come hell or high water [spn][one-shot]
Part 1 || Part 2
He drives to the other end, because there’s no way he’d get there in one piece running. He stumbles three times on the way back to the car alone, though he musters enough sense not to reenact his infertility bid and goes around the fence instead of over it.
The drive through inundated streets takes a full fifteen minutes. He parks as close to the manmade basin in which the larger end of the culvert is embedded as he can. When he gets out of the car and looks back at the street, nothing seems even vaguely familiar. He can’t remember the drive.
Sam makes sure he has his gun, flashlight and jack and then wades over to the embankment. The “valley” isn’t very deep; probably only five or six feet. The opening of the culvert is entrenched in one of the earthy walls. Water has risen here, too; about four feet.
It’s a goddamn swimming pool.
Sam takes his light and the jack in one hand, uses the other to carefully maneuver himself down the slope. There’s a brief moment of hesitation before he lowers himself into the water - in retrospect, he probably should have just plunged. It’s like ice and knocks Sam’s breath away, goes right to his head, his muscles.
The opening is a little higher than the water level, and Sam has to toss his tools up before hefting himself into the culvert. It’s harder than it would usually be; his arms don’t seem to want to support his weight properly.
He switches the flashlight on when he’s up. There’s less water at this end, which means that debris is still blocking the dividing grill. But it’s easier to run without the hindrance, and Sam does run, runs as fast as his legs will allow, ducking to avoid decapitating himself. He almost pauses at the one turn the culvert takes, knowing he’s going to see Dean somewhere up ahead, terrified of what he’s going to find, afraid that Dean will have given up.
But he goes around the bend, and the first thing his senses catch is the sound of the chorus of Whole Lotta Love, sung albeit weakly and in stutter, but it’s there and that’s all that matters because Dean’s alive.
He hurries forward now, strengthened by the voice, and a few seconds later, Dean comes into sight. As soon as he spots Sam, he stops singing and lets out an odd, strangled laugh. It’s borne of relief and it, coupled with the look on Dean’s face and his sickly pallor, makes Sam’s chest ache more than the cold ever could.
“Someone closed the other end,” Sam chokes out, falling to his knees at the grill. He stuffs the light under his arm, lifts up the jack.
“I - I f-figured,” mumbles Dean, after a brief pause. “Tha’s why - kept s-singing.”
Sam doesn’t quite believe him.
“At - at least we go’ rid of the k-kelpie,” says Dean with a breathless laugh. “Not gonna be d-dinner t-tonight.”
If Sam wasn’t trying to position the jack in between the grill’s rods, he might have reached out and decked his brother. As it is, his anger has abated into panic and all he can focus on is how long the pause is in between each word Dean spits out and how the jack just refuses to stay in one position, keeps slipping on the wet rods.
Sam’s shaky grip isn’t helping either.
He tries to do the math in his head again. Dean’s been in the water now for approximately forty minutes on an optimist’s scale. He started shivering at around twenty minutes and now he can’t string two words together properly. Sam squints at Dean in the flashlight’s beam; his shivering seems to have grown less pronounced, though his teeth are still chattering.
Without warning, Dean’s chin falls. The water is at neck level, and his mouth and nose go under easily.
Sam drops the jack, pulse spiking, reaches through the bars and splashes water on Dean’s face. “Whoa, Dean, no - wake up. Wake up!”
“I - I’m-” Dean struggles to pull his head up.
“Talk to me - come on, man, talk,” insists Sam, as forcefully as he can, picking the jack back up and pushing it through the bars. He gets it on the first try, this time around, grabs the handle and cranks before the tool can slip.
“I ca - I ca-,” breathes Dean. His lips are blue. They’re stark against his white face.
“Yes, you can,” says Sam, and his heart picks up speed. “You fucking can. Say something - Dean!” He lets go of the jack again, as Dean’s eyes start to slip closed, but this time it stays jammed in between the bars. Sam reaches through, grabs Dean’s face, slaps him. There’s not enough room though, and he can’t muster the momentum to deal Dean a proper blow, one that’ll have a decent effect. He slaps Dean again, snarls, “Stay awake! Talk, Dean! Talk!”
‘What ‘m I s-s-”
Sam leans on the jack, pushes with all his strength. It hardly budges. “Talk about-” He searches for a topic that’ll keep Dean alert. “Tell me about Hell. Tell me what happened.”
Just the thought seems to jerk Dean awake. He stares at Sam through the bars, and Sam sees more life in his eyes than there was five seconds ago.
“C’mon,” he groans out as he braces himself against the culvert’s wall, pushes again. “Tell - me - about - Hell.”
“Wha-” says Dean, trying to keep his chin above water, eyes never leaving Sam.
“Anything,” Sam grates out. “Anything - at - all.” There’s a sound, like the grill is about to give way, and Sam pulls his hands off the jack, stares at it. Nothing moves, but he guesses that he’s made a little room. He reaches into the water, grasps one of the tree branches blocking the flow and tugs at it.
It budges.
“Dean, hey,” says Sam.
Keep him talking, keep him talking.
“Was there anyone special?” he says, yanking at the tree branch.
“Special?”
“Someone you tor - hurt?” Sam hates himself for stumbling over the word, knows Dean’ll catch it even in the state he is. “Someone you knew?”
“No,” says Dean, quietly. His face has taken on that expression of self-loathing that Sam has been seeing so often of late.
“B-bu’ it d-doesn’t m-matter,” he forges on. “T-they c-c-could’a pu’ anyone in f-front o’ me and I w-would ha’ gone after t-them too. Any - anyone.”
The tree branch comes out suddenly and the force of the water that gushes out propels Sam backwards and onto his rear. Dean mumbles something and winces, and Sam guesses he must have jostled his leg, but it’s only a guess because the reaction is a bit toned down.
“Can you feel your legs?” Sam asks suddenly.
There’s a long pause, and for a brief moment, the possibility that Dean’s died with his eyes open actually enters Sam’s mind, because that’s how it happened last time, and this Dean looks a lot like that Dean did - pale, lifeless.
But Dean’s shifts very slightly, then and says, “I dunno - m-maybe.”
And maybe’s not good enough because maybe essentially means no, and Dean’s really been in the water too long. Sam tries to remember the symptoms of hypothermia, tries to list them in his head and check off which one’s Dean is exhibiting, but he can’t recall them. He snarls expletives at himself, as if a mental checklist is the key to saving Dean’s life, rummages in the water for more debris, yanks them out as quickly as he can.
Water is spurting forcefully through the gaps now.
After a few seconds, he feels Dean’s shoe. “Okay, I’m gonna push your leg out,” he says. “Help me.”
Dean gazes across the grill at him in what Sam guesses is an incredulous fashion, but there isn’t time to discuss what Dean can or can’t do. Sam pushes Dean’s foot, tries to get it through the rods.
“Come on,” he mutters, puts his head down and closes his eyes and pushes.
There’s a choking sounds. Sam looks up; Dean’s head has fallen again, and he must have breathed in some water. He’s coughing and spluttering now, head still dangerously close to the water, eyes lidded.
“No!” shouts Sam. He grabs Dean’s face, splashes water on him. When it doesn’t work, he curls his fingers in Dean’s hair and pulls. “Stay awake!”
Instinct tells him to do something, anything, like start bodily shaking Dean or bash his head against the wall to keep him alert. He pulls at Dean’s hair again, feeling panic clawing at his throat.
If Dean decides to fall asleep, there’s nothing Sam can do to stop it.
“Dean!” he shouts. “Stay awake - do you understand me?!” Dean looks up at him, and Sam grabs the opportunity.
He pulls his arms back through the grill, tries to push Dean’s leg out of it again, doesn’t care that he could be worsening the break, just wants Dean out. His leg doesn’t even move.
He grabs the tire jack’s handle again, braces his own foot against Dean’s, and strains both leg and arm, groaning from the exertion.
“Does - does it hurt w-when you t-touch me? I t-think it’s s-supposed to,” Dean stutters unexpectedly, eyelids drooping.
“What are you saying, Dean?” asks Sam, despair lacing his words. “Stop it. Wake up.” He lets go of the jack again, slaps Dean’s icy face, puts his fingers under Dean’s chin, pushes his brother’s head up.
The water is so high on the other end that it makes little difference. Dean’s almost completely submerged. The few openings that Sam’s managed to make through the grill don’t seem to be helping much.
“Don’t you dare give up. Please, Dean, please. Please,” Sam says, trying to inject some firmness into his voice, some belief that giving up isn’t the only option here.
He has to let go of Dean’s head. He can’t get them out of here if Dean’s leg is stuck, and the only way to get Dean unstuck is to use the jack. And Sam needs both his aching arms for that.
Feeling sick, he lets go of Dean’s head, hopes that Dean hasn’t succumbed to sleep yet. He can’t tell. The second Sam removes his hand, Dean’s head drops. The water is up to his eyes.
Sam can feel his face crumpling as he grabs the jack’s handle and let’s loose an almighty heave. “For God’s sake,” he shouts, and there’s a sudden, deafening keening, so loud that Sam thinks for a moment that God’s answered his call.
It’s the sound of metal tearing.
Out of the corner of his eyes, just before it happens, Sam catches sight of the grill shifting.
His foot is still braced against Dean’s.
With a second to react, he shoves against Dean’s foot with his own, and against all odds, it slips through the metal bars.
And the grill comes loose.
The water hits Sam with unbelievable force, slams him against one of the culvert’s rounded walls and cracks his head on the cement. He hears the sound in his ears, sees white light bloom behind his closed eyes. The impact makes him gasp. He sucks in water, chokes, swallows convulsively.
His left shoulder hits something too and he feels it pop out, almost silkily.
Then it’s over. He’s suddenly in water that isn’t trying to kill him, sinking slowly. He opens his eyes, sees nothing but dark shapes all around him. His lungs are searing, the urge to start coughing is overwhelming. He kicks his leg, forces himself in the general direction of up, though for all he knows he could be swimming deeper into his own grave.
Just when he’s starting to wonder how much the actual drowning hurts, his head breaks the surface. He gasps, coughs, gasps again.
“Dean!” Sam shouts, but his voice is hoarse and broken and completely lost in the sound of rushing water and rain.
Dean’s nowhere in sight.
Sam sucks in a breath and goes under again.
It’s so fucking dark.
His dislocated shoulder makes him a slower swimmer.
It’s his second time under when something brushes against his good arm. Sam doesn’t even look (like he could see anything if he wanted to), just turns in the water and grabs.
It feels like it takes eons to get to the surface, good arm wrapped around his brother, legs kicking ferociously. It feels like it takes eons and it feels like Dean’s dead and Sam can’t even think.
He surfaces close to one of the embankments, manages to heave Dean up onto the mud and rock. It’s uphill, and everything’s even slipperier than before and Sam’s arm is killing him. All he can do is dig his toes into the fine dirt and hold Dean above the water with his good arm and gasp and shudder.
He tries to convince himself it hasn’t been long as he tentatively removes his hand from Dean’s chest. Dean doesn’t slip back into the water so Sam heaves himself up, struggles onto more level ground before turning around and dragging his brother up too.
“Come on,” he hears himself say as he collapses to his knees, meaning please and no and a myriad of other things that he just can’t express anymore, starts pressing down on Dean’s chest with one hand without even checking because he knows Dean’s not breathing. He tries not to notice that he can hardly feel Dean’s heartbeat. Tries not to think about what that means, how far Dean is gone.
He does the compressions and then breathes into Dean’s mouth and prays like he hasn’t in months, prays that nothing’s in Dean’s airway, and just as he begins pleading, bargaining, I’ll do anything you want, just - Dean gasps, coughs. Sam roughly turns him onto his side, watches the water stream from Dean’s mouth, shivers and shakes and thinks, thankyouthankyouthankyou.
Dean doesn’t wake up though and he’s stopped shivering all together. They’re not out of trouble yet. Sam looks up and around for the Impala, doesn’t see it anywhere. Panic strikes his heart. Did Michael call the police? Did they take the car? His eyes fly across the landscape, looking everywhere, anywhere, clinging onto hope for a moment longer - and then he spots it.
On the other side of the lake.
They came up on the wrong side.
Sam doesn’t even have his phone.
Okay, he thinks, quaking like a newborn bird, clutching his dislocated arm close to his body, focusing on the slow (too slow) up-down movement of Dean’s chest. I can do this.
He clambers to his feet, knees almost buckling as soon as he tries to put all his weight on them, head throbbing like a bitch. Looks around for a person or a phone. Finds himself inanely willing Castiel to them, as if the angel is ever on call.
Lightning illuminates the world and in the distance, Sam catches sight of a pay phone. He glances back at Dean once and then runs in the direction of the phone. Grabs the phone off the cradle when he gets there, presses the silver buttons: 911.
He doesn’t know what he tells the operator, doesn’t remember the call at all. Everything starts flashing as soon as he dials the phone. One moment he’s hanging up, the next he’s by Dean again, and then he’s on the earth, cheek pressed to mud, head throbbing viciously.
Then there’s only darkness and defeat.
**
The emergency room is buzzing. It’s one of those really big, busy, inner city ones, where someone is always rolling in. Victims of gunfights, drug addicts who’re afraid they’ve overdosed, homeless people who’re just there for the warmth under the pretext of having a serious injury.
Babies are screaming. A man is yelling at the nurse sitting behind the main desk, a main desk encased in bulletproof glass. There are people of every ethnicity and age. Hospital volunteers scurry here and there, looking stressed. Doctors float, assured and professional. A triage team rushes through with a gurney.
Sam is sitting on one of the bolted-down plastic chairs. A doctor is seated across from him, a small table set up to his right with an unpacked suture kit on top. He’s sewing up a gash on Sam’s forehead.
Sam regained consciousness in the ambulance. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but the lady standing over him had run a hand through his hair and told him they were almost at the hospital. Someone had already popped his shoulder back in by then, and he was strapped to a stretcher. He’d managed to choke out a few sentences, to tell the woman that there was a boy at the culvert in his car. She relayed the message to someone Sam couldn’t see.
Where’s my brother? he tried to ask after, but nothing more came out of his mouth. Before he knew it, the ambulance was jerking to a stop and he was being carted out.
He didn’t see Dean. The doctor who first looked him over, strapped his shoulder and told him he had a concussion, said that Dean was being taken care of and not to worry.
Which was really helpful.
After the initial examination, they told him he’d have to sit in the waiting room. He was lucid, and though lying down was probably better for him, they had a shortage of beds. They would get him into a bed as soon as one freed up, they assured him. Sam didn’t argue.
“Okay, all done,” says the doctor, setting the curved stitching needle back on the portable table. Sam reaches up and brushes his fingers against the gash. He can feel its ugliness, doesn’t really care. Vaguely thinks that the inside matches the out, now, and immediately berates himself for being overdramatic.
“You tell someone if you need anything,” says the doctor, as she packs up the suture kit and refolds the tiny table, before walking away. Sam nods after her.
He doesn’t know where Dean is. No room number, no general direction.
At least he’s somewhere on earth, Sam thinks. That has to count for something.
Two feet away, a couple of men get into a fistfight. Two armed security guards saunter over and wrench them apart, putting them in two different corners.
Sam starts to drift amidst the cries and shouts and loud voices, amidst the ever-moving surroundings, like he’s been drifting in life, lately. Not really going anywhere.
Once upon a time, he had a purpose.
Now all he’s good for is chasing after his quasi-suicidal brother.
Sam closes his eyes, pushes away that anger that always seems to burst out of nowhere, presses it deep into the recesses of his mind.
It’s not Dean he’s angry at, though.
Until the day Sam dies, he will regret it, regret not being able to get Dean out of that deal, like he promised. And the guilt will never go away. It’s the way Winchesters are, he realizes.
Always telling beautiful lies.
Always making promises and never keeping them, so that in the end, the promises just become empty shells of what-ifs and no meaning. Sam wonders now if, when he told Dean, I’ll save you, Dean actually understood it to mean, You’re going to die no matter what.
“Mr. Dugray?”
Sam looks up. The ER is slightly quieter now. A doctor is standing before him, wrapped in green scrubs. He’s got glasses and a sympathetic expression. The clock on the nurse’s desk a few feet behind him reads 8:45 am. Sam’s been sitting in this waiting room for hours.
“Your brother is awake now. You can see him if you like.”
Sam stands immediately, legs and arms still shaky. The doctor lifts a hand.
“Your brother is very lucky, Mr. Dugray. According to what you told us, he was under water and not breathing for about fifteen minutes. If he hadn’t already been in a severely hypothermic state, there is no doubt that he would be dead. Fortunately, we managed to raise his temperature in a desirable amount of time. We were forced to flush his body with warm fluids to do so, but… no harm, no foul, right?” He takes a breath, glances up at Sam with a small smile.
Sam says nothing.
“We don’t think he’s in any immediate danger,” he goes on when it becomes apparent that Sam has no questions, comments or derogatory observations to hurl at the doctor. “We set his leg too, but the break was pretty bad and we won’t know how well it’ll heal for a while. I’ve seen people with similar breaks - many never recover fully.”
Sam’s temples throb in time with his pulse.
“And… I don’t want you talking to him unless he speaks first. Understand? If he’d rather sleep, let him,” the doctor adds, not unkindly.
Sam nods. He doesn’t seem to be able to form words, anyway. Not that that’s surprising. Words are useless when you’ve forgotten how to use them.
He follows the doctor to Dean’s room, which is nothing more or less than a bed surrounded by a curtain, and hovers a few feet away until the doctor kindly drifts off.
There’s a small gap in the curtains and Sam peers through them. Dean is lying on the bed with his eyes closed, wrapped in heated blankets. There’s an IV; the warm fluids the doctor was talking about, Sam guesses, and a machine keeping tabs on Dean’s heart rate. Dean’s leg is in a cast; the bed is elevated slightly at the foot. He looks pale and faded.
Sam feels, for a moment, like he can sandpaper away the spider silk cracks that make up Dean just by looking long enough.
Dean opens his eyes, as if he can feel Sam’s gaze, and maybe he can. They stare at each other for a long moment, until Sam’s heart imitates a triphammer and he begins to think that Dean won’t speak and he’ll have to leave because the doctor said don’t speak to him unless he speaks first and doctors know best, right?
A small gleam comes into Dean’s eyes, a shadow of something that once was, and it makes Sam ache suddenly.
“Handsome devil, aren’t I?” he says, in a muffled hospital voice, closing his eyes again.
“I’m just giving you an idea of what the freak show you’re getting shipped to is gonna be like,” mumbles Sam half-heartedly, slipping through the curtain.
Dean makes a little sound that Sam thinks is a snort. “You’d fit in better, Frankenstein.”
There’s no chair. Sam stands near Dean’s bed and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Dean cracks open one eye. “Dude, grab a chair. Or just sit on the bed. You’re making me nervous.”
It wasn’t his intention, but Sam’s not complaining. After the stunt Dean pulled…
But he parts the curtain again, spots a chair sitting near a beat-up ECG and drags it back to Dean’s cubicle.
The chair’s too small. He has to force himself into it. Dean watches his discomfort with a slightly amused glance. Sam can see him formulating a joke or a jab. It’s the ever-present Dean Winchester coping mechanism: always needing to keep his game face on, be cool and casual and laidback.
Sam was always able to see through it before. Now, it doesn’t even a form flimsy screen and sometimes Sam wants to grab his brother and shake him and say, It’s okay to show me who you really are. It’s okay to be ashamed and afraid. But you have to stop trying to hide it or you’ll never move on.
“Doctor says your leg is pretty-”
“Fucked up?” interrupts Dean. “Yeah, he told me. But hey - I’m a good healer, right?” He actually attempts a trademark cocky grin.
Sam nods, purses his lips, crosses his legs and then uncrosses them. Reaching up, he fingers the stitched-up gash on his forehead. He shifts his left arm around, trying to get it comfortable in the sling the doctors have given him, as a precaution. His body aches, his head feels heavy from exhaustion.
“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Dean mutters. “Stop fidgeting.”
(Stop trying so hard, stop pretending everything’s not okay when everything’s perfectly fine, stop thinking that you can understand when you can’t. )
Sam can’t stop fidgeting. He needs to say something, right now, but he doesn’t want to start yelling at the broken man wrapped in thermal blankets.
He can feel anger tickling the back of his throat, furious words just itching to come out and deal Dean a cutting blow.
They’re wrong. It’s wrong. He needs to make Dean understand, not make him curl further into himself.
“So,” he says, running his hands up and down his thighs. “Good lemming imitation back there.”
Dean opens his eyes then, and turns to face Sam. “I’m not suicidal.”
There’s a moment of silence in which they try to stare each other down. Outside the curtain, someone is shouting for a volunteer.
“No,” agrees Sam eventually. “Suicidal people try to off themselves - you just want someone else to do it.”
Dean shakes his head like he thinks Sam is being stupid, looks away. “No - I don’t.”
“Then what, Dean?” asks Sam. “Explain it to me. Make me understand, because I can’t see any other reason for what you did.”
I’ll come back and get you.
Dean sighs, looks away, at the curtain surrounding his bed. Its pale pink and not completely opaque; Sam can see people moving around beyond it.
Sam bites the insides of his cheeks and looks up at the ceiling.
“I need you to get your head straight,” he tries, words like bricks in his mouth. But Dean isn’t talking (explaining) and it’s all Sam can think of. “I can’t do - we can’t go on like this.”
“And what’s wrong with my head?” asks Dean, and Sam can see anger flaring in his eyes.
“You ran off without cover,” Sam points out.
Dean raises his eyebrows slightly, looks right at Sam. “I’m not suicidal,” he repeats.
“Did you open the culvert?”
“Sam…”
“Did - you - open - the culvert?”
“Let it go, Sam,” mutters Dean.
“No, I’m not going to just ‘let it go’,” says Sam, closing his eyes, hands up near his head like he’s inches away from ripping his hair out. “Did you? Did you stand there and unscrew the bolts and remove the gate and go in on your own?”
Dean doesn’t say anything, just shifts around on his bed like he’s trying to get comfortable.
“Why would you do that?” asks Sam softly.
“You didn’t want to do it - thought I’d save you the trouble.”
“I didn’t want to do it tonight, because you - we were dead on our feet. You said you’d come back for me. Instead you went and took the gate off and decided to do the job yourself.”
There’s a brief pause in which Dean picks at the loose threads on his blanket. Then, he says, “I didn’t know the kid would follow me. Hell, didn’t even know the kid was there until the kelpie grabbed him.” He sounds disgusted with himself. But that’s all - nothing else. Not regretful, not apologetic. Just disgusted.
Sam stares at him for a long time, pinches the bridge of his nose as hard as he possibly can. “I’m not - I don’t - do you think I care about the kid?”
“Uh… yes?” Dean hazards. Sam swallows hard and Dean adds, “Look - can we just do this tomorrow?”
Sam clenches his teeth so hard he expects them to sink through his gums.
Dean catches his expression, narrows his eyes. “What? What do you want me to say, Sam? Huh? Enlighten me, why don’t you?”
“That - that you were wrong to run off without cover!” exclaims Sam, waving his hands. “You do not run off without me. When the fuck will you get that? What do I have to do to make you get it, because whatever it is, I’ll do it, Dean. You just tell me what the fuck it is.”
Dean rolls his eyes, settles back into his pillows. “Don’t be melodramatic, Sam. We had to get rid of the kelpie.”
“No,” says Sam and he curls his hands around the armrests of the too-small chair he’s forced into until his fingers go numb. “No. We didn’t. You did. You and this sudden complex that you’ve developed.”
Dean’s eyes go hard at that, harder than they already are, huge Hell-built walls coming up in three seconds flat. “And what complex is that?”
“This saving - hero - this-” and Sam can’t even put the words together, wants to reach out and start shaking his brother and wonders if it would just be better for him to step out and get a fucking grip. His head hurts and his arms hurt and he just wants to know what to say, what’ll make Dean listen, wishes an angel would fall from the heavens with a scroll from God and just give him the answer.
“Jesus,” mutters Dean. He glances away, at the pink curtains, at the miniature clock on the night table, at anything. “You’re making this bigger than it is. Just - I’m alive, OK?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Sam, as calmly and clearly as he can.
Dean gives him a cold smirk. “Really? Wasn’t it? Made the choice, didn’t I?”
“It was Hell-”
“So what?” asks Dean icily. “That makes it ‘all better’? That makes it acceptable? We hunt things that are evil because they’ve been in Hell, Sam. So, is what they do acceptable? Because after all, ‘it’s Hell’, right?”
“You wouldn’t have-”
“I did.”
“You made the choice to stop.”
“Made the choice to start too. You think they forced me to say yes? That Alastair sprung half a dozen demons on me and then asked if I wanted off the rack? There was no torture when he asked me, Sam. There was never any torture when he asked me.”
Sam starts to say you couldn’t have held out, because they let Dean taste-test freedom while offering it to him and that would have made it all the more difficult to resist and Sam can see it clear as day, and he wants Dean to see it too. But Dean’s not looking at him anymore and all the fight is rushing out of Sam.
He slumps back into his chair, presses finger and thumb into his eyes, feels slightly dizzy.
He opens his eyes to find Dean giving him an appraising look. “Go get a motel room,” he says. “You look like crap.”
“‘Get a motel room’?” says Sam wearily. “That’s it?”
Dean sighs loudly. “Sam, I get it, I do. I screwed up, okay?”
“Do you know how close you came to-?”
“Yeah - close. Doc told me. Don’t sugarcoat anything here. Apparently he went easy on me ‘cause of the kid, though.”
“I don’t care what you did,” Sam attempts.
“I know, Sammy.” But I do, Sam hears and it takes a lot of self-control not to start on Dean again.
“You’d better not pull something like that again,” he says finally.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Without me, I mean. Because, you know, someone needs to be there to take pictures,” Sam mutters, shrugging slightly.
Dean gets a little light back in his eyes. “Funny.”
“You should get some sleep.”
“I’m not the one with the concussion,” Dean points out.
“Wow, your doctor was a chatterbox, huh?”
“Yes, she was,” says Dean, looking smug.
“Oh, she. No wonder.”
“And what’s the supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing,” says Sam, struggling out of his chair. He almost topples right back down as soon as he’s on his feet, but manages to keep his balance.
“You gonna be okay?” asks Dean after a brief second in which, Sam imagines, he’d had an epic internal battle on whether or not to ask.
“Yes,” says Sam. “I’ll call a taxi or take the bus. Don’t have the car, anyway.”
“You - you what?”
“I didn’t drive us here, Dean. We came on an ambulance.”
“Yeah - but-”
“Relax. I’ll pick the car up tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”
“Better be.”
“Well, if it’s not, you know who to blame,” Sam says, a little less jokey now.
“Yeah, yeah, mother,” says Dean petulantly. “Now get the hell outta here so I can get some shuteye.”
“Okay,” replies Sam. He stops at the curtains, turns back. “I-”
“I’m not an idiot, Sam,” says Dean flatly.
Sam gazes at him for a long moment and then nods. Okay. I’m trusting you.
Outside, the ER is growing restless again. It’s early morning and people have started tumbling in again. The day starts early and ends late here. A nurse Sam recognizes corners him in the waiting room, just as he’s about to exit and thrusts some papers in his direction. Insurance, she tells him.
“Can I do it tomorrow?” Sam’s head is hurting again. “I won’t skip out on you, I swear. My brother’s still here.”
She looks doubtful. City hospital, Sam remembers. Lots of people who can’t pay.
The nurse peers closer, her eyes flicking from one of his to the other. “You had a concussion, right?” she says. “I think can get you a bed now - or at least, a comfortable chair. You can fill the forms and then leave.”
Sam glances back at the hallway he’s just left. “Can it be close to there?” he asks, gesturing with his chin.
“Sure thing,” says the nurse, beaming suddenly. She turns around and shouts for a volunteer.
Ten minutes later, Sam finds himself in a well-cushioned (and large) chair, close to Dean’s curtained bed.
Dean doesn’t know he’s there, which is fine by Sam. He can hear his brother’s level breathing alternating with the beeps of the machine he’s attached to.
He gets only halfway through the forms before his chin drops and he drifts away, to the sounds that prove that Dean’s alive.
After all, as long as their hearts are beating and their lungs are filling, they have all the time in the world to mend.
End