FIC - "Sometime Voices" (Gen)
Title: "Sometime Voices"
Author: earzwideopen
Rating: R
Warnings: Something akin to a panic attack depicted, substantial talk about blood, language
Pairing/Genre: Gen
Word Count: ~2800
Spoilers: spoilers for 2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Summary: Written fashionably late as usual for sparrow_lately's hoodie_time comment fic meme. Dean's not doing so great after is djinn experience - not that Sam needs to know, of course. A gap filler of sorts for the end of 2.20, featuring hurt!woozy!panicky!Dean and awesome!Sammy and hella angst.
Notes: Pardon my brain's occasional and brief breaks from canon, if you happen to spot any. ;)
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked long after sleep,
Will make me sleep again.
- Caliban, The Tempest
Sometime Voices
"It's okay."
Dean murmurs, almost chants, voice slurring more and more by the second, "I've got you... I've got you..."
And he does have her, for a moment at least. The girl is dead weight though, and the last of Dean's adrenaline is trickling out fast. Before Dean can say another word to her, gravity swoops in and nearly wrenches her away.
But Dean's body just isn't gonna let this girl fall; his knees buckle and he crumples down with her, down into the muck of the warehouse floor, cradling her like she's made of glass.
Sam, watching their entwined dive like he's rubbernecking at a car crash, could swear he sees a tear fall from Dean's face onto the girl's dirt-streaked chest. Or maybe it's a drop of blood from Dean's neck, from the vein the djinn's needle gouged out.
"Dean," Sam says finally, choking now on the name he's called out countless times in his life, "c'mon man. We gotta get her outta here. Hell- we gotta get you outta here. Can you stand...? You know what- never mind, just stay put and I'll pull the car up."
No response from Dean - unless the exhausted way he bows his head toward the girl's body can be considered a response.
At any rate, Sam always knows exactly how bad Dean is the minute he gives up control of Baby.
This is one of those cases where Sam wants to call 9-1-1 for the vic and let Dean stretch out in the backseat of the Impala while he deals with the paramedics - just to give Dean's body some down time. Above all, Sam never, ever wants to push Dean when he's down for the count, never wants to tell him to "man up" the way Dad used to... But right now, any paramedics that arrive on the scene are gonna involve the cops, no questions asked. Mostly-dead girl, all-the-way dead monster, crazy warehouse blood bank, ropes hanging from the ceiling, the whole nine yards. They don't have the luxury of sticking around and seeking outside help.
Sam leaves the Impala running inches from the warehouse door. Dean will read him the riot act for leaving the keys in the ignition while the car's unattended, but that's hanging way off the bottom of Sam's priority list right now.
When Sam gets back into the warehouse, Dean's curled completely around the girl and showing no signs of letting go.
Sam approaches Dean, shakes him gingerly by the shoulder, trying not to alarm him.
"Mmph," Dean breathes in response, like he doesn't have the time or energy for anything but holding this broken young woman in his arms.
"Hey, I've got the car parked outside," Sam says, trying to squeeze as much stability and patience in his voice as he can muster. "Think you can help get her in the backseat?"
Dean doesn't say anything. He lets Sam's hands get a good grip under his armpits. Once Dean finds some footing, Sam drags the both of them off the ground. Dean simply won't let go of the girl, so Sam just wraps his arms around his older brother as he stumbles out to the Impala with the vic in his trembling grip.
...
...
Mile markers rush up out of the darkness.
Dean's slumped in a wasted heap in the passenger seat, face all white and waxy, the bags under his eyes and the area around his left jugular standing out purple. He's awake and able to follow simple conversations, but beyond that he's essentially useless.
Sam keeps driving, keeps looking every now and then to Dean hasn't fainted, or... floated away, or something.
The girl's laid out in the back; whenever Dean's eyes come into focus (which is rarely), they strain to the side like he's trying to check on her. There's no way he's lucid or strong enough to lean back and do any first aid, so she's certainly critical if not already dead... But no, don't think about that, just drive.
Just drive and keep talking to Dean. Gotta keep Dean awake until they drop off the vic and they can stop and get some fluids. Dean are you awake. Dean wake up. Dean tell me about how Led Zeppelin... uh, 'discovered their sound,' or whatever it's called. Dean - don't stop talking.
Don't go away again.
Sam yanks the gear shift into park at the hospital's emergency entrance ("Hold that thought, Dean, I'll hear about Zepp's first world tour in a sec"), lowers the girl as gently and humanely as he can in front of the automatic doors, prays the whole time that any nurses coming and going won't see what he's doing, won't see his ashen brother practically passed out in the front seat, won't see how banged up he is himself. After all that's done, he gets back in the Impala and floors it out of there. Dean's head lolls as the car jolts forward, but he's coherent enough to ask if the girl's gonna make it, for what seems like the thousandth time.
"Let's hope so," Sam answers plainly. It's out of their hands. He's too busy hypothesizing how many pints Dean lost to the djinn, glossing over parts of WebMD he's stowed away in his brain for safekeeping, wondering if he shouldn't have just dragged Dean into the E.R. along with the victim.
"Take it easy with the driving, Evil Kenevil," Dean slurs, and it comes out sounding disappointingly hollow. Usually Dean's pop culture references get at least a grin out of Sam, but the joke doesn't land this time; it just hangs sadly in the air.
"Just trying to get to a place that has water for you," Sam responds. "How do you feel?"
"Shitty."
"Sure. I mean- do you wanna turn around? Is it 'hospital shitty?'"
"Sammy, not now, please," says Dean, way too politely for Sam's taste, like someone who gets woken up during R.E.M. sleep and wants to get back to whatever cloud they were hanging out on in their dreams.
...
...
They find a glowing twenty-four-hour gas station a few miles up the road.
Sam stops in and grabs the biggest water bottle he can find out of the fridge, a pack of styrofoam cups, ice packs, a fresh tube of Neosporin for Dean's neck (think think think, you've got to be forgetting something), and a couple six-packs of Gatorade. It's the red kind of Gatorade, because when Dean's hurt and fussy he'll only drink the red kind... At least, Sam's pretty sure it's the red kind...
Dean's asleep when he gets back. His eyebrows are all creased up and his lips are cracked and Sam realizes he should've bought Carmex or Chapstick or something.
Sleeping Beauty starts awake at the sound of the car door slamming shut. He blinks owlishly and smacks his chapped lips together with a kind of wandering weariness that Sam hasn't seen in Dean since he was way, way younger. Dean's eye are dull and forlorn, lids weighed down, probably trying to drag his consciousness back into the closest thing his brain can invent to mimic djinn's somewhere-else-ness.
As soon as Dean's alert enough, Sam pours some water into a cup and makes Dean drink the whole thing. ("Dude, we are not leaving this gas station until you get some fluids, no buts"). He wraps an ice pack up in a rag he finds in the glove compartment, puts the pack in Dean's left hand and a Gatorade bottle in his right.
"Hm, the red kind..." Dean muses.
"Yep," says Sam. He pulls his seatbelt on and starts backing the car out of the parking lot. "Ice pack goes on your neck, alright?"
"...Always used to get the blue kind," Dean says, and the tone of voice he uses is so sad and so constricted that Sam can't help but look back at him.
Dean's bloodshot eyes are transfixed drearily on the Gatorade bottle, staring at it like it's an impostor - or a disappointment, at least.
"Can you, uh... drink the red kind this once?" Sam asks, his heart hurting at the possibility that he could've gotten it wrong, that he could've gotten the stupid color of Dean's favorite Gatorade flavor wrong. Sam only wants Dean to like being back here - being back in the real world, out of the djinn's grip - and now Sam's just messing it all up, confusing him, alienating him.
"Can you do it... for me, Dean?"
"What...?" Dean wonders at Sam, eyebrows knit together, nose scrunched up in hazy bewilderment.
A second later, though, he gets it, sees the bottle in his hand again and says, resigned, "Oh... Yeah... Yeah, I'll drink the... Whatever."
Dean takes two swigs and falls asleep again.
Sam gets the bottle out of his hand before he spills on himself, adjusts the ice pack so it's covering his neck as much as possible, and vows to find the nearest motel with a vacancy.
He wonders absently how Dean will feel in the morning about the blood on Baby's upholstery.
...
...
Dean would open his eyes if there weren't something cold and wet covering them.
He flaps a surprisingly jittery hand upwards and yanks the damp washcloth off his forehead, only to realize there's another washcloth draped across his neck right where it meets his collarbone. And there are two more washcloths tucked in his armpits, two more wrapped around his wrists...
Man, whatever flu bug he caught must've come with one helluva fever; wife-Carmen really went all out with her nurse stuff this time. Dean feels a surge of relief... Relief that he's in his bed at home, at home home, with the woman he married, with the woman who takes care of him. Hell, he's even glad that he has a common disease instead of some weird-ass hunting injury. He'll take walking pneumonia over broken ribs any day, so long as he can have tomato-rice soup instead of random drugs pilfered from pharmacies or bought off some dude on the street.
"Hey... uh... hon?" Dean calls out experimentally, taking a shot in the dark because he's not sure what his usual pet name for Carmen is. The very act of shouting makes his head spin. His voice sounds sparse and cracked in his own ears. "Am I... Could I get more of that soup, maybe...?"
"What?" responds a voice Dean knows, a voice Dean knows he knows... And now there's a big hand on his achy shoulder, trying to get him to lie back on the covers. "Dean- just take it easy, okay? You lost a lotta blood..."
And oh, Dean realizes.
It's Sam.
Real Life Sam.
...
...
There's a creak of springs and Dean hoists himself upright on the motel bed in one awkward, jerky motion, like shot out of a faulty cannon. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and plants his feet on the carpet, like he needs something solid under him.
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean croaks distractedly, almost back to his usual self if you discount the ashen skin and limpness in his voice and the vacancy in his eyes. "I know I gave a couple Red Cross donations' worth of the old A-negative back there, but these rags are colder than a bitch."
"Sorry, man," Sam replies with raised eyebrows, nearly chuckling in relief that Dean's recovered enough to give him any sass whatsoever.
"Gatorade?" Sam asks, twisting a new bottle out of the six-pack.
But as soon as he looks up at Dean to offer him the stuff, Sam can see there's something wrong:
Dean's droopy eyes are suddenly gaping blankly at his hands where they lay shaking almost imperceptibly in his lap. His eyebrows are etching a faint crease on his forehead, the hollows of his cheeks are going gray and he's swallowing deliberately... swallowing again...
And oh shit, shit - Sam thanks god for his hunter's reflexes even as he bolts to the corner of the room, grabs the trashcan, and gets it under Dean's mouth a split second before he spews a couple pints of red Gatorade and bile into it.
Sam guesses the puking doesn't last for more than a minute, but it feels like hours. After it's over, the sound of Dean dry heaving pollutes the air in sharp, wrenching waves. And then there's just silence and Dean's ragged, hitching sniffles.
It's all getting very disconcerting for Sam, who's seen his older brother lose plenty of blood in the past without turning jelly-limbed and nauseous. Now that Sam thinks about it, this is the first time since before Stanford that Sam's seen Dean vomit, period.
Dean spits into the trashcan a couple more times and signals that he's done by weakly pushing the plastic container out of the way. Sam gets the message and sets the can down by the side of the bed, keeping it close in case Dean wants to pull a repeat performance. Dean's got his hands on his knees, shaky fingers gripping tight, bone on bone, red-rimmed eyes seeing something inside his own head, panting jagged breaths through his nose, shoulders tense and shuddery.
"Okay - this isn't normal, Dean," Sam says softly, as if Dean needs a reminder.
Dean still isn't looking anywhere in particular.
"Did you call the hospital?" Dean forces the question out over raw tonsils.
"No, not yet," Sam says. "You really have to tell me about this djinn thing, though... now. No offense, but you're a wreck, man, and I need to know why..."
In a low dark voice, Dean asks, completely out of the blue, "They're all dead, right?"
Sam's blood runs cold. He's not sure what he's hearing.
"Just... tell me they're all dead, Sammy. Mom, Dad... Jess..."
"What?" Sam blurts, utterly blindsided. "I mean- yeah, Dean, they're, uh... Yeah. Yes."
There are tears lining Dean's eyes now, and not just the ones left over from the episode with the trashcan. Sam watches Dean shaking, holding back what would probably come out as a gagging sob if he let it - and all of this scares Sam way more than seeing Dean half-conscious and strung up by his wrists.
"And they all died the way they were..." Dean winces heavily and now he's standing and pacing and wringing his hands like he's trying to piece together the very information he doesn't want to know, he can't know. "And they all died how they were supposed... How they..."
Sam's on his feet too now, trying to corner his brother, trying to look him in the eye and reel him back in.
"Dean - what happened back there?" he says, he begs, quietly and firmly and insistently.
"Doesn't matter," Dean murmurs feverishly, and now his teeth are chattering a little. "Just please call the goddamn hospital, Sam, please, please..."
"First tell me what happened."
Dean's eyes focus enough to flash angrily. "Grow up and call the damn hospital," he chokes out.
"Tell me what happened."
"Fuckin' call them."
"Tell me, Dean, please..."
Sam lays one hand on Dean's shoulder, just one, as gently as he's been doing it all night. Dean explodes, jerks himself away, eyes wild and wet and desperate and terrified.
"Nothing fucking happened, Sam, so just shut up about it!" he barks.
There's something so final about how Dean says it that Sam just stands there for a minute, looking Dean up and down, waiting for a tear to fall from Dean's eye, the one tear that always inches its way out, like a little sign of impending catharsis.
The tear doesn't fall. Dean sniffs wetly. Sam inhales, exhales.
"Fine," he breathes.
He picks up his cell and dials 4-1-1. While he's on hold for the next operator, he watches Dean lower himself back down onto the edge of the bed and tosses one of the damp washcloths his way. Dean just holds it in his fists and sighs.
Sam finds out the girl's critical but stable, should pull through. He says thanks and goodnight to the nurse on the other end of the line and tells Dean his findings.
Dean nods. Dean nods again, twisting the rag in on itself, biting down on his lower lip. The tear finally drops; it lands on the meat between Dean's left thumb and forefinger and stays there, quivering.
Slowly, slowly, Sam sits down opposite Dean, on the edge of the room's other bed. The clock on the far wall ticks.
Sam takes a shaky breath and says, barely able to form the words:
"It was Mom, wasn't it. In your dream... she never died."
Dean bows his head. The tear rolls off his hand, onto the floor somewhere.
Sam lifts the unopened Gatorade bottle off the carpet and offers it up. Dean takes it and just holds it, carefully, the way he held the girl at the warehouse.
"Y'know - it's okay, Sammy," Dean says, his voice small and far away. "It's okay that it's the red kind."
Author: earzwideopen
Rating: R
Warnings: Something akin to a panic attack depicted, substantial talk about blood, language
Pairing/Genre: Gen
Word Count: ~2800
Spoilers: spoilers for 2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Summary: Written fashionably late as usual for sparrow_lately's hoodie_time comment fic meme. Dean's not doing so great after is djinn experience - not that Sam needs to know, of course. A gap filler of sorts for the end of 2.20, featuring hurt!woozy!panicky!Dean and awesome!Sammy and hella angst.
Notes: Pardon my brain's occasional and brief breaks from canon, if you happen to spot any. ;)
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked long after sleep,
Will make me sleep again.
- Caliban, The Tempest
Sometime Voices
"It's okay."
Dean murmurs, almost chants, voice slurring more and more by the second, "I've got you... I've got you..."
And he does have her, for a moment at least. The girl is dead weight though, and the last of Dean's adrenaline is trickling out fast. Before Dean can say another word to her, gravity swoops in and nearly wrenches her away.
But Dean's body just isn't gonna let this girl fall; his knees buckle and he crumples down with her, down into the muck of the warehouse floor, cradling her like she's made of glass.
Sam, watching their entwined dive like he's rubbernecking at a car crash, could swear he sees a tear fall from Dean's face onto the girl's dirt-streaked chest. Or maybe it's a drop of blood from Dean's neck, from the vein the djinn's needle gouged out.
"Dean," Sam says finally, choking now on the name he's called out countless times in his life, "c'mon man. We gotta get her outta here. Hell- we gotta get you outta here. Can you stand...? You know what- never mind, just stay put and I'll pull the car up."
No response from Dean - unless the exhausted way he bows his head toward the girl's body can be considered a response.
At any rate, Sam always knows exactly how bad Dean is the minute he gives up control of Baby.
This is one of those cases where Sam wants to call 9-1-1 for the vic and let Dean stretch out in the backseat of the Impala while he deals with the paramedics - just to give Dean's body some down time. Above all, Sam never, ever wants to push Dean when he's down for the count, never wants to tell him to "man up" the way Dad used to... But right now, any paramedics that arrive on the scene are gonna involve the cops, no questions asked. Mostly-dead girl, all-the-way dead monster, crazy warehouse blood bank, ropes hanging from the ceiling, the whole nine yards. They don't have the luxury of sticking around and seeking outside help.
Sam leaves the Impala running inches from the warehouse door. Dean will read him the riot act for leaving the keys in the ignition while the car's unattended, but that's hanging way off the bottom of Sam's priority list right now.
When Sam gets back into the warehouse, Dean's curled completely around the girl and showing no signs of letting go.
Sam approaches Dean, shakes him gingerly by the shoulder, trying not to alarm him.
"Mmph," Dean breathes in response, like he doesn't have the time or energy for anything but holding this broken young woman in his arms.
"Hey, I've got the car parked outside," Sam says, trying to squeeze as much stability and patience in his voice as he can muster. "Think you can help get her in the backseat?"
Dean doesn't say anything. He lets Sam's hands get a good grip under his armpits. Once Dean finds some footing, Sam drags the both of them off the ground. Dean simply won't let go of the girl, so Sam just wraps his arms around his older brother as he stumbles out to the Impala with the vic in his trembling grip.
...
...
Mile markers rush up out of the darkness.
Dean's slumped in a wasted heap in the passenger seat, face all white and waxy, the bags under his eyes and the area around his left jugular standing out purple. He's awake and able to follow simple conversations, but beyond that he's essentially useless.
Sam keeps driving, keeps looking every now and then to Dean hasn't fainted, or... floated away, or something.
The girl's laid out in the back; whenever Dean's eyes come into focus (which is rarely), they strain to the side like he's trying to check on her. There's no way he's lucid or strong enough to lean back and do any first aid, so she's certainly critical if not already dead... But no, don't think about that, just drive.
Just drive and keep talking to Dean. Gotta keep Dean awake until they drop off the vic and they can stop and get some fluids. Dean are you awake. Dean wake up. Dean tell me about how Led Zeppelin... uh, 'discovered their sound,' or whatever it's called. Dean - don't stop talking.
Don't go away again.
Sam yanks the gear shift into park at the hospital's emergency entrance ("Hold that thought, Dean, I'll hear about Zepp's first world tour in a sec"), lowers the girl as gently and humanely as he can in front of the automatic doors, prays the whole time that any nurses coming and going won't see what he's doing, won't see his ashen brother practically passed out in the front seat, won't see how banged up he is himself. After all that's done, he gets back in the Impala and floors it out of there. Dean's head lolls as the car jolts forward, but he's coherent enough to ask if the girl's gonna make it, for what seems like the thousandth time.
"Let's hope so," Sam answers plainly. It's out of their hands. He's too busy hypothesizing how many pints Dean lost to the djinn, glossing over parts of WebMD he's stowed away in his brain for safekeeping, wondering if he shouldn't have just dragged Dean into the E.R. along with the victim.
"Take it easy with the driving, Evil Kenevil," Dean slurs, and it comes out sounding disappointingly hollow. Usually Dean's pop culture references get at least a grin out of Sam, but the joke doesn't land this time; it just hangs sadly in the air.
"Just trying to get to a place that has water for you," Sam responds. "How do you feel?"
"Shitty."
"Sure. I mean- do you wanna turn around? Is it 'hospital shitty?'"
"Sammy, not now, please," says Dean, way too politely for Sam's taste, like someone who gets woken up during R.E.M. sleep and wants to get back to whatever cloud they were hanging out on in their dreams.
...
...
They find a glowing twenty-four-hour gas station a few miles up the road.
Sam stops in and grabs the biggest water bottle he can find out of the fridge, a pack of styrofoam cups, ice packs, a fresh tube of Neosporin for Dean's neck (think think think, you've got to be forgetting something), and a couple six-packs of Gatorade. It's the red kind of Gatorade, because when Dean's hurt and fussy he'll only drink the red kind... At least, Sam's pretty sure it's the red kind...
Dean's asleep when he gets back. His eyebrows are all creased up and his lips are cracked and Sam realizes he should've bought Carmex or Chapstick or something.
Sleeping Beauty starts awake at the sound of the car door slamming shut. He blinks owlishly and smacks his chapped lips together with a kind of wandering weariness that Sam hasn't seen in Dean since he was way, way younger. Dean's eye are dull and forlorn, lids weighed down, probably trying to drag his consciousness back into the closest thing his brain can invent to mimic djinn's somewhere-else-ness.
As soon as Dean's alert enough, Sam pours some water into a cup and makes Dean drink the whole thing. ("Dude, we are not leaving this gas station until you get some fluids, no buts"). He wraps an ice pack up in a rag he finds in the glove compartment, puts the pack in Dean's left hand and a Gatorade bottle in his right.
"Hm, the red kind..." Dean muses.
"Yep," says Sam. He pulls his seatbelt on and starts backing the car out of the parking lot. "Ice pack goes on your neck, alright?"
"...Always used to get the blue kind," Dean says, and the tone of voice he uses is so sad and so constricted that Sam can't help but look back at him.
Dean's bloodshot eyes are transfixed drearily on the Gatorade bottle, staring at it like it's an impostor - or a disappointment, at least.
"Can you, uh... drink the red kind this once?" Sam asks, his heart hurting at the possibility that he could've gotten it wrong, that he could've gotten the stupid color of Dean's favorite Gatorade flavor wrong. Sam only wants Dean to like being back here - being back in the real world, out of the djinn's grip - and now Sam's just messing it all up, confusing him, alienating him.
"Can you do it... for me, Dean?"
"What...?" Dean wonders at Sam, eyebrows knit together, nose scrunched up in hazy bewilderment.
A second later, though, he gets it, sees the bottle in his hand again and says, resigned, "Oh... Yeah... Yeah, I'll drink the... Whatever."
Dean takes two swigs and falls asleep again.
Sam gets the bottle out of his hand before he spills on himself, adjusts the ice pack so it's covering his neck as much as possible, and vows to find the nearest motel with a vacancy.
He wonders absently how Dean will feel in the morning about the blood on Baby's upholstery.
...
...
Dean would open his eyes if there weren't something cold and wet covering them.
He flaps a surprisingly jittery hand upwards and yanks the damp washcloth off his forehead, only to realize there's another washcloth draped across his neck right where it meets his collarbone. And there are two more washcloths tucked in his armpits, two more wrapped around his wrists...
Man, whatever flu bug he caught must've come with one helluva fever; wife-Carmen really went all out with her nurse stuff this time. Dean feels a surge of relief... Relief that he's in his bed at home, at home home, with the woman he married, with the woman who takes care of him. Hell, he's even glad that he has a common disease instead of some weird-ass hunting injury. He'll take walking pneumonia over broken ribs any day, so long as he can have tomato-rice soup instead of random drugs pilfered from pharmacies or bought off some dude on the street.
"Hey... uh... hon?" Dean calls out experimentally, taking a shot in the dark because he's not sure what his usual pet name for Carmen is. The very act of shouting makes his head spin. His voice sounds sparse and cracked in his own ears. "Am I... Could I get more of that soup, maybe...?"
"What?" responds a voice Dean knows, a voice Dean knows he knows... And now there's a big hand on his achy shoulder, trying to get him to lie back on the covers. "Dean- just take it easy, okay? You lost a lotta blood..."
And oh, Dean realizes.
It's Sam.
Real Life Sam.
...
...
There's a creak of springs and Dean hoists himself upright on the motel bed in one awkward, jerky motion, like shot out of a faulty cannon. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and plants his feet on the carpet, like he needs something solid under him.
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean croaks distractedly, almost back to his usual self if you discount the ashen skin and limpness in his voice and the vacancy in his eyes. "I know I gave a couple Red Cross donations' worth of the old A-negative back there, but these rags are colder than a bitch."
"Sorry, man," Sam replies with raised eyebrows, nearly chuckling in relief that Dean's recovered enough to give him any sass whatsoever.
"Gatorade?" Sam asks, twisting a new bottle out of the six-pack.
But as soon as he looks up at Dean to offer him the stuff, Sam can see there's something wrong:
Dean's droopy eyes are suddenly gaping blankly at his hands where they lay shaking almost imperceptibly in his lap. His eyebrows are etching a faint crease on his forehead, the hollows of his cheeks are going gray and he's swallowing deliberately... swallowing again...
And oh shit, shit - Sam thanks god for his hunter's reflexes even as he bolts to the corner of the room, grabs the trashcan, and gets it under Dean's mouth a split second before he spews a couple pints of red Gatorade and bile into it.
Sam guesses the puking doesn't last for more than a minute, but it feels like hours. After it's over, the sound of Dean dry heaving pollutes the air in sharp, wrenching waves. And then there's just silence and Dean's ragged, hitching sniffles.
It's all getting very disconcerting for Sam, who's seen his older brother lose plenty of blood in the past without turning jelly-limbed and nauseous. Now that Sam thinks about it, this is the first time since before Stanford that Sam's seen Dean vomit, period.
Dean spits into the trashcan a couple more times and signals that he's done by weakly pushing the plastic container out of the way. Sam gets the message and sets the can down by the side of the bed, keeping it close in case Dean wants to pull a repeat performance. Dean's got his hands on his knees, shaky fingers gripping tight, bone on bone, red-rimmed eyes seeing something inside his own head, panting jagged breaths through his nose, shoulders tense and shuddery.
"Okay - this isn't normal, Dean," Sam says softly, as if Dean needs a reminder.
Dean still isn't looking anywhere in particular.
"Did you call the hospital?" Dean forces the question out over raw tonsils.
"No, not yet," Sam says. "You really have to tell me about this djinn thing, though... now. No offense, but you're a wreck, man, and I need to know why..."
In a low dark voice, Dean asks, completely out of the blue, "They're all dead, right?"
Sam's blood runs cold. He's not sure what he's hearing.
"Just... tell me they're all dead, Sammy. Mom, Dad... Jess..."
"What?" Sam blurts, utterly blindsided. "I mean- yeah, Dean, they're, uh... Yeah. Yes."
There are tears lining Dean's eyes now, and not just the ones left over from the episode with the trashcan. Sam watches Dean shaking, holding back what would probably come out as a gagging sob if he let it - and all of this scares Sam way more than seeing Dean half-conscious and strung up by his wrists.
"And they all died the way they were..." Dean winces heavily and now he's standing and pacing and wringing his hands like he's trying to piece together the very information he doesn't want to know, he can't know. "And they all died how they were supposed... How they..."
Sam's on his feet too now, trying to corner his brother, trying to look him in the eye and reel him back in.
"Dean - what happened back there?" he says, he begs, quietly and firmly and insistently.
"Doesn't matter," Dean murmurs feverishly, and now his teeth are chattering a little. "Just please call the goddamn hospital, Sam, please, please..."
"First tell me what happened."
Dean's eyes focus enough to flash angrily. "Grow up and call the damn hospital," he chokes out.
"Tell me what happened."
"Fuckin' call them."
"Tell me, Dean, please..."
Sam lays one hand on Dean's shoulder, just one, as gently as he's been doing it all night. Dean explodes, jerks himself away, eyes wild and wet and desperate and terrified.
"Nothing fucking happened, Sam, so just shut up about it!" he barks.
There's something so final about how Dean says it that Sam just stands there for a minute, looking Dean up and down, waiting for a tear to fall from Dean's eye, the one tear that always inches its way out, like a little sign of impending catharsis.
The tear doesn't fall. Dean sniffs wetly. Sam inhales, exhales.
"Fine," he breathes.
He picks up his cell and dials 4-1-1. While he's on hold for the next operator, he watches Dean lower himself back down onto the edge of the bed and tosses one of the damp washcloths his way. Dean just holds it in his fists and sighs.
Sam finds out the girl's critical but stable, should pull through. He says thanks and goodnight to the nurse on the other end of the line and tells Dean his findings.
Dean nods. Dean nods again, twisting the rag in on itself, biting down on his lower lip. The tear finally drops; it lands on the meat between Dean's left thumb and forefinger and stays there, quivering.
Slowly, slowly, Sam sits down opposite Dean, on the edge of the room's other bed. The clock on the far wall ticks.
Sam takes a shaky breath and says, barely able to form the words:
"It was Mom, wasn't it. In your dream... she never died."
Dean bows his head. The tear rolls off his hand, onto the floor somewhere.
Sam lifts the unopened Gatorade bottle off the carpet and offers it up. Dean takes it and just holds it, carefully, the way he held the girl at the warehouse.
"Y'know - it's okay, Sammy," Dean says, his voice small and far away. "It's okay that it's the red kind."