Fic: The Ache
Title: The Ache
Authors: triquetralmoon and wave_obscura
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, H/C
Warnings: This is the premiere episode of the sixth season. Don't read if you aren't caught up. Also - swearing.
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Missing scene from 6.01. hurt!sick!Dean This will probably be Kripke'd immediately, but - it gets inside Sam's head.
Author's note: This was written as a round robin last night that turned out pretty well. We each took turns and then both went over the whole thing together. It was rather fun - and it actually prompted us to write, something both of us have been stuck in lately.
::: ::: :::
This isn’t how he imagined their reunion going down.
Standing in Lisa’s - Dean’s - garage, the smell of exhaust fumes in the air, the syringe Sam had just stabbed into Dean’s chest jutting out of his limp body.
Sam wonders if he’s hallucinating again.
“Dean?” he says, like he expects an answer.
Of course there isn’t one, so Sam yanks the plunger from Dean’s chest. Dean falls against him with a sigh. Aside from that soft breath of air, there’s no movement from his brother, nothing to suggest he’s close to waking up. For a moment, Sam panics, wondering if he’s stabbed his brother in the heart. He wonders if this is how John Travolta felt standing over an OD’d Uma Thurman. He nearly laughs - Dean as Uma Thurman. It’s the kind of thing he would have joked about before, teased his brother about. Not anymore.
Watching Dean’s face closely, Sam reaches out to his brother’s chest - feels a heartbeat, steady and strong, and he lets out a breath. It feels like he’s been holding it forever - at least for a year.
Dean’s getting heavy and starting to sink to the ground, so Sam forces himself to focus. He bends over, gripping Dean around the waist and hefting him over his shoulder. He’s gained a little weight, it seems -- normal will do that to you-- and Sam has to stop to catch his breath just outside the garage door. He lays Dean across the hood of the Charger.
He manages to stuff Dean inside the backseat, which is much harder than stuffing a body into the backseat of the Impala.
And just the thought of the Impala, covered by a tarp in the garage, causes a lump to form in Sam’s throat, which he has to shake off when he notices a guy across the way, standing in his driveway in a Nirvana t-shirt and waving cheerfully.
Sam glances at his brother’s body laid out in the backseat, wondering if the guy had seen anything, but no - the man just stands there waving like this is Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. So, Sam plasters a smile on his face, flashes dimples and waves back before getting into the driver’s seat and revving up the engine.
It’s a long drive back to where they’re staying. Twice Sam veers to the shoulder of the highway when Dean moans, freaked that maybe the antidote isn’t working. But each time he pulls over, he checks Dean’s heart rate and counts each breath until he’s satisfied. Somewhere in Dean’s delirium he’s in pain, maybe hallucinating a little, but he’s going to live and he’s going to get better.
“So what have you been up to?” Sam says when he grows bored with the silence. He can see Dean’s nose through his rearview mirror, sees his forehead pinch up when Sam speaks. “Can you hear me, bro?”
He stops at a red light, and thinks about turning the radio on. Instead he says, “You’re gonna be so pissed at me. I just want you to know... if you break my jaw? The cousins will ditch my ass and then you’re stuck with me.”
Dean’s response is a simple word - concrete: “Sammy.”
Sam nearly swerves the car off the road right then and there, but flicking another glance in the rear view, this time a hopeful glance, he can tell his brother is still down for the count, maybe for quite awhile. It’s probably better this way, Sam thinks. If Dean wakes up in the backseat of his supposedly dead brother’s car, with his dead brother driving, they’re going to get in a wreck. And he kind of likes his car, likes that his iPod isn’t going to get flung unceremoniously into the backseat. .
Truth is, though, he’d drive the goddamn thing over a cliff if it meant having Dean back.
Now that they’re just a couple of miles from where they’re going, his mouth has gone dry just thinking about it. He’s turned this moment over in his head a thousand times, the moment he and Dean would meet again. In his mind it has occurred just about everywhere-- from Bobby’s house to the fucking Grand Canyon, and a thousand different scenarios. Most of them involved Sam getting punched in the nose, but he was ready for it.
He always knew, even when he was yelling and screaming at Bobby and his grandfather to leave Dean the fuck out of all of it-- he always knew that he’d find an excuse, sooner or later, to pull Dean back in.
And he’ll feel terrible about that later. Right now he’s too goddamn excited to talk to his brother again to think about anything else.
“Almost there,” Sam says to the rearview mirror. “Almost there.”
The Dodge Charger pulls up a gravel driveway that crunches underneath the tires and leads up to a ramshackle (fuck you, Chuck) house. One of his cousins, Christian, is sitting outside - eyes flinty. He doesn’t say anything as Sam gets out of the car and stretches his long legs, just spits on the ground and yells, “Samuel!” before turning and walking into the house.
Sam’s grandfather, who Sam still can’t believe is here, walks out as Sam opens the back door of the car and pulls Dean out by the ankles so that he can get a firm grip around his chest.
He grabs his brother by the belt. “You’re looking good there, old man. Tucked in shirt and everything, huh?” He tries to keep his laughter quiet, a private joke between brothers, but his shoulders shake so hard he knocks his head on the roof and stars sparkle before his eyes.
“You got him?” Samuel says behind him.
“I got him,” Sam replies, slinging Dean’s body over his shoulder.
Samuel follows him into the house, into the back bedroom. He helps get Dean settled on the flimsy bed and Sam has to resist the urge to snarl at the old man like a possessive dog.
“Thank you,” he says through gritting teeth. “We’ll be fine.”
Samuel doesn’t move. “He looks a lot like your mother. They got that same pretty little nose. Bet he got beat up a lot in school.”
As much as he wishes Samuel would fuck off, Sam can’t resist a little smile and even a laugh. “No. Dad had us throwing punches before we could walk.”
Samuel nods. “That chest wound’s gonna hurt later. I think we’ve got some--”
“--it’s fine. We’re fine. Just... he’s going to freak when he wakes up, and all of you aren’t going to help. So get the fuck out - that's the politest I can be."
Samuel puts his hands up in surrender, a little smirk on his face. Sam doesn’t really care if the man feels slighted or not -- he just needs this time to be him and Dean. It’s been a long time coming, and God - in all his goddamned glory - knows how impatient Sam has been for it, the moment when his brother will look at him with wide eyes - disbelief, relief, and anger all at once.
But what Sam knows he’ll see there - what he needs to see there - is love. He doubts he knows what that means anymore - but he knows that if he can muster it up for anyone, it’s Dean.
Sam reaches out again, splays his hand on Dean’s chest to feel the reassuring thump of his brother’s heart, when he feels eyes on him. He turns to see a slight dark-haired shadow in the doorway. Gwen.
Sam stands up - feels the anger thrumming through him - and crosses the room in two strides.
“You need something?” he snaps.
“Uh, no,” she drawls, still trying to poke her head in, that curious look in her eye. The look drives Sam crazy - as if Dean is some exhibit in a zoo rather than family. And - yeah, he’s talked about Dean to them kind of a lot, maybe too much. So he can understand being curious - but now is not the fucking time.
“Damn,” she says, “he’s way prettier than any Campbell I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s not a Campbell. He’s a Winchester,” Sam says, and slams the door in her face.
He kneels at Dean’s bedside and checks his heart rate once again. He’s burning up now, but that’s normal-- once the fever breaks, it won’t be long until he wakes up. Only a little while longer now.
“Gwen!” he calls, because he knows she’s still standing outside the door, probably looking through one of the cracks. “Bring me a rag and some water. Leave it outside the door.”
He hears Gwen grumble all the way down the hall, and the other two cousins disapproving rather loudly of his attitude. After a minute a pan of water sloshes deliberately on the floor, a rag thrown in with a splash.
“Thank you,” Sam calls without an ounce of gratitude in his voice. He waits a moment for Gwen to walk away, opens the door and drags the water in. He rings the rag out and lays it over Dean’s forehead, sure that it must have been the filthiest scrap Gwen could find.
“Sammy,” Dean mutters, leaning into his touch. Dirty, brownish water slides down his face. “Sam.”
“Yeah, Dean. Yeah. It’s me.”
“I’ll find a way, Sam. Don’ worry. Find somethin’.”
“Shhh.”
Dean squirms, his lips parting in a grimace. “I won’t let you burn.”
He says it so clearly, so lucidly (he is not lucid, he is so not lucid) that the hair stands up on the back of Sam’s arms. He clears a lump painfully from his throat. “I know, dude. I know that.”
“I won’t do it. Sammy. Won’t.”
“Quiet now,” Sam says, his voice cracking. “Shut the fuck up. Please, man. You fucking talk too much when you’re out of it like this. Can’t ever shut up, can you?” As desperate as Sam’s been to hear his brother’s voice - it can’t be about that, never about that.
Dean tenses up with pain and relaxes again, his mouth going slack.
“Thank you,” Sam mutters. “Thank god.”
He dabs the damp rag along Dean’s neck, pausing when he comes to the neckline of Dean’s shirt. The cotton is stained red, a little blood seeping out of the wound. Sam puts the rag aside and lifts up his brother’s shirt; the site where the syringe went is already bruising. He winces - remembering his own little djinn-induced acid trip - and how hard Samuel had plunged one of the needles right into his torso. Grandpa did not hold back - with words or force, and Sam had been nursing a deep ache in his chest for a couple of days. That ache and the ache of missing Dean-- he could barely tell the difference anymore.
Icepack, he thinks, and he jumps up to his feet. He’s loathe to leave Dean alone for even a moment, but what he needs is right in his backpack and it’ll be a helluva lot easier to just get it himself than depending on his curious cousins.
He stomps past his long lost relatives, giving them a glare that pins them to their seats - letting them know with no uncertainty to stay the fuck away from Dean. There’s an icepack in his first aid kit and he grabs some gauze to go with it, some peroxide.
Samuel is standing against one of the walls, hands in his pockets, staring at Sam, quirking one of his enormous caterpillar eyebrows in inquiry. Sam simply holds up the icepack in answer.
“Sam,” he says, and stops Sam with a hand across the chest. His eyes are serious, for once, with a dash of something that could be mistaken for tenderness.
“What?” Sam answers, challenging.
“I understand... you’re happy we got to him in time, that he’s back with you. But.”
“But what?” Sam takes a step closer, until he and his grandfather’s face are inches apart.
Samuel shakes his head sadly. “He don’t belong to you anymore, Sam. And it would do you good to remember that.”
Sam heads back to Dean without a word.
That’s bullshit. Dean will come with them. Sam knows it.
Dean has to.
Sam’s footsteps creak across the worn wooden floor, the musty smell of abandoned building strong in his nose as he gets closer to his brother. Dean’s forehead has broken out in sweat, which is good - it means he’s that much closer to the fever breaking, but he looks unsettled - pained. His brother’s face in pinched in the many furrows Sam knows - and Dean lets out a low moan stifled by grinding teeth.
“Hey,” Sam says, picking up the rag again, dipping it in the water. “Hey, man, s’okay. You’re okay.”
Dean’s face smooths out and seems to relax, but not before his hand reaches out and grabs his brother by the wrist as Sam goes to dab the rag along Dean’s forehead. Dean squeezes Sam’s wrist for only a moment - but during that moment Sam feels his heart stop before Dean’s hand goes slack, falling back against his chest. He moans again as the hand hits his sore spot.
Sam picks the hand up and holds it against his face, feels the warmth. Dean would shit a brick, if he saw what Sam was doing.
But he doesn’t care.
Grandpa Campbell is wrong. Sam has Dean now like he never really lost him.
And that’s the way it’s gonna be. How Sam needs it to be.
After a moment he lets go, lays the arm gently down on the bed. He sits across the room and waits for Dean to wake.
::::
The end.
Authors: triquetralmoon and wave_obscura
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, H/C
Warnings: This is the premiere episode of the sixth season. Don't read if you aren't caught up. Also - swearing.
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Missing scene from 6.01. hurt!sick!Dean This will probably be Kripke'd immediately, but - it gets inside Sam's head.
Author's note: This was written as a round robin last night that turned out pretty well. We each took turns and then both went over the whole thing together. It was rather fun - and it actually prompted us to write, something both of us have been stuck in lately.
::: ::: :::
This isn’t how he imagined their reunion going down.
Standing in Lisa’s - Dean’s - garage, the smell of exhaust fumes in the air, the syringe Sam had just stabbed into Dean’s chest jutting out of his limp body.
Sam wonders if he’s hallucinating again.
“Dean?” he says, like he expects an answer.
Of course there isn’t one, so Sam yanks the plunger from Dean’s chest. Dean falls against him with a sigh. Aside from that soft breath of air, there’s no movement from his brother, nothing to suggest he’s close to waking up. For a moment, Sam panics, wondering if he’s stabbed his brother in the heart. He wonders if this is how John Travolta felt standing over an OD’d Uma Thurman. He nearly laughs - Dean as Uma Thurman. It’s the kind of thing he would have joked about before, teased his brother about. Not anymore.
Watching Dean’s face closely, Sam reaches out to his brother’s chest - feels a heartbeat, steady and strong, and he lets out a breath. It feels like he’s been holding it forever - at least for a year.
Dean’s getting heavy and starting to sink to the ground, so Sam forces himself to focus. He bends over, gripping Dean around the waist and hefting him over his shoulder. He’s gained a little weight, it seems -- normal will do that to you-- and Sam has to stop to catch his breath just outside the garage door. He lays Dean across the hood of the Charger.
He manages to stuff Dean inside the backseat, which is much harder than stuffing a body into the backseat of the Impala.
And just the thought of the Impala, covered by a tarp in the garage, causes a lump to form in Sam’s throat, which he has to shake off when he notices a guy across the way, standing in his driveway in a Nirvana t-shirt and waving cheerfully.
Sam glances at his brother’s body laid out in the backseat, wondering if the guy had seen anything, but no - the man just stands there waving like this is Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. So, Sam plasters a smile on his face, flashes dimples and waves back before getting into the driver’s seat and revving up the engine.
It’s a long drive back to where they’re staying. Twice Sam veers to the shoulder of the highway when Dean moans, freaked that maybe the antidote isn’t working. But each time he pulls over, he checks Dean’s heart rate and counts each breath until he’s satisfied. Somewhere in Dean’s delirium he’s in pain, maybe hallucinating a little, but he’s going to live and he’s going to get better.
“So what have you been up to?” Sam says when he grows bored with the silence. He can see Dean’s nose through his rearview mirror, sees his forehead pinch up when Sam speaks. “Can you hear me, bro?”
He stops at a red light, and thinks about turning the radio on. Instead he says, “You’re gonna be so pissed at me. I just want you to know... if you break my jaw? The cousins will ditch my ass and then you’re stuck with me.”
Dean’s response is a simple word - concrete: “Sammy.”
Sam nearly swerves the car off the road right then and there, but flicking another glance in the rear view, this time a hopeful glance, he can tell his brother is still down for the count, maybe for quite awhile. It’s probably better this way, Sam thinks. If Dean wakes up in the backseat of his supposedly dead brother’s car, with his dead brother driving, they’re going to get in a wreck. And he kind of likes his car, likes that his iPod isn’t going to get flung unceremoniously into the backseat. .
Truth is, though, he’d drive the goddamn thing over a cliff if it meant having Dean back.
Now that they’re just a couple of miles from where they’re going, his mouth has gone dry just thinking about it. He’s turned this moment over in his head a thousand times, the moment he and Dean would meet again. In his mind it has occurred just about everywhere-- from Bobby’s house to the fucking Grand Canyon, and a thousand different scenarios. Most of them involved Sam getting punched in the nose, but he was ready for it.
He always knew, even when he was yelling and screaming at Bobby and his grandfather to leave Dean the fuck out of all of it-- he always knew that he’d find an excuse, sooner or later, to pull Dean back in.
And he’ll feel terrible about that later. Right now he’s too goddamn excited to talk to his brother again to think about anything else.
“Almost there,” Sam says to the rearview mirror. “Almost there.”
The Dodge Charger pulls up a gravel driveway that crunches underneath the tires and leads up to a ramshackle (fuck you, Chuck) house. One of his cousins, Christian, is sitting outside - eyes flinty. He doesn’t say anything as Sam gets out of the car and stretches his long legs, just spits on the ground and yells, “Samuel!” before turning and walking into the house.
Sam’s grandfather, who Sam still can’t believe is here, walks out as Sam opens the back door of the car and pulls Dean out by the ankles so that he can get a firm grip around his chest.
He grabs his brother by the belt. “You’re looking good there, old man. Tucked in shirt and everything, huh?” He tries to keep his laughter quiet, a private joke between brothers, but his shoulders shake so hard he knocks his head on the roof and stars sparkle before his eyes.
“You got him?” Samuel says behind him.
“I got him,” Sam replies, slinging Dean’s body over his shoulder.
Samuel follows him into the house, into the back bedroom. He helps get Dean settled on the flimsy bed and Sam has to resist the urge to snarl at the old man like a possessive dog.
“Thank you,” he says through gritting teeth. “We’ll be fine.”
Samuel doesn’t move. “He looks a lot like your mother. They got that same pretty little nose. Bet he got beat up a lot in school.”
As much as he wishes Samuel would fuck off, Sam can’t resist a little smile and even a laugh. “No. Dad had us throwing punches before we could walk.”
Samuel nods. “That chest wound’s gonna hurt later. I think we’ve got some--”
“--it’s fine. We’re fine. Just... he’s going to freak when he wakes up, and all of you aren’t going to help. So get the fuck out - that's the politest I can be."
Samuel puts his hands up in surrender, a little smirk on his face. Sam doesn’t really care if the man feels slighted or not -- he just needs this time to be him and Dean. It’s been a long time coming, and God - in all his goddamned glory - knows how impatient Sam has been for it, the moment when his brother will look at him with wide eyes - disbelief, relief, and anger all at once.
But what Sam knows he’ll see there - what he needs to see there - is love. He doubts he knows what that means anymore - but he knows that if he can muster it up for anyone, it’s Dean.
Sam reaches out again, splays his hand on Dean’s chest to feel the reassuring thump of his brother’s heart, when he feels eyes on him. He turns to see a slight dark-haired shadow in the doorway. Gwen.
Sam stands up - feels the anger thrumming through him - and crosses the room in two strides.
“You need something?” he snaps.
“Uh, no,” she drawls, still trying to poke her head in, that curious look in her eye. The look drives Sam crazy - as if Dean is some exhibit in a zoo rather than family. And - yeah, he’s talked about Dean to them kind of a lot, maybe too much. So he can understand being curious - but now is not the fucking time.
“Damn,” she says, “he’s way prettier than any Campbell I’ve ever seen.”
“He’s not a Campbell. He’s a Winchester,” Sam says, and slams the door in her face.
He kneels at Dean’s bedside and checks his heart rate once again. He’s burning up now, but that’s normal-- once the fever breaks, it won’t be long until he wakes up. Only a little while longer now.
“Gwen!” he calls, because he knows she’s still standing outside the door, probably looking through one of the cracks. “Bring me a rag and some water. Leave it outside the door.”
He hears Gwen grumble all the way down the hall, and the other two cousins disapproving rather loudly of his attitude. After a minute a pan of water sloshes deliberately on the floor, a rag thrown in with a splash.
“Thank you,” Sam calls without an ounce of gratitude in his voice. He waits a moment for Gwen to walk away, opens the door and drags the water in. He rings the rag out and lays it over Dean’s forehead, sure that it must have been the filthiest scrap Gwen could find.
“Sammy,” Dean mutters, leaning into his touch. Dirty, brownish water slides down his face. “Sam.”
“Yeah, Dean. Yeah. It’s me.”
“I’ll find a way, Sam. Don’ worry. Find somethin’.”
“Shhh.”
Dean squirms, his lips parting in a grimace. “I won’t let you burn.”
He says it so clearly, so lucidly (he is not lucid, he is so not lucid) that the hair stands up on the back of Sam’s arms. He clears a lump painfully from his throat. “I know, dude. I know that.”
“I won’t do it. Sammy. Won’t.”
“Quiet now,” Sam says, his voice cracking. “Shut the fuck up. Please, man. You fucking talk too much when you’re out of it like this. Can’t ever shut up, can you?” As desperate as Sam’s been to hear his brother’s voice - it can’t be about that, never about that.
Dean tenses up with pain and relaxes again, his mouth going slack.
“Thank you,” Sam mutters. “Thank god.”
He dabs the damp rag along Dean’s neck, pausing when he comes to the neckline of Dean’s shirt. The cotton is stained red, a little blood seeping out of the wound. Sam puts the rag aside and lifts up his brother’s shirt; the site where the syringe went is already bruising. He winces - remembering his own little djinn-induced acid trip - and how hard Samuel had plunged one of the needles right into his torso. Grandpa did not hold back - with words or force, and Sam had been nursing a deep ache in his chest for a couple of days. That ache and the ache of missing Dean-- he could barely tell the difference anymore.
Icepack, he thinks, and he jumps up to his feet. He’s loathe to leave Dean alone for even a moment, but what he needs is right in his backpack and it’ll be a helluva lot easier to just get it himself than depending on his curious cousins.
He stomps past his long lost relatives, giving them a glare that pins them to their seats - letting them know with no uncertainty to stay the fuck away from Dean. There’s an icepack in his first aid kit and he grabs some gauze to go with it, some peroxide.
Samuel is standing against one of the walls, hands in his pockets, staring at Sam, quirking one of his enormous caterpillar eyebrows in inquiry. Sam simply holds up the icepack in answer.
“Sam,” he says, and stops Sam with a hand across the chest. His eyes are serious, for once, with a dash of something that could be mistaken for tenderness.
“What?” Sam answers, challenging.
“I understand... you’re happy we got to him in time, that he’s back with you. But.”
“But what?” Sam takes a step closer, until he and his grandfather’s face are inches apart.
Samuel shakes his head sadly. “He don’t belong to you anymore, Sam. And it would do you good to remember that.”
Sam heads back to Dean without a word.
That’s bullshit. Dean will come with them. Sam knows it.
Dean has to.
Sam’s footsteps creak across the worn wooden floor, the musty smell of abandoned building strong in his nose as he gets closer to his brother. Dean’s forehead has broken out in sweat, which is good - it means he’s that much closer to the fever breaking, but he looks unsettled - pained. His brother’s face in pinched in the many furrows Sam knows - and Dean lets out a low moan stifled by grinding teeth.
“Hey,” Sam says, picking up the rag again, dipping it in the water. “Hey, man, s’okay. You’re okay.”
Dean’s face smooths out and seems to relax, but not before his hand reaches out and grabs his brother by the wrist as Sam goes to dab the rag along Dean’s forehead. Dean squeezes Sam’s wrist for only a moment - but during that moment Sam feels his heart stop before Dean’s hand goes slack, falling back against his chest. He moans again as the hand hits his sore spot.
Sam picks the hand up and holds it against his face, feels the warmth. Dean would shit a brick, if he saw what Sam was doing.
But he doesn’t care.
Grandpa Campbell is wrong. Sam has Dean now like he never really lost him.
And that’s the way it’s gonna be. How Sam needs it to be.
After a moment he lets go, lays the arm gently down on the bed. He sits across the room and waits for Dean to wake.
::::
The end.