[Fic] New Ground Rules
Title: New Ground Rules
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean
Genre: Gen, hurt/comfort
Warnings/Spoilers: none
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4,030
Beta: sariagray ♥
Summary: Bobby's happy pills turn out to be a little less awesome than Dean's expecting. Sam helps make it better.
Notes: This is a wish fill for sailoreyes67's wish #3, over at hoodie_time's Wish Fullfillment Party. It's set sometime in S2, and the prompt was: There can never be enough allergic reactions. Er, I mean.... exactly what I said, actually. *stops trying not to look like an h/c sadist* I'll take any severity and any range of symptoms, although if it involves Dean lying listlessly in a bed doing nothing but rubbing his nose raw with kleenex at some point, there will be extra cookies. But really, anything, just as long as Dean is allergic to something. Kleenex didn't quite make it into the mix here, but I really hope you enjoy it! ^_^
Dean blinks and the interior of the Impala slowly comes into focus. The fuzzy glow from the headlights blankets the darkness. It resembles a perfectly rounded curve of fresh snow outside the window, soft and hazy around the edges.
In retrospect, this probably should have been a red flag -- they haven’t been anywhere near snow in months and, well, Dean’s not really one to see the world in metaphors. That would be more up Sam’s alley.
All the same, he’s pretty sure he’d been floating just a second ago, somewhere high above the clouds - there’d been blue skies, and blindingly bright sun, and everything around him had felt soft and doughy, insulated from the world below. His own private little bubble. This should have been red flag number two, but when Dean closes his eyes, he can still feel himself spinning, turning head over heel, tumbling endlessly; it’s distracting, and not nearly as disturbing as it should be.
It’s also fading now, but man. It had felt great. More than great, really; it’d felt freaking awesome, which is part of the reason why it’s taking him a while to react to the fact that someone--Sammy-- is shaking his arm.
He starts, shifts, and then groans, because, oh, right.
Sandpoint, middle-of-nowhere-Idaho.
The details are a little fuzzy, but he’s pretty sure the last 24-hours had at one point involved one hell of an angry spirit that hadn’t gone down nearly as easily as it should have.
It’d started with a call from Ellen - a string of disturbances and one unexplained death in a sleepy vacation town. It seemed like it’d be an easy trip, one night, tops. So they’d done their usual investigative routine, and after twelve hours, they’d managed to track the thing to an abandoned warehouse, well outside the town limits. Definitely no more casualties, as long as they did their jobs right - but that had been about the extent of their good fortune.
Maybe they were just worn out, or maybe Dean hadn’t had enough coffee that morning, but they’d both gone down fast - this thing had them scrambling, fighting for an edge from the get-go.
Sam had taken it out in the end, but not before it’d tossed Dean back and forth a few too many times, one of those times through a first story window. Or at least that’s what Sam told him had happened. Dean had been knocked blissfully unaware after toss number one.
It was a shitty feeling, too, knowing he’d missed out on the action, knowing Sammy’d been in danger, and that he’d been helpless, not able to do a damn thing.
Yeah, things had definitely gone a little sideways in Idaho.
And now, bottom line - everything hurt like hell. And that was despite whatever happy pills Sam had dug out of Bobby’s stash and forced down his throat before they started this drive. Which, now that he thinks about it, feels like it’s been dragging on for about three days, though he swears he remembers Sam saying their next destination was just a few hours east - some town outside of Missoula that might or might not be dealing with a poltergeist.
Time feels a little strange all around at the moment though, like maybe Sammy’s been shaking his arm for a ten seconds, or ten minutes, he’s really not sure.
“Dean.”
Sam is hovering over him. The car door is open to some non-descript motel parking lot, and Sam is frowning at him, at eye level. He’s sitting on his heels, and peering into Dean’s face like he’s confused, and maybe a little concerned. A bit like he’s going go all chick-flick on him if Dean doesn’t answer him, already.
“What?” Dean asks, with effort. His throat is tight, like it’s filled with cotton, like the air doesn’t have enough space to move. He swats Sam’s hand away. “Get off me. And stop looking at me like that.”
Sam is frowning, brows knit and eyes creased at the corners, the whole nine yards.
“Well, you’re kind of freaking me out, Dean. I’ve been trying to wake you up ever since we pulled in here. How many of those pills did you take?”
Dean shrugs. Or tries to. His bones feel heavy. Tired, but a different sort of tired than he’s used to, like his brain isn’t moving fast enough to get the message to his muscles to just move, already.
Okay, he’s kind of freaking himself out now, to be honest.
“I don’t know," he says finally. “Whatever you gave me back there - I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Sam stares at him for another moment, and then shakes his head. Then he straightens up to his normal towering Sam-ness.
“Well, we’re here. Come on.”
Dean rolls his eyes, and almost asks where exactly “here” is again, but then he realizes that he probably should be putting all of his concentration into staying upright. Not pitching forward into the gravel of the parking lot as he stands up seems like it'd be a good thing to accomplish right about now. Nine times out of ten, he’d have walked away from a job like yesterday’s, but sometimes this stuff catches up to him a little faster than he’s used to these days.
This time, he’s pretty sure he has a broken rib or two, and it’s also possible that his right shoulder hasn’t quite slotted back into place just yet. Nothing a couple of drinks and a little rest wouldn’t fix, but damn if it isn’t slowing him down.
He has to pause to take a breath after he swings the car door closed behind him, and honestly, he’s a little grateful when Sam reappears at his side.
Sam doesn’t say a word, just wraps one arm around Dean’s good shoulder, gets them moving across the parking lot. There are stars up above them, which is not really a thing he’d usually notice, but he swears they’re moving - dancing back and forth like when Sam used to try to get him to look through Dad’s binoculars even though Dean could never quite get the things to work right, could never hold his breath and still his hands like Sam could.
**
The inside of the motel room is red. Red curtains, deep, blood-red bedspreads on the beds, and it smells stale, like old cigarette smoke and dust, and flowers underneath - someone’s attempt to freshen the place up maybe, hospitality and all.
Dean’s throat and his chest are burning, and he’s out of breath, and while it doesn’t exactly smell good in here, he knows it’s not that bad. They’ve had much worse, that’s for sure.
He sinks down onto the bed closest to the door, and Sam sits down next to him, close, watching him, like he doesn’t quite trust him on his own.
It’s a fair point, especially since Dean’s fingers have gone a little tingly, and he’s got that fog-closing-in feeling, like he might pass out. He closes his eyes, and tries to take a deep breath. It hurts like hell though, and so he gives up. It also feels like someone may be trying to choke the life out of him, so he decides he’ll just as soon not try that again -- instead, he'll just close his eyes and wait for this, whatever it is, to pass. It’d be nice if he could get back to that soft, floating, cloud place though, but then he realizes that Sam’s fingers are digging into his thigh, hard.
“Dean, come on, tell me what’s going on. Are you in pain? Do you feel sick?”
“I‘m fine,” Dean manages, though he’s sure it’s not all that convincing. “Okay,” he reconsiders after a second. “I do feel a little weird.”
“Weird, how?” Sam is frowning at him again. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Dean says, and when he rolls his eyes, the room rolls right along with them. Not good. “Is it hot in here?”
“No, why. It’s freezing, actually. I think the heat’s broken.”
“Huh,” Dean says.
“Why, do you feel hot?”
Dean nods, and to illustrate his point, he tugs at the collar of his shirt, and then realizes that damn, if he’s not itchy as hell. Unfortunately, now that he’s aware of this, it’s kind of all he can think about. He wonders if maybe he could squirm out of his skin if he concentrates hard enough.
“What are you doing?”
“Itchy,” Dean explains, and before he has a chance to unhelpfully attempt to scratch at his chest through several layers, Sam is reaching around him and pulling off his jacket. Then those huge hands are pressed against his forehead, and his neck, and Sam is unbuttoning Dean’s shirt.
Dean is just starting to think that Sam’s hands against his skin are even better than that crazy, floaty place, all cool, and comforting against his burning skin, but Sam is cursing under his breath, looking angry and worried and several other variations of not-good-at-all.
“Shit,” Sam says. “Your chest. I think you’re having some kind of allergic reaction,” he says, which honestly, kind of makes sense, since Dean is pretty sure how he’s feeling right now doesn’t have all that much to do with that angry spirit in Idaho.
And then Sam is pulling Dean up carefully by his good arm, and walking him into the tiny motel bathroom. When he flips on the light, it hurts Dean’s eyes, so he closes them.
His legs also feel a little less than stable, so he leans back against Sam’s chest for a moment. Sam’s chest is soft, and made of flannel, and it’s inviting, like somewhere he could maybe get lost (and he’s talking about the good kind of lost here, like the time when they were kids and he and Sammy went out behind the woods of their motel in the Poconos and got turned around accidentally at the bottom of the ravine, and then turned around again on purpose and didn’t make it back until after dark). Dad had been furious. At Dean, of course. Sammy always got off scot-free back then.
Dean’s chest aches with the memory; he tries to push it away, but he thinks maybe that drawer might be overstuffed, like it might be spilling out all over his insides anyway.
And then Dean hears Sam’s voice, and he’s not really sure what he’s saying, just that he doesn't sound happy at all. A little panicked, really.
Dean opens his eyes, but the room is fuzzy and spinning, and not in a good way, and for a second Dean can’t quite figure out which end is up, or where his feet should be.
Sam’s arms are around him quickly, his hair brushing up against Dean’s face, too long, tickling his cheek, his nose. Dean is trying to fight this, whatever it is - he’s been poisoned, or he’s been cursed, or maybe he’s allergic to spirits now, who knows - but everything is starting to fade into dark grey, like the haze and the fog in his head is spreading out around him. In the mirror, he can see his neck and his chest - round patterns of bright red welts jutting up against pale skin. Sam’s face looks scared, and there’s a thin crack that runs from his cheekbone, down past his chin, the kind with character, darkening and ancient around the edges. This has happened before, Dean thinks - falling, being caught. A bunch of times, maybe, and even though he swears it’s supposed to be the other way around, Sam always seems to be the constant. Bigger, taller, stronger, strongest.
They’re half-propped up in the small space between the door and the bathroom sink now, and Dean keeps his eyes on the crack; he wonders how long it’s been there, when it started, tiny, when it will shatter.
Dean tries to whisper, tries to press the curve of Sam’s ear to his lips like he used to back when they were kids, small enough to squeeze into one bed, Sam and Dean and Dad, and it wasn’t even that crowded, just warm. Secrets revealed in the dark, and Dean whispering the words right into Sam’s ear like if he said them out loud into the air they wouldn’t be real anymore. Because that was what felt right back then. Dad had secrets, and Uncle Bobby had secrets, but not Dean, not Sammy.
The bathroom lights are so bright, and Sam’s chest is so warm, and Dean is whispering against Sam’s neck, his chest, telling him things that are really only sometimes true, because it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that it was okay to keep secrets to protect someone. Okay to lie, too, sometimes. And now he’s so used to it, he can’t tell the difference. He’s really not sure his words can be trusted at all, but he says them anyway.
It’s okay and we’re okay and everything is fine, he says, or tries to, but really, his lungs feel like they’ve been turned inside out, like they’re filled with acid.
Honestly, Dean thinks he might be dying, and that’s not really all that scary, it’s been a long time coming, probably, but Sammy. Sammy is right here, so close he can feel his heart pounding in his chest.
Dean can’t take his last breath in Sammy’s arms.
It’s an okay way to go, sure, but it’ll rip Sammy apart, and that thought hurts, it twists somewhere deep in Dean’s stomach, and he thinks he might be sick. He closes his eyes and there’s an image there, a still frame that feels like a memory, or maybe a dream, or maybe both - Sam’s fingers, torn up, knuckles bloody, a spirit board, and a gulf between them that should be impossible to breach, and helplessness spreads through Dean’s entire body, flooding through his insides, breaching the levee, pulling him down.
But then Sam is moving, is pushing off from the door, and lifting him up, and it wrenches his shoulder something awful, but they’re out of the bathroom.
He feels the soft press of the bed, and it’s buoyant, like a water bed, and his head is just barely straining up above the surface. Sam’s fingers are cool against his neck, and it’s kind of like he’s floating again, and he thinks fine, maybe he’s not dying, maybe he’ll just sleep, and so he closes his eyes, and lets the darkness press in around him.
**
When Dean opens his eyes again, he’s laid out flat on a thin bed, and almost immediately there's an all-out assault on his senses, every way at once. Brash fluorescent lights, and the scratch of unfamiliar fabric against his skin, and that horrible antiseptic smell filling his nose. He starts to panic, like he usually does when reason tells him he’s most likely in a hospital bed and he’s only got dull snippets of memory telling him how he got there.
And then his eyes focus on the chair next to his bed, and Sam, his legs and arms folded up awkwardly around him, and his neck bent and wrenched over against his shoulder. He doesn’t look peaceful at all, but it’s not like he looks peaceful when he’s sleeping on any ordinary day, let alone trapped in an awful place like this.
The guilt hits Dean hard for a moment, throbs deep and familiar in his gut, and then Sam blinks awake and flashes him a bright, happy smile, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and it fades.
“You’re awake,” Sam says, stretching a little.
Dean watches Sam approach the bed, thinking he looks huge, larger than life, but maybe it’s just the hideous industrial glow of the lights overhead playing tricks.
“How do you feel?” Sam asks. His voice is rough, tired. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week - his eyes are red; the circles underneath look like bruises against his skin.
“Like I’ve been hit by a freight train or three,” Dean says finally. “What the hell happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Well, I remember you picking me up off the bathroom floor back at the motel, but everything else is a little fuzzy.”
Sam laughs. “That’s not exactly surprising.”
“So, what? What happened?”
“Codeine,” Sam says with a sigh. “You’re allergic to it, apparently.” Then he shakes his head, and gives Dean a pointed stare. “How could you possibly not know that?”
Dean shrugs. “Obviously it never came up before. But wait - Bobby’s happy pills?”
“Yeah. I thought you said you’d taken them before. I asked you, and you--”
“I have taken them before. Maybe these were different?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Sam says, but he’s looking down at Dean with his brows knitted together and his eyes all big and round and concerned, and then he sits down next to Dean on the tiny bed and his shoulders slump forward and Dean feels guilty all over again.
“You should have gone back to the motel. Would have been more comfortable than that chair,” Dean says, but Sam just shakes his head.
“Not a chance. If you woke up alone here, you’d have ripped those tubes out of your arm and I’d be left picking you up off the floor all over again.”
He’s got a point, and for a second Dean just watches him, watches Sam’s face, those tired eyes, the softness of them, and he thinks for one awful second that he has absolutely no fucking idea what he’d do without this kid, none at all.
He closes his eyes against it, this wave of fear, of complete vulnerability, and it passes. Of course it does. The room is quiet except for some machine beeping away behind him, and Sam’s breathing, slow and steady next to him.
“Look, Dean--“
“I’m sorry, Sammy--”
They both start talking at the same time, and then Sam’s face is pressed against Dean’s neck, and Sam’s arms are wrapped around his back in a tight hug. He can feel Sam take a shuddering breath against his chest.
“C’mon man, get off me,” Dean says, but not before he brings his hand up to his brother’s neck and holds him in place there for a second, his fingers tangled in Sam’s hair.
He takes a deep breath, too, and feels his chest press tight to Sam’s. Even though Sam mostly smells like hospital, like bright lights and sickness and worse, underneath all of that there’s just Sam, familiar and clean, like home, like family, like everything that’s ever meant anything at all.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Sam says. His voice is quiet as he sits up.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Dean says. “Everything’s fine though. I’m fine.”
Sam laughs, shakes his head. “You keep saying that.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“You told me the same thing last night when you were high as a kite. I bet you don’t even remember.”
“So, it was still--”
“You could have died, Dean,” Sam says, eyes flashing. His tone of voice reminds him of Dad, just a little, makes him sink back against the bed, feeling reprimanded, feeling like a teenager again.
“You could have gone into anaphylactic shock, and you could have died. If the ambulance had come a few minutes later, or if I’d let you stay asleep. If you’d been alone.”
“Okay,” Dean says, because he isn’t sure what else to say.
“It’s just…” Sam says, and his voice is quiet and sad in a way he hasn’t heard in a while, and it breaks Dean’s heart a little. “You can’t--”
“I know,” Dean says. “I won’t. I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
Sam shakes his head. “You know who else used to say that?”
Sam doesn’t have to tell him; of course Dean knows.
“I’m not Dad, Sam.”
Not by a long shot, he thinks. Then he closes his eyes, leaves it at that. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t let it weigh him down, just lets the thought evaporate into the silence that stretches between them, long and slow and heavy.
Sam meets Dean’s eyes eventually.
“I know,” Sam says, and then he smiles a little. “Believe me, I know.”
They don’t say anything after that, but after a few minutes Dean grabs the remote, and Sam leans back against the bed and they sit there with their shoulders pressed together, muted TV voices filling in the silence around them. Sam’s damn legs take up half the bed, but they sit there until the doctor shows up and discharges Dean anyway. Dean couldn’t tell you what they’ve been watching, and he has no idea if it’s been an hour, or five hours, or fifteen minutes, but sitting there with Sam, no place to be, nothing to chase, nothing to kill - he’s content. Happy, even.
It reminds him of long nights spent in beat up motel rooms all over the country, waiting for the job to end, for Dad to come back. Back then, there was one person who mattered who’d always been right there next to him.
And he was here now, too. Even though Dad was gone, and that was probably never going to be okay, was probably never going to stop hurting like hell - Sam was right here. It felt good, and pure, like maybe there was still one thing in the world that was on the right track.
**
“Okay - new ground rules,” Sam says once they’re back in the Impala.
Dean’s entirely unimpressed eye roll at that statement is ignored, as Sam raises his eyebrows from across the seat, and turns the key in the ignition.
“If you start hallucinating or breaking out in hives again, this time you’ll let me know right away, okay? Not five hours later.”
“I wasn’t hallucinating,” Dean says, a little defensively. He might not remember everything that happened last night, but he’s pretty sure he’d remember that. “Who said I was hallucinating?”
“Whatever,” Sam says, smiling, his lips just barely turning up at the corners as he reaches over to turn on the radio.
ACDC’s Back in Black (that opening riff gets him every time) is playing on the rock station, and Dean closes his eyes.
“Wait,” he says after a minute. There was something they were forgetting, he was sure of it. Almost sure, anyway. “Hang on.”
Sam is speeding down the highway out of town like he always does, like he can’t wait to put this place behind them, like he can’t get away fast enough.
“What?” he asks over the screech of the lyrics. Dean turns the volume down a couple of notches.
“Wasn’t there a poltergeist we were supposed to be hunting?” he asks. “Or was I imagining that?”
Sam shakes his head. “Vengeful spirit.”
“What, how do you know?”
Sam shrugs. “I called Bobby. After we got to the hospital. Friend of his a couple of towns over took it out, no problem.”
“You pawned our job off on Bobby?”
“Well, you were kind of out of commission, Dean. And I-“
“You what?”
“I told you, bad things would’ve happened if I’d left you alone in that hospital. Didn’t want to take the risk.”
“Right,” Dean says, and he can’t help it, he’s smiling a little. He raises his chin in Sam’s direction. “Admit it. You didn’t want to go out there without me.”
Sam just shakes his head, eyes on the road. He glances at Dean after a second. “What?”
“Nothing, just waiting for you to admit it, that’s all.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Fine, Dean. You win. I didn’t want to go out there without you, you’re right,” he deadpans.
“Good,” Dean says. He flashes Sam a quick smile, and leans back against the seat, watching the road slip away underneath them, the trees blurring past, smooth and sure as always.
“Now you know how I feel,” he says, and cranks up the volume.
end
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean
Genre: Gen, hurt/comfort
Warnings/Spoilers: none
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4,030
Beta: sariagray ♥
Summary: Bobby's happy pills turn out to be a little less awesome than Dean's expecting. Sam helps make it better.
Notes: This is a wish fill for sailoreyes67's wish #3, over at hoodie_time's Wish Fullfillment Party. It's set sometime in S2, and the prompt was: There can never be enough allergic reactions. Er, I mean.... exactly what I said, actually. *stops trying not to look like an h/c sadist* I'll take any severity and any range of symptoms, although if it involves Dean lying listlessly in a bed doing nothing but rubbing his nose raw with kleenex at some point, there will be extra cookies. But really, anything, just as long as Dean is allergic to something. Kleenex didn't quite make it into the mix here, but I really hope you enjoy it! ^_^
Dean blinks and the interior of the Impala slowly comes into focus. The fuzzy glow from the headlights blankets the darkness. It resembles a perfectly rounded curve of fresh snow outside the window, soft and hazy around the edges.
In retrospect, this probably should have been a red flag -- they haven’t been anywhere near snow in months and, well, Dean’s not really one to see the world in metaphors. That would be more up Sam’s alley.
All the same, he’s pretty sure he’d been floating just a second ago, somewhere high above the clouds - there’d been blue skies, and blindingly bright sun, and everything around him had felt soft and doughy, insulated from the world below. His own private little bubble. This should have been red flag number two, but when Dean closes his eyes, he can still feel himself spinning, turning head over heel, tumbling endlessly; it’s distracting, and not nearly as disturbing as it should be.
It’s also fading now, but man. It had felt great. More than great, really; it’d felt freaking awesome, which is part of the reason why it’s taking him a while to react to the fact that someone--Sammy-- is shaking his arm.
He starts, shifts, and then groans, because, oh, right.
Sandpoint, middle-of-nowhere-Idaho.
The details are a little fuzzy, but he’s pretty sure the last 24-hours had at one point involved one hell of an angry spirit that hadn’t gone down nearly as easily as it should have.
It’d started with a call from Ellen - a string of disturbances and one unexplained death in a sleepy vacation town. It seemed like it’d be an easy trip, one night, tops. So they’d done their usual investigative routine, and after twelve hours, they’d managed to track the thing to an abandoned warehouse, well outside the town limits. Definitely no more casualties, as long as they did their jobs right - but that had been about the extent of their good fortune.
Maybe they were just worn out, or maybe Dean hadn’t had enough coffee that morning, but they’d both gone down fast - this thing had them scrambling, fighting for an edge from the get-go.
Sam had taken it out in the end, but not before it’d tossed Dean back and forth a few too many times, one of those times through a first story window. Or at least that’s what Sam told him had happened. Dean had been knocked blissfully unaware after toss number one.
It was a shitty feeling, too, knowing he’d missed out on the action, knowing Sammy’d been in danger, and that he’d been helpless, not able to do a damn thing.
Yeah, things had definitely gone a little sideways in Idaho.
And now, bottom line - everything hurt like hell. And that was despite whatever happy pills Sam had dug out of Bobby’s stash and forced down his throat before they started this drive. Which, now that he thinks about it, feels like it’s been dragging on for about three days, though he swears he remembers Sam saying their next destination was just a few hours east - some town outside of Missoula that might or might not be dealing with a poltergeist.
Time feels a little strange all around at the moment though, like maybe Sammy’s been shaking his arm for a ten seconds, or ten minutes, he’s really not sure.
“Dean.”
Sam is hovering over him. The car door is open to some non-descript motel parking lot, and Sam is frowning at him, at eye level. He’s sitting on his heels, and peering into Dean’s face like he’s confused, and maybe a little concerned. A bit like he’s going go all chick-flick on him if Dean doesn’t answer him, already.
“What?” Dean asks, with effort. His throat is tight, like it’s filled with cotton, like the air doesn’t have enough space to move. He swats Sam’s hand away. “Get off me. And stop looking at me like that.”
Sam is frowning, brows knit and eyes creased at the corners, the whole nine yards.
“Well, you’re kind of freaking me out, Dean. I’ve been trying to wake you up ever since we pulled in here. How many of those pills did you take?”
Dean shrugs. Or tries to. His bones feel heavy. Tired, but a different sort of tired than he’s used to, like his brain isn’t moving fast enough to get the message to his muscles to just move, already.
Okay, he’s kind of freaking himself out now, to be honest.
“I don’t know," he says finally. “Whatever you gave me back there - I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Sam stares at him for another moment, and then shakes his head. Then he straightens up to his normal towering Sam-ness.
“Well, we’re here. Come on.”
Dean rolls his eyes, and almost asks where exactly “here” is again, but then he realizes that he probably should be putting all of his concentration into staying upright. Not pitching forward into the gravel of the parking lot as he stands up seems like it'd be a good thing to accomplish right about now. Nine times out of ten, he’d have walked away from a job like yesterday’s, but sometimes this stuff catches up to him a little faster than he’s used to these days.
This time, he’s pretty sure he has a broken rib or two, and it’s also possible that his right shoulder hasn’t quite slotted back into place just yet. Nothing a couple of drinks and a little rest wouldn’t fix, but damn if it isn’t slowing him down.
He has to pause to take a breath after he swings the car door closed behind him, and honestly, he’s a little grateful when Sam reappears at his side.
Sam doesn’t say a word, just wraps one arm around Dean’s good shoulder, gets them moving across the parking lot. There are stars up above them, which is not really a thing he’d usually notice, but he swears they’re moving - dancing back and forth like when Sam used to try to get him to look through Dad’s binoculars even though Dean could never quite get the things to work right, could never hold his breath and still his hands like Sam could.
**
The inside of the motel room is red. Red curtains, deep, blood-red bedspreads on the beds, and it smells stale, like old cigarette smoke and dust, and flowers underneath - someone’s attempt to freshen the place up maybe, hospitality and all.
Dean’s throat and his chest are burning, and he’s out of breath, and while it doesn’t exactly smell good in here, he knows it’s not that bad. They’ve had much worse, that’s for sure.
He sinks down onto the bed closest to the door, and Sam sits down next to him, close, watching him, like he doesn’t quite trust him on his own.
It’s a fair point, especially since Dean’s fingers have gone a little tingly, and he’s got that fog-closing-in feeling, like he might pass out. He closes his eyes, and tries to take a deep breath. It hurts like hell though, and so he gives up. It also feels like someone may be trying to choke the life out of him, so he decides he’ll just as soon not try that again -- instead, he'll just close his eyes and wait for this, whatever it is, to pass. It’d be nice if he could get back to that soft, floating, cloud place though, but then he realizes that Sam’s fingers are digging into his thigh, hard.
“Dean, come on, tell me what’s going on. Are you in pain? Do you feel sick?”
“I‘m fine,” Dean manages, though he’s sure it’s not all that convincing. “Okay,” he reconsiders after a second. “I do feel a little weird.”
“Weird, how?” Sam is frowning at him again. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Dean says, and when he rolls his eyes, the room rolls right along with them. Not good. “Is it hot in here?”
“No, why. It’s freezing, actually. I think the heat’s broken.”
“Huh,” Dean says.
“Why, do you feel hot?”
Dean nods, and to illustrate his point, he tugs at the collar of his shirt, and then realizes that damn, if he’s not itchy as hell. Unfortunately, now that he’s aware of this, it’s kind of all he can think about. He wonders if maybe he could squirm out of his skin if he concentrates hard enough.
“What are you doing?”
“Itchy,” Dean explains, and before he has a chance to unhelpfully attempt to scratch at his chest through several layers, Sam is reaching around him and pulling off his jacket. Then those huge hands are pressed against his forehead, and his neck, and Sam is unbuttoning Dean’s shirt.
Dean is just starting to think that Sam’s hands against his skin are even better than that crazy, floaty place, all cool, and comforting against his burning skin, but Sam is cursing under his breath, looking angry and worried and several other variations of not-good-at-all.
“Shit,” Sam says. “Your chest. I think you’re having some kind of allergic reaction,” he says, which honestly, kind of makes sense, since Dean is pretty sure how he’s feeling right now doesn’t have all that much to do with that angry spirit in Idaho.
And then Sam is pulling Dean up carefully by his good arm, and walking him into the tiny motel bathroom. When he flips on the light, it hurts Dean’s eyes, so he closes them.
His legs also feel a little less than stable, so he leans back against Sam’s chest for a moment. Sam’s chest is soft, and made of flannel, and it’s inviting, like somewhere he could maybe get lost (and he’s talking about the good kind of lost here, like the time when they were kids and he and Sammy went out behind the woods of their motel in the Poconos and got turned around accidentally at the bottom of the ravine, and then turned around again on purpose and didn’t make it back until after dark). Dad had been furious. At Dean, of course. Sammy always got off scot-free back then.
Dean’s chest aches with the memory; he tries to push it away, but he thinks maybe that drawer might be overstuffed, like it might be spilling out all over his insides anyway.
And then Dean hears Sam’s voice, and he’s not really sure what he’s saying, just that he doesn't sound happy at all. A little panicked, really.
Dean opens his eyes, but the room is fuzzy and spinning, and not in a good way, and for a second Dean can’t quite figure out which end is up, or where his feet should be.
Sam’s arms are around him quickly, his hair brushing up against Dean’s face, too long, tickling his cheek, his nose. Dean is trying to fight this, whatever it is - he’s been poisoned, or he’s been cursed, or maybe he’s allergic to spirits now, who knows - but everything is starting to fade into dark grey, like the haze and the fog in his head is spreading out around him. In the mirror, he can see his neck and his chest - round patterns of bright red welts jutting up against pale skin. Sam’s face looks scared, and there’s a thin crack that runs from his cheekbone, down past his chin, the kind with character, darkening and ancient around the edges. This has happened before, Dean thinks - falling, being caught. A bunch of times, maybe, and even though he swears it’s supposed to be the other way around, Sam always seems to be the constant. Bigger, taller, stronger, strongest.
They’re half-propped up in the small space between the door and the bathroom sink now, and Dean keeps his eyes on the crack; he wonders how long it’s been there, when it started, tiny, when it will shatter.
Dean tries to whisper, tries to press the curve of Sam’s ear to his lips like he used to back when they were kids, small enough to squeeze into one bed, Sam and Dean and Dad, and it wasn’t even that crowded, just warm. Secrets revealed in the dark, and Dean whispering the words right into Sam’s ear like if he said them out loud into the air they wouldn’t be real anymore. Because that was what felt right back then. Dad had secrets, and Uncle Bobby had secrets, but not Dean, not Sammy.
The bathroom lights are so bright, and Sam’s chest is so warm, and Dean is whispering against Sam’s neck, his chest, telling him things that are really only sometimes true, because it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that it was okay to keep secrets to protect someone. Okay to lie, too, sometimes. And now he’s so used to it, he can’t tell the difference. He’s really not sure his words can be trusted at all, but he says them anyway.
It’s okay and we’re okay and everything is fine, he says, or tries to, but really, his lungs feel like they’ve been turned inside out, like they’re filled with acid.
Honestly, Dean thinks he might be dying, and that’s not really all that scary, it’s been a long time coming, probably, but Sammy. Sammy is right here, so close he can feel his heart pounding in his chest.
Dean can’t take his last breath in Sammy’s arms.
It’s an okay way to go, sure, but it’ll rip Sammy apart, and that thought hurts, it twists somewhere deep in Dean’s stomach, and he thinks he might be sick. He closes his eyes and there’s an image there, a still frame that feels like a memory, or maybe a dream, or maybe both - Sam’s fingers, torn up, knuckles bloody, a spirit board, and a gulf between them that should be impossible to breach, and helplessness spreads through Dean’s entire body, flooding through his insides, breaching the levee, pulling him down.
But then Sam is moving, is pushing off from the door, and lifting him up, and it wrenches his shoulder something awful, but they’re out of the bathroom.
He feels the soft press of the bed, and it’s buoyant, like a water bed, and his head is just barely straining up above the surface. Sam’s fingers are cool against his neck, and it’s kind of like he’s floating again, and he thinks fine, maybe he’s not dying, maybe he’ll just sleep, and so he closes his eyes, and lets the darkness press in around him.
**
When Dean opens his eyes again, he’s laid out flat on a thin bed, and almost immediately there's an all-out assault on his senses, every way at once. Brash fluorescent lights, and the scratch of unfamiliar fabric against his skin, and that horrible antiseptic smell filling his nose. He starts to panic, like he usually does when reason tells him he’s most likely in a hospital bed and he’s only got dull snippets of memory telling him how he got there.
And then his eyes focus on the chair next to his bed, and Sam, his legs and arms folded up awkwardly around him, and his neck bent and wrenched over against his shoulder. He doesn’t look peaceful at all, but it’s not like he looks peaceful when he’s sleeping on any ordinary day, let alone trapped in an awful place like this.
The guilt hits Dean hard for a moment, throbs deep and familiar in his gut, and then Sam blinks awake and flashes him a bright, happy smile, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and it fades.
“You’re awake,” Sam says, stretching a little.
Dean watches Sam approach the bed, thinking he looks huge, larger than life, but maybe it’s just the hideous industrial glow of the lights overhead playing tricks.
“How do you feel?” Sam asks. His voice is rough, tired. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week - his eyes are red; the circles underneath look like bruises against his skin.
“Like I’ve been hit by a freight train or three,” Dean says finally. “What the hell happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Well, I remember you picking me up off the bathroom floor back at the motel, but everything else is a little fuzzy.”
Sam laughs. “That’s not exactly surprising.”
“So, what? What happened?”
“Codeine,” Sam says with a sigh. “You’re allergic to it, apparently.” Then he shakes his head, and gives Dean a pointed stare. “How could you possibly not know that?”
Dean shrugs. “Obviously it never came up before. But wait - Bobby’s happy pills?”
“Yeah. I thought you said you’d taken them before. I asked you, and you--”
“I have taken them before. Maybe these were different?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Sam says, but he’s looking down at Dean with his brows knitted together and his eyes all big and round and concerned, and then he sits down next to Dean on the tiny bed and his shoulders slump forward and Dean feels guilty all over again.
“You should have gone back to the motel. Would have been more comfortable than that chair,” Dean says, but Sam just shakes his head.
“Not a chance. If you woke up alone here, you’d have ripped those tubes out of your arm and I’d be left picking you up off the floor all over again.”
He’s got a point, and for a second Dean just watches him, watches Sam’s face, those tired eyes, the softness of them, and he thinks for one awful second that he has absolutely no fucking idea what he’d do without this kid, none at all.
He closes his eyes against it, this wave of fear, of complete vulnerability, and it passes. Of course it does. The room is quiet except for some machine beeping away behind him, and Sam’s breathing, slow and steady next to him.
“Look, Dean--“
“I’m sorry, Sammy--”
They both start talking at the same time, and then Sam’s face is pressed against Dean’s neck, and Sam’s arms are wrapped around his back in a tight hug. He can feel Sam take a shuddering breath against his chest.
“C’mon man, get off me,” Dean says, but not before he brings his hand up to his brother’s neck and holds him in place there for a second, his fingers tangled in Sam’s hair.
He takes a deep breath, too, and feels his chest press tight to Sam’s. Even though Sam mostly smells like hospital, like bright lights and sickness and worse, underneath all of that there’s just Sam, familiar and clean, like home, like family, like everything that’s ever meant anything at all.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Sam says. His voice is quiet as he sits up.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Dean says. “Everything’s fine though. I’m fine.”
Sam laughs, shakes his head. “You keep saying that.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“You told me the same thing last night when you were high as a kite. I bet you don’t even remember.”
“So, it was still--”
“You could have died, Dean,” Sam says, eyes flashing. His tone of voice reminds him of Dad, just a little, makes him sink back against the bed, feeling reprimanded, feeling like a teenager again.
“You could have gone into anaphylactic shock, and you could have died. If the ambulance had come a few minutes later, or if I’d let you stay asleep. If you’d been alone.”
“Okay,” Dean says, because he isn’t sure what else to say.
“It’s just…” Sam says, and his voice is quiet and sad in a way he hasn’t heard in a while, and it breaks Dean’s heart a little. “You can’t--”
“I know,” Dean says. “I won’t. I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
Sam shakes his head. “You know who else used to say that?”
Sam doesn’t have to tell him; of course Dean knows.
“I’m not Dad, Sam.”
Not by a long shot, he thinks. Then he closes his eyes, leaves it at that. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t let it weigh him down, just lets the thought evaporate into the silence that stretches between them, long and slow and heavy.
Sam meets Dean’s eyes eventually.
“I know,” Sam says, and then he smiles a little. “Believe me, I know.”
They don’t say anything after that, but after a few minutes Dean grabs the remote, and Sam leans back against the bed and they sit there with their shoulders pressed together, muted TV voices filling in the silence around them. Sam’s damn legs take up half the bed, but they sit there until the doctor shows up and discharges Dean anyway. Dean couldn’t tell you what they’ve been watching, and he has no idea if it’s been an hour, or five hours, or fifteen minutes, but sitting there with Sam, no place to be, nothing to chase, nothing to kill - he’s content. Happy, even.
It reminds him of long nights spent in beat up motel rooms all over the country, waiting for the job to end, for Dad to come back. Back then, there was one person who mattered who’d always been right there next to him.
And he was here now, too. Even though Dad was gone, and that was probably never going to be okay, was probably never going to stop hurting like hell - Sam was right here. It felt good, and pure, like maybe there was still one thing in the world that was on the right track.
**
“Okay - new ground rules,” Sam says once they’re back in the Impala.
Dean’s entirely unimpressed eye roll at that statement is ignored, as Sam raises his eyebrows from across the seat, and turns the key in the ignition.
“If you start hallucinating or breaking out in hives again, this time you’ll let me know right away, okay? Not five hours later.”
“I wasn’t hallucinating,” Dean says, a little defensively. He might not remember everything that happened last night, but he’s pretty sure he’d remember that. “Who said I was hallucinating?”
“Whatever,” Sam says, smiling, his lips just barely turning up at the corners as he reaches over to turn on the radio.
ACDC’s Back in Black (that opening riff gets him every time) is playing on the rock station, and Dean closes his eyes.
“Wait,” he says after a minute. There was something they were forgetting, he was sure of it. Almost sure, anyway. “Hang on.”
Sam is speeding down the highway out of town like he always does, like he can’t wait to put this place behind them, like he can’t get away fast enough.
“What?” he asks over the screech of the lyrics. Dean turns the volume down a couple of notches.
“Wasn’t there a poltergeist we were supposed to be hunting?” he asks. “Or was I imagining that?”
Sam shakes his head. “Vengeful spirit.”
“What, how do you know?”
Sam shrugs. “I called Bobby. After we got to the hospital. Friend of his a couple of towns over took it out, no problem.”
“You pawned our job off on Bobby?”
“Well, you were kind of out of commission, Dean. And I-“
“You what?”
“I told you, bad things would’ve happened if I’d left you alone in that hospital. Didn’t want to take the risk.”
“Right,” Dean says, and he can’t help it, he’s smiling a little. He raises his chin in Sam’s direction. “Admit it. You didn’t want to go out there without me.”
Sam just shakes his head, eyes on the road. He glances at Dean after a second. “What?”
“Nothing, just waiting for you to admit it, that’s all.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Fine, Dean. You win. I didn’t want to go out there without you, you’re right,” he deadpans.
“Good,” Dean says. He flashes Sam a quick smile, and leans back against the seat, watching the road slip away underneath them, the trees blurring past, smooth and sure as always.
“Now you know how I feel,” he says, and cranks up the volume.
end