Fic: Duct Tape and Glue
Title: Duct Tape and Glue
Author: triquetralmoon
Rating: R
Genre: Gen, H/C
Warnings: Swearing. Winchesters leering at women. No spoilers, but someplace past Bloody Mary.
Word Count: ~6100
Summary: When something is broken, you fix it. [The hurt: Dean's getting repeated nosebleeds. More annoying than anything else]
Thank you to wave_obscura for the wonderful beta-ing.
Here's something John Winchester probably should have put in his journal.
It's a pain in the ass to run out of spell ingredients in the goddamn Bible Belt.
Stores catering to New Age types weren't exactly a dime a dozen. You can maybe find one or two listed in the phone book, and even then - it is likely to be a store with nothing but patchouli and a chick wearing too many scarves offering to read your future. The people who were the real deal didn't advertise, they didn't need to.
But it would've been helpful if they did.
::: ::: :::
There was a poltergeist in a house outside of Mineral Bluff, Georgia who had killed an entire family there in the mid-80s. The house had stood abandoned until a newly married couple, Garrett and Cheryl Barker, had bought it for a low price that should have tipped them off that it was too good to be true. Now the woman was in the hospital, one broken leg and a concussion that kept her unconscious for two days. That's where Dean and Sam had found them, the young man clutching the hand of his new wife as if he were afraid to let go. Paper coffee cups littered the bedside table, and from Garrett's haggard expression and several days worth of stubble, it was obvious he hadn't slept in days - that maybe he was even afraid to sleep.
Cheryl laid in bed, her right leg in a cast from foot to thigh, elevated by traction. A large bruise, a whopper of a goose egg half-hidden by strawberry blonde bangs. Eyes brimming with tears, she was only able to tell them that there was something evil in the house before dissolving into sobs.
Poltergeist, and a nasty one at that, but it wasn't anything they hadn't seen before. While the couple was in the hospital, the boys crept into a house that was surely a fixer-upper, watching their step on the warped wood of the porch that looked ready to break any second.
It was quick work in a stifling mid-July heat wave. Under a tornado of rapid fire furnishings, they jammed the burlap pouches that curried the banishing spell into the walls - walls which were all too eager to crumble apart in a spray of plaster dust. The usual blinding white flash of energy accosted their eyes, as if a physical force was giving the ghost the ol' heave ho right out the front door.
Apparently this spook was up on evictions laws, because all that did was piss it off. A knotty oak dining table flew across the room, the corner smacking right into Sam's funnybone before crashing into the wall, adding yet more holes to the décor.
The sound of creaking and cracking, plaster showering down - Dean moved out of the way as a light fixture came down, chunks of the ceiling coming with it.
Sam, defensive in posture as he tried to bat away home furnishings and debris in equal measure, yelled over the roar of the room. "Dean, we gotta go!"
Dean - using a leg from the splintered dining table as a baseball bat - nodded and they made their way through the war zone of a living room to the front door, kicking the weather-beaten wood off its hinges to get out.
Dean and Sam stood on the front porch, bent over and panting heavily. Vibrations trembled through their feet as a resounding crash from inside signaled all the levitating objects falling simultaneously, frightening a group of swallows to flee from the conifer bush in the front yard.
"The fuck?!" Dean asked, wiping a trickle of blood from underneath his nose. His voice boomed against the sharp silence.
"I dunno," Sam replied, equally confounded as he picked flakes of the ceiling out of his hair. "Son of a bitch must be lodged in here deep. We'll have to find something stronger."
Sam took his EMF meter out of his pocket, broken plastic pieces for it in his other hand. Dean snatched it from his brother, examined the black shards and gave wide a grin.
"A little duct tape, some glue, it's good as new," Dean said, declaring their technology salvageable. "We can fix it.
Sam nodded, taking his broken EMF back from his brother. "C'mon. We gotta figure out how to eject this spook."
::: ::: :::
That was how they found themselves in the predicament they were in now - stuck in a nowhere town on the outskirts of the Blue Ridge mountains, a drought burning that had left the local flora crispy and brown.
Poltergeists wore anger into a place, gouged into it far beneath the surface - the four walls acting as supernatural solar panels - charging the house with malevolent energy, the ghost's ire the sun that kept the whole thing going. Usually banishing spells dispersed that energy, and the poltergeist -having put so much of itself into the haunting - went right along with it.
Usually.
Dean sped the Impala back to the Ramada Inn in Blue Ridge, one of the only empty motel rooms available in the whole damn city. An icepack on his arm, Sam called Bobby - the both of them poring over books until finally they found a bit of magic that might just do the job. The spell would draw the poltergeist out of the house, unseating it from the place it had built up so much power.
"The banishing spell we already did is like changing the locks. It won't be able to get back in," Sam explained, tossing a box of tissues at Dean, whose nose had begun bleeding again.
"So then it becomes just a vengeful spirit again? Salt 'n' burn?" Dean asked thickly from behind the tissue, his nose pinched shut.
"Actually, if we torch the corpse beforehand, we can just use the spell to break its connection to the house. Once it's drawn away from the energy, it should just disperse." So, a simple enough complication to shake off. The next complication, not so much.
Dean leaned over the small dinette table, staring at the ingredients they needed. Most of them were standard fare for banishing and protection rituals, all things they had neatly labeled in a dented red tackle box, old baby food jars and Ziploc baggies full of funky smelling herbs, crystals and semi-precious stones up and down the color spectrum, and the occasional freeze-dried animal parts.
"Dude, we have lodestones. I know we do."
"Not big enough," Sam replied with a sigh.
"How big they gotta be?"
Sam read from the spell instructions Bobby had emailed him. "A lodestone as large as the closed hand of a man of strength."
Sam held up a loose fist. "So, approximately this big."
"We should use my hands to gauge. I'm strong and my hands are not as freakishly large as your mitts."
Sam smirked. "Either way, the lodestones we have aren't enough. We're going to have to find one that's a couple pounds at least."
"Rue water?" Dean questioned, because he was sure they had that.
"We used the last we had making the banishing bags."
"We still have rue, though. Stick it in some water." The obvious solution.
"Yeah, but we don't have a month to let it steep under the full moon," Sam countered.
No, Dean definitely did not want to stick around Blue Ridge for another month, sure that no place in Georgia was supposed to feel like Death Valley. They hadn't planned to stick around this long as it was. Contemplating being stuck in this town, which was well on its way to becoming a tourist trap, he felt the faint tickling sensation of fluid dripping out of his nose, warm wetness along his upper lip.
"Jesus, Dean, what the hell?" Sam asked, as his brother used the hem of his t-shirt to staunch the flow while he sought out the box of tissues yet again.
Dean simply shrugged. "Spook musta really got me."
The last ingredient written in Sam's untidy scrawl was really the clincher, punctuated by a drop of blood.
"Sam, where are we going to get mistletoe in freakin' July?!"
::: ::: :::
Before heading into Atlanta to track down ingredients, the boys stopped by the hospital to let the Barkers know in no uncertain terms that they could not return to the house, not even to pick up an overnight bag. Dean opened up his own wallet and pulled out a few twenties, pressing the folded bills into Garrett's shaking hand.
"You can pay me back if you want, okay? This is just insurance." Dean said, holding the young man's gaze. "We really need to know that you're not going to go back in there - even for clean shorts. We clear?"
Garrett nodded, reluctantly pocketing the money, gazing at his sleeping wife.
"Good." And then, because he couldn't resist, "Uh, how would you feel about us burning your house down?" It'd be an easier plan - for one. And perhaps it would be better if the Barkers just moved - preferably somewhere without angry ghosts, termites or shattered furniture.
Garrett just looked at the both of them, stricken. "No, you can't! All our savings went into that property, we can't - we can't just move. Can you fix it? Just fix it - please."
The young man was near hyperventilating. Dean reached out, thumped the guy on the arm. "Hey, it's okay, man, I was just asking. We won't, okay?"
"When was the last time you slept?" Sam asked softly, as Garrett began to breathe normally again.
"I haven't," he replied, his voice cracking. Underneath the bloodshot eyes, the stubble, and the look of someone who had aged a decade in a day, it became apparent that this kid was a couple years younger than Sam.
The younger Winchester put a reassuring hand on the kid's shoulder. "Garrett, Cheryl needs you to keep it together, okay? If you ask the nurses to bring a cot in, they'll probably do it, or at the very least a more comfortable chair." Sam's big hazel eyes softened into the dewy mess that always convinced strangers to do what he wanted. "Get some sleep, man. We're taking care of it."
Eyes wet, Garrett swallowed hard, trying to vocalize his gratitude, the words not coming as he reached for a Kleenex off of the bedside table. Expecting the young man to blow his nose or sweep the moisture away from his eyes, Sam gave a huge look of surprise when instead the tissue was offered to Dean, who was pressing his sleeve to his face, the effect making him look like a sheepish toddler - if a sheepish toddler had blood-smeared hands.
Sam didn't need to say a word, the incredulous look on his face said it all, while his older brother accepted the tissue graciously and pinched his nose shut. Garrett insisted Dean took a seat, at least until he stopped bleeding. Every few minutes, Dean pulled the tissue away to see if they were making any headway in the clotting department. Ten minutes later, Sam was fidgeting restlessly - not in worry, just in sheer agitation. As Dean sat there, his fist grasping at his nose like a lobster claw, he couldn't say he was doing much better. It was fucking awkward to be sitting in Cheryl Barker's hospital room, her husband staring at them as if they were some kind of slumlord saviors.
Sure, we can vanquish the evil in your house, no problem. Can I get another tissue first?
Peeling the crumpled Kleenex back, it was with relief Dean noted that no more droplets of crimson were rushing out to join the blood already soaked into the tattered tissue. Legs suddenly bestowed with spring-action capability, he jumped out his seat, keen to get to the bathroom and make himself look less like a murderer. Mumbling something to that effect, he was walking out the door right as a nurse looking to take Cheryl's vitals crossed the threshold.
"Whoa, what happened here?" The nurse was a pretty brunette, wearing bright red horn-rimmed glasses, possibly to keep the attention on her eyes, because - damn - even Pamela Anderson would have a tough time getting her rack noticed if she was wearing scrubs, a problem this chick did not seem to have.
"Um..." Dean faltered, dabbing at his nose with the tissue thoughtlessly. His gaze, not exactly brimming with subtlety, went from her glasses to her chest several times before Sam finally chimed in on his behalf.
"I punched him for not looking women in the eyes." Sam did his level best to keep a straight face, one dimple trembling into existence.
The glare Dean gave Sam didn't do anything to wipe the smirk off of his face. The Barkers showed the first inklings that they still remembered how to smile, and the nurse laughed so hard tears came to her eyes, especially upon viewing Dean's discomfort.
"Oh, don't be embarrassed!" She put a hand gently on Dean's arm, winked at Sam, her voice a lazy Georgian drawl that spoke of white front porches and sweet tea. "Not the first time I've been ogled on the job. Might be the first time I've laughed that hard about it, though," she offered with a grin. "So, what did happen?"
Dean relaxed slightly. "Nosebleed."
"I should've guessed. The drought messing with you too?"
"What? Huh?" Dean blinked at her, confused.
She dampened a washcloth with the water pitcher and handed it to him.
"The dry air bothers a lot of people, dries out the nose - causes a lot of bleeds. More annoying than anything else, for most people."
"That would explain it," Sam mused.
"If it becomes a real problem, you might want to get a humidifier, some saline nasal spray."
And yeah, Dean could picture that - shoving a squeeze bottle up his nose all day. He'd rather have the occasional bleed, thanks.
::: ::: :::
The boys managed to track down a couple of alchemical shops that weren't dealing in sham magics, splitting up and each taking a location. The rue water was there waiting for Sam, but no luck on the other two ingredients.
Sam's phone began ringing in his pocket - the familiar strains of....
"No woman, no cry...."
...Bob Marley?
"No woman, no cry."
Fuck Dean and his pathological need to screw with his ringtones at every opportunity.
"What?" Sam said, letting a world-weary sigh escape his lips with no real effort at holding it back.
"Change of plans," Dean's voice sounded annoyed and congested. "Meet me here."
"Why, what happened? Do they have what we need?"
"I don't know, they kicked me out."
"What?! Why? What'd you do?"
"Nevermind, Nancy Drew!" Dean snapped. "Just - get here."
::: ::: :::
It wasn't apparent exactly what happened when Sam lumbered up the sidewalk to where Dean was standing, arms crossed and wearing a glowering expression. It was apparent that his nose had been bleeding again, stubble smeared with blood, one nostril blackened with it. Without a word, Dean pointed an accusing finger at the store.
Sam was apprehensive about what he was going to find upon entering the store, using his hands to swat at the crystal-beaded curtain hanging across the doorway, the tinkering of bells heralding his arrival. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't the apologetic looking salesman, burning a tightly bundled smudge stick of white sage.
"Hello?" Sam asked hesitantly, "My brother said you asked him to leave?"
"Yes, sorry about that." The balding man tamped down the embers of the smoking sage onto a ceramic plate, blushing and hardly able to look Sam in the eyes. "He started bleeding and he was near some highly potent spell ingredients. Add blood to some of those and you pretty much have a bomb. I may have overreacted. If there's anything I can do to help..."
Sam's eyes swept from a shelf of lodestones - all of them too small - to Dean, who was standing hesitantly at the threshold of the shop. Even as he was watching, another dribble of blood trickled down to his brother's lips.
"The fuck?!" Dean shouted, pinching his nose shut as a winding trail of blood dripped down his forearm. The sales clerk stood nervously next to Sam, as if afraid Dean was going to run inside and purposefully start blowing his nose on things.
"Getting your blood pressure up isn't going to help," Sam said calmly, wondering if they could tape together a bunch of the lodestones.
Dean, wearing a disturbingly charming smile that spoke of nothing but peace and serenity and a healthy diastolic, flipped his little brother off with both hands, letting the thick red droplets continue to drip down onto the concrete walkway. Sam's eyes still on his brother, he was startled when his personal space was invaded; he found himself looking down at the little man's bald spot. The clerk murmured apologies as he shoved a roll of paper towels into his hands, clearly intending them for Dean.
Sam shifted awkwardly, taking a step back from the man. "Um, okay, I'm going to go give these to him. We still need to find mistletoe berries, if you have any of those."
The sales clerk looked at Sam as if he had lost his mind. "Mistletoe berries? In July? In Georgia?"
::: ::: :::
As pointless as the entire shopping extravaganza seemed, the mousy sales clerk at least had some contacts that were willing to ship the items, some frozen mistletoe berries and a lodestone they swore up and down was at least the size of Andre the Giant's fist. Considering they were paying for refrigerated shipping for the plant life and then the shipping weight of a giant magnetic rock, there was no hope for overnight shipping. This meant probably two or three more days hanging out in obnoxiously hot weather.
Sam was quick to point out that they still had to do research on who the poltergeist actually was so they could take care of the ghost. He was also quick to point out, before Dean could open his mouth to complain, that the library in Blue Ridge was very likely air conditioned.
Sam was right - it was, delicious industrial AC whipping around a library full of college-age tourists of the female persuasion who were trying to get out of the heat, leaning over the mahogany balustrade in low-cut tank tops while nipples tried to pierce their way through thin cotton fabric.
This was pretty much the best library Dean had ever been in.
Leaning deeply into his chair, he held his book up expertly so he could take a nice long gander at the rows and rows of breasts lined up for his viewing pleasure. Yes, the book on local murders was supposed to have his rapt attention, but - really, wasn't it more important at the moment to rank someone first prize? (First prize went to a girl who had a delicate pink sunburn cresting the tops of her cultivated C-cups that made them look like they were blushing in modesty. It was adorable. And Dean was always a willing party to helping a woman apply sunblock.)
"Do you really think I don't know what you're doing? That they don't?" Sam hissed.
Dean didn't even swivel his head to the side. "Francis, as much as I say things to the contrary, you do have a dick. Tell me you didn't spend at least five of the last ten minutes doing the same thing."
"No, I-"
"Honestly?" Dean chuckled. "Because it wasn't me Miss Runner-Up was winking at."
Sam huffed indignantly and stuffed his nose back into his book.
::: ::: :::
Fifteen minutes later, it was decided who sixth place was, as well as labeling the dates from a series of gruesome murders - all unsolved - that all happened prior to the 1980s. With the violence involved, any one of them could have had the juice powerful enough to provoke poltergeist action. However, considering it was only one of the victim's fathers who built the house, there was good money that they'd pinpointed who it was that was in dire need of a bonfire.
Sam was busy scrawling down all the dates pertaining to their spook's murder when he klutzed out and his pen went flying underneath their table. Scrabbling with his fingers and a long stretch of his arm to get the ballpoint, he became aware of a pair of sensible heels tapping impatiently rather close to his face.
"Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave," a highly offended voice spoke.
"Aw, c'mon..." Sam heard Dean say, sounding extremely dismayed.
I knew it, knew he was going to get us kicked out, Sam thought, coming up from underneath the table legs. What he expected was the group of women in the far corner of the room to look pissed off and disgusted by a guy who seemed entirely too immature to be entering his 30s. He did not expect to see his brother endeavoring not to bleed onto his stack of books (and failing) while the matronly librarian looked on as if he were setting the pile on fire. The bevy of buxom beauties, if anything, just looked concerned. Sam didn't blame them, it kinda looked like someone turned on a faucet of blood.
"Shit, Dean! Jesus," Sam bit his tongue to stop himself from snapping at the indignant hag. She couldn't do something useful while she came over to harass bleeding patrons, like bring some tissues? Or a mop. Possibly a transfusion.
Sam grabbed Dean by the elbow and hauled him into the bathroom, pulling paper towel after paper towel out of the rack, hypnotized by the way the blood keeps absorbing into the pattern, the way the vermilion slowly blossomed out onto the white. All the while, Dean sat on the faux-marble counter, far too docile for Sam's liking, leaning up against the wall with his eyes closed. Eventually, the bleeding stopped and his skin quit being leeched of color.
Sam ran out to the car to grab him a clean shirt, but by the time he got back inside, Dean was already at the circulation desk, haggling a price for all the books he'd bled on and a few he hadn't that they still needed, since the grim librarian was refusing to lend them out anything. While this was going on, one of the girls - Third Place - was writing her cell phone number and hotel room on the back of a purse-sized packet of Kleenex.
Sam shook his head. Only Dean could look like a hemophiliac and end up getting a date.
::: ::: :::
Up to their eyeballs in the local lore books they now owned -and stacks of copies they'd had to spend all their laundry money on - the two brothers sat uncomfortably in the broken air conditioning of their motel room. The heat and closed quarters served as additional irritants as they scoured regional maps and burial records, mostly trying to ignore each other so they wouldn't piss each other off.
Unfortunately, Dean was pretty hard to ignore as he sat there with a twist of tissue stuffed in each bloodied nostril, a trail of rust-colored fingerprints scattered across nearly every surface he touched. Sam sat there tapping his pen on the table, praying for patience, telling himself that Dean was at least trying to help, at least trying to research - and none of this was his fault.
But then he saw it - the bloody print on his laptop screen.
"Dude! What the hell?!"
Dean blinked in complete surprise, one of the tissues falling out of his nose.
"Can you stop gushing everywhere? Jesus, you're leaking all over the place."
"Uh, yeah," Dean smirked. "I'll get right to work on that."
Sam took a deep breath that was intended to calm him down, but didn't quite do the job. "I'm serious, Dean."
"Me too, Sam. I mean, it's a drought, what the fuck do you expect me to do - a fucking rain dance?" Dean got to his feet, open and shuts the mini-fridge with a slam. More fingerprints are left behind.
"No, but maybe you could wash your goddamn hands instead of smearing your DNA all over everything."
The trickle resumed its flow down Dean's emptied nostril, his fingers automatically investigating it as he swore under his breath.
"Fucking gross," Sam muttered.
And it wasn't that it is gross to either of them, it was just that they were both pissy, Sam's comment sending Dean over the edge. With a face crumpled up in defiance, he smacked his freshly bloodied hand right into the middle of the laptop screen, thick fluid marring the LCD monitor like war paint.
"What the fuck?!" Sam practically howled, towering over Dean who was holding the hem of his shirt to his face. He grabbed a clean shirt for Dean and the car keys, which was friggin' thoughtful as hell considering what just happened, and then shoved his brother out the motel door, locking it behind him. As an afterthought, Sam re-opened the door and tossed the small pack of tissues the girl from the library had used as a calling card. Surprised, Dean fumbled to catch them, the tips of his fingers managing to hang onto them before the door slammed shut.
::: ::: :::
The evening cooled off just enough that both of them realized they were being assholes. Dean came back with some cold submarine sandwiches and an exact location on where their ghost was buried - the markings carved into the keystone of the house also carved into the tombstone of one of the murder victims that Dean had found.
The lingering scent of smoke and charred bones clung to Dean, cloying and familiar and one less thing they had to worry about before they could ditch this town. Sam purposefully ignored the fierce desire he had to yell at his brother for going out and doing part of the gig alone - because really, the poltergeist wasn't going to leave the house, so the danger was only imagined.
The Fedex truck delivered to the motel early the next morning, mistletoe berries getting set out to thaw while Sam went through the rest of the spell's ingredients and measured them out carefully for the job that night. Deep breaths helped him reign in his irritation, irrational irritation maybe, but it was still there. Until he figured it out - that maybe there was worry mixed in there too, that he stood there uselessly as his brother bled all over the place. His instinct was to do something, anything, to fix it. And he couldn't, there was nothing he could do - so he was pissed, useless. But it was worry over a nosebleed - okay, maybe twenty nosebleeds - maybe he was just as hovering as Dean accused him of being.
::: ::: :::
Three am witchcraft - it was so cliché.
Dean mixed coffin splinters and grave dirt into the red Georgia clay, consecrating the ground with the rue water, then holy water for good measure. All around the area, Sam used a sharpened stick to draw sigils into the earth, placing the giant lodestone dead center and chanting in Latin.
A flash of blinding light, and whatever was drawn out of the house knocked them clear off their feet, the smell of burnt ozone and the sap of pine needles sharp in their noses, something very much like static raising the hair on their arms.
All in all, probably one of the easier hunts they'd had, at least in terms of getting the crap kicked out of them.
They'd normally hit the road right after, but Sam wanted to stop by the hospital, let the Barkers know they could head back home. Dean didn't know why they couldn't just call them on the phone, but sometimes Sam got a bug up his ass about doing things in person, so he let it go - didn't want to start tempers flaring again while they were still stuck in this heat. Instead he offered an ice cold beer before they hit the sack - the famous Dean Winchester Reconciliation Beer, to smooth things over, make sure things are okay, to fix things. They clinked bottles and kept silent as they polished off the hoppy lager.
::: ::: :::
Alarm on his phone blaring its chiding pattern, Sam reached one hand over to the nightstand to shut it off, eyes blinking slowly against the rays of sun casting light on dancing motes of dust. Dean was sitting on his bed, his back to Sam. It struck him as a little weird that Dean was awake, but the room wasn't packed up and there was no caffeine brewing in the dinky two cup Mr. Coffee.
Sam got out of bed, stretched up toward the ceiling, balancing on the balls of his bare feet, yawning loudly. His mind already compiling a list of breakfast options, he stumbled sleepily over to the other side of Dean's bed.
His appetite fled immediately.
It was a goddamn massacre, blood everywhere. The blankets and sheets swirled around Dean like a nest of saturated bandages, he was - in fact - bringing a balled up corner of the formerly white sheet to his face.
Sam shook his head back and forth, as if it was a damned Etch-a-Sketch and he could clear away the image in front of him. "Dean, what - what the hell?!"
His older brother, startlingly pale-faced, gave him a salute with a shaking hand, trembling that seemed to jackhammer up into the rest of his body. "S'fine," he slurred into the sheets.
"The hell it is - how long?"
Dean stared at the pointy star wall clock through eyes that were blinking heavily. "Long enough."
"And you didn't think maybe you should wake me up?"
"I was gonna in a minute," Dean said, adjusting the sheet in his hands to get a firmer pinch on his nose. "It's just a nosebleed, Sammy."
"It's like any other bleeding in your body, man, if it goes on too long..." Sam stopped himself right there. From the looks of things, he could tell it had already gone on too long. The sluggish flutter of Dean's impossibly long lashes against his pallid complexion, ghoulish with its splashes of grayish-green.
And then Sam noticed something that pretty much caused panic to wipe his mind completely blank, stark fear the only thing present.
There was blood welling up in Dean's eyes.
"Fuck, Dean!" Sam said, taking Dean's head in his hands to make sure this was what he was truly seeing.
"Gettoff me! What the hell?!" Dean tried to shrug him off, hardly any strength behind the motion.
"Your eyes Dean, you're crying blood."
"No way!" Dean brought a hand up to his eyes, presses fingers against the moisture there and stared dumbly at his hand when it came away dotted with red tears. "What is this - fuckin' True Blood?"
Sam blinked. "You watch that-" He pulled up short, shaking his head. He needed to focus.
"Hospital Dean, now."
Dean nodded, pointing at a t-shirt flopping out of his bag. Sam grabbed it quickly, Dean untangling himself from the swathes of blankets and sheets he has surrounding him. Dean used the shirt to pinch his nose.
"Jeans," Dean said.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, it is the goddamn hospital, no one is going to care."
"I'm not going out in my skivvies, Sam." Stubborn flared in Dean's eyes, which were still focusing slowly.
Sam grabbed the jeans off the worn carpet and tossed them at his brother's legs, Dean snatching them out of the air with one hand and tugging them on. Dean dressed himself, Sam pawed through his clothes for his own jeans. His brother shoved his bare feet into his boots, not really bothering with the laces.
Two steps. Two steps was how far Dean got from the bed before the last of the color drained from his face and his knees buckled like a belt.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sam said, keeping his voice calm, trying not to look at the fact that his brother was - fuckfuckfuck- bleeding from his eyes. Grabbing Dean under the armpits he hoisted him back up, held his trembling form still for a minute, furrowing his brow deeper at the cold sweat Dean had going on. "Hey, I got you."
Dean, still clamping his nose with the t-shirt, mumbled something behind the cotton cloth that may have been, "I know."
Sam grabbed his brother's free arm and slung it over his shoulders. Step by step they made it outside to the car.
Sam chattered nervously the whole way, furtive glances at his brother's eyes - thinking about Bloody Mary and secrets and Ebola and strokes and shock - as Dean curled in on himself in the passenger seat.
"Hey, hey, Dean, stay awake, we're almost there. We're gonna getcha fixed up."
The triage nurse took one look as they stumbled through the door, bloodied and looking like war-torn veterans, immediately got Dean on a gurney and in ten minutes there were people running around with IV lines and blood work and commenting on how low his blood pressure was, doctors sticking the little flashlight up Dean's nose.
Dean refused to lay down. "If I do, I'm gonna swallow blood and then puke all over you," he snapped out to the scrawny resident who suggested it. They gave him an ice pack and told him to put it on his forehead, to see if that would help.
Sam kept picking at the cuticle on his thumb, a nervous habit, one that had earned him a great deal of scar tissue. Dean stopped swinging his legs like a toddler on the bed to kick his little brother.
"Quit it."
Sam rolled his eyes, kept picking. Dean knew why he did this, why he sometimes worried at his thumb until it bled.
Another kick. "Sam, I'm gonna be fine. Quit picking."
Sam gave another eyeroll, but stopped.
The doctor eventually came back. "Looks like you have a doozy of a nosebleed."
A doozy. Dean nearly cracked up right there, used the bloody t-shirt to hide the smirk on his face.
"But the eyes..." Sam said.
"That happens rarely, if the bleed is bad enough, which it is."
Just as Sam breathed a sigh of relief that it was just some normal medical problem, easily explained, the doctor continued.
"We're going to go in through the left nostril and cauterize the blood vessel responsible. That should solve all the problems."
Cauterize. Dean immediately sat up ramrod straight and Sam went back to tearing the skin off of his thumb.
"Uh, cauterize...what, you take a branding iron and shove it up there?" Dean asked, a chuckle bursting out that was laced with nervousness.
"No, no, no," the doctor said, laughing in a way that made Dean clench his fists - which was probably good - more pinching for his nose. "We numb the area, then go in with an acid. It may be mildly uncomfortable afterwards, nothing that your normal over the counter medication can't handle."
Which is what they did - stuck long Q-tips of goop up Dean's nose, first the anesthetic, then the acid. A roll of cotton got stuffed up Dean's nostrils, and they still had him sit with the ice pack and soak up fluids until some color returned to his face. He would be fine, the bleeding stopped. Problem fixed. And Sam planned to get them away from this freaky weather as soon as possible anyway.
The Barkers were upstairs. Sam snuck up the staircases into Cheryl's room, Garrett's asleep on the chair next to her, a hospital blanket draped over him. Cheryl was awake - doing a crossword and looking more like she should, Sam thought. Just a woman who broke her leg, rather than a woman chased down by a manifestation of pure anger. The bruise on her head was fading already, healing.
She looked up eagerly, keeping her voice whisper soft. "You're here early."
"Yeah," Sam said. "Just wanted to let you know that the house is clear now, shouldn't have anymore problems. Except, well, it's a little messy. A lot, actually."
Sam could feel the wave of relief and gratitude that washed over the new Mrs. Barker.
"The mess doesn't matter. Whatever's broken - we can fix it." she said softly.
Sam nodded, thinking of his brother downstairs, of stupid fights and tugs of war, of control issues and family drama - of all the broken things they've had to deal with.
"Don't worry," Cheryl said again, a reassuring smile on her face. "We'll fix it."
Sam smiled back, genuine and bright as he turned to go back to Dean.
Yeah, they will.
----
The end.
Author: triquetralmoon
Rating: R
Genre: Gen, H/C
Warnings: Swearing. Winchesters leering at women. No spoilers, but someplace past Bloody Mary.
Word Count: ~6100
Summary: When something is broken, you fix it. [The hurt: Dean's getting repeated nosebleeds. More annoying than anything else]
Thank you to wave_obscura for the wonderful beta-ing.
Here's something John Winchester probably should have put in his journal.
It's a pain in the ass to run out of spell ingredients in the goddamn Bible Belt.
Stores catering to New Age types weren't exactly a dime a dozen. You can maybe find one or two listed in the phone book, and even then - it is likely to be a store with nothing but patchouli and a chick wearing too many scarves offering to read your future. The people who were the real deal didn't advertise, they didn't need to.
But it would've been helpful if they did.
::: ::: :::
There was a poltergeist in a house outside of Mineral Bluff, Georgia who had killed an entire family there in the mid-80s. The house had stood abandoned until a newly married couple, Garrett and Cheryl Barker, had bought it for a low price that should have tipped them off that it was too good to be true. Now the woman was in the hospital, one broken leg and a concussion that kept her unconscious for two days. That's where Dean and Sam had found them, the young man clutching the hand of his new wife as if he were afraid to let go. Paper coffee cups littered the bedside table, and from Garrett's haggard expression and several days worth of stubble, it was obvious he hadn't slept in days - that maybe he was even afraid to sleep.
Cheryl laid in bed, her right leg in a cast from foot to thigh, elevated by traction. A large bruise, a whopper of a goose egg half-hidden by strawberry blonde bangs. Eyes brimming with tears, she was only able to tell them that there was something evil in the house before dissolving into sobs.
Poltergeist, and a nasty one at that, but it wasn't anything they hadn't seen before. While the couple was in the hospital, the boys crept into a house that was surely a fixer-upper, watching their step on the warped wood of the porch that looked ready to break any second.
It was quick work in a stifling mid-July heat wave. Under a tornado of rapid fire furnishings, they jammed the burlap pouches that curried the banishing spell into the walls - walls which were all too eager to crumble apart in a spray of plaster dust. The usual blinding white flash of energy accosted their eyes, as if a physical force was giving the ghost the ol' heave ho right out the front door.
Apparently this spook was up on evictions laws, because all that did was piss it off. A knotty oak dining table flew across the room, the corner smacking right into Sam's funnybone before crashing into the wall, adding yet more holes to the décor.
The sound of creaking and cracking, plaster showering down - Dean moved out of the way as a light fixture came down, chunks of the ceiling coming with it.
Sam, defensive in posture as he tried to bat away home furnishings and debris in equal measure, yelled over the roar of the room. "Dean, we gotta go!"
Dean - using a leg from the splintered dining table as a baseball bat - nodded and they made their way through the war zone of a living room to the front door, kicking the weather-beaten wood off its hinges to get out.
Dean and Sam stood on the front porch, bent over and panting heavily. Vibrations trembled through their feet as a resounding crash from inside signaled all the levitating objects falling simultaneously, frightening a group of swallows to flee from the conifer bush in the front yard.
"The fuck?!" Dean asked, wiping a trickle of blood from underneath his nose. His voice boomed against the sharp silence.
"I dunno," Sam replied, equally confounded as he picked flakes of the ceiling out of his hair. "Son of a bitch must be lodged in here deep. We'll have to find something stronger."
Sam took his EMF meter out of his pocket, broken plastic pieces for it in his other hand. Dean snatched it from his brother, examined the black shards and gave wide a grin.
"A little duct tape, some glue, it's good as new," Dean said, declaring their technology salvageable. "We can fix it.
Sam nodded, taking his broken EMF back from his brother. "C'mon. We gotta figure out how to eject this spook."
::: ::: :::
That was how they found themselves in the predicament they were in now - stuck in a nowhere town on the outskirts of the Blue Ridge mountains, a drought burning that had left the local flora crispy and brown.
Poltergeists wore anger into a place, gouged into it far beneath the surface - the four walls acting as supernatural solar panels - charging the house with malevolent energy, the ghost's ire the sun that kept the whole thing going. Usually banishing spells dispersed that energy, and the poltergeist -having put so much of itself into the haunting - went right along with it.
Usually.
Dean sped the Impala back to the Ramada Inn in Blue Ridge, one of the only empty motel rooms available in the whole damn city. An icepack on his arm, Sam called Bobby - the both of them poring over books until finally they found a bit of magic that might just do the job. The spell would draw the poltergeist out of the house, unseating it from the place it had built up so much power.
"The banishing spell we already did is like changing the locks. It won't be able to get back in," Sam explained, tossing a box of tissues at Dean, whose nose had begun bleeding again.
"So then it becomes just a vengeful spirit again? Salt 'n' burn?" Dean asked thickly from behind the tissue, his nose pinched shut.
"Actually, if we torch the corpse beforehand, we can just use the spell to break its connection to the house. Once it's drawn away from the energy, it should just disperse." So, a simple enough complication to shake off. The next complication, not so much.
Dean leaned over the small dinette table, staring at the ingredients they needed. Most of them were standard fare for banishing and protection rituals, all things they had neatly labeled in a dented red tackle box, old baby food jars and Ziploc baggies full of funky smelling herbs, crystals and semi-precious stones up and down the color spectrum, and the occasional freeze-dried animal parts.
"Dude, we have lodestones. I know we do."
"Not big enough," Sam replied with a sigh.
"How big they gotta be?"
Sam read from the spell instructions Bobby had emailed him. "A lodestone as large as the closed hand of a man of strength."
Sam held up a loose fist. "So, approximately this big."
"We should use my hands to gauge. I'm strong and my hands are not as freakishly large as your mitts."
Sam smirked. "Either way, the lodestones we have aren't enough. We're going to have to find one that's a couple pounds at least."
"Rue water?" Dean questioned, because he was sure they had that.
"We used the last we had making the banishing bags."
"We still have rue, though. Stick it in some water." The obvious solution.
"Yeah, but we don't have a month to let it steep under the full moon," Sam countered.
No, Dean definitely did not want to stick around Blue Ridge for another month, sure that no place in Georgia was supposed to feel like Death Valley. They hadn't planned to stick around this long as it was. Contemplating being stuck in this town, which was well on its way to becoming a tourist trap, he felt the faint tickling sensation of fluid dripping out of his nose, warm wetness along his upper lip.
"Jesus, Dean, what the hell?" Sam asked, as his brother used the hem of his t-shirt to staunch the flow while he sought out the box of tissues yet again.
Dean simply shrugged. "Spook musta really got me."
The last ingredient written in Sam's untidy scrawl was really the clincher, punctuated by a drop of blood.
"Sam, where are we going to get mistletoe in freakin' July?!"
::: ::: :::
Before heading into Atlanta to track down ingredients, the boys stopped by the hospital to let the Barkers know in no uncertain terms that they could not return to the house, not even to pick up an overnight bag. Dean opened up his own wallet and pulled out a few twenties, pressing the folded bills into Garrett's shaking hand.
"You can pay me back if you want, okay? This is just insurance." Dean said, holding the young man's gaze. "We really need to know that you're not going to go back in there - even for clean shorts. We clear?"
Garrett nodded, reluctantly pocketing the money, gazing at his sleeping wife.
"Good." And then, because he couldn't resist, "Uh, how would you feel about us burning your house down?" It'd be an easier plan - for one. And perhaps it would be better if the Barkers just moved - preferably somewhere without angry ghosts, termites or shattered furniture.
Garrett just looked at the both of them, stricken. "No, you can't! All our savings went into that property, we can't - we can't just move. Can you fix it? Just fix it - please."
The young man was near hyperventilating. Dean reached out, thumped the guy on the arm. "Hey, it's okay, man, I was just asking. We won't, okay?"
"When was the last time you slept?" Sam asked softly, as Garrett began to breathe normally again.
"I haven't," he replied, his voice cracking. Underneath the bloodshot eyes, the stubble, and the look of someone who had aged a decade in a day, it became apparent that this kid was a couple years younger than Sam.
The younger Winchester put a reassuring hand on the kid's shoulder. "Garrett, Cheryl needs you to keep it together, okay? If you ask the nurses to bring a cot in, they'll probably do it, or at the very least a more comfortable chair." Sam's big hazel eyes softened into the dewy mess that always convinced strangers to do what he wanted. "Get some sleep, man. We're taking care of it."
Eyes wet, Garrett swallowed hard, trying to vocalize his gratitude, the words not coming as he reached for a Kleenex off of the bedside table. Expecting the young man to blow his nose or sweep the moisture away from his eyes, Sam gave a huge look of surprise when instead the tissue was offered to Dean, who was pressing his sleeve to his face, the effect making him look like a sheepish toddler - if a sheepish toddler had blood-smeared hands.
Sam didn't need to say a word, the incredulous look on his face said it all, while his older brother accepted the tissue graciously and pinched his nose shut. Garrett insisted Dean took a seat, at least until he stopped bleeding. Every few minutes, Dean pulled the tissue away to see if they were making any headway in the clotting department. Ten minutes later, Sam was fidgeting restlessly - not in worry, just in sheer agitation. As Dean sat there, his fist grasping at his nose like a lobster claw, he couldn't say he was doing much better. It was fucking awkward to be sitting in Cheryl Barker's hospital room, her husband staring at them as if they were some kind of slumlord saviors.
Sure, we can vanquish the evil in your house, no problem. Can I get another tissue first?
Peeling the crumpled Kleenex back, it was with relief Dean noted that no more droplets of crimson were rushing out to join the blood already soaked into the tattered tissue. Legs suddenly bestowed with spring-action capability, he jumped out his seat, keen to get to the bathroom and make himself look less like a murderer. Mumbling something to that effect, he was walking out the door right as a nurse looking to take Cheryl's vitals crossed the threshold.
"Whoa, what happened here?" The nurse was a pretty brunette, wearing bright red horn-rimmed glasses, possibly to keep the attention on her eyes, because - damn - even Pamela Anderson would have a tough time getting her rack noticed if she was wearing scrubs, a problem this chick did not seem to have.
"Um..." Dean faltered, dabbing at his nose with the tissue thoughtlessly. His gaze, not exactly brimming with subtlety, went from her glasses to her chest several times before Sam finally chimed in on his behalf.
"I punched him for not looking women in the eyes." Sam did his level best to keep a straight face, one dimple trembling into existence.
The glare Dean gave Sam didn't do anything to wipe the smirk off of his face. The Barkers showed the first inklings that they still remembered how to smile, and the nurse laughed so hard tears came to her eyes, especially upon viewing Dean's discomfort.
"Oh, don't be embarrassed!" She put a hand gently on Dean's arm, winked at Sam, her voice a lazy Georgian drawl that spoke of white front porches and sweet tea. "Not the first time I've been ogled on the job. Might be the first time I've laughed that hard about it, though," she offered with a grin. "So, what did happen?"
Dean relaxed slightly. "Nosebleed."
"I should've guessed. The drought messing with you too?"
"What? Huh?" Dean blinked at her, confused.
She dampened a washcloth with the water pitcher and handed it to him.
"The dry air bothers a lot of people, dries out the nose - causes a lot of bleeds. More annoying than anything else, for most people."
"That would explain it," Sam mused.
"If it becomes a real problem, you might want to get a humidifier, some saline nasal spray."
And yeah, Dean could picture that - shoving a squeeze bottle up his nose all day. He'd rather have the occasional bleed, thanks.
::: ::: :::
The boys managed to track down a couple of alchemical shops that weren't dealing in sham magics, splitting up and each taking a location. The rue water was there waiting for Sam, but no luck on the other two ingredients.
Sam's phone began ringing in his pocket - the familiar strains of....
"No woman, no cry...."
...Bob Marley?
"No woman, no cry."
Fuck Dean and his pathological need to screw with his ringtones at every opportunity.
"What?" Sam said, letting a world-weary sigh escape his lips with no real effort at holding it back.
"Change of plans," Dean's voice sounded annoyed and congested. "Meet me here."
"Why, what happened? Do they have what we need?"
"I don't know, they kicked me out."
"What?! Why? What'd you do?"
"Nevermind, Nancy Drew!" Dean snapped. "Just - get here."
::: ::: :::
It wasn't apparent exactly what happened when Sam lumbered up the sidewalk to where Dean was standing, arms crossed and wearing a glowering expression. It was apparent that his nose had been bleeding again, stubble smeared with blood, one nostril blackened with it. Without a word, Dean pointed an accusing finger at the store.
Sam was apprehensive about what he was going to find upon entering the store, using his hands to swat at the crystal-beaded curtain hanging across the doorway, the tinkering of bells heralding his arrival. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't the apologetic looking salesman, burning a tightly bundled smudge stick of white sage.
"Hello?" Sam asked hesitantly, "My brother said you asked him to leave?"
"Yes, sorry about that." The balding man tamped down the embers of the smoking sage onto a ceramic plate, blushing and hardly able to look Sam in the eyes. "He started bleeding and he was near some highly potent spell ingredients. Add blood to some of those and you pretty much have a bomb. I may have overreacted. If there's anything I can do to help..."
Sam's eyes swept from a shelf of lodestones - all of them too small - to Dean, who was standing hesitantly at the threshold of the shop. Even as he was watching, another dribble of blood trickled down to his brother's lips.
"The fuck?!" Dean shouted, pinching his nose shut as a winding trail of blood dripped down his forearm. The sales clerk stood nervously next to Sam, as if afraid Dean was going to run inside and purposefully start blowing his nose on things.
"Getting your blood pressure up isn't going to help," Sam said calmly, wondering if they could tape together a bunch of the lodestones.
Dean, wearing a disturbingly charming smile that spoke of nothing but peace and serenity and a healthy diastolic, flipped his little brother off with both hands, letting the thick red droplets continue to drip down onto the concrete walkway. Sam's eyes still on his brother, he was startled when his personal space was invaded; he found himself looking down at the little man's bald spot. The clerk murmured apologies as he shoved a roll of paper towels into his hands, clearly intending them for Dean.
Sam shifted awkwardly, taking a step back from the man. "Um, okay, I'm going to go give these to him. We still need to find mistletoe berries, if you have any of those."
The sales clerk looked at Sam as if he had lost his mind. "Mistletoe berries? In July? In Georgia?"
::: ::: :::
As pointless as the entire shopping extravaganza seemed, the mousy sales clerk at least had some contacts that were willing to ship the items, some frozen mistletoe berries and a lodestone they swore up and down was at least the size of Andre the Giant's fist. Considering they were paying for refrigerated shipping for the plant life and then the shipping weight of a giant magnetic rock, there was no hope for overnight shipping. This meant probably two or three more days hanging out in obnoxiously hot weather.
Sam was quick to point out that they still had to do research on who the poltergeist actually was so they could take care of the ghost. He was also quick to point out, before Dean could open his mouth to complain, that the library in Blue Ridge was very likely air conditioned.
Sam was right - it was, delicious industrial AC whipping around a library full of college-age tourists of the female persuasion who were trying to get out of the heat, leaning over the mahogany balustrade in low-cut tank tops while nipples tried to pierce their way through thin cotton fabric.
This was pretty much the best library Dean had ever been in.
Leaning deeply into his chair, he held his book up expertly so he could take a nice long gander at the rows and rows of breasts lined up for his viewing pleasure. Yes, the book on local murders was supposed to have his rapt attention, but - really, wasn't it more important at the moment to rank someone first prize? (First prize went to a girl who had a delicate pink sunburn cresting the tops of her cultivated C-cups that made them look like they were blushing in modesty. It was adorable. And Dean was always a willing party to helping a woman apply sunblock.)
"Do you really think I don't know what you're doing? That they don't?" Sam hissed.
Dean didn't even swivel his head to the side. "Francis, as much as I say things to the contrary, you do have a dick. Tell me you didn't spend at least five of the last ten minutes doing the same thing."
"No, I-"
"Honestly?" Dean chuckled. "Because it wasn't me Miss Runner-Up was winking at."
Sam huffed indignantly and stuffed his nose back into his book.
::: ::: :::
Fifteen minutes later, it was decided who sixth place was, as well as labeling the dates from a series of gruesome murders - all unsolved - that all happened prior to the 1980s. With the violence involved, any one of them could have had the juice powerful enough to provoke poltergeist action. However, considering it was only one of the victim's fathers who built the house, there was good money that they'd pinpointed who it was that was in dire need of a bonfire.
Sam was busy scrawling down all the dates pertaining to their spook's murder when he klutzed out and his pen went flying underneath their table. Scrabbling with his fingers and a long stretch of his arm to get the ballpoint, he became aware of a pair of sensible heels tapping impatiently rather close to his face.
"Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave," a highly offended voice spoke.
"Aw, c'mon..." Sam heard Dean say, sounding extremely dismayed.
I knew it, knew he was going to get us kicked out, Sam thought, coming up from underneath the table legs. What he expected was the group of women in the far corner of the room to look pissed off and disgusted by a guy who seemed entirely too immature to be entering his 30s. He did not expect to see his brother endeavoring not to bleed onto his stack of books (and failing) while the matronly librarian looked on as if he were setting the pile on fire. The bevy of buxom beauties, if anything, just looked concerned. Sam didn't blame them, it kinda looked like someone turned on a faucet of blood.
"Shit, Dean! Jesus," Sam bit his tongue to stop himself from snapping at the indignant hag. She couldn't do something useful while she came over to harass bleeding patrons, like bring some tissues? Or a mop. Possibly a transfusion.
Sam grabbed Dean by the elbow and hauled him into the bathroom, pulling paper towel after paper towel out of the rack, hypnotized by the way the blood keeps absorbing into the pattern, the way the vermilion slowly blossomed out onto the white. All the while, Dean sat on the faux-marble counter, far too docile for Sam's liking, leaning up against the wall with his eyes closed. Eventually, the bleeding stopped and his skin quit being leeched of color.
Sam ran out to the car to grab him a clean shirt, but by the time he got back inside, Dean was already at the circulation desk, haggling a price for all the books he'd bled on and a few he hadn't that they still needed, since the grim librarian was refusing to lend them out anything. While this was going on, one of the girls - Third Place - was writing her cell phone number and hotel room on the back of a purse-sized packet of Kleenex.
Sam shook his head. Only Dean could look like a hemophiliac and end up getting a date.
::: ::: :::
Up to their eyeballs in the local lore books they now owned -and stacks of copies they'd had to spend all their laundry money on - the two brothers sat uncomfortably in the broken air conditioning of their motel room. The heat and closed quarters served as additional irritants as they scoured regional maps and burial records, mostly trying to ignore each other so they wouldn't piss each other off.
Unfortunately, Dean was pretty hard to ignore as he sat there with a twist of tissue stuffed in each bloodied nostril, a trail of rust-colored fingerprints scattered across nearly every surface he touched. Sam sat there tapping his pen on the table, praying for patience, telling himself that Dean was at least trying to help, at least trying to research - and none of this was his fault.
But then he saw it - the bloody print on his laptop screen.
"Dude! What the hell?!"
Dean blinked in complete surprise, one of the tissues falling out of his nose.
"Can you stop gushing everywhere? Jesus, you're leaking all over the place."
"Uh, yeah," Dean smirked. "I'll get right to work on that."
Sam took a deep breath that was intended to calm him down, but didn't quite do the job. "I'm serious, Dean."
"Me too, Sam. I mean, it's a drought, what the fuck do you expect me to do - a fucking rain dance?" Dean got to his feet, open and shuts the mini-fridge with a slam. More fingerprints are left behind.
"No, but maybe you could wash your goddamn hands instead of smearing your DNA all over everything."
The trickle resumed its flow down Dean's emptied nostril, his fingers automatically investigating it as he swore under his breath.
"Fucking gross," Sam muttered.
And it wasn't that it is gross to either of them, it was just that they were both pissy, Sam's comment sending Dean over the edge. With a face crumpled up in defiance, he smacked his freshly bloodied hand right into the middle of the laptop screen, thick fluid marring the LCD monitor like war paint.
"What the fuck?!" Sam practically howled, towering over Dean who was holding the hem of his shirt to his face. He grabbed a clean shirt for Dean and the car keys, which was friggin' thoughtful as hell considering what just happened, and then shoved his brother out the motel door, locking it behind him. As an afterthought, Sam re-opened the door and tossed the small pack of tissues the girl from the library had used as a calling card. Surprised, Dean fumbled to catch them, the tips of his fingers managing to hang onto them before the door slammed shut.
::: ::: :::
The evening cooled off just enough that both of them realized they were being assholes. Dean came back with some cold submarine sandwiches and an exact location on where their ghost was buried - the markings carved into the keystone of the house also carved into the tombstone of one of the murder victims that Dean had found.
The lingering scent of smoke and charred bones clung to Dean, cloying and familiar and one less thing they had to worry about before they could ditch this town. Sam purposefully ignored the fierce desire he had to yell at his brother for going out and doing part of the gig alone - because really, the poltergeist wasn't going to leave the house, so the danger was only imagined.
The Fedex truck delivered to the motel early the next morning, mistletoe berries getting set out to thaw while Sam went through the rest of the spell's ingredients and measured them out carefully for the job that night. Deep breaths helped him reign in his irritation, irrational irritation maybe, but it was still there. Until he figured it out - that maybe there was worry mixed in there too, that he stood there uselessly as his brother bled all over the place. His instinct was to do something, anything, to fix it. And he couldn't, there was nothing he could do - so he was pissed, useless. But it was worry over a nosebleed - okay, maybe twenty nosebleeds - maybe he was just as hovering as Dean accused him of being.
::: ::: :::
Three am witchcraft - it was so cliché.
Dean mixed coffin splinters and grave dirt into the red Georgia clay, consecrating the ground with the rue water, then holy water for good measure. All around the area, Sam used a sharpened stick to draw sigils into the earth, placing the giant lodestone dead center and chanting in Latin.
A flash of blinding light, and whatever was drawn out of the house knocked them clear off their feet, the smell of burnt ozone and the sap of pine needles sharp in their noses, something very much like static raising the hair on their arms.
All in all, probably one of the easier hunts they'd had, at least in terms of getting the crap kicked out of them.
They'd normally hit the road right after, but Sam wanted to stop by the hospital, let the Barkers know they could head back home. Dean didn't know why they couldn't just call them on the phone, but sometimes Sam got a bug up his ass about doing things in person, so he let it go - didn't want to start tempers flaring again while they were still stuck in this heat. Instead he offered an ice cold beer before they hit the sack - the famous Dean Winchester Reconciliation Beer, to smooth things over, make sure things are okay, to fix things. They clinked bottles and kept silent as they polished off the hoppy lager.
::: ::: :::
Alarm on his phone blaring its chiding pattern, Sam reached one hand over to the nightstand to shut it off, eyes blinking slowly against the rays of sun casting light on dancing motes of dust. Dean was sitting on his bed, his back to Sam. It struck him as a little weird that Dean was awake, but the room wasn't packed up and there was no caffeine brewing in the dinky two cup Mr. Coffee.
Sam got out of bed, stretched up toward the ceiling, balancing on the balls of his bare feet, yawning loudly. His mind already compiling a list of breakfast options, he stumbled sleepily over to the other side of Dean's bed.
His appetite fled immediately.
It was a goddamn massacre, blood everywhere. The blankets and sheets swirled around Dean like a nest of saturated bandages, he was - in fact - bringing a balled up corner of the formerly white sheet to his face.
Sam shook his head back and forth, as if it was a damned Etch-a-Sketch and he could clear away the image in front of him. "Dean, what - what the hell?!"
His older brother, startlingly pale-faced, gave him a salute with a shaking hand, trembling that seemed to jackhammer up into the rest of his body. "S'fine," he slurred into the sheets.
"The hell it is - how long?"
Dean stared at the pointy star wall clock through eyes that were blinking heavily. "Long enough."
"And you didn't think maybe you should wake me up?"
"I was gonna in a minute," Dean said, adjusting the sheet in his hands to get a firmer pinch on his nose. "It's just a nosebleed, Sammy."
"It's like any other bleeding in your body, man, if it goes on too long..." Sam stopped himself right there. From the looks of things, he could tell it had already gone on too long. The sluggish flutter of Dean's impossibly long lashes against his pallid complexion, ghoulish with its splashes of grayish-green.
And then Sam noticed something that pretty much caused panic to wipe his mind completely blank, stark fear the only thing present.
There was blood welling up in Dean's eyes.
"Fuck, Dean!" Sam said, taking Dean's head in his hands to make sure this was what he was truly seeing.
"Gettoff me! What the hell?!" Dean tried to shrug him off, hardly any strength behind the motion.
"Your eyes Dean, you're crying blood."
"No way!" Dean brought a hand up to his eyes, presses fingers against the moisture there and stared dumbly at his hand when it came away dotted with red tears. "What is this - fuckin' True Blood?"
Sam blinked. "You watch that-" He pulled up short, shaking his head. He needed to focus.
"Hospital Dean, now."
Dean nodded, pointing at a t-shirt flopping out of his bag. Sam grabbed it quickly, Dean untangling himself from the swathes of blankets and sheets he has surrounding him. Dean used the shirt to pinch his nose.
"Jeans," Dean said.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, it is the goddamn hospital, no one is going to care."
"I'm not going out in my skivvies, Sam." Stubborn flared in Dean's eyes, which were still focusing slowly.
Sam grabbed the jeans off the worn carpet and tossed them at his brother's legs, Dean snatching them out of the air with one hand and tugging them on. Dean dressed himself, Sam pawed through his clothes for his own jeans. His brother shoved his bare feet into his boots, not really bothering with the laces.
Two steps. Two steps was how far Dean got from the bed before the last of the color drained from his face and his knees buckled like a belt.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sam said, keeping his voice calm, trying not to look at the fact that his brother was - fuckfuckfuck- bleeding from his eyes. Grabbing Dean under the armpits he hoisted him back up, held his trembling form still for a minute, furrowing his brow deeper at the cold sweat Dean had going on. "Hey, I got you."
Dean, still clamping his nose with the t-shirt, mumbled something behind the cotton cloth that may have been, "I know."
Sam grabbed his brother's free arm and slung it over his shoulders. Step by step they made it outside to the car.
Sam chattered nervously the whole way, furtive glances at his brother's eyes - thinking about Bloody Mary and secrets and Ebola and strokes and shock - as Dean curled in on himself in the passenger seat.
"Hey, hey, Dean, stay awake, we're almost there. We're gonna getcha fixed up."
The triage nurse took one look as they stumbled through the door, bloodied and looking like war-torn veterans, immediately got Dean on a gurney and in ten minutes there were people running around with IV lines and blood work and commenting on how low his blood pressure was, doctors sticking the little flashlight up Dean's nose.
Dean refused to lay down. "If I do, I'm gonna swallow blood and then puke all over you," he snapped out to the scrawny resident who suggested it. They gave him an ice pack and told him to put it on his forehead, to see if that would help.
Sam kept picking at the cuticle on his thumb, a nervous habit, one that had earned him a great deal of scar tissue. Dean stopped swinging his legs like a toddler on the bed to kick his little brother.
"Quit it."
Sam rolled his eyes, kept picking. Dean knew why he did this, why he sometimes worried at his thumb until it bled.
Another kick. "Sam, I'm gonna be fine. Quit picking."
Sam gave another eyeroll, but stopped.
The doctor eventually came back. "Looks like you have a doozy of a nosebleed."
A doozy. Dean nearly cracked up right there, used the bloody t-shirt to hide the smirk on his face.
"But the eyes..." Sam said.
"That happens rarely, if the bleed is bad enough, which it is."
Just as Sam breathed a sigh of relief that it was just some normal medical problem, easily explained, the doctor continued.
"We're going to go in through the left nostril and cauterize the blood vessel responsible. That should solve all the problems."
Cauterize. Dean immediately sat up ramrod straight and Sam went back to tearing the skin off of his thumb.
"Uh, cauterize...what, you take a branding iron and shove it up there?" Dean asked, a chuckle bursting out that was laced with nervousness.
"No, no, no," the doctor said, laughing in a way that made Dean clench his fists - which was probably good - more pinching for his nose. "We numb the area, then go in with an acid. It may be mildly uncomfortable afterwards, nothing that your normal over the counter medication can't handle."
Which is what they did - stuck long Q-tips of goop up Dean's nose, first the anesthetic, then the acid. A roll of cotton got stuffed up Dean's nostrils, and they still had him sit with the ice pack and soak up fluids until some color returned to his face. He would be fine, the bleeding stopped. Problem fixed. And Sam planned to get them away from this freaky weather as soon as possible anyway.
The Barkers were upstairs. Sam snuck up the staircases into Cheryl's room, Garrett's asleep on the chair next to her, a hospital blanket draped over him. Cheryl was awake - doing a crossword and looking more like she should, Sam thought. Just a woman who broke her leg, rather than a woman chased down by a manifestation of pure anger. The bruise on her head was fading already, healing.
She looked up eagerly, keeping her voice whisper soft. "You're here early."
"Yeah," Sam said. "Just wanted to let you know that the house is clear now, shouldn't have anymore problems. Except, well, it's a little messy. A lot, actually."
Sam could feel the wave of relief and gratitude that washed over the new Mrs. Barker.
"The mess doesn't matter. Whatever's broken - we can fix it." she said softly.
Sam nodded, thinking of his brother downstairs, of stupid fights and tugs of war, of control issues and family drama - of all the broken things they've had to deal with.
"Don't worry," Cheryl said again, a reassuring smile on her face. "We'll fix it."
Sam smiled back, genuine and bright as he turned to go back to Dean.
Yeah, they will.
----
The end.