost of a werewolf--what kind of luck is that?"
Sam snorted softly. "Sounds like Winchester luck to me."
Dean gave a short bark of laughter. "Yeah, you're probably right about that."
They lapsed into silence, and Sam shifted on the bed, trying to work a kink out of his lower back. His bandages itched a little, and as the sedatives wore off, he was feeling more and more like a guy who had been ripped to shreds.
Apologies weren't easy, not for anyone, and not for Winchesters. But, Dean had saved his life, and even when Sam rolled his eyes and felt annoyed, his brother was the best thing he had. When everything else in his life was a nightmare, Dean might not have been able to keep it at bay, but Dean was the one standing there with him when he faced it. Sam had never liked hunting, but he'd always appreciated his brother's steady presence.
"I'm sorry," he blurted finally, trying to will the burn of tears to die down behind his eyes. "For asking so many questions, for not just shutting up. I mean, maybe if I'd been more focused, thinking less about Dad--"
Dean's faced screwed up. "Dude, what?"
"I screwed up," Sam said. "That's what Dad always warned me about. Making sure I pay attention, because there's no room for distraction on the hunt."
Dean just raised his eyebrows, shaking his head a little incredulously. "Yeah, well, Dad also said to always watch each other's backs, and I didn't exactly do a bang up job or that this time, did I?"
"Dean, it was a were-ghost, we weren't prepared-"
"Exactly," Dean cut in again. "Which is what you were trying to tell me."
"But if I had been more focused, we could have figured it out together."
"And if the moon just stopped rising, we might not have had to worry about this at all."
Sam's mouth was open to retort almost out of reflex, but Dean's comment made him pause. "What?"
"Stop the what if's, Sam," Dean said. "What happened, happened. I've had three days to sit here and think about all the ways I screwed this hunt up, and even at the end of all of it, I'm still not sure that's the point."
Sam felt small in the bed. "Then what is the point?"
"The family business," Dean said. "This is all I ever wanted, you know? You and me, hunting. Bring Dad back and do it all up right. Like we'd be invincible."
Sam eyed him cautiously. It was always a sticking point between Sam and his family, between Sam and Dean. What Dean saw as family bonding, Sam saw as the biggest risk of everything.
"But, I don't know," Dean said. "You were just gone back there. Without a trace kind of gone. And it was like the entire bottom had fallen out. And then I found you and you were so bloody, and I couldn't stop it and I didn't know what to do, and there was this dumb were-ghost, who we were supposed to be stopping because it was killing people and that's just what we do, and I always thought that it was worth any cost--the safe life, the normal life, a permanent address--but damn it, Sam. It's not worth you."
"But it's still worth doing," Sam answered back, looking down. It was hard to admit. Hard to think about while still remembering what it felt like to sit in a classroom, to hold Jess close. "The world isn't safe. I'm not sure it ever can be. So, maybe there's nothing else we can do."
And that was the point, really. Sam had tried safe. Sam had tried normal. It had blown up in his face, and he'd gotten Jessica killed. Maybe that was the price of ignorance. Maybe that was just the price of being Sam Winchester.
"Sam, I don't want it to be that way," Dean said.
Sam looked at him, head cocked. "But I thought it was what you wanted?"
"And I thought you wanted the apple pie life."
"I just wanted to be safe," Sam told him flatly.
"And I just wanted you to be safe, too," Dean shot back.
All laid out, it seemed kind of obvious, Sam realized. That the things that had made Sam feel so uncertain and vulnerable, all the knowledge about monsters, all the weapons and the hunts, were the exact things that gave Dean's life security. Hunting was more than the family business to Dean. It was the family. It was the only way to live.
Maybe it was true and Sam had never seen it. Maybe he wasn't supposed to feel safe. Maybe safety was just another weakness.
Still, Sam missed it. He missed his apartment in Palo Alto, he missed a world without monsters, he missed a world where he didn't have to try to remember their cover story after a hunt gone wrong.
But that was a world where one night, he came home and found his girlfriend on the ceiling.
Life wasn't safe. Sam would never be safe. He needed to cling to the one thing that had always made him feel closest: Dean.
Sam sighed a little, smiling up at his brother. "Do you remember when you first started going on hunts?" he asked.
Dean stiffened a little, uncertainly. "Yeah."
"I remember that Dad always gave me this huge list. A whole run-down of things to do, contingency plans, ways to kill all sorts of monsters. And we had to chalk all these symbols everywhere and lay salt lines and he always told me to shoot first and ask questions later and that I'd be just fine."
"Dad liked you to be prepared."
Sam licked his lips, nodding. "I know," he said. "I mean, I know now. But, at the time, it was like, the more things I needed to protect myself, the less safe I felt. It was like, how terrible things had to be if I needed all of this just to stay the night alone. And I was always petrified, every time you two left. Hardly slept. Didn't eat. Didn't even enjoy the time alone. I just sat there, and prayed for it to be over."
Dean's face was purposely impassive, but Sam could see the flicker of guilt in his brother's eyes. "I hated feeling like that, you know?"
"I guess," Dean admitted softly.
"Do you want to know what always made me feel the safest?"
Dean clenched his jaw. "What's that?"
"Seeing you two coming back," he said. "Knowing I wasn't alone."
Dean swore a little, breathing out heavily. "You'll never have to be alone again," Dean said. "Not as long as I can help it."
Sam smiled a little. It was a promise Dean couldn't keep--over the top and ridiculous and so very Dean. "I know," he said, and his answer was just as much a lie, just as much a false assertion in an even falser statement.
Lies weren't the best safety net in the world. But, if Sam were honest with himself, they were the best he'd had in a very long time.
"So," Sam said. "What exactly is our cover story?"
"Animal attack," Dean said without a missing a beat. "Given the number of those around here lately, they bought it pretty easy."
"And why were we out there?"
"I told them you were throwing a hissy fit," Dean said, shrugging with the nonchalance that seemed to define him. "Something about your favorite getting kicked off American Idol."
"I don't even know who's on American Idol," Sam said, brow furrowed.
"You could probably tell all about the origins of any supernatural creature on a whim, but you can't even tell me if you think Katharine McPhee should win for that sweet face of hers alone."
"What?"
"Exactly," Dean said, slinking down into the seat by Sam's bed. "Pathetic."
"I'm not the one sneaking around watching American Idol," Sam said, but he couldn't deny that there was something reassuring about it. The familiarity. Not normal. Not really safe. The best he had.
"Who's sneaking?" Dean shot back. "What do you think I do while you're surfing for porn?"
Sam scowled, and for a moment, he could forget that he was laying in a hospital bed. He could forget that he'd dropped out of college. He could forget that Jess had died. He could forget all of it, and just be with his brother.
Not quite all of it. "What about the ghost?" Sam said, his mind switching gears. "How did we get out?"
"Trapped it in a salt circle," Dean said. "Hard to say if it'll still be there or not, but I figured I'd take care of it once you were on the mend."
Sam shook his head. "No."
"We can't just leave it there," Dean said. "It's going to get out eventually."
"You're not going after it alone," Sam insisted. Because he was not going to relive that experience. Not now. Not ever. "We do it together."
"Did you miss the part where you're in a hospital bed?"
"You need to figure out more about it anyway," Sam pointed out. "You know, do some research, figure out where the remains are or at least, what's keeping it around."
Dean was watching him, leaned back in his chair, a position of relaxation, but his eyes were sharp and wary. "Research, huh?"
"Since charging in half-blind worked so well for us last time," Sam said. And he did have the stitches to prove it.
"Well," Dean said. "It's a good thing the geek boy just woke up then, isn't it?"
Sam couldn't help but smile. "Jerk," he said, because he needed to hear it.
Dean, true to form, did not disappoint. "Bitch."
And despite the pain vibrating throughout his body, the haze of medication and injury still lingering in his head, Sam felt safe enough to let himself begin to drift away, just a little, then a little more, eyes feeling heavy, as he gave way to sleep.