fic: Where Gravity is Dead -- SPN
Okay wow, it's been awhile since I wrote a missing scene and this was an excuse to write shameless h/c but challenge myself to do something character-wise with it and attempt a season 6 Sam POV. I am knocking on wood that this means my long streak of writer's block has been broken.
Thank you to dafnap and gabby_silang , I believe the power of our squee a couple of weeks ago was too strong for whatever was preventing me from writing. Also they held my hand while I wrote this.
This is gen, missing scene from SPN 6.01 so obviously spoilers abound. ~4,000 words.
Where Gravity is Dead
Dean was on the floor, convulsing, by the time Sam made it to the neighbor's house. Eyes rolled up and cloudy, little bits of foam at the corners of his mouth, he didn't look like Sam's brother. He was a dead thing that didn't know it yet.
Sam jabbed a syringe into Dean's chest, the way he had in the garage. Plunged the milky antidote in and pulled the needle out. The shaking didn't stop and now Dean was choking, making unaware, animal sounds. Sam gave it another minute before using the second syringe and this much antidote might be as fatal as the poison but there wasn't anything else he could do. Not like a hospital would be any help.
It took a long time but the shaking ratcheted down and then mostly stopped and so he pried Dean's jaw open and cleared the airway and turned Dean onto his side. There was a wet patch at Dean's crotch and the acid smell of piss and Dean coughed weakly, his eyelids fluttering, one hand twitching before he sank into his neighbor's carpet, limp. His heart beat too fast against Sam's fingers. There was nothing he could do about that, just wait it out.
Sam glanced at the two bodies across the room. Waiting it out here was probably a bad idea.
Dean was heavy and solid and clammy and Sam hefted him over one shoulder and lugged him across the lawn to the other house. Lisa's house. Samuel met him at the back door and raised an eyebrow. Followed Sam up the stairs and into the master bedroom, where Sam dumped Dean onto the quilted bed and made sure he was on his side again so he wouldn't choke if he vomited.
"He been conscious at all?" Samuel asked.
"No." Sam stared down at his brother. At first glance the quilt had looked authentic, handmade. Maybe Lisa's grandmother's work. But up close the pattern was printed onto the fabric, not sewn.
Samuel leaned over the bed and pushed Dean's eyelids open one after the other with his thumb. Dean's pupils were pinpricks. "He was seizing?"
"Yeah." Sam's hands were sweaty so he rubbed them against his jeans. Just the adrenalin wearing off. "Had to give him two doses."
Samuel nodded. "He'll come down hard. Might take awhile."
"What about--"
"You stay with him. We'll take care of the mess." Samuel tilted his head, studying Dean. "Think he'll come with us now?"
"Probably," Sam said, but it didn't come out as sure as it should have. Samuel tossed him a look and Sam shrugged. A year ago there wouldn't have been any question. But now he'd seen the snapshots tacked up in the kitchen. Dean relaxed and smiling.
"If they've got any juice in the fridge, he'll need the sugar. You know where we'll be," Samuel said, and then left. Sam could hear the cousins banging around downstairs, Samuel's muffled bark of command, and then silence fell, leaving him with Dean's shallow pants.
Sam stood there for a long moment and then found a chair. Pulled it over to the bed. Dean's eyes flicked back and forth under the lids regular as a metronome. Dreaming. The antidote didn't stop the hallucinations right away, just kept the poison from killing you. Dean was probably seeing Yellow Eyes again. That had been a surprise; Sam had thought he'd see Hell. Alastair maybe. Lucifer.
Azazel was old news. Sam had almost forgot him altogether.
After awhile Dean's body picked up a fine tremor and when Sam touched his forehead he was cold. Not corpse cold, but cool enough to shiver. There was a crocheted afghan draped over Sam's chair so he covered Dean with it but the shaking didn't stop.
Prodded by thoughts of a hot water bottle or heating pad, Sam got up and pushed open the door to the master bath, turned on the light. It wasn't very big -- this wasn't a huge house, though next to the motels he had grown up in it was a mansion -- but it had a tub. The shower curtain was covered with concentric blue and green circles where Sam had expected a floral pattern. Under the sink was a basket of appliances, a hair dryer and a curling iron tangled with a couple of hair brushes. A package of toilet paper rolls. A set of hot rollers. A can of cleanser and a curled, dried sponge. A can of scented bath salts nestled next to a familiar blue container of kosher salt. Sam blinked. It was the first sign he'd seen that maybe Dean hadn't quite packed everything away with the Impala.
The mirror over the sink covered a medicine cabinet. Inside were two varieties of deodorant, one Sam remembered Dean favoring. An unfamiliar brand of aftershave, more expensive than Dean ever would have bought for himself. A creased tube of toothpaste, a plastic floss dispenser. An electric thermometer. Birth control pills in a round plastic case. A bottle of Tylenol next to a cluster of prescription bottles. Dean's name caught his eye, but he didn't recognize the medications on the labels.
Sam sat on the toilet and considered the mismatched towels hanging wrinkled and uneven on the towel rack. No way to know which one was Dean's, or if he and Lisa even made a distinction. There was probably a linen closet full of towels and washcloths and sheets and pillowcases, maybe one of the doors he'd passed in the hallway. The sink was splashed with a film of dried toothpaste, and a couple of long dark hairs curled near the drain. A half-melted bar of soap floated in a little tray near the faucet. Everything was neat enough but not spotless. There hadn't been time to notice it before, these lived-in imperfections.
A sound from the bedroom brought Sam to his feet. When he got back to the bed Dean had rolled onto his back, one arm spread outside the afghan, his hand in a loose fist. Sam flipped on the lamp next to the bed. Dean didn't react to the sudden bright light, but now Sam could see that he'd gone from clammy to drenched, the fine hair at his temples and forehead plastered to his skin with sweat. Still cold to the touch though, and the tremor lingered. Sam frowned.
"Dean," he said. At the sound, Dean's head moved a little on the pillow, but his face stayed lax with the expressionlessness of deep sleep. Sam glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was barely past eleven -- Dean had been under for a good hour. He'd stayed out for close to three after the first time in the garage, and that had been a milder dose of poison.
Dean's pulse was stronger now, galloping against Sam's fingers. He'd gone a milky grey color, his lips cracked and bluish, but he was breathing okay and his nail beds were still pink so Sam left him alone. Watched him for awhile but there wasn't much to see. He'd already noted the changes a year had left on his brother, back the first time he'd had nothing to do but wait for Dean to wake up.
This time Sam couldn't tell if he was seeing the poison or the antidote work its way through his brother's body. Guessed it didn't much matter.
Sam didn’t realize he’d dozed off until he jerked upright in his chair and blinked blearily at the clock. Just past four in the morning. Jesus. There was a small sound from the bed and when he turned he found Dean curled on his side again, eyes open. Finally. Sam let out a huff of air and ran a hand down his face.
“Hey,” he said. “You’ve been out for awhile.”
Dean just stared at him. Unblinking and glassy.
“Dean.” Nothing. “Dean, come on man, I’ve been sitting here for hours.”
Sam sighed. Leaned forward and grabbed Dean’s shoulder. It was stiff and unyielding, and Dean didn’t react to the touch. Maybe he was still hallucinating, but it had been like six hours at this point. How much longer could this go on? Sam stood up and bent over Dean and Dean’s eyes sort of followed him, in a vague way. And then drifted off.
“Dean.” Sam was half asleep, and it was taking too long for his brain to catch up with whatever was going on here. “Wake the fuck up.”
Dean didn’t react. If anything he curled tighter and Sam hadn’t noticed at first but the wide-open stare wasn’t focused in the least. Instead it was like Sam was seeing into Dean’s lizard brain, some kind of not quite unconscious presence, not quite watching him but not all the way unaware, either. Not afraid, but sort of wary. Uncomprehending. Sam tried to roll Dean onto his back and he resisted, or Dean’s body did, because it didn’t seem intentional or directed in any way. His muscles were rock hard, his arms held stiffly against his chest, and a strangled sound escaped his throat.
Fuck this. Sam pulled out his cell phone.
“Yeah.” Samuel didn’t sound the least bit like he’d been sleeping.
“Dean’s not out of it yet. Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” He sounded impatient, even to himself.
There was a brief silence, maybe Samuel checking his watch. “He seize again?”
“I don’t think so, but his eyes are open and he’s... stiff. Rigid.”
Samuel sighed. “That’s a seizure, kid. Or he’s right on the edge of one. It’s not all flopping around like in the movies. The antidote is fucking with his blood sugar -- you need to get some juice into him, now. Got it?”
Sam stared at his brother, who didn’t stare back. “He’s not conscious. How am I supposed to--”
“You’ll figure it out. O.J. is good, if they got it. You need to get anything you can into him. Sugar water if you have to. And when he wakes up, make him eat, he’ll burn the juice off fast.”
Sam disconnected the call and dragged a hand through his hair. Juice. Right.
Downstairs the kitchen was dark and Sam didn’t bother trying to find the light switch. He yanked the fridge door open and squinted at the white expanse. It was well stocked with condiments and bottles of salad dressing and marinade and a jug of 2% milk and two drawers of vegetables wrapped in those green plastic freshness-saving bags he’d seen advertised on late night infomercials. A half-depleted six pack of El Sol was shoved toward the back but there was nothing like juice. Or even soda. Maybe Lisa was one of those parents who didn’t like to give their kids sugary drinks. Which was great for Ben and his teeth and his later chances of developing diabetes, but not so helpful right now.
“Fuck,” Sam muttered.
It’s not like he even knew where the closest convenience store was, even if it would have been open at this time of night. He banged open a couple of cabinets until he found a pantry the size of a shallow closet. Tossed boxes of cereal and pasta aside and finally, finally hidden at the back of one of the shelves found a plastic container of blue Kool-Aid. Maybe left over from a kid’s party or a picnic. On the shelf above it sat a row of labeled glass containers -- Flour, Salt, Sugar -- and Sam grabbed the sugar.
It had been... probably fifteen years since Sam made Kool-Aid. He peered at the tiny print of the directions without comprehension and then just unscrewed the top of the plastic container and used the handy scoop inside to dump some blue powder into the glass sangria pitcher he’d found in a drying rack by the sink. Poured in a couple of cups of sugar and stuck the pitcher under the faucet. Ran some warm water in so the sugar would dissolve quicker and pulled a wooden spoon from a ceramic holder on the counter to stir it with. The sugar felt gritty against the spoon and seemed to take forever to dissolve despite the lukewarm water temperature. When it had mostly disappeared into the water, Sam grabbed a big plastic Iron Man 2 Slurpee cup (so someone -- probably Dean -- occasionally contributed to the rotting of Ben’s teeth), in one hand and the pitcher in the other and took the stairs two at a time back to the second floor. Splashing drips of blue Kool-Aid on Lisa’s white carpet as he went.
Dean hadn’t moved. Nothing had changed. He was curled nearly fetal under the afghan, his eyes still wide with that alien not-quite-unawareness.
Sam put the pitcher and the cup on the nightstand. Poured the cup mostly full of warmish Kool-Aid and set the pitcher back down and took a breath.
Okay.
He crawled up onto the bed next to Dean and grabbed his brother’s shoulders. Dean made another incoherent sound at that and jerked in Sam’s grip but he was just as rigid as he’d been when Sam had woken up so it was like trying to maneuver a weirdly contorted window display mannequin. Sam managed to get himself kneeling behind Dean and pulled Dean’s body half upright and held him there with one arm while he reached out for the Iron Man cup.
Shit. Another set of hands would be really helpful right about now.
Now that he was up close to Dean he could feel the minute tremors running through his brother’s body, a constant near-vibration. Sam shifted his grip so that he could pull Dean’s head back with one hand, holding him as steady as possible. He brought the cup up to Dean’s mouth and found that while Dean’s teeth weren’t quite clenched, he wasn’t exactly about to easily swallow anything.
“You’ll figure it out,” Sam muttered. “Yeah, thanks. Very helpful.”
The plastic cup clicked against Dean’s teeth as Sam tried to pour Kool-Aid into his mouth. Most of it ended up dribbling down Dean’s chin and soaking into the front of his shirt. Sam tried again, got more in this time, and tilted Dean’s head back farther, hoping he’d swallow on his own. After a long moment he did and Sam breathed out. Then it was a matter of getting as much liquid as he could actually into Dean’s mouth, because once he did reflex would kick in and do the rest.
Sam had managed about half the cup before the mechanical spasms faded and Dean’s body softened a little under his grip, turning from a mannequin back into something more human and pliable. Twenty minutes and the rest of the cup later Dean’s eyes slid closed. By then Sam’s hands were sticky with spilled Kool-Aid and Dean’s shirt was a mess. Somehow he’d succeeded in sparing Lisa’s quilt, though, so that was something.
Another twenty minutes and Dean blinked, his mouth working.
“Dean,” Sam said, weary as hell and not trying to hide it. “Come on. Are you with me yet?”
Dean’s head turned at the sound of his voice and the creepy alien vibe was gone, replaced by blurry confusion. Sam shifted off of the bed and propped Dean up against the headboard and Dean’s gaze followed him, as open and stunned as it had been back at the house Sam and the Campbells were squatting in.
“Sammy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. You feeling better?”
“Better?”
Sam shook his head. “Guess better’s relative at this point.”
“My fucking head is killing me,” Dean ground out.
Sam sat forward in his chair. “Yeah, that would be the antidote, you got a double dose. Samuel said you need to eat something.”
Dean made a face. “He’s really loving this whole grampa thing, huh?” The hand he raised to scrub his face was shaking, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“It wasn’t a suggestion. Your blood sugar is jacked.” Sam poured another cupful of Kool-Aid from the pitcher.
Dean still looked too vague and he hadn’t moved from where Sam had left him, leaning awkwardly against the headboard.
“I knew it couldn’t be real,” he said, disconnected, his gaze remote.
Sam tried to imagine seeing Yellow Eyes again, after all this time. He’d always been more afraid of what Azazel would tell him than of the demon himself. And now? Sam stifled a laugh, turned it into a cough, covered it with one hand.
“But it didn’t matter,” Dean finished, blinking like he was waking up all over again.
“Dean.” He held the cup out and Dean took it from him automatically but then just stared down at it. “Drink that.”
Dean took a sip and sputtered. “Jesus, what is this? Is it... blue?”
Somehow during the year apart, Sam had forgotten how difficult Dean had to make everything. “It’s just Kool-Aid. Drink it. I’m going to go find you something to eat.”
This time around Sam found the switch and flooded Lisa’s kitchen with light. The easiest thing would be a sandwich, and now that Sam was thinking about food he realized he was hungry. He and Dean had stopped at a drive-through mid-way between Bobby’s and Cicero and that had been... years ago. Sam stood in front of the open fridge again and nothing registered. Sandwiches. Right. There was a plastic wrapped package of sliced turkey -- actual turkey, not the processed lunch meat -- in one drawer. Sam grabbed it and the package of sliced Havarti sitting underneath and a squeeze bottle of mayo from the fridge door and decided that was complicated enough for a pre-dawn emergency meal.
By the time Sam made it back to the bedroom, Dean was sitting up in the bed with a couple of pillows shoved behind his back. Despite his grousing he’d finished off the cup of Kool-Aid and had set it back on the nightstand next to the half-full pitcher. He eyed the plate of sliced sandwiches Sam carried with a wan grimace.
“You really expect me to eat those?”
“Two are for me,” Sam said. He handed Dean half of a turkey-and-cheese sandwich made with some kind of 12-grain bread that he’d found in an actual bread box, the crusts studded with sunflower seeds, and waited for the inevitable comment, but Dean just took it from him and nibbled at one corner.
Sam dropped into the chair and started in on his own sandwich, trying not to watch Dean eat. His brother was still a waxy shade of pale and his eyes were bloodshot to hell. Sweat-stiffened hair stood up on one side of his head and was flattened on the other, giving him an off-kilter aura that was only emphasized by the way he picked at the sandwich, pulling off chunks of meat and bread with his fingers like a little kid.
“I’m not dead, so you must have got ‘em.” It wasn’t a question.
Sam swallowed. “The djinn? Yeah. I got one, anyway. Samuel took care of the other two.”
“Dude should be like, eighty,” Dean said. He sent Sam a sidelong glance and then started back in on destroying his sandwich.
“You’re supposed to be ingesting that, not dissecting it,” Sam said, ignoring the doubts about their grandfather that Dean was waiting for him to share.
One of Dean’s shoulders lifted. “Not hungry.”
“I don’t give a damn. Eat the fucking sandwich,” Sam bit off. “Eat the sandwich or I take you to the ER.”
And there it was, that wounded shock Dean had flashed when he’d found out Sam had been back and kept it from him. Sam took a deep breath. “You were pretty messed up this time,” he said, managing to modulate his tone. “I just need you to eat that, okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, hollow. “Okay.”
Dean ate the rest of his half sandwich in silence and when he was done Sam handed him the other half. Sam didn’t taste his own sandwiches, just looked down at the plate and found them gone. Dawn was edging through the window shades when Dean brushed crumbs from his hands and sat up, swinging his boots around to the floor.
“Gotta take a leak,” Dean said. “All that blue shit you made me drink.”
Sam stood, but Dean ignored him. Just peered down at his blue stained shirt, almost like he was puzzled.
“What’d you do, dunk me in this crap? I’m... sticky.”
Dean had no idea what had happened after the djinn dosed him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Sam kept his expression carefully blank as Dean noticed his stiffened jeans.
“Jesus,” Dean said, a little color finally rising into his face. “I’m, uh. Gonna shower.” He shuffled over to a low, double wide dresser, putting a hand out and gripping the edge for balance, and dug through the drawers, picking out clean clothes.
“Dean,” Sam started talking before he quite knew what he wanted to say. His brother turned, the clothes clutched to his chest, and Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to seeing Dean stripped of his defenses like this, despite the fact that it had been his default state in the month or so before Stull. Maybe longer.
Sam floundered, but Dean just waited him out.
“Uh. You know I wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have come like this. If it hadn’t been for the djinn.”
Dean turned away, shoved a drawer shut. “Yeah, Sam, you made that pretty clear.”
That wasn’t what he’d meant. “Dean--”
“I feel like shit, I’m covered with Kool-Aid, and from the looks of it I pissed myself. Can we have this conversation later?”
There wouldn’t be a later, there never was, but Sam nodded anyway.
Dean slipped into the bathroom and shut the door and a moment later Sam could hear the hiss of the shower. He pulled the tangled afghan from the bed and folded it, draped it back over the chair he’d used all night and then returned the chair to where he’d found it, across the room by the windows. Straightened the rucked-up bedclothes and redistributed the pillows. Carried the pitcher and the Slurpee cup back down to the kitchen and rinsed them out, left them in the drying rack. Brought a damp rag up to the bedroom again and wiped away the sticky spots of Kool-Aid he’d spilled on the nightstand. Tried to rub away the few splashes of blue on the carpet.
Dean had to be using up all the hot water, but then, there wasn’t anyone else here to complain. Sam listened to the muffled squeak of flesh on tile and wondered if it was over, if the poison and the antidote were done with his brother. If he was back to being Dean again.
It had taken seeing Zachariah’s Heaven for Sam to realize there had never been a Before for Dean, either. Not the picture-postcard Before that Sam had somehow managed to smuggle with him from childhood, half resented, half a comfort. He’d wanted Dean to have an After, though. From the smiling snapshots and the golf clubs in the closet -- Dean playing golf -- and Dean’s fluster at the way Sam and the Campbells had trodden over Lisa’s house, maybe he had, for awhile. As flawed by grief as it had been, it had been something, it had to have been worth Dean’s wrecked silence during their marathon trek to South Dakota and back.
But now... now the djinn had forced Sam’s hand, had dropped them both back squarely into the space between Before and After again. There was really only one choice, and Dean had to know it by now. After was for people without monsters gunning for them. Sam had learned that lesson once for himself; he should have realized it would be true for Dean, too.
Sam glanced at the clock and then his attention caught on a photo he hadn’t noticed before, tucked half behind the lamp. Dogeared and marked up against the smooth brass of the frame. Sam picked it up and stared at it for a good while before the faces gained familiarity: John and Mary Winchester smiled out at the camera, infant Sam propped in the crook of John’s elbow, round-faced Dean in the circle of Mary’s arms. Sam couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, but he must have, maybe stashed between the pages of their father’s battered journal. And now it was here, on Lisa Braeden’s nightstand, preserved under glass.
The shower cut off. Sam put the picture frame back where he’d found it and folded the blue-stained rag into a small square. Decided that maybe it would be better to bring up hitting the road again downstairs.
He needed to return the rag to the sink anyway.
Thank you to dafnap and gabby_silang , I believe the power of our squee a couple of weeks ago was too strong for whatever was preventing me from writing. Also they held my hand while I wrote this.
This is gen, missing scene from SPN 6.01 so obviously spoilers abound. ~4,000 words.
Where Gravity is Dead
Dean was on the floor, convulsing, by the time Sam made it to the neighbor's house. Eyes rolled up and cloudy, little bits of foam at the corners of his mouth, he didn't look like Sam's brother. He was a dead thing that didn't know it yet.
Sam jabbed a syringe into Dean's chest, the way he had in the garage. Plunged the milky antidote in and pulled the needle out. The shaking didn't stop and now Dean was choking, making unaware, animal sounds. Sam gave it another minute before using the second syringe and this much antidote might be as fatal as the poison but there wasn't anything else he could do. Not like a hospital would be any help.
It took a long time but the shaking ratcheted down and then mostly stopped and so he pried Dean's jaw open and cleared the airway and turned Dean onto his side. There was a wet patch at Dean's crotch and the acid smell of piss and Dean coughed weakly, his eyelids fluttering, one hand twitching before he sank into his neighbor's carpet, limp. His heart beat too fast against Sam's fingers. There was nothing he could do about that, just wait it out.
Sam glanced at the two bodies across the room. Waiting it out here was probably a bad idea.
Dean was heavy and solid and clammy and Sam hefted him over one shoulder and lugged him across the lawn to the other house. Lisa's house. Samuel met him at the back door and raised an eyebrow. Followed Sam up the stairs and into the master bedroom, where Sam dumped Dean onto the quilted bed and made sure he was on his side again so he wouldn't choke if he vomited.
"He been conscious at all?" Samuel asked.
"No." Sam stared down at his brother. At first glance the quilt had looked authentic, handmade. Maybe Lisa's grandmother's work. But up close the pattern was printed onto the fabric, not sewn.
Samuel leaned over the bed and pushed Dean's eyelids open one after the other with his thumb. Dean's pupils were pinpricks. "He was seizing?"
"Yeah." Sam's hands were sweaty so he rubbed them against his jeans. Just the adrenalin wearing off. "Had to give him two doses."
Samuel nodded. "He'll come down hard. Might take awhile."
"What about--"
"You stay with him. We'll take care of the mess." Samuel tilted his head, studying Dean. "Think he'll come with us now?"
"Probably," Sam said, but it didn't come out as sure as it should have. Samuel tossed him a look and Sam shrugged. A year ago there wouldn't have been any question. But now he'd seen the snapshots tacked up in the kitchen. Dean relaxed and smiling.
"If they've got any juice in the fridge, he'll need the sugar. You know where we'll be," Samuel said, and then left. Sam could hear the cousins banging around downstairs, Samuel's muffled bark of command, and then silence fell, leaving him with Dean's shallow pants.
Sam stood there for a long moment and then found a chair. Pulled it over to the bed. Dean's eyes flicked back and forth under the lids regular as a metronome. Dreaming. The antidote didn't stop the hallucinations right away, just kept the poison from killing you. Dean was probably seeing Yellow Eyes again. That had been a surprise; Sam had thought he'd see Hell. Alastair maybe. Lucifer.
Azazel was old news. Sam had almost forgot him altogether.
After awhile Dean's body picked up a fine tremor and when Sam touched his forehead he was cold. Not corpse cold, but cool enough to shiver. There was a crocheted afghan draped over Sam's chair so he covered Dean with it but the shaking didn't stop.
Prodded by thoughts of a hot water bottle or heating pad, Sam got up and pushed open the door to the master bath, turned on the light. It wasn't very big -- this wasn't a huge house, though next to the motels he had grown up in it was a mansion -- but it had a tub. The shower curtain was covered with concentric blue and green circles where Sam had expected a floral pattern. Under the sink was a basket of appliances, a hair dryer and a curling iron tangled with a couple of hair brushes. A package of toilet paper rolls. A set of hot rollers. A can of cleanser and a curled, dried sponge. A can of scented bath salts nestled next to a familiar blue container of kosher salt. Sam blinked. It was the first sign he'd seen that maybe Dean hadn't quite packed everything away with the Impala.
The mirror over the sink covered a medicine cabinet. Inside were two varieties of deodorant, one Sam remembered Dean favoring. An unfamiliar brand of aftershave, more expensive than Dean ever would have bought for himself. A creased tube of toothpaste, a plastic floss dispenser. An electric thermometer. Birth control pills in a round plastic case. A bottle of Tylenol next to a cluster of prescription bottles. Dean's name caught his eye, but he didn't recognize the medications on the labels.
Sam sat on the toilet and considered the mismatched towels hanging wrinkled and uneven on the towel rack. No way to know which one was Dean's, or if he and Lisa even made a distinction. There was probably a linen closet full of towels and washcloths and sheets and pillowcases, maybe one of the doors he'd passed in the hallway. The sink was splashed with a film of dried toothpaste, and a couple of long dark hairs curled near the drain. A half-melted bar of soap floated in a little tray near the faucet. Everything was neat enough but not spotless. There hadn't been time to notice it before, these lived-in imperfections.
A sound from the bedroom brought Sam to his feet. When he got back to the bed Dean had rolled onto his back, one arm spread outside the afghan, his hand in a loose fist. Sam flipped on the lamp next to the bed. Dean didn't react to the sudden bright light, but now Sam could see that he'd gone from clammy to drenched, the fine hair at his temples and forehead plastered to his skin with sweat. Still cold to the touch though, and the tremor lingered. Sam frowned.
"Dean," he said. At the sound, Dean's head moved a little on the pillow, but his face stayed lax with the expressionlessness of deep sleep. Sam glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was barely past eleven -- Dean had been under for a good hour. He'd stayed out for close to three after the first time in the garage, and that had been a milder dose of poison.
Dean's pulse was stronger now, galloping against Sam's fingers. He'd gone a milky grey color, his lips cracked and bluish, but he was breathing okay and his nail beds were still pink so Sam left him alone. Watched him for awhile but there wasn't much to see. He'd already noted the changes a year had left on his brother, back the first time he'd had nothing to do but wait for Dean to wake up.
This time Sam couldn't tell if he was seeing the poison or the antidote work its way through his brother's body. Guessed it didn't much matter.
Sam didn’t realize he’d dozed off until he jerked upright in his chair and blinked blearily at the clock. Just past four in the morning. Jesus. There was a small sound from the bed and when he turned he found Dean curled on his side again, eyes open. Finally. Sam let out a huff of air and ran a hand down his face.
“Hey,” he said. “You’ve been out for awhile.”
Dean just stared at him. Unblinking and glassy.
“Dean.” Nothing. “Dean, come on man, I’ve been sitting here for hours.”
Sam sighed. Leaned forward and grabbed Dean’s shoulder. It was stiff and unyielding, and Dean didn’t react to the touch. Maybe he was still hallucinating, but it had been like six hours at this point. How much longer could this go on? Sam stood up and bent over Dean and Dean’s eyes sort of followed him, in a vague way. And then drifted off.
“Dean.” Sam was half asleep, and it was taking too long for his brain to catch up with whatever was going on here. “Wake the fuck up.”
Dean didn’t react. If anything he curled tighter and Sam hadn’t noticed at first but the wide-open stare wasn’t focused in the least. Instead it was like Sam was seeing into Dean’s lizard brain, some kind of not quite unconscious presence, not quite watching him but not all the way unaware, either. Not afraid, but sort of wary. Uncomprehending. Sam tried to roll Dean onto his back and he resisted, or Dean’s body did, because it didn’t seem intentional or directed in any way. His muscles were rock hard, his arms held stiffly against his chest, and a strangled sound escaped his throat.
Fuck this. Sam pulled out his cell phone.
“Yeah.” Samuel didn’t sound the least bit like he’d been sleeping.
“Dean’s not out of it yet. Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” He sounded impatient, even to himself.
There was a brief silence, maybe Samuel checking his watch. “He seize again?”
“I don’t think so, but his eyes are open and he’s... stiff. Rigid.”
Samuel sighed. “That’s a seizure, kid. Or he’s right on the edge of one. It’s not all flopping around like in the movies. The antidote is fucking with his blood sugar -- you need to get some juice into him, now. Got it?”
Sam stared at his brother, who didn’t stare back. “He’s not conscious. How am I supposed to--”
“You’ll figure it out. O.J. is good, if they got it. You need to get anything you can into him. Sugar water if you have to. And when he wakes up, make him eat, he’ll burn the juice off fast.”
Sam disconnected the call and dragged a hand through his hair. Juice. Right.
Downstairs the kitchen was dark and Sam didn’t bother trying to find the light switch. He yanked the fridge door open and squinted at the white expanse. It was well stocked with condiments and bottles of salad dressing and marinade and a jug of 2% milk and two drawers of vegetables wrapped in those green plastic freshness-saving bags he’d seen advertised on late night infomercials. A half-depleted six pack of El Sol was shoved toward the back but there was nothing like juice. Or even soda. Maybe Lisa was one of those parents who didn’t like to give their kids sugary drinks. Which was great for Ben and his teeth and his later chances of developing diabetes, but not so helpful right now.
“Fuck,” Sam muttered.
It’s not like he even knew where the closest convenience store was, even if it would have been open at this time of night. He banged open a couple of cabinets until he found a pantry the size of a shallow closet. Tossed boxes of cereal and pasta aside and finally, finally hidden at the back of one of the shelves found a plastic container of blue Kool-Aid. Maybe left over from a kid’s party or a picnic. On the shelf above it sat a row of labeled glass containers -- Flour, Salt, Sugar -- and Sam grabbed the sugar.
It had been... probably fifteen years since Sam made Kool-Aid. He peered at the tiny print of the directions without comprehension and then just unscrewed the top of the plastic container and used the handy scoop inside to dump some blue powder into the glass sangria pitcher he’d found in a drying rack by the sink. Poured in a couple of cups of sugar and stuck the pitcher under the faucet. Ran some warm water in so the sugar would dissolve quicker and pulled a wooden spoon from a ceramic holder on the counter to stir it with. The sugar felt gritty against the spoon and seemed to take forever to dissolve despite the lukewarm water temperature. When it had mostly disappeared into the water, Sam grabbed a big plastic Iron Man 2 Slurpee cup (so someone -- probably Dean -- occasionally contributed to the rotting of Ben’s teeth), in one hand and the pitcher in the other and took the stairs two at a time back to the second floor. Splashing drips of blue Kool-Aid on Lisa’s white carpet as he went.
Dean hadn’t moved. Nothing had changed. He was curled nearly fetal under the afghan, his eyes still wide with that alien not-quite-unawareness.
Sam put the pitcher and the cup on the nightstand. Poured the cup mostly full of warmish Kool-Aid and set the pitcher back down and took a breath.
Okay.
He crawled up onto the bed next to Dean and grabbed his brother’s shoulders. Dean made another incoherent sound at that and jerked in Sam’s grip but he was just as rigid as he’d been when Sam had woken up so it was like trying to maneuver a weirdly contorted window display mannequin. Sam managed to get himself kneeling behind Dean and pulled Dean’s body half upright and held him there with one arm while he reached out for the Iron Man cup.
Shit. Another set of hands would be really helpful right about now.
Now that he was up close to Dean he could feel the minute tremors running through his brother’s body, a constant near-vibration. Sam shifted his grip so that he could pull Dean’s head back with one hand, holding him as steady as possible. He brought the cup up to Dean’s mouth and found that while Dean’s teeth weren’t quite clenched, he wasn’t exactly about to easily swallow anything.
“You’ll figure it out,” Sam muttered. “Yeah, thanks. Very helpful.”
The plastic cup clicked against Dean’s teeth as Sam tried to pour Kool-Aid into his mouth. Most of it ended up dribbling down Dean’s chin and soaking into the front of his shirt. Sam tried again, got more in this time, and tilted Dean’s head back farther, hoping he’d swallow on his own. After a long moment he did and Sam breathed out. Then it was a matter of getting as much liquid as he could actually into Dean’s mouth, because once he did reflex would kick in and do the rest.
Sam had managed about half the cup before the mechanical spasms faded and Dean’s body softened a little under his grip, turning from a mannequin back into something more human and pliable. Twenty minutes and the rest of the cup later Dean’s eyes slid closed. By then Sam’s hands were sticky with spilled Kool-Aid and Dean’s shirt was a mess. Somehow he’d succeeded in sparing Lisa’s quilt, though, so that was something.
Another twenty minutes and Dean blinked, his mouth working.
“Dean,” Sam said, weary as hell and not trying to hide it. “Come on. Are you with me yet?”
Dean’s head turned at the sound of his voice and the creepy alien vibe was gone, replaced by blurry confusion. Sam shifted off of the bed and propped Dean up against the headboard and Dean’s gaze followed him, as open and stunned as it had been back at the house Sam and the Campbells were squatting in.
“Sammy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. You feeling better?”
“Better?”
Sam shook his head. “Guess better’s relative at this point.”
“My fucking head is killing me,” Dean ground out.
Sam sat forward in his chair. “Yeah, that would be the antidote, you got a double dose. Samuel said you need to eat something.”
Dean made a face. “He’s really loving this whole grampa thing, huh?” The hand he raised to scrub his face was shaking, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“It wasn’t a suggestion. Your blood sugar is jacked.” Sam poured another cupful of Kool-Aid from the pitcher.
Dean still looked too vague and he hadn’t moved from where Sam had left him, leaning awkwardly against the headboard.
“I knew it couldn’t be real,” he said, disconnected, his gaze remote.
Sam tried to imagine seeing Yellow Eyes again, after all this time. He’d always been more afraid of what Azazel would tell him than of the demon himself. And now? Sam stifled a laugh, turned it into a cough, covered it with one hand.
“But it didn’t matter,” Dean finished, blinking like he was waking up all over again.
“Dean.” He held the cup out and Dean took it from him automatically but then just stared down at it. “Drink that.”
Dean took a sip and sputtered. “Jesus, what is this? Is it... blue?”
Somehow during the year apart, Sam had forgotten how difficult Dean had to make everything. “It’s just Kool-Aid. Drink it. I’m going to go find you something to eat.”
This time around Sam found the switch and flooded Lisa’s kitchen with light. The easiest thing would be a sandwich, and now that Sam was thinking about food he realized he was hungry. He and Dean had stopped at a drive-through mid-way between Bobby’s and Cicero and that had been... years ago. Sam stood in front of the open fridge again and nothing registered. Sandwiches. Right. There was a plastic wrapped package of sliced turkey -- actual turkey, not the processed lunch meat -- in one drawer. Sam grabbed it and the package of sliced Havarti sitting underneath and a squeeze bottle of mayo from the fridge door and decided that was complicated enough for a pre-dawn emergency meal.
By the time Sam made it back to the bedroom, Dean was sitting up in the bed with a couple of pillows shoved behind his back. Despite his grousing he’d finished off the cup of Kool-Aid and had set it back on the nightstand next to the half-full pitcher. He eyed the plate of sliced sandwiches Sam carried with a wan grimace.
“You really expect me to eat those?”
“Two are for me,” Sam said. He handed Dean half of a turkey-and-cheese sandwich made with some kind of 12-grain bread that he’d found in an actual bread box, the crusts studded with sunflower seeds, and waited for the inevitable comment, but Dean just took it from him and nibbled at one corner.
Sam dropped into the chair and started in on his own sandwich, trying not to watch Dean eat. His brother was still a waxy shade of pale and his eyes were bloodshot to hell. Sweat-stiffened hair stood up on one side of his head and was flattened on the other, giving him an off-kilter aura that was only emphasized by the way he picked at the sandwich, pulling off chunks of meat and bread with his fingers like a little kid.
“I’m not dead, so you must have got ‘em.” It wasn’t a question.
Sam swallowed. “The djinn? Yeah. I got one, anyway. Samuel took care of the other two.”
“Dude should be like, eighty,” Dean said. He sent Sam a sidelong glance and then started back in on destroying his sandwich.
“You’re supposed to be ingesting that, not dissecting it,” Sam said, ignoring the doubts about their grandfather that Dean was waiting for him to share.
One of Dean’s shoulders lifted. “Not hungry.”
“I don’t give a damn. Eat the fucking sandwich,” Sam bit off. “Eat the sandwich or I take you to the ER.”
And there it was, that wounded shock Dean had flashed when he’d found out Sam had been back and kept it from him. Sam took a deep breath. “You were pretty messed up this time,” he said, managing to modulate his tone. “I just need you to eat that, okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, hollow. “Okay.”
Dean ate the rest of his half sandwich in silence and when he was done Sam handed him the other half. Sam didn’t taste his own sandwiches, just looked down at the plate and found them gone. Dawn was edging through the window shades when Dean brushed crumbs from his hands and sat up, swinging his boots around to the floor.
“Gotta take a leak,” Dean said. “All that blue shit you made me drink.”
Sam stood, but Dean ignored him. Just peered down at his blue stained shirt, almost like he was puzzled.
“What’d you do, dunk me in this crap? I’m... sticky.”
Dean had no idea what had happened after the djinn dosed him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Sam kept his expression carefully blank as Dean noticed his stiffened jeans.
“Jesus,” Dean said, a little color finally rising into his face. “I’m, uh. Gonna shower.” He shuffled over to a low, double wide dresser, putting a hand out and gripping the edge for balance, and dug through the drawers, picking out clean clothes.
“Dean,” Sam started talking before he quite knew what he wanted to say. His brother turned, the clothes clutched to his chest, and Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to seeing Dean stripped of his defenses like this, despite the fact that it had been his default state in the month or so before Stull. Maybe longer.
Sam floundered, but Dean just waited him out.
“Uh. You know I wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have come like this. If it hadn’t been for the djinn.”
Dean turned away, shoved a drawer shut. “Yeah, Sam, you made that pretty clear.”
That wasn’t what he’d meant. “Dean--”
“I feel like shit, I’m covered with Kool-Aid, and from the looks of it I pissed myself. Can we have this conversation later?”
There wouldn’t be a later, there never was, but Sam nodded anyway.
Dean slipped into the bathroom and shut the door and a moment later Sam could hear the hiss of the shower. He pulled the tangled afghan from the bed and folded it, draped it back over the chair he’d used all night and then returned the chair to where he’d found it, across the room by the windows. Straightened the rucked-up bedclothes and redistributed the pillows. Carried the pitcher and the Slurpee cup back down to the kitchen and rinsed them out, left them in the drying rack. Brought a damp rag up to the bedroom again and wiped away the sticky spots of Kool-Aid he’d spilled on the nightstand. Tried to rub away the few splashes of blue on the carpet.
Dean had to be using up all the hot water, but then, there wasn’t anyone else here to complain. Sam listened to the muffled squeak of flesh on tile and wondered if it was over, if the poison and the antidote were done with his brother. If he was back to being Dean again.
It had taken seeing Zachariah’s Heaven for Sam to realize there had never been a Before for Dean, either. Not the picture-postcard Before that Sam had somehow managed to smuggle with him from childhood, half resented, half a comfort. He’d wanted Dean to have an After, though. From the smiling snapshots and the golf clubs in the closet -- Dean playing golf -- and Dean’s fluster at the way Sam and the Campbells had trodden over Lisa’s house, maybe he had, for awhile. As flawed by grief as it had been, it had been something, it had to have been worth Dean’s wrecked silence during their marathon trek to South Dakota and back.
But now... now the djinn had forced Sam’s hand, had dropped them both back squarely into the space between Before and After again. There was really only one choice, and Dean had to know it by now. After was for people without monsters gunning for them. Sam had learned that lesson once for himself; he should have realized it would be true for Dean, too.
Sam glanced at the clock and then his attention caught on a photo he hadn’t noticed before, tucked half behind the lamp. Dogeared and marked up against the smooth brass of the frame. Sam picked it up and stared at it for a good while before the faces gained familiarity: John and Mary Winchester smiled out at the camera, infant Sam propped in the crook of John’s elbow, round-faced Dean in the circle of Mary’s arms. Sam couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, but he must have, maybe stashed between the pages of their father’s battered journal. And now it was here, on Lisa Braeden’s nightstand, preserved under glass.
The shower cut off. Sam put the picture frame back where he’d found it and folded the blue-stained rag into a small square. Decided that maybe it would be better to bring up hitting the road again downstairs.
He needed to return the rag to the sink anyway.