SPN Fic: For Fierce Confusion, Peace
Title: For Fierce Confusion, Peace
Characters: Sam, Dean
Genre: Gen
Word-count: 2909
Rating: PG-13 for brief language
Spoilers: AU post-7.23
Summary: Sam tries to remember what he even had in mind, all those weeks of fighting and reading and praying. All he knows is that it wasn't this.
Notes: Follows Absolute Bearing. Title from the hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save.
Two blocks tends to feel a lot longer with six feet of unconscious brother slung across your shoulders. Sam knows that better than most; he's staggered down too many roads with those boots kicking helplessly at his side with each step, struggled too often for breath beneath the twin weights of Dean and a terror so profound it nearly topples him.
But tonight, all he feels is relief - that, and the slow rhythm of Dean's ribcage as it expands and contracts, each breath whistling quietly in the still autumn night.
About halfway back, as they're rounding the corner to the motel (Sam can see their ungainly shadow cast on the sidewalk in the yellow glow from the windows of a tiny delicatessen), he feels Dean wake up, body tensing momentarily as though to fight against Sam's steady hands on his legs and arm. After a few seconds of silence, there's the upside-down sensation of Dean's face pressing intently into the back of his shirt. And still it's as though his weight hasn't registered with Sam's muscles, because it feels like carrying a little kid, like carrying nothing at all.
They finish the journey in silence, and each patient step echoes against the chilly, leaf-cluttered pavement.
- - - - - - - - - - -
The streetlamp outside their window's got a wonky bulb in it, or something; every so often the light shudders and spits, blinking back to a slightly new shade of sickly green each time. It makes the whole room feel unsteady, as though their motel's pitching gently on an uneasy ocean, like something out of some apocalyptic Bible story about the good brother and the foolish brother.
So when Sam's gut feels hollow and queasy and wrong as he stares stupidly at his brother curled expressionless on the bed, it's not because he's wishing this had happened some other way. It's not that he wants the easy rhythm of searching back again, and Dean a comfortably painful memory.
He's just having a little trouble finding his sea legs, is all.
“Sit up,” he tells Dean, who's been huddled armadillo-fashion against the headboard even since Sam dumped him across the navy bedspread. Dean doesn't respond, just burrows his face further into the mound of pillows and lies still. Sam's already tried to pry him out of his silent crouch, to wipe some of the mud out of the scrapes and gashes or at least get a better look at the damage they're up against, but every time he reaches out, Dean shrinks away instinctively, folding blistered feet underneath him and tucking his ragged arms into the deep, soft folds of the blankets.
For the first few moments after he stopped spluttering over the water Sam tipped anxiously into his mouth, he stared suspiciously around the room, squinting at the curtains and the mirrors and the empty black expanse of the television screen. Since then, he's kept his eyes firmly shut, as if he's not sure what he'll see if he opens them.
So for the last twenty minutes, Sam's just been standing there by the bed like he's forgotten what he's there for, washcloth dripping silently into the soft green fibers of the carpet. His fingers grow clammy, crinkling against the sopping cotton.
He feels eight years old again, goggling down at a leg that's more pulpy blood than Dean, scissors and needle and sutures trembling in his hands and threatening to lose themselves in cruddy motel carpeting. Trying to remember what he'd seen Dad do only once or twice; trying to get through the next five minutes without actually throwing up on the open wound. Gazing numbly at Dean's eyebrows twitching into a distracted frown over the edge of the piled covers, Sam can already taste the bile at the back of his throat.
He tries to remember what he even had in mind, all those weeks of fighting and reading and praying. What he expected to find at the end of the rainbow, what magic words he thought Dean would have saved up for him. But to be honest, he hasn't got a damn clue.
All he knows is that it wasn't - this.
Tossing the washcloth in the general direction of the bedside table, he drops onto the hard seat of the chair by the window, turning his face towards the flickering green light and scrubbing a hand through his nasty hair. He could always leave Dean alone, let the guy lick out his own wounds the way he's been doing for the past five years, because Dean's thirty-whatever and he can take care of himself; because Sam knows better than to offer something neither of them asked for. It's probably what that silence means, anyway: the best “fuck off” in the world, in the full-body sign language that only Dean Winchester speaks.
Still - he wishes Dean would just say it out loud. Blinking up at the moth-littered streetlamp, Sam tries to remember the cadences of Dean's bitching. It sounds alien in his head, like his own voice played back off a tape recorder - light in all the wrong places, too fast and too slow and scratchy and not Dean at all.
Whatever he expected - well, he was wrong, that's all. Dean's no different from when he left - and really, why should he be? Just because Sam's started to lose track of himself over the last five months, it doesn't mean Dean Winchester, Certified Badass, has too.
By rights, he should be relieved that nothing's changed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He's still slumped in the chair a few minutes later, staring at the cold red digits of the alarm clock, when the silence finally breaks.
“You fell.”
It's so quiet he doesn't think he would have heard it if the shower next door hadn't stopped a while back; hushed and so raspy it barely sounds like Dean. But it's enough, and the world comes rushing back with a roar until all Sam can hear for a few minutes is that tired, matter-of-fact sentence playing over and over again in his head.
But while he's gaping like an idiot over the relief of hearing his brother's voice, Dean's sat up and pushed back the blankets, the raincoat he's kept stubbornly wrapped around himself slipping off one shivering shoulder as he struggles to lever himself up off of the mattress. His eyes are open now, and they seem to be trained on something in the vicinity of Sam's legs.
“You fell,” he says again, as though Sam might not have understood. To be fair, Sam doesn't have a clue what Dean's talking about. What's more, he doesn't care.
What he does care about is the fact that whatever it is is apparently important enough to have Dean stumbling to his feet and attempting to walk across the room. Sam arrives in time to push his brother back onto the bed before he takes another nose dive onto the carpet. Dean's still staring at Sam's knees, and it finally occurs to him to look down at the shredded material, wincing a little at the sight of his own bloodied skin. The sidewalk, he remembers, and he's glad he didn't have to add a rug burn to the damage he's already done to his kneecaps tonight. But it's just a scrape, and now that the silence has finally broken, Sam's brain is taking over again.
“Never mind,” he tells Dean, sneaking a look at the deep cut running down beside his mud-caked ear. “We need to get you cleaned up first, okay?”
But Dean's picking at the torn denim, eyes scanning the room for Kleenex and disinfectant. “Your knees,” he says, voice crackling from deep in his chest as though he hasn't used it in years, and Sam wonders whether he has.
“My knees aren't going anywhere, Dean,” he says. He snags the damp washcloth from where he left it on the beside table, and tries to dab at the streaked dirt around the cut. Dean flinches away, and tries to reach for the washcloth, eyes still glued to Sam's skinned knees, swimming with fatigue.
He bites his lip, and squeezes the lids shut long enough for tears to slip out at the corners, dragging wet tracks through the muddy canvas of his cheeks.
“Hey,” Sam says quickly, “hey.” He grabs the washcloth from his brother and tosses it nervously from hand to hand, embarrassed and terrified that he's done the wrong thing, set gears into motion inside Dean that can't be stopped until they've chewed him into scraps.
Dean gulps and leans his head back, breathing unevenly, and Sam makes up his mind.
“Look,” he tells Dean. “I'll make you a deal. You let me clean you up and get you something to eat, I'll take care of my knees. I'll use disinfectant and everything, Dean. Okay? Dammit, you can put Elmo band-aids on them if you want. Just let me … okay, Dean?”
For a minute, he's not sure Dean's going to answer: he can feel the muscles in his brother's back and arms tensing, ready to revert to pillbug mode. Then Dean takes a careful breath, tips his head to one side as though considering the offer, and licks his lips.
“Okay,” he agrees, and Sam's stinging knees go weak with relief.
“All right then,” he says, and goes for the first aid kit.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Hold still,” he tells Dean, even though Dean hasn't so much as flinched the whole time Sam's been washing out his cuts. But the silence is making him uncomfortable, and it gives him something to say.
Rocking back onto his heels, Sam surveys his work so far. Dean's face is finally clean, the long cut near his ear sewn up in tight black flecks and covered with a neat square of gauze and surgical tape, the dark mud clinging to his bangs scrubbed away down the sink. Tiny red welts and slits criss-cross his cheeks and nose, gleaming with shiny smears of antibiotic cream.
Unearthed from the layer of topsoil and blood he's been carrying around on it, Dean's face looks stupidly raw and young, like he's a fourth-grader coming out of his first fight shaky and winded. While Sam dabbed at the slashes and scrapes, Dean kept his gaze fixed hard on the light fixture overhead, but now his eyes are screwed shut, and Sam can see the deep circles of exhaustion swelling underneath them. He's surprised Dean's stayed perched on the toilet lid this long; keeps expecting him to pitch over to one side or the other. But it's been almost an hour, and Dean's barely moved.
He stays alert anyway as he pries Dean's arms from his chest one at a time, rinsing off the dirt in gentle, soapy swipes with the rapidly-dirtying washcloth (he has to switch to a clean one halfway through), painting on antibiotic cream with a careful thumb and painstakingly taping band-aids over the bigger cuts. He works his way down Dean's battered shins, talking quiet gibberish all the time, just for a noise to distract them both.
“Saw the new Batman movie. Without you; I know, I know. But we'll see it again together sometime. We'll find a library or a rental place or something, I dunno. It was really good, man - I don't wanna spoil it for you, but let me tell you, Catwoman? Worth the price of the ticket all by herself.”
He drags the washcloth across a gouge so deep he's afraid to look too closely at the half-formed scab for fear of catching a glimpse of bone. Dean winces ever so slightly, barely more than an instinctual twitch of his left calf muscle. The pain doesn't register on his face.
“Food's gotten better since you left. I mean, nearly everything's still full of drugged-up corn syrup, but I've found some places that do all-natural stuff - I mean really all-natural, like dig-it-out-of-the-ground-and-put-it-on-the-supermarket-shelf natural. Found a lady who baked apple pie, nothing in it that didn't come right off her own farm. We're gonna have to go back there, Dean, because that was some seriously good pie. You've gotta promise me you won't make a pig of yourself, though, all right?”
Dean's toes are individual blisters, puffed up round and white away from the filthy black soles of his feet. Sam swings his brother's legs easily over the bathtub and turns on the taps. He trails the washcloth hesitantly across the tight, painful skin as hot water gushes over Dean's curling toes.
“I got the Impala fixed up again; she's driving fine…”
“You're gonna have to help me sort out our socks; I can't ever tell whose is whose…”
“Got a call from Sheriff Mills the other day, she's doing okay…everyone's okay.”
The night wears on, and the washcloth turns slowly into rust.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He asks Dean how long it's been since he ate, and Dean can't remember.
The duffel bag holds a half-eaten packet of beef jerky and a full house of gold-wrapped power bars: two chocolate peanut butter, three vanilla. Sam looks over that dismal hand and up at his brother, who's perched solemnly on the edge of the bed with his head dipping unevenly towards his chest. He's swimming in his old Black Sabbath T-shirt, a pair of Sam's worn-out gray sweats cinched tight around his waist and nearly swallowing his bandaged toes, and Sam decides that he's not going to chance the hiking food he's been surviving on since three libraries ago on Dean's untested stomach. He's starting to look halfway human, but the last thing the guy needs is to spend the last few hours of the night choking up chocolate-flavored soy protein and salty fake gristle.
“Stay here,” he orders Dean, straightening up and heading for the door. “Don't fall asleep.”
He waits for the small, distracted nod that could just be Dean zonking out completely, and steps out into the parking lot.
Outside, the world feels turned inside out: way too warm for October, so that he's hot even in short sleeves as he starts down the empty road. It rained, apparently, while they were inside cleaning Purgatory off of Dean - the leaves that scuffed noisily under his shoes on the way from the park are plastered against the pavement now, shimmering and treacherous with the slight slick of putrefaction that fills the gutters. Over his head, the sky's lit up around the edges with a weird lint-blue, and he can hear morning birds jabbering in the darkness around him.
It's all slightly unreal, and he hurries his pace towards the sleepy delicatessen on the corner. Ordering a cup of chicken soup to go from the heavy-eyed teenager behind the counter, Sam feels like a lost astronaut returning to earth, trying to remember the language of humanity.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Dean stares as if he's never seen soup before. He holds the styrofoam cup cautiously in his lap, and looks up at Sam as though waiting for more detailed instructions.
Sam thinks he knows the feeling.
Soup, at least, has answers. “It's chicken noodle,” he explains, handing over a plastic spoon and a couple of napkins.
Dean just stares at him, green eyes unfocused with fatigue. “It'll put hair on your chest,” Sam tells him, but Dean doesn't move to pick up the spoon.
Right, then. Plan B.
“Move over,” he tells Dean, standing up and shoving his brother carefully back against the headboard, waiting for him to settle his shoulders against the piled pillows. Sam drags back the covers and tosses them over Dean, watching his brother wriggle down into the clean, cool luxury of fresh sheets. Clambering over Dean's shins, Sam settles himself cross-legged on the far side of the bed and grabs the soup container from its precarious position near Dean's hip.
“You don't get to go to sleep until you've eaten - ” he jiggles the cup around, evaluating - “half of this soup. Okay? Finish that, you can sleep until Tuesday if you want, but you need something in you now. Besides, I paid good money for this,” he informs Dean, cracking open the flimsy plastic lid and digging around through the soft noodles and snippets of carrot.
Dean eyes the spoon with as much resentment as he can summon up while half-asleep, and grabs the soup from Sam, spilling it across his fingers. He wipes them on his shirt, and jams a sloppy bite of soup into his mouth.
Satisfied, Sam settles himself back against the pillows and faces the TV, not bothering to hide the stupid smile that's sneaking all Cheshire-catlike onto his face.
Halfway through Cheers, Dean's head falls to the side, and soup burns suddenly against Sam's thigh.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He wakes up with salt in his mouth. He wakes to flat white light, and the overpowering smell of ash.
He wakes up alone.
Next: Till Human Voices Wake Us