hurt!Sam comment fic meme: Square Knots
WELL, since I need to start actually writing and putting stuff out there, here's something I did in about an hour \o/ I'm still working on my LONG fics for AO3, (two Wincests and a j2) so I'm a busy bee.
Square Knots
Dean turns over, the sheets soft against his skin and his head on a just-right angle to his pillow. Dad’s snoring somewhere to his left, softer than his usual chainsaw timbre. This is heaven. Dean’s finally bit it. Nineteen’s not a bad time to go. At least he left behind a good-looking stiff.
So this must be his eternal reward (minus the hundred virgins): sleeping in on a Sunday morning in a bed he can stretch out in-except he’s kinda hungry, and stretching hurts like a motherfucker and if he has all this room it means…
Sam?
He blinks, letting the dark room come into focus. Sam’s not next to him, not scrunched up against his side in the double bed.
Dean pushes himself up gingerly, a ragged pain shooting up his side. He peels back the sheets, breath catching in his chest. The bedding is stained red.
A row of neat stitches stands out in stark contrast to his pale and bruised torso. The skin around his wound is mottled purple. Seeing it only makes the pain worse, but Dean grits his teeth and manages to swing a leg out of bed.
“Sammy?”
Jesus, how long’s he been out? His voice is shot.
He feels around in the dark, searching for the light switch. His fingers catch on plastic and the room is bathed in a weak yellow glow.
“Dad,” Dean limps over to John’s bed, fighting the rise of bile in his throat.
John’s face is just as battered as Dean’s side. He’s sporting a spectacular black eye, his cheek marred by deep gashes.
“Dad!”
John’s up in a flash, blankets pushed back and sitting up in one coil of bulky muscle. He doesn’t allow himself to cough until he has a .45 in hand. Then he doubles over, hacking and wheezing.
“W-what is it, son?”
“Dad, Sam’s…”
“Sam’s what?” John fixes him with that piercing gaze. The drill sergeant rather than Dad. “Where’s Sam?”
“I don’t know,” Dean admits, dropping his father’s stare.
“Come on.”
John braces himself on the nightstand for a moment, catching his breath.
“Dean, there’s blood everywhere.”
Dean hadn’t noticed in his panic, but there is.
The comforters on both beds are soaked through, the walls streaked with red.
The worst of it is on the bathroom door frame, where two red stripes indicate that someone had been holding on to it for support.
“SAM?!”
Dean darts to the bathroom, clutching his side. His stitches are weeping. He bites the inside of his cheek, hammering on the door. Who the fuck locks the door when they’re bleeding out? Sam always needed his privacy but fuck, this is ridiculous.
“Sam!”
Holding absolutely still for a moment, he listens. Thinks he hears scratching on the other side of the door.
“Hang on man, we’re coming in!”
Dad’s at his shoulder.
“Stay back, Dean.”
Dad shoves him aside, angling his broad body against the door and slamming into it. It doesn’t stand a chance; flies back on its hinges like it’s been hit by a Mack truck.
Dean’s whole world narrows to red and white. Red on white tile, red on white porcelain, red on white skin.
Because Sam’s in there alright, slumped over the toilet while his side leaks blood onto the floor. It pools, thick and dark, drying into a crust.
“Sam, Jesus Christ, Sam,” the words spill out of Dean as he collapses to the floor beside his brother.
Sam’s hair is wet, matted with gore, his face stained like the rest of his body. His right hand is clutched around a sewing needle, his left holding onto the toilet bowl. The stench of puke and copper is overwhelming.
“Get the backup kit out of the trunk!” Dean screams at John, who’s standing in the doorway. His father’s mouth hangs open, his eyes blank with shock. “Dad!”
John snaps to attention at the desperation in his older son’s voice. He’s gone in a second.
Dean turns back to Sam, fifteen year old lanky Sam, whose insides look like they might slip out at any minute. The base of the wound is stitched, but a good five inch gash is still open. He wraps an arm around Sam’s waist, careful not to touch his injury, easing him away from the toilet and propping him up against the bathtub instead.
“Sammy, I need you to wake up. I need you to be okay. Sam. Sam.”
Bits and pieces of the night before are coming back to Dean, a sense memory triggered by the stink of blood. Claws. A black dog, maybe. He passed out after the pain in his side had become too much, he remembers fighting off the numbness that was settling over his limbs. But it was like falling asleep; couldn’t be helped. And Dad… it’d tackled Dad just as Dean lost his battle to stay awake.
So it’d been Sam. Alone.
Sam had tried to sew his own injuries. After he’d sewn Dad and Dean up. Dean needs him to wake up, so he can scream himself hoarse at Sam for being so stupid. How many times has he told him to take care of himself first? That he and Dad aren’t a priority; that he needs to look after himself.
Sam’s hand twitches, his grip on the sewing needle loosening so that it drops silently to the blood-slick tile floor.
“You in there, Sam?”
He groans. A good sign.
Dad’s back with the first aid kit and a fifth of whiskey.
“I’ve got him, Dean.”
But Dean doesn’t move.
“Dean.” There’s a command in the way John says his name, but Dean still doesn’t budge.
His father reaches out to touch his shoulder and Dean recoils.
“No,” he growls, body instinctively moving to shield Sam.
Dad exhales heavily, and Dean feels the air between them tighten, and then release as Dad tries to calm down. A few seconds later heavy footfalls exit the bathroom.
Dean reaches for the kit, picking out a clean needle and driver, drenching them with amber liquid. Sam’s eyes are open now, just slits of hazel in a mess of mud and blood.
“Hang on, buddy. You with me?”
Sam nods, over and over like he can’t stop, eyes drifting. His head flops again, messy hair falling into his face. The whiskey he splashes on Sam’s belly might as well have been acid for the way his little brother squirms, pushing into Dean like he’s going to burrow inside him and hide from the pain.
“Okay. This is gonna hurt. ‘M sorry.”
Sam whimpers, averting his eyes. Shit, Dean’s not sure if he can do this. He’s stitched Sammy up a hundred times before, but not like this.
Dean takes a swig of the whiskey and sets to work.
He lines up, and drives the needle down to the base of the wound at Sam’s hip. Sam’s mouth falls open, his fingers digging into Dean’s shoulder.
“Sorry, Sam, sorry. I gotta. You know I’ve gotta…”
Sam whimpers. “’Sokay. Okay.”
On the one hand, he’s relieved to hear Sam speak, but Dean wishes he’d stayed passed out just a little longer so he wouldn’t have to feel this.
And Sam’s looking straight at him, teeth sunk into his lower lip and all Dean can see is trust. Lousy, since Dean’s the one who passed out on him in the woods.
Dean takes a long, shuddering breath and pulls the suture up, trying not think about how he can feel the tug of Sam’s flesh as the line goes taught. He braces himself for a second time, then plunges the needle into the opposite side of the wound and pulls up. He has the basic “U” shape of the knot.
Sam’s breath hisses out as Dean loops the suture around the driver, then completes the first square knot just like Dad taught him.
“Couple more, ‘kay Sammy?”
Sam’s hand has moved down from his shoulder to clutch around Dean’s amulet. He’s pulling so hard the cord’s starting to give.
Dean starts in on a second square knot, and Sam tugs, yanking the necklace loose from around Dean’s throat.
A few knots and what seems an eternity later, Dean’s finished playing doctor, and Sam has a stitched up wound to match the one on Dean’s side. Sam’s gone limp against the bathtub, mouth drawn tight and knuckles white from clutching Dean’s amulet.
“Done, Sam. You’re gonna be okay.”
He splashes whiskey over the stitches and offers Sam the bottle. His little brother accepts with shaking hands, knocking it back. He cringes at the taste and it’s just so Sam that Dean smiles.
Smiling feels an awful lot like straining his stitches getting out of bed did.
He scoops Sam up in his arms, carrying him bridal style to the bed, easing him onto the mattress. It’s insane how brittle Sam looks like this; like one wrong move would snap him in two. Reminds him of the time he and Sam tried to move a nest of baby robins from underneath a playground slide when they were kids.
Dean had never held anything so delicate in his life. He’d felt each of the bird’s bones through the skin, hollow weight cradled in his palm; could even feel its pulse, hammering against his thumb.
John’s at the table, nursing his own bottle of Jack. Dean nods at him, and his stony expression collapses, relief written in every line of his face. He leaves the room, closing the door softly behind him. That was John’s way. He’d need time to recover from this, the same way Dean would after he made sure Sam was okay.
Dean retrieves fresh blankets from the closet, tucking Sam underneath a mountain of soft cotton and propping his head up with two pillows. Sam closes his eyes, pale and drawn.
Sponge bathes aren’t really his idea of a good time, but his brother needs him, so Dean spends half an hour scrubbing all the filth from Sam’s face, arms, and body. Sam doesn’t protest, just lets Dean clean him up, lifting his arms when he’s told.
“Don’t fucking do that again, you hear me?” Dean grunts, working at a particularly stubborn bit of mud on Sam’s chin.
Sam doesn’t say anything.
“Sam? I’m talking to you.”
But Sam’s already drifted off, the cord of Dean’s amulet tangled in his fingers.