Fic: And Nothing 1/1
Title: And Nothing
Genre: gen, h/c
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: Sam and Dean go to a Metallica concert.
Spoilers/Warnings: permanently injured Dean, forearm crutches, boozing, language
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: I started writing this for roque_clasique 's birthday (I think?) not this year but the year before that ( :-O ) and just now finished it. The prompt was "Sam pov, forearm crutches, Metallica concert." I really did not plan on posting two forearm crutch fics in a row and am not terribly pleased with myself for doing so (they aren't even in the same 'verse), but my persistant writer's block seems to be backing off and I'm doing whatever I can to keep writing. So, um. Happy very very very very very belated birthday, roque. And thanks for the advice you gave me about it a million years ago, too.
And Nothing
by wave obscura
Sam groans his way out of the car and slams the door, pausing a moment to take it all in-- the stadium, the black-shirted, be-spiked, over-tanned crowd, the rows and rows of motorcycles, the distance smash of beer bottles as they meet their fate against the pavement of the vast parking lot.
He takes it all in and he sniffs and he thinks this is exactly what I thought it would look like.
"Hey," Dean calls from inside the car, "Can I get a hand?"
More evidence that they should not be here. But Sam goes to the passenger side anyway, and gives Dean his arm. He pays extra attention to the pain that flickers across Dean's face every time he moves, the sharp exhale as he digs his fingers into Sam's bicep and pulls himself up.
"Dean," Sam tries to say gently, but there's no keeping the nag out of his voice. "I really think it might be--"
"Shut up." Dean props himself up between the hood and the door, breathing too rapidly through his nose.
"If you get knocked around--"
"--I'm not gonna get knocked around."
Sam turns, gesturing wildly at the crowds of people pouring into the stadium. "Look at all that. This is a stupid idea."
Dean shifts ever-so-slightly, testing his weight on his leg, and even that makes him wince.
"It's been a year, Sam," he says. "Whaddya want me to do? Never go to concert again the whole rest of my life?"
Sam glances up at the sky. They're in the middle of the city and there's not a star in sight. Futile. Absolutely futile. And really, how's he supposed to argue? They hunt, don't they, and what's more dangerous, a crowd of balding mullets or an angry spirit?
"Will you at least tell me if it... will you at least tell me if we need to leave?"
"Uh huh," Dean says, "Get out of my way."
"Seriously, man. You gotta--" Sam is distracted when Dean starts to inch forward. "Hey hey hey-- I'll get them for you, just--"
"--I got it," Dean says with a dangerous sense of finality. He ushers Sam away with a wave of his hand; Sam hastily steps backward but keeps his arms outstretched and ready in case Dean takes a tumble.
It's slow going. Dean braces himself on the hood of the car and takes a full step forward, blinking rapidly and looking down at his bad leg like he's wondering if he's made a huge mistake. Then he takes a breath and moves the other leg, stepping down on it for a micro-second, his face twisting with pain. He transfers his weight quickly to his good leg with a grunt.
Then he repeats the process. A few painful-for-both-of-them minutes later, he's on the other side of the passenger door, huffing and puffing. He opens it and pulls one crutch out, then the other.
"What the fuck was the point of that?" Sam demands.
"I gotta practice walking, dude. I stay off the leg too much it's just gonna get weaker."
It's a perfect statement of irony, not real irony but black-fly-in-your-Chardonnay irony, that Dean says this as he settles himself on his crutches. They're the kind that wrap around your forearms, with hand grips, made for long-term use, and they pretty much scream permanently disabled never gonna walk again.
It was some kind of witch or sorcerer that did it, they didn't really bother learning the details before they went after it because the thing was mortal and it was killing people. Right before they set his ass on fire he said something like "so you shall witness, so it shall be done," which Sam and Dean figured was just some kind of cryptic horseshit that they all screamed upon their deaths.
But that night the brothers were dozing off to an episode of House when Dean started screaming and didn't stop, not once, all the way to the ER.
"A leg in-fart-tion? " Dean had giggled at the doctor, beating on his morphine button like a bongo. "What the fuck is a leg infarttion?"
It was just like the injury of the TV show doctor, right down to the last medical detail-- aneurism, muscle dead in his leg. Relentless pain and weakness. Never going away. It was all the same except for one thing: either Dr. House was one badass son of a bitch or Dean had a low tolerance for pain, or maybe the witch/sorcerer/whatever had slathered on an extra layer of agony; either way, there was no fucking way Dean could ever use a cane.
Even crutches were a stretch, in Sam's opinion-- Dean had learned how to twirl pirouettes in his wheelchair like using it was no big deal, but the pain still had to be totally fucking intolerable before he'd even go near it.
Or when the pain was intolerable but he couldn't swallow his stupid pride, like when he didn't want to be a guy in a wheelchair at a Metallica concert. Like tonight.
"You remember the tickets?" Dean says, leaning one crutch against the car and digging in his jacket pocket.
"Of course," Sam says, affronted outwardly but inwardly kicking himself, because what a great idea that would have been, forgetting the tickets. By the time they retrieved them the concert would be half over.
He pulls them out of his pocket and shows them to Dean. Then he turns to study the entranceway. The beatless drumming and tuneless twanging of sound check has begun, he can hear the giant crowd humming with anticipation. He wonders if maybe they have a handicapped area somewhere, some place nice and safe and roped off--
Yeah, because Dean would totally go for that.
"Why general access tickets?" Sam says. "Why?"
Dean shrugs. "Cause that's the only way to go to a concert. Come on, Sam. We're going to have fun."
It's stupid. It's fucking stupid. It's mega mega seriously stupid.
But you know what? Sam wants it to be a good idea, just like Dean does. So he follows his brother inside.
***
He wakes up to a pounding head and a thick, sewer-y film on the roof of his mouth. He's flat on his back. The morning light is slicing through a gap in the curtains, straight between his eyes.
"Bluhhh," he says. It seems logical to sit up, but instead he throws his arm out to the side and is met by something warm and hard-soft.
"Ow," Dean groans, "stop."
Sam turns his head and cracks open an eye. "Why're you in my bed?"
"You're in my bed."
"Why'm I in your bed?"
"Dunno. Got just as drunk as you did."
The night comes back to Sam in vague flickers-- flashing lights, waving arms, sweating armpits. The back of his throat is sore and dry. Screaming.
"Did we... Jesus Christ, how many people died?"
Dean scowls blearily at him. "It wasn't a hunt. It was a fuckin' Metallica concert."
"Oh. Oh yeah."
Dean rubs at his eyes, chest expanding and collapsing with a roaring yawn. "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
Dean keeps his eyes on the ceiling. "Bring me the wheelchair, please? I have to piss."
This wakes Sam right up. He's not sure what shocks him more, the word wheelchair or the word please.
"What's wrong? What happened to your leg?"
"Nothin'."
"Bull. Tell me what happened."
"I was on my feet for hours. I'm sore. Jesus."
"Dean--"
"Bring me the wheelchair or open wide, Sam, cause I gotta take a piss somewhere."
Sam tugs at his dead limbs until he's sitting. He takes a moment to wince at his aching head. He looks for evidence of what could have happened. Dean's crutches are lying discarded by the door, which means he either performed a miracle by walking across the room unassisted, or Sam helped him--maybe even carried him--to the bed.
Which would explain why they slept in the same bed-- Sam must have lost consciousness shortly afterward.
"Dude," Dean says, "Make some coffee while you're up. My mouth tastes like barf."
Sam finds his jacket halfway underneath the bed, and digs out the Impala's keys. He twirls the ring around his finger. "You sure you don't just want help?"
Dean digs his fingers in his eyes. He blindly pats the nightstand down for his pills. "Just. Bring me the fucking wheelchair, okay?"
This is probably one in just a hand full of times all year that Dean's used it. The first time was in the weeks after his release from the hospital, when he could barely move. Then there were a few isolated, short-lived incidents after grueling physical therapy sessions, and maybe a couple of times after a hunt had gone shitty, a time or two he'd used it for no reason at all except the pain was flaring, and those times he didn't really go anywhere but the bathroom and back.
All of these incidences were more than six months ago. For the last six months Dean had been-- well, Sam thought Dean had been starting to accept, or adjusting, or maybe healing, who knew. They both were. They didn't talk about the leg and honestly, thanks to some fairly fantastic pain management, it didn't get in the way much. They'd gotten by just fine on all sorts of hunts, maybe with a few more injuries, and the truth was yeah, they hunted less often now. But for the most part, things were starting to return to something that almost felt like normal.
And then Dean wanted to go to this Metallica concert and nothing-- not even a sudden flare up and the threat of fucking it all up-- was going to stop him.
As Sam stumbles out to the car, he tries his damnedest to remember what the hell could've happened last night. But all he knows is that his ears are ringing, his mouth is sour, his head is pounding, and his stomach muscles ache like he's been doing some pretty heavy projectile vomiting.
Or laughing.
Laughing?
He remembers Dean's arm locked around his neck last night, hot, liquor-stinking breath in his ear. He was telling Sam a story, reliving a memory with him-- the time Dad had tried to test Sam's swimming skill by shoving him into the river.
Instead Sam tossed Dad right over his shoulder and into the water, then stood on the bank and laughed as Dad sputtered and flailed, drenched shocked speechless and drifting rapidly downstream.
Sam laughs at the memory and ow, his stomach muscles.
He pulls the wheelchair out of the trunk, goes back to the room and unfolds it by Dean's bed, locks the wheels. "There you go," he says.
Dean starts to sit up. His head barely makes it off the pillow before he's falling back again. "Fucking christ."
"Please tell me what you did to your leg."
"Goddamn it nothing. My bladder's gonna explode."
"You really didn't hurt yourself?"
Dean gives him a look that at once says I will kill you very soon and the suffering in my bladder is vast and eternal brother please help me.
Sam looks around, spots the ice bucket on the nightstand. In it is an empty bottle of Evan Williams, upturned and standing in an inch of water. He holds the bottle out out to Dean. "Piss in that."
Smiling conspiratorially, Dean takes the bottle under his blanket. A few seconds later: "Ahhhhhh. Oh man. That is fantastic. That is absolutely--"
"--dude stop. You're lucky I got nothing left to puke."
More memories flash. A padded bra against his chest, the taste of cheap lipgloss. The crowd pulsing on all sides of his body. Indulgent, overwrought pyrotechnics. He possibly might have headbanged last night. He thinks maybe they both headbanged, which is really embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the snippets of conversation he's remembering: I don't tell you I love you enough bro love you bro love you bro love you bro.
"Man, you sure love me when you're shitfaced," Dean says, because leave it to him to have the exact same memory at the exact same time. He gives Sam the toothiest of shit-eating grins. "You still love me? Enough to get rid of this?" He holds up the bottle.
Sam complies. When he returns Dean's eyes are closed. Brimming with warm fuzzies now, Sam crawls into bed next to him.
"Hey Dean."
"Huh."
"Last night. We just... we just had fun. Right? Nothing bad happened? I mean... we didn't have to kill anything, did we? And your leg's still attached to your body."
"Yup. Told you we'd have fun." Dean rests a hand on his bad thigh, makes a face. "Leg's sure telling me we had fun."
"You think--"
"It'll be better in a couple days."
"Honestly?"
"Yep."
"We just... had fun. And nothing happened," Sam repeats. He blinks in disbelief. "Man. How often can we say that?"
Dean yawns a mighty yawn. "All the fucking time. Starting now."
:::
The end.
P.S. Sam and Dean were responsible and called a volunteer DD to drive the Impala home from the concert, because they are two heroic young men who care first and foremost about the safety of others. :D
Genre: gen, h/c
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: Sam and Dean go to a Metallica concert.
Spoilers/Warnings: permanently injured Dean, forearm crutches, boozing, language
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: I started writing this for roque_clasique 's birthday (I think?) not this year but the year before that ( :-O ) and just now finished it. The prompt was "Sam pov, forearm crutches, Metallica concert." I really did not plan on posting two forearm crutch fics in a row and am not terribly pleased with myself for doing so (they aren't even in the same 'verse), but my persistant writer's block seems to be backing off and I'm doing whatever I can to keep writing. So, um. Happy very very very very very belated birthday, roque. And thanks for the advice you gave me about it a million years ago, too.
And Nothing
by wave obscura
Sam groans his way out of the car and slams the door, pausing a moment to take it all in-- the stadium, the black-shirted, be-spiked, over-tanned crowd, the rows and rows of motorcycles, the distance smash of beer bottles as they meet their fate against the pavement of the vast parking lot.
He takes it all in and he sniffs and he thinks this is exactly what I thought it would look like.
"Hey," Dean calls from inside the car, "Can I get a hand?"
More evidence that they should not be here. But Sam goes to the passenger side anyway, and gives Dean his arm. He pays extra attention to the pain that flickers across Dean's face every time he moves, the sharp exhale as he digs his fingers into Sam's bicep and pulls himself up.
"Dean," Sam tries to say gently, but there's no keeping the nag out of his voice. "I really think it might be--"
"Shut up." Dean props himself up between the hood and the door, breathing too rapidly through his nose.
"If you get knocked around--"
"--I'm not gonna get knocked around."
Sam turns, gesturing wildly at the crowds of people pouring into the stadium. "Look at all that. This is a stupid idea."
Dean shifts ever-so-slightly, testing his weight on his leg, and even that makes him wince.
"It's been a year, Sam," he says. "Whaddya want me to do? Never go to concert again the whole rest of my life?"
Sam glances up at the sky. They're in the middle of the city and there's not a star in sight. Futile. Absolutely futile. And really, how's he supposed to argue? They hunt, don't they, and what's more dangerous, a crowd of balding mullets or an angry spirit?
"Will you at least tell me if it... will you at least tell me if we need to leave?"
"Uh huh," Dean says, "Get out of my way."
"Seriously, man. You gotta--" Sam is distracted when Dean starts to inch forward. "Hey hey hey-- I'll get them for you, just--"
"--I got it," Dean says with a dangerous sense of finality. He ushers Sam away with a wave of his hand; Sam hastily steps backward but keeps his arms outstretched and ready in case Dean takes a tumble.
It's slow going. Dean braces himself on the hood of the car and takes a full step forward, blinking rapidly and looking down at his bad leg like he's wondering if he's made a huge mistake. Then he takes a breath and moves the other leg, stepping down on it for a micro-second, his face twisting with pain. He transfers his weight quickly to his good leg with a grunt.
Then he repeats the process. A few painful-for-both-of-them minutes later, he's on the other side of the passenger door, huffing and puffing. He opens it and pulls one crutch out, then the other.
"What the fuck was the point of that?" Sam demands.
"I gotta practice walking, dude. I stay off the leg too much it's just gonna get weaker."
It's a perfect statement of irony, not real irony but black-fly-in-your-Chardonnay irony, that Dean says this as he settles himself on his crutches. They're the kind that wrap around your forearms, with hand grips, made for long-term use, and they pretty much scream permanently disabled never gonna walk again.
It was some kind of witch or sorcerer that did it, they didn't really bother learning the details before they went after it because the thing was mortal and it was killing people. Right before they set his ass on fire he said something like "so you shall witness, so it shall be done," which Sam and Dean figured was just some kind of cryptic horseshit that they all screamed upon their deaths.
But that night the brothers were dozing off to an episode of House when Dean started screaming and didn't stop, not once, all the way to the ER.
"A leg in-fart-tion? " Dean had giggled at the doctor, beating on his morphine button like a bongo. "What the fuck is a leg infarttion?"
It was just like the injury of the TV show doctor, right down to the last medical detail-- aneurism, muscle dead in his leg. Relentless pain and weakness. Never going away. It was all the same except for one thing: either Dr. House was one badass son of a bitch or Dean had a low tolerance for pain, or maybe the witch/sorcerer/whatever had slathered on an extra layer of agony; either way, there was no fucking way Dean could ever use a cane.
Even crutches were a stretch, in Sam's opinion-- Dean had learned how to twirl pirouettes in his wheelchair like using it was no big deal, but the pain still had to be totally fucking intolerable before he'd even go near it.
Or when the pain was intolerable but he couldn't swallow his stupid pride, like when he didn't want to be a guy in a wheelchair at a Metallica concert. Like tonight.
"You remember the tickets?" Dean says, leaning one crutch against the car and digging in his jacket pocket.
"Of course," Sam says, affronted outwardly but inwardly kicking himself, because what a great idea that would have been, forgetting the tickets. By the time they retrieved them the concert would be half over.
He pulls them out of his pocket and shows them to Dean. Then he turns to study the entranceway. The beatless drumming and tuneless twanging of sound check has begun, he can hear the giant crowd humming with anticipation. He wonders if maybe they have a handicapped area somewhere, some place nice and safe and roped off--
Yeah, because Dean would totally go for that.
"Why general access tickets?" Sam says. "Why?"
Dean shrugs. "Cause that's the only way to go to a concert. Come on, Sam. We're going to have fun."
It's stupid. It's fucking stupid. It's mega mega seriously stupid.
But you know what? Sam wants it to be a good idea, just like Dean does. So he follows his brother inside.
***
He wakes up to a pounding head and a thick, sewer-y film on the roof of his mouth. He's flat on his back. The morning light is slicing through a gap in the curtains, straight between his eyes.
"Bluhhh," he says. It seems logical to sit up, but instead he throws his arm out to the side and is met by something warm and hard-soft.
"Ow," Dean groans, "stop."
Sam turns his head and cracks open an eye. "Why're you in my bed?"
"You're in my bed."
"Why'm I in your bed?"
"Dunno. Got just as drunk as you did."
The night comes back to Sam in vague flickers-- flashing lights, waving arms, sweating armpits. The back of his throat is sore and dry. Screaming.
"Did we... Jesus Christ, how many people died?"
Dean scowls blearily at him. "It wasn't a hunt. It was a fuckin' Metallica concert."
"Oh. Oh yeah."
Dean rubs at his eyes, chest expanding and collapsing with a roaring yawn. "Sam?"
"Yeah?"
Dean keeps his eyes on the ceiling. "Bring me the wheelchair, please? I have to piss."
This wakes Sam right up. He's not sure what shocks him more, the word wheelchair or the word please.
"What's wrong? What happened to your leg?"
"Nothin'."
"Bull. Tell me what happened."
"I was on my feet for hours. I'm sore. Jesus."
"Dean--"
"Bring me the wheelchair or open wide, Sam, cause I gotta take a piss somewhere."
Sam tugs at his dead limbs until he's sitting. He takes a moment to wince at his aching head. He looks for evidence of what could have happened. Dean's crutches are lying discarded by the door, which means he either performed a miracle by walking across the room unassisted, or Sam helped him--maybe even carried him--to the bed.
Which would explain why they slept in the same bed-- Sam must have lost consciousness shortly afterward.
"Dude," Dean says, "Make some coffee while you're up. My mouth tastes like barf."
Sam finds his jacket halfway underneath the bed, and digs out the Impala's keys. He twirls the ring around his finger. "You sure you don't just want help?"
Dean digs his fingers in his eyes. He blindly pats the nightstand down for his pills. "Just. Bring me the fucking wheelchair, okay?"
This is probably one in just a hand full of times all year that Dean's used it. The first time was in the weeks after his release from the hospital, when he could barely move. Then there were a few isolated, short-lived incidents after grueling physical therapy sessions, and maybe a couple of times after a hunt had gone shitty, a time or two he'd used it for no reason at all except the pain was flaring, and those times he didn't really go anywhere but the bathroom and back.
All of these incidences were more than six months ago. For the last six months Dean had been-- well, Sam thought Dean had been starting to accept, or adjusting, or maybe healing, who knew. They both were. They didn't talk about the leg and honestly, thanks to some fairly fantastic pain management, it didn't get in the way much. They'd gotten by just fine on all sorts of hunts, maybe with a few more injuries, and the truth was yeah, they hunted less often now. But for the most part, things were starting to return to something that almost felt like normal.
And then Dean wanted to go to this Metallica concert and nothing-- not even a sudden flare up and the threat of fucking it all up-- was going to stop him.
As Sam stumbles out to the car, he tries his damnedest to remember what the hell could've happened last night. But all he knows is that his ears are ringing, his mouth is sour, his head is pounding, and his stomach muscles ache like he's been doing some pretty heavy projectile vomiting.
Or laughing.
Laughing?
He remembers Dean's arm locked around his neck last night, hot, liquor-stinking breath in his ear. He was telling Sam a story, reliving a memory with him-- the time Dad had tried to test Sam's swimming skill by shoving him into the river.
Instead Sam tossed Dad right over his shoulder and into the water, then stood on the bank and laughed as Dad sputtered and flailed, drenched shocked speechless and drifting rapidly downstream.
Sam laughs at the memory and ow, his stomach muscles.
He pulls the wheelchair out of the trunk, goes back to the room and unfolds it by Dean's bed, locks the wheels. "There you go," he says.
Dean starts to sit up. His head barely makes it off the pillow before he's falling back again. "Fucking christ."
"Please tell me what you did to your leg."
"Goddamn it nothing. My bladder's gonna explode."
"You really didn't hurt yourself?"
Dean gives him a look that at once says I will kill you very soon and the suffering in my bladder is vast and eternal brother please help me.
Sam looks around, spots the ice bucket on the nightstand. In it is an empty bottle of Evan Williams, upturned and standing in an inch of water. He holds the bottle out out to Dean. "Piss in that."
Smiling conspiratorially, Dean takes the bottle under his blanket. A few seconds later: "Ahhhhhh. Oh man. That is fantastic. That is absolutely--"
"--dude stop. You're lucky I got nothing left to puke."
More memories flash. A padded bra against his chest, the taste of cheap lipgloss. The crowd pulsing on all sides of his body. Indulgent, overwrought pyrotechnics. He possibly might have headbanged last night. He thinks maybe they both headbanged, which is really embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the snippets of conversation he's remembering: I don't tell you I love you enough bro love you bro love you bro love you bro.
"Man, you sure love me when you're shitfaced," Dean says, because leave it to him to have the exact same memory at the exact same time. He gives Sam the toothiest of shit-eating grins. "You still love me? Enough to get rid of this?" He holds up the bottle.
Sam complies. When he returns Dean's eyes are closed. Brimming with warm fuzzies now, Sam crawls into bed next to him.
"Hey Dean."
"Huh."
"Last night. We just... we just had fun. Right? Nothing bad happened? I mean... we didn't have to kill anything, did we? And your leg's still attached to your body."
"Yup. Told you we'd have fun." Dean rests a hand on his bad thigh, makes a face. "Leg's sure telling me we had fun."
"You think--"
"It'll be better in a couple days."
"Honestly?"
"Yep."
"We just... had fun. And nothing happened," Sam repeats. He blinks in disbelief. "Man. How often can we say that?"
Dean yawns a mighty yawn. "All the fucking time. Starting now."
:::
The end.
P.S. Sam and Dean were responsible and called a volunteer DD to drive the Impala home from the concert, because they are two heroic young men who care first and foremost about the safety of others. :D