a Dean-focused hurt/comfort comment meme (#5)
Omg, I’m so ready for this right now. \o/
Before we get started, I'd like to thank geckoholic a million times over for making the lovely banner for this meme. You can find her graphics community at bl00dredskies.
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Before we get started, I'd like to thank geckoholic a million times over for making the lovely banner for this meme. You can find her graphics community at bl00dredskies.
( Read more... )
***
It didn’t make sense for the longest time - he just thought he was losing it, for good this time - but later he could pinpoint exactly when it had first hit him.
He’d come back to himself in Illinois, which was the wrong state because his brother was in Missouri. He’d blacked out from drinking before, god had he ever, but it didn’t feel like he’d been drinking. In fact, his head hurt the way it did when he hadn’t been drinking for too long, a tight, hot ache behind his right eye. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, which was parked haphazardly on the side of an unfamiliar road, but he was sure he hadn’t been in an accident either. All he remembered was driving.
He’d gone out to pick them up something to eat. Anything but burgers, Sam had said. But Dean had needed to drive around a bit first, the way he sometimes did, and he’d ended up here.
Okay. It was hardly the strangest thing that had ever happened to him. He was tired, the messy, probably-shouldn’t-be-behind-the-wheel kind of tired. Maybe that was all this was. Maybe it was his subconscious, leading him in the opposite direction of Kansas.
Maybe he was too fucking tired to analyze his own fucked up mind right now.
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At the motel, Sam’s face was pinched with hunger and worry, and Dean was sorry. He’d missed more than some time. The town was small and it was very late and everything was closed.
“Sammy,” he said, and just then a veil of awful tiredness fell over him. His knees shook with it.
“Dean, what- Dean,” Sam said, one giant hand gripping his elbow. “What’s going on?”
“Went for a drive,” Dean said, vaguely surprised by the way his voice slurred. “Sorry.”
“You went for a drive?” Sam said slowly, like he was trying to decipher just what Dean meant by that. “What, to the bar?”
“Sure, yeah,” Dean said, and face-planted onto the bed when Sam propelled him there.
“You’ve got a fever, you moron,” Sam said, and his giant hand was on Dean’s forehead now. It covered his eyes too, and it was dark under there, felt nice. Dean’s eyelashes caught on the roughness of Sam’s fingers, then he closed his eyes for good and crashed headlong into sleep.
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Sam was sitting at the table by the window with his laptop, watching him like a creeper. “You spiked a fever of 103 last night. I thought I was going to have to throw you in the shower, man,” he said. He didn’t sound mad. Or maybe he did. When he was worried, upset, anything, he got that same line between his eyes. He’d have a wrinkle there when he got older. “You feel okay now?”
“Yep,” Dean said.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Hey, catch,” he said, and tossed a thermometer at him. Dean fumbled, but he caught it. “You put that under your tongue,” Sam said helpfully. “And don’t talk around it. You always talk.”
He was holding steady at 98 degrees. Normal.
***
Neither of them did well with dead kids, which Dean took as a good sign. They weren’t as desensitized as they could have been, the bad kind of desensitized, the kind they never wanted to be.
But, Dean- he hadn’t thrown up over a salt and burn since he was a kid, and Sam certainly hadn’t seen him do it since then.
Sam stood behind him now, uncertain, while Dean dragged a wrist across his mouth. His bones ached.
“Your fever back?” Sam asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” Dean said, and picked his shovel back up.
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Something huge welled in the pit of his stomach at the sound of Sam’s raised voice, something terrible and gnawing and as incomprehensible as dark matter. It had been inside of him for nearly as long as he could remember, a too-empty space, had gotten bigger when dad died, then in hell had become a huge, yawning, black mouth - but he didn’t know why it was pulling at him more now than any other time.
Honestly, Dean usually found their occasional fight over the stupid shit comforting, a string that tethered him back to life, to Sam.
“Sam,” he said, the breathless way you screamed in dreams.
Sam stopped immediately. “Jesus, Dean,” he said. “What’s wrong? You look-”
“I gotta take a leak,” Dean interrupted him. He didn’t want to know how he looked.
He didn’t have to take a leak. They both knew he didn’t. He banged into Sam’s shoulder on the way past, the doorframe to the bathroom, the sink. That too-empty space inside of him pulsed hot-cold, and he had the strangest desire to lie on the dirty floor and to not move from there.
Sam followed him inside when he sat down on the bath-mat. “What the hell are you doing?” he said, sounding freaked.
“I don’t want to fight,” Dean said.
Sam crouched down in front of him. “Nobody’s fighting now,” he said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing on the floor?”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said. “I can’t fight with you.”
Sam’s hand found his forehead and rested there. “Dean, what’s wrong?” he said imploringly.
Dean let himself lean into the touch.
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Sam, still alive, found him braced up against a tree. Blood ran thicker than sap all down the bark from his clawing fingers. Sam, shocked, stared at him wildly. The forest was silent except for their breathing - Sam’s harsh, Dean’s low, whistling, like someone locked inside a small space, preserving oxygen.
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“I’m not hungry. I’m sorry, I’m not-” Dean told them, and there was that feeling, that absence of true feeling, of true anything, welling again. “Sam,” he said. “Sammy?” This time, though, Sam’s palm finding the back of his neck didn’t help as much as he thought it would. Bobby taking his plate away didn’t help. Nothing helped.
That was around the time Dean went to bed, and didn’t get up for a week.
***
Sam made him get up and shower on the third day, actually physically dragged him from one room to the next, turned the tap on and pushed him towards the spray. It was too much work to stand up straight, so Dean leaned against the shower wall for traction. Water stinging his eyes and banging the back of his skull gently against the tile because that, at least, felt good. Sam came back, took one look at him, and let him go back to bed.
He put a towel on Dean’s pillow for him so he wouldn’t get it wet and that made Dean want to cry, but for some reason he couldn’t.
“Gotta find us a hunt,” Dean said, and thought he should be more alarmed by the way his words smushed into each other like his mouth wasn’t his own.
Sam sat next to him on the bed with his elbows on his knees, back tense as anything. “We’re not going on a hunt right now, Dean,” he said in a clipped voice.
“Shouldnta stopped here. This wouldn’t be happening if we hadn’t stopped,” Dean said. He’d always hated downtime. He’d been doing fine. And now here he was, and just moving a finger was suddenly a monumental task. Like the too-empty space inside of him was getting heavier by the second. And all because they’d stopped; he knew it.
“What is happening?” Sam said. “Huh? What’s going on in that crazy head of yours?”
“Nothing much,” Dean said.
“Bullshit,” Sam said, but it was the truth.
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Dean was trying. There was a constant buzz in his ears. Maybe the cicadas. That probably meant it was daytime.
“You and the ghost sicknesses and the weirdo curses. How’d you get to be so lucky, huh?” Sam said and he was smiling with one side of his mouth. “Don’t worry, this isn’t you. Everything you feel, it’s being magnified. It isn’t you. Not really.” He looked away. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. Bobby’s gonna go take care of it, and it’ll be fine. I’m gonna stay here with you.”
Sam hadn’t stayed, that last time with the ghost sickness. Dean didn’t know why he would this time.
“Where’s your gun?” Sam said eventually, carefully.
Oh. Well, now, that was a thought.
***
Sam made him soup from a can and wanted Dean to go downstairs and eat it at the table like a human being.
“Shit,” Sam said after awhile, and went away and came back with a bowl, and a spoon that he shoved towards Dean’s face. “Eat something, man, or I swear to-“ He paused, regrouped. “Dean, I fucking love you,” he said. “I know we don’t say that out loud, but I want you to hear it now. Okay?”
Dean briefly considered nodding, the effort it would take to move his head on the pillow. Didn’t.
“Don’t you make me make plane noises, asshole,” Sam said.
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And through it all Sam kissed Dean’s temple, his unwashed hair. Again and again and again, like they were lovers or children.
None of it ever stopped.
***
“How are you feeling?” Sam said, afterward.
Dean’s whole face was swollen, hot, like the worst sunburn of his life. He leaned over the sink and splashed water over it, and that helped, a little.
“The same,” Dean said creakily. In the mirror, Sam looked uncertain. “The same as before, I mean,” he clarified.
Sam still looked uncertain. He knew. Dean couldn’t stand that he knew.
“I fucking love you too, Sam,” he said, and smiled. His same old smile.
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Especially that last line. What a kicker. Words fail.
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Just, wow. Fantastic job. I had been thinking of attempting this fic once I had time, but you nailed it.
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Yes, this got even angstier on me than I thought it would, and I knew it was going to be angsty!
You should write this one too. I'm sure you'd do a great job and I'd love to read another take on it.
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