Slow Me Down 2/2, for leah_elisabeth
Back to Part 1
Sam hadn’t known what to expect. When he had to go to the doctor, Dean always distracted him from the needle and made him laugh, or made him mad, so he never felt the needle going in. But Dean wasn’t distracting him this time. He held Sam’s hand, which helped, but he didn’t tease Sam about being a girl and maybe the doctor should check. Maybe they got it wrong all these years.
Mr. Cas wasn’t a doctor, though, he was an angel, so maybe that was why.
He swallowed and squeezed this Dean’s hand and wished his Dean was here.
But that wasn’t what he was supposed to wish. He was supposed to wish things were back to normal, and he clenched the coin tighter in his other hand, thinking please, please, please--
Then the needle slid into his neck, sharp and big, and it didn’t just sting, it bit--hard--and kept biting, pushing hard and sharp and unrelenting into his head, filling it up until there was no room for anything else. Tears flooded his eyes and collected in his throat, and it burned. It burned, and it burned, and it burned, and Sam wanted to say stop, and he wanted to say, it hurts, and he wanted to say, Dean, but it wasn’t his Dean. I don’t want to do this anymore, Dean.
His Dean would’ve crawled up on the chair-bed with him and held Sam against him. His Dean would’ve rubbed his belly and whispered in his ear.
“Focus on your wish, Sam.”
But he couldn’t. The pain grew and grew and pushed it out, swallowed it up, swallowed him up, and he was--
--burning, flames licking at his toes, at his hands, jumping up his arms and down his throat; he was--
--sunk deep into the water, twisted and turned, and his lungs burned and burned and burned, and he was drowning, he was--
--stuck, pinned, someone pressed tight up against his back, hot breath rushing past his ear; a spike sunk into his chest, into his heart, eating into him like acid, and he couldn’t get away, couldn’t move, the fire consuming him--
--Dean!--
--and he was big, was dying, was looking through somebody else’s eyes. How many people are you going to kill, Sam? Was pressing his hand to someone’s head, someone smaller, and light flashed, burned, danced behind their eyes, left them burned black and red, and Sam--
I can’t!
--gasped.
“Dammit, Cas, Dean growled, hands pressed painfully tight across his shoulders. “Get back here. We’re not done.”
“It’s not working, Dean,” Mr. Cas said, his voice frustrated but distant, and Sam realized he couldn’t feel the angel’s hand on his head anymore. He turned his head. “I told you, Sam has to want to--”
“He does!”
“Does he? Did you even tell him the truth, Dean? You can’t force him to make a wish just because you’ve decided it’s what’s best.”
Dean’s face was white and tight, his eyes bright and furious, and Sam made himself very still. “That’s not what this is,” his brother said. He should have been asking if Sam was ok, if he needed anything, if he could hear him.
Sam could, but it felt like his head was floating, light and dizzying, his body somewhere far down below.
“There’s something going on with you, Dean,” Mr. Cas was saying. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that something’s different--”
“It’s none of your business,” Dean growled, his voice still terrible, his hands still hard. “You’re here to heal Sam. That’s it.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“Well, you thought wrong.”
Wrong. Dean was wrong. “Dean?”
There was a stranger staring down at him. He wore Dean’s eyes and used Dean’s hands, but Sam didn’t know him. Weakly, Sam started struggling. “Let me go,” he demanded.
“No,” not-Dean said. “Sam, stop. We still have to undo the wish.”
“I don’t want to!” Which wasn’t true, he wanted his Dean now more than ever, but he kept struggling, trying to get away.
“Let him go, Dean,” Mr. Cas said, Sam had had always liked Mr. Cas. “It won’t work if he isn’t willing.”
“The hell it won’t!”
“He has to make the wish, Dean,” Mr. Cas growled, suddenly closer, not touching, but close. “If you try to force this, you’re going to get Sam killed.”
Sam struggled hard, nearly bucking Dean off, and Dean growled. Cas snapped, “Dean!”
And Dean snapped back: “So what?”
Sam stopped moving. Dean washed a hand over his mouth, let go off Sam. Sam rolled off the chair-bed toward Mr. Cas. Dean watched him, eyes wide, and slowly backed further away. His Dean would have ripped the lungs out of anyone who wanted to him.
“I-I, I didn’t mean that. Sam. . . .”
Sam slipped behind Cas. “You’re not my brother,” he told the imposter. “You’re not my brother.”
The fake Dean backed further away, every time he repeated, so he kept saying it until Mr. Cas put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sam--” the angel said, but Sam twisted away. “He’s not my brother!”
He ran. Dean had longer legs than him and could always catch him, even if Sam got a head-start, but he ran anyway. Up the stairs and down the hall and into the room Mr. Cas had said was his. His chest felt tight and he almost wished the fake Dean would run after him, would catch him up in his arms and hold him close and tell him he was wrong, he’d been confused, he was fine. But he pushed the door closed behind him and turned the lock and backed into the corner, with his legs drawn up to his chest, and buried his face in his knees.
Dean hadn’t caught him. He didn’t want to cry over this fake Dean, but hot tears slipped out anyway, kept slipping out until the storm in his chest settled down, and the quiet in the room moved into his head. He stayed where he was while his breath slowed and his cheeks dried and a plan formed in his head.
Then he pushed to his feet.
#
It was quiet when Sam stuck his head out of his bedroom door. He looked both ways, but couldn’t see either Mr. Cas or the fake Dean, and he couldn’t hear them. So he pulled the bag he’d filled with supplies over his head, closed the door behind him, and crept down the hall.
He kept expecting someone to round the corner or come up behind him and demand to know what he was doing. Dean--his Dean--had always known when he was about to do something he wasn’t supposed to, and he wasn’t supposed to go out without Dean or Dad. But Dean and Dad weren’t here, so he needed to find them.
He made sure the heavy front door latched behind him, pulling it slowly and keeping the knob twisted so it would close quietly, like Dean--his Dean--had taught him.
Everything looked so much bigger when he turned around, swallowed up by the dark, without Dean there to make it feel safe. Part of him wanted to go back inside. Mr. Cas was nice, if weird, and Sam didn’t think he’d hurt him. But he wasn’t Dean. Sam needed to find Dean, his Dean, the real Dean, needed to make sure he was ok, and make sure that Dean knew he was ok. With that thought, he started walking.
It took a long time to get to the bus stop, and even longer for the bus to come. Long enough that the sun was peaking over the horizon. And Sam messed up the money for his fare, because he couldn’t find any quarters, but when the bus pulled away, he was on it.
#
Sam zoned out watching the scenery pass by. There were buildings and trees, some bright colors or cool designs, but mostly it just looked like city and farm, and that stopped being interested pretty quick when all you could do was look at it. At some point, the hum of the engine, the murmur of the people lulled him to sleep. Reminded him of cruising along with Dad and Dean in the Impala, and he settled in feeling warm, the rumble of the tired familiar over asphalt.
Then he dreamed that a boat took him to Dean. It was small and white and rocked a lot, but it dropped him right in front of the green door where Dean was waiting to pull him into a hug. His brother smelled like dirty socks and BO, but that was ok because he told Sam, I’m never letting you go again, and held on tight forever.
And then a giant coin fell on them and Dean let go to push it away. The coin had a serpent on it, bent like it was walking on its knees, and the sun caught it, so it glinted bright in Sam’s eyes, even though they were inside. When it was gone, Dean looked like fake Dean, still smiling but sad and hurt.
“I’ll do it alone,” he said. “I have to protect you, Sammy.”
Sam didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but he heard himself say, “Go. I’m not going to stop you,” and it hurt, even though a part of Sam remembered he’d been the one to walk away this time, and Sam really wanted to say, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Don’t go, Dean, but his mouth wouldn’t work and Dean walked away, got swallowed up.
He woke to a rough hand shaking his shoulder, the smell of dirty socks following him up. He blinked blearily, realizing with shock that he was still on the bus and--his stomach dropped--no one else was on with him, except the bus driver, the engine quiet. He turned quickly to the window, but they were parked, and he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He didn’t know where he was.
“Time to go, kid,” the bus driver said, stepping back when Sam focused on him, fumbled his bag over his shoulder. The bus driver jerked his head toward the front. “Your dad’s waiting for you.”
Dad! Sam’s heart leapt, and he moved faster, stumbling over his own feet trying to get the bag untwisted and not run into the seats and get off the bus. Best yet, if Dad was here, Dean would be, too, and he really wanted to give his big brother a hug. His dream had made his stomach feel funny.
But it wasn’t Dad waiting when Sam got off the bus. It was the fake Dean, and Mr. Cas, waiting as Sam hesitated at the foot of the stairs. For a moment, he thought about making a scene. He could tell the bus driver that the man wasn’t his father, that he didn’t know either of them, and he would probably take Sam away and have him call his father.
But he might also call the cops, and even if the fake Dean wasn’t his Dean, Sam still knew he was a Dean, and didn’t actually want to get him in trouble. He just wanted to go home.
He searched Dean’s face, but he didn’t look mad so much as sad, his eyes red like he’d been crying, so he went to his not-brother, and when Dean held out his hand, Sam took it. He was too big to need to hold hands to cross the street, but it felt better to hold Dean’s hand.
Settled a little of the feeling his dream had left in his tummy.
He chewed his lip while they passed bus after bus. “Are you mad?”
“I’m not mad.” He sounded a little mad. Dad would’ve been mad, and he thought his Dean would’ve been, too, if Sam had left either of them in the middle of the night.
“Even though I ran away?” he asked.
For a moment, Dean didn’t answer, then he said, “I understand why you did it.”
If that was true, Sam really didn’t understand why Dean wasn’t mad. He tried to think about what it would’ve been like if Dean had told him Sam wasn’t his brother and run away and--he scrunched his nose. He couldn’t really picture it, but it still didn’t feel good.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” he said, because he needed to say something to make the bad feeling go away.
Dean huffed. “Naw, you weren’t exactly wrong.” His smile was tight and unhappy and pale when he looked down at Sam’s shocked face. “You just weren’t exactly right, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain in a minute.”
He opened the passenger door and let Sam crawl into the front seat, surprised when Mr. Cas climbed into the back. Neither said anything as Dean started the car, so Sam didn’t, either, but it had been more than a minute. None of the streets looked familiar, so Sam tried to pay attention to where they were going.
His stomach grumbled, reminding him he’d missed breakfast. And--he squinted up at the sun--maybe lunch.
“Dean?” he asked, after a silent debate his stomach won. His maybe-not-brother grunted. “I’m hungry.”
“We’ll stop in a minute.”
Dean was collecting a lot of minutes.
But they did stop just a few minutes later, only it wasn’t at a diner or fast food place. With some surprise, Sam realized they were back at the park. Dean shifted the car in park and cut the engine, and Mr. Cas climbed out, but Dean stayed where he was, staring out the windshield and draping his wrists over the steering wheel.
It made him antsy. He didn’t really remember Dean being quiet.
Finally, Dean sighed. “You know, every time I think our lives can’t get any more fucked up, something like this happens, and I just--” He gestured, like he was throwing something away, and Sam’s brow furrowed in confusion.
He twisted around so he was facing Dean. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re not the reason I’m a grown-up, Sam. I’m exactly as old as I’m supposed to be. You, though--” He fixed Sam with a serious face that made it hard to breathe. “I don’t know what you wished for, dude, but you were thirty-one when I left, and then Cas called me and you--were you.”
Four, Sam thought, instead of thirty-one. He didn’t know what to think about that. He frowned. Stretched out his hands. He definitely didn’t feel thirty-one.
“And with everything that’s going down--with the angels and the demons, and all the enemies we’ve made--” Sam’s eyes were wide as Dean washed a hand down his face, glanced at his little brother. “I promised to keep you safe, Sam, and I’ve done a crappy job of it lately, I know, and Cas--but I can’t--you can’t protect yourself like this. You don’t remember what you need to know to protect yourself from--everything--and you don’t have enough time to learn it. I can’t let you die, Sammy. I can’t. But I don’t know how to protect you right now. The only thing I could think of was to get you back to normal.” He looked at Sam, dark-eyed and wary, a question in the tilt of his head, his eyes. All right?
Sam didn’t know if it was. Or even if he could do what Dean wanted, but he remembered Dean babbling when he was nervous, and that was right. Sam believed him, and he knew Dean was scared. He wanted to try. “Ok,” he said.
Which was when Dean straightened, focused on something past Sam, and sort of--stilled. “Stay in the car, Sam,” he ordered, almost like back at the Bunker. “Doesn’t matter what you see or hear, you stay here. Got it?”
He fixed Sam with a hard look, waited for Sam’s agreement, then shot out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He pulled something out of his jacket as he walked, something long and shiny that he quickly tucked against his side. It looked kind of like a stake, and Sam wondered if that meant Dean was going to kill vampires. If vampires were real.
He scrambled up to his knees, pressing closer against the glass so he could see better. The guys circling Mr. Cas didn’t look like vampires. They looked like normal people, but they weren’t smiling, and they all had those silver stakes, not even hiding them like Dean. And there were six of them.
Apprehension churning his stomach, Sam wished he was out there. Six against two wasn’t very good odds. Six against three wasn’t good odds, either, not when you were the three, but it was better than when you were the two. But he couldn’t. Even if he hadn’t promised Dean he’d stay in the car, Sam was only four. He didn’t know how to fight. Dad said he was going to teach him, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
The middle one’s mouth moved and Sam shuffled closer to the open window, straining his ears to hear.
“--chose them over your brothers. You then compounded your transgression, first, by betraying Michael to Lucifer.”
“Michael served his own agenda, not Father’s,” Castiel interjected.
“Then, by slaughtering all who stood against you. And, now, you have conspired with Metatron--”
“I was misled by Metatron.”
“As you were misled by Crowley?”
Sam couldn’t see Mr. Cas’s face, but his shoulders rounded against the hit. Dean, who had stopped on the edge of the conflict, started making his way closer.
“Truly, I would be doing the world a favor.”
“You know what else would do the world a favor?” Dean asked, coming up level with Cas, spaced he was closer to one of the bad guys. “Falling on your sword.”
“Stay out of this, Winchester. This is your free pass. Walk away now, and we won’t kill you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Dean,” Mr. Cas protested softly. “This isn’t your fight.”
“Shut up, Cas.”
“Where’s the other Winchester,” a blond girl asked, head cocked as her eyes scanned the area around them. Sam shrunk back against the seat. “Don’t tell me: trouble in paradise, Dean?”
“Leave the Winchesters out of this,” Mr. Cas said over whatever Dean had been about to say. “Your quarrel is with me.”
“Dean Winchester had his chance to walk away,” the middle guy--the leader--said. “Now, you’re both dead.”
Everything happened fast, after that. The leader swung at Mr. Cas with the silver stake, and everyone started moving, too fast to track. Heart in his throat, Sam saw Cas bend away from a strike, do something that sent one of the stakes flying, then bend away again and bury the stake in the blond guy’s chest.
The guy lit up from the inside, bright white light flashing under his skin, escaping out his eyes and mouth, and then--for one moment, Sam could have sworn he saw a pair of wings--and then the light flared one last time and exploded--
It would’ve been really cool, except the angel was dead, dropping boneless to the ground when Mr. Cas pulled back. That was what they were trying to do to Dean.
Then one of the bad guys smashed Mr. Cas in the mouth, and the girl Dean had been fighting sent him flying. Dean landed hard and rolled to his feet, staying bent over with his hand at his stomach, and with another angel coming for him.
Sam didn’t really register the intent to move, but his hand closed on the door release and pulled.
Dean straightened with the angel’s tug, burying the stake in his chest. Sam breathed a sigh of relief, then caught sight of the girl, of the sneer on her face. “You’re going to pay for that, ape.”
“Bring it, bitch,” Dean spat.
Sam didn’t want her to bring it.
Another angel flashed, and Sam tore his gaze away to make sure it wasn’t Mr. Cas. It wasn’t, but he didn’t pull away fast enough and the tip of one of the stakes drew a glowing line up his arm before Mr. Cas yanked it close and stabbed. The third angel flashed out.
That left two, which was better odds.
Then the leader grabbed Mr. Cas from behind, stake right up under his chin like a knife, forcing Mr. Cas’s head back.
Sam swung his gaze back to Dean, hoping his brother could help. And it looked like he could: he swung the stake at the girl, who blocked with her own stake, then he ducked a punch aimed at him and got her in the face with his own. She staggered back, letting Dean get another punch and then a cut to her arm.
She cried out, folding over her arm, and Dean grabbed her shoulder, ready to push her up and finish it, and Sam saw in a flash what would happen instead. He’d pushed the door open before the thought consciously registered.
“No!” he gasped, dashing forward with no real thought beyond getting to Dean.
It didn’t help.
The stake sunk into Dean’s chest, and his brother stiffened, body held rigid before he staggered back, sunk to the ground. Wide, horrified eyes latched onto Sam. He exhaled Sam’s name, blood speckling his lips, and Sam froze.
Freezing didn’t help Dean, but the girl was between Sam and the nearest stake, and getting back in the car wouldn’t help, either.
“Well, well,” the girl said, pleased and taunting. “The other Winchester.”
“Leave him alone, Muriel. He’s an innocent.” Mr. Cas.
Muriel looked down her nose at Sam, stalking slowly closer. “He’s a Winchester,” she retorted. Dean’s blood colored her stake. She crouched in front of Sam-“Muriel, no!” falling on deaf ears--and caressed Sam’s cheek with the tip of the blade, painting it red. She smiled sweetly. “Your mother should have drowned you in the bathtub when you were born.”
She raised the stake.
He could hear scuffling from where Mr. Cas had been, and he hoped the angel wasn’t dead. He was nice.
He couldn’t see Dean, and he really wanted to. He wanted to ask if dying hurt. He wanted to hold on to Dean and never let go.
He wanted a stake, and to be big and strong, so he could kill Muriel like she’d killed Dean. To stop Dean from dying.
The stake came down and Sam threw his arm up, but the pain never came. Sam squinted his eyes open and saw the bright white light trying to escape her eyes and mouth. It pulsed brightest, flared, and was gone, and Muriel sank to the ground. Dean, standing right behind her, swayed, his chin painted red with blood.
“Sam,” he rasped. “You okay?” He stumbled.
Sam rushed forward, leaning hard into his brother’s leg to try to keep him upright. “I’m ok.”
Dean’s hand landed heavily on Sam’s back, and Sam knew he was going down, knew he wasn’t going to be enough to help his brother, and then Mr. Cas was there, bracing Dean from the other side.
“I’ve got him,” the angel said. “Help me set him against the car.”
“We need to call 9-1-1,” he argued, helping Mr. Cas get Dean against the car anyway. He’d be more comfortable there.
“This will be faster.” Sam didn’t have time to ask, before Mr. Cas lightly touched his hand over Dean’s chest. It felt like static electricity, like being dipped in water, like--magic, only Sam wasn’t sure how he felt anything at all, because it didn’t touch his skin.
Then Dean drew a deep breath, and another, exhaling hard and not bringing up more blood. Mr. Cas pulled back, and helped Dean sit up straighter. “Thanks, Cas,” his brother said, his voice no longer so raspy.
“I couldn’t fix it all,” Mr. Cas cautioned gravely, flexing his injured arm. “But it should do for now.”
“Feels good as new.”
Sam didn’t believe it. He lunged for the hem of Dean’s shirt, ignoring his brother’s startled “Hey, whoa,” especially since Dean didn’t push him back. The skin was red and sunken where the stake had gone through, but it was closed. Sam reached out to trace the edges of the wound in a daze.
Dean caught his hand, pressed it solidly against the scar and didn’t flinch. “I’m ok,” he said. Sam nodded, feeling his eyes belatedly flood with tears, and he ducked his head. Dean put his hand on Sam’s head, held him close for several breaths, Sam listening to his heartbeat, then he ruffled Sam’s hair. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this park.”
#
Dean went to bed when they got back to the Bunker. Sam hovered in the doorway, not willing to disturb his brother’s sleep, but equally unable to trust that he wouldn’t disappear if Sam let him out of his sight.
Dean had almost died because of Sam. Because Sam had run away. Because Sam had made himself four instead of someone big who was able to help protect Dean the way Dean protected him.
“Dean will be alright, Sam,” Mr. Cas said, appearing suddenly behind him, even if he had to walk now that the angels had been cast out of heaven. He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder the way Dean did. “He’s just tired, now. When he wakes, he will be good as new.”
“I know.” It just didn’t seem real. He twisted to look up at the angel. “Mr. Cas? Was Dean there when I made my wish?”
Mr. Cas’s eyebrows went up. “No,” he said. “Dean wasn’t there.”
Sam nodded. He chewed his lip as he looked at Dean, making up his mind, then he turned back to Mr. Cas. “Can we do it now?”
“Do what now?”
“Fix my wish.”
“But--” Mr. Cas also looked to Dean, then knelt so he could look straight into Sam’s face. “Your brother would want to be there.”
“I know.” But Dean and Cas had said it needed to be the same as the first time. “I want to do it now.”
“Are you sure?”
He was.
#
That certainty was hard to hold onto when he walked into the infirmary the second time. The place was just as big and scary as he remembered, and this time he knew what was going to happen. How much it would hurt.
And Dean wasn’t there. Not even the wrong Dean.
Clenching his hands into fists, he let Mr. Cas help him up onto the chair. It was big and uncomfortable, padded but hard, and cold, and he shivered.
“We don’t have have to do this now,” Mr. Cas said. He had the syringe, the Grace inside it seeming to pulse, bright and pure, searing white.
Sam sucked air through his nose and forced his jaw to unlock. “I want to.”
Mr. Cas nodded, so Sam laid back, forced his legs to straighten, and put his arms at his side. He tried to imagine being big enough that his feet hung over the bottom, big enough that he didn’t have to stretch to hold onto the sides. He wanted that. Wanted to be able to help Dean when he hunted. Wanted to not feel helpless.
Dean said that was how things were supposed to be.
“Are you ready, Sam?”
He wasn’t going to be able to relax, not knowing how much it was going to hurt, so he locked his muscles tight, instead. Nodded.
I wish everything was back to normal. Even if it meant that Dean was gone. I wish everything was back to normal. He’d be big enough to track Dean down then. I wish everything was back to normal. And he’d know how to fight. He could make things right.
I wish everything was back to normal.
The bite of the needle was sharp, bright, piercing. I wish--It grew the further it traveled, becoming a spike, an ice pick, a torch. Burning as it went until it was the only thing he could feel. --normal.
And then it got worse, ratcheting up like the radio dial turned to the limit, like the high note that broke glass, like his head was being filled with cement, with acid with--
Normal
--with the sun, with--
Wish
--lightening.
Dean
His brother stood before him, the gentle wash of waves like static in his ears, eating at his head. He felt burned out, exhausted, rode hard and put up wet, and Dean looked devastated, like dad dead and Sam gone and Hell coming. He said, “I’m poison, Sam. And I’m not going to drag anyone else down with me.”
The pier flashed photo-negative, white-black on black-white, and then Sam was sucked back out of his head into darkness.
“Sam.”
There was a hand on his forehead, warm and sweaty and too small to be Dean’s. His eyelids fluttered, trying to open. “Cas?”
“I’m here.”
Where’s here? His eyes rolled in his head. Breathing felt like swimming through glass. His head felt thick and heavy, and he licked dry lips with a dry tongue, tried to force words past them. “Did it work?”
“It worked.” He thought Cas stroked his hair back from his face, but he wasn’t sure, couldn’t seem to make his eyes focus, or his nerves transmit proper signals, darkness slipping back around him.
Dean?
“Get some sleep, Sam.”
#
Sam woke up in his bedroom, a foot pressed into his hip mildly painful. He dropped his hand atop it automatically, drawing a deep breath and stretching, trying to wake up his body and mind, and decided he felt better than his vague memory suggested he had. So, only slightly tenderized.
“Cas said you’d feel like crap for awhile still, between the post-Trial damage and the trauma of shoving Gadreel’s Grace back into your noggin, or wherever, but that you’d eventually be good as new.” Dean paused, and Sam found the energy to turn his head.
His brother looked rough, a couple days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, his skin pale, his eyes bloodshot. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t much different than the last time he’d seen Dean, before. “How long have I been out?”
Dean shrugged, careless. “ ‘Bout a day.”
Sam quirked a disbelieving eyebrow. Not so much because he thought Dean was lying as it didn’t feel like it’d been that long.
“Maybe two. Man, I don’t know. I woke up from getting stabbed to find out my kid brother volunteered to shish-ka-bob his brain. And the reintroduction is harder on the system than the extraction, Cas said.” The and I wouldn’t have known it had gone wrong until you were gone never made it past Dean’s lips, but Sam knew his brother.
“I seem to remember you were okay with that the first time,” he said, didn’t quite flinch-apparently he was still mad enough to take his shots where he could get them, didn’t quite miss that Dean did flinch, even if he played it off.
“Yeah, well. The first time I was there to supervise.”
Right. He closed his eyes. Dean retracted his foot, dropping the chair he’d dragged up to Sam’s bedside back to all fours. The way his breathing changed, Sam knew he’d leaned forward, braced his forearms against his thighs.
“How’re you feeling?” Sam asked, before he could make whatever confession he’d been chewing over.
Dean paused. “Fine. Cas was able to sneak a second session in between healing your stupid ass.”
“You wouldn’t let him possess me.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean made a face, washed his hand over his mouth. “It was too weird, the thought of having my best friend up inside my baby brother.”
Sam wrinkled his nose, letting the diversion stand. “Thanks for that.” That mental image would stick with him forever.
Dean huffed, going silent and still a moment later. His, “You almost died,” was hushed, a secret whispered to the walls.
“So did you,” Sam told the darkness of his eyelids.
“I can’t do it, Sam,” he said suddenly. “I can’t sit back and watch you die. Not and not do anything in my power to save you. I’m sorry I . . . I’m sorry I didn’t have enough time to find a better a better way. Ok?”
No, it wasn’t, but Sam’s chest caved in thinking of the alternative. He breathed through it. “You told me that your life wasn’t worth the life of another’s,” he said, carefully, ignoring Dean’s warning, “Sam.” “You told me that what’s dead should stay dead.”
He looked at Dean, at his brother’s sallow face and aching eyes, and thought they probably mirrored each other. “When I asked you to talk about Hell, you said there weren’t words. You said you couldn’t make me understand. And I can’t make you understand what it was like to be trapped in the cage with Lucifer, but I need you to understand how important it is for me to be able to trust you, Dean. How important it is for me to make my decisions. Ok?”
“Ok.”
It probably still wasn’t, but Sam took the promise and let go the breath he’d been holding, letting his body sink back into the bed and his eyes sink closed. Breathed in the silence with his brother beside him.
“Are you staying?” he asked.
Dean hesitated, still for a long moment, then shifted uncomfortably. “If you want me to,” he said. His guilt talking, probably, but whatever.
“Yeah,” Sam breathed. He’d get up in a little bit. He and Dean would get back to looking for Gadreel, for Metatron, talk about whatever Cas had said Dean was hiding, and they’d figure it out. Somehow. “Jerk.”
“Bitch.”