SPN Fic: Open Your Eyes (Gen, PG-13, h/c, Pre-series)
Title: Open Your Eyes
Author: Dodger Winslow
Challenge: Bat out of Kansas Ficathon
Prompt: You hold me so close that my knees grow weak, but my soul is flying high above the ground. I’m trying to speak, but no matter what I do, I just can’t seem to make any sound.
Word Count: 8,500
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: I’m don’t own the boys, I’m just stalking them for a while.
Summary: "I uh … I think I’m hit, Dad," Dean managed a little shakily. John stopped what he was doing. He came over, knelt down; all business, no emotion, when he asked, "Where?" Dean looked at him, blinked again to stay focused. "I’m a … not … not really sure." He held out the bloody hand, saying, "I’m … I’m bleeding, though. So I guess that … I think … maybe … I think I must be hit."
Open Your Eyes
You hold me so close that my knees grow weak,
But my soul is flying high above the ground.
I’m trying to speak, but no matter what I do,
I just can’t seem to make any sound.
"Shake it off, boy," John said. "We need to put this thing to a burn before sun-up."
Dean grunted. He rolled over slowly, surprised the aswang had managed to hit him at all, let alone hit him hard enough to knock his ass into next Thursday. He’d thought he was a little tougher than that, a little less related to some pansy-ass bitch pantywaist who’d go down for the count just because some fugly monster charged him hard enough to hurt.
But damn, that son of a bitch hurt. It felt like his ribs had been knocked out through his back, like his teeth were going to be rattling around in his head for some time to come. He was having a little bit of trouble thinking, a little more trouble breathing. Wiping a haze of disoriented fog out of his eyes with the back of one hand, he watched his dad drag the carcass free of the ground cover, twist it in on itself to form a compact lump of butt-fuck ugly, then start kicking sticks and kindling clear so putting the aswang to a good toasting wouldn’t put the surrounding real estate to one, too.
John glanced over at him, a flicker of disapproval in his expression. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Just got the wind knocked out of me."
John grunted. It was his way of calling Dean a pantywaist little bitch.
Dean took the criticism to heart. He pushed to his elbows first, allowed another indulgent moment of rest-and-regroup before sitting up to brush dead leaves and debris out of his hair, out of his jacket. He was trying to give himself a chance to gather his wits; trying to set himself to drag his sorry ass up to help his dad finish what they’d started.
But his sorry ass didn’t want to drag. He wasn’t gathering so much as he was losing. He was still dazed. More than dazed even, he felt like he was fading in and out, slipping away then jerking back. It was still hard to breathe - maybe harder than before - and he was getting vaguely nauseous, almost like he’d been kicked in the balls, only without the pain.
Or more accurately, with the pain dislocated a little north of where the kicking would have been done. There was a stitch from hell cramping up his gut, pulling on his insides as if he’d run too far, too fast, for too long, and without enough air to do the job right.
He wanted to consider it more of an aggravation than an actual pain, more of a warning that he might be overdoing it than the burn of a torn muscle, but it wasn’t. It was more than just aggravating as hell, it hurt like a son of a bitch, and it was getting worse fast.
Dean reached down, tried to rub the stitch out. It surprised him to feel the danger of a warm wet, to look down and see his hand sticky with blood.
Oh, crap. That couldn’t be good.
Almost as if to oblige his assessment, the pain escalated from son of a bitch to fucking hell. He had to blink half a dozen times in rapid succession just to keep his eyes focused, just to keep from losing his balance and falling over. It got harder to think, harder to focus. He thought maybe his tongue was swelling. It felt thick and awkward and useless.
"I could use a hand here any time you’re done napping, son," John said, his tone terse, irritated.
"I uh … I think I’m hit, Dad," Dean managed a little shakily.
John stopped what he was doing. He came over, knelt down; all business, no emotion, when he asked, "Where?"
Dean looked at him, blinked again to stay focused. "I’m a … not … not really sure." He held out the bloody hand, saying, "I’m … I’m bleeding, though. So I guess that … I think … maybe … I think I must be hit."
It embarrassed him a little to sound that stupid. His dad liked concise answers: as many details in as few words as possible. But there wasn’t much concise in him right now. It was like his brain was trying to shut down all of a sudden. Like it had no intention of letting him actually form a cohesive thought; let alone put a cohesive thought to words.
John barely glanced at the hand. He’d already run a whole recon while Dean stumbled around his teeth with his tongue. He’d narrowed his search to a list of likely suspects, then pared it down to only one. As accurately as a heat-seeking missile on seek, John reached out and found the wound with a single touch.
Dean gasped at the intensity of the pain that jolted through him. Fire radiated out from the point of contact as he fell back to his elbows. His dad’s fingers were light, exploratory; but it felt like he was being gutted. The air slicked to a startling cold against his skin. His elbows gave way, and he hit the ground hard, one of his shoulders bruising against a rock, his head bouncing a little on the spongy groundcover.
"Uh … right there, I guess," he managed, his tongue slurring the words, barely pushing them past his teeth
"You think?" John said like his collapse was no big deal.
Dean stared up at the half-dark sky, wondering how much longer they had until true dawn hit. "What is it?" he asked.
"Not sure yet." John ripped the hole in Dean’s shirt a little wider to get a better look at the damage.
"Dude," Dean protested weakly. "That’s my favorite shirt."
"I thought the N*Sync one was your favorite," John said.
Dean snorted, groaned, snorted again. "Oh. Low blow. I’m wounded here. Show a little compassion, will ya?"
"I was showing compassion. I could have gone with Hanson."
"It is so wrong that you even know who Hanson is."
John looked up, met Dean’s eyes. "This is going to hurt, son," he said.
Dean nodded.
John spent the next three minutes re-defining what "this is going to hurt" meant. He worked quickly, carefully, but the exploration still lasted forever and hurt so bad it made Dean want to stand up and start singing hymns to the choir.
By the time he was finished, Dean was panting, his eyes closed, his teeth aching with how hard he had to clench them to keep from crying out. "Jesus, Dad," he hissed. "Gonna hurt, my ass. Try ‘gonna fucking kill you’ or something next time."
John flicked him a glance. "Sorry," he said, wiping bloody hands on his jacket.
Which told Dean it was bad. Worse than bad, even. His dad didn’t apologize. He wasn’t sorry for much, and those few things he might be sorry for, he didn’t admit.
"’T’s okay," Dean managed. "Didn’t hurt as much as the N*Sync crack."
"Mmm hmmm." John was taking Dean’s pulse, but he was distracted, still watching the wound, still studying it like it was doing something other than just sitting there bleeding. After almost three minutes of taking a pulse that could have been counted and multiplied in fifteen seconds, John pulled a penlight from his pocket and flicked it across Dean’s eyes. It was SOP for checking pupil response, but there was nothing SOP in how much a simple flick of light felt like the blade of a knife cutting across Dean’s face.
"Holy fuck, Dad."
"Sorry," John said again.
Which scared him. One sorry was cause for concern. Two was justifiable grounds for panic. His dad was still watching the wound, still studying it with a concentration intense enough it was hard for Dean to keep his voice level when he asked, "So … bad?"
"I’ve seen worse," John said.
"Yeah. That’s encouraging, given that you’ve seen dead, too."
John glanced at him again, said, "I’ve seen worse on little girls who didn’t bitch about it as much as you’re bitching." Then he lifted an eyebrow. "That more encouraging?"
It was the worst thing his dad could have said. As much as John Winchester didn’t believe in apologies, he really didn’t believe in lying. Not about wounds, not about degrees of bad when it came to what was hurt and how much it hurt. Informed is warned, he always said. Pain’s a yardstick to measure by, and only a fool measures three feet and calls it one out of ego.
But he was lying now. Lying out his ass, and it showed.
Dean dropped his head back to the ground. "Dude. You are such a bad liar."
John grunted. "I’ll work on that."
Dean closed his eyes, listened to the sound of his own heartbeat. "So … how long?" he asked.
"How long what?"
He opened his eyes again, tried to keep his tone casual. "How long until you’re going to have to burn my bones so I don’t haunt you over that N*Sync crack?"
John put a little effort into sounding disgusted. "Jesus, Dean," he snorted as he pushed to his feet. "Don’t be such a drama queen. You got hit. It happens. I know it hurts, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to die. Rub a little dirt on it, you’ll be fine."
Then he walked away.
Just walked away.
For a moment, Dean thought he’d left. For just a moment, he thought maybe his dad really was disgusted; thought maybe he really was serious about rubbing a little dirt on it, about not being such a drama queen, about thinking his son was bitching like a little girl over nothing more than a broken fingernail.
Dean tried to sit up - tried to see where John had gone - but the effort was more than he had in him. It required more energy than he had left to spare; it hurt more than he was willing to suffer.
"Dad?"
"I’m right here, son." John dropped down beside him again. He had the medic pack in one hand and an open canteen in the other. Setting the pack to one side, he put the canteen to Dean’s lips and reached around to support his head, helping Dean sit up just enough to drink without drowning himself to a coughing fit. "Here. Drink this."
Because it was an order, not a suggestion, Dean obeyed. He didn’t want a drink - all he wanted was to close his eyes for a minute and catch his breath - but his dad was tipping the canteen, so he took the water in, swallowed it with an effort. The metal was cold. Bitter. The water felt good going down, but it burned like hell when it hit bottom.
"Keep drinking," his dad said.
Again, an order, not a suggestion. But it was a gentle order; the kind he used to issue when Dean was a kid, worrying too much about something John didn’t want him to worry about. You let me deal with that, son, he used to say. And Who’s the father here again? which was as coy as John Winchester ever got with a command directive he laid down, expecting it to be obeyed without discussion, if not without hesitation.
It hurt to swallow, so Dean started letting the water collect in his mouth, pushing it through in a single gulp rather than taking it down in several smaller sips.
"Slowly," his dad warned. "You suck it down the way you chug a Bud, and you’ll look like Wiley Coyote after a run-in with the Acme Pin Cushion Maker."
Dean took a couple more sips, then stopped.
"Keep drinking," his dad instructed.
Dean tried. He took another five or six sips before his throat closed down on him completely, refusing to pass another drop whether his dad kept tipping the canteen or not.
"Just a little more, Dean," John urged.
"Can't," Dean muttered.
"Do it anyway," John told him.
Dean turned his face, let water spill down his chin until his dad gave in and quit trying to force something that wasn't going to happen. "Okay," John conceded, setting the canteen aside. "Fine. You made your point."
"I can’t believe you remember Acme," Dean said, his voice coarse with the effort it took to speak. "You’re not holding out on me, are you? Watching the cartoon channel on the sly?"
"I used to watch those with you when you were a kid," John said. "You remember? You thought that damn coyote was a riot. I never could figure out what you thought was so funny about him. Poor guy couldn’t buy a break with a Visa gold card."
"Wasn’t funny so much as …" Dean cleared his throat, "… so much as appreciation for his … his situation. He’s the only guy I’ve ever saw who … saw who got beat up more than you did." His gut was burning - burning bad - but he was doing his best to ignore it. His dad took his hand, held on like he knew the pain was getting worse. "Used to crack me up, the way he’d … damnit … the way he’d fall off a cliff or something, and all you’d … all you’d see … all you’d see is this … crap … little puff of … ah, crap. Fuck. Dad. Dad." His insides were on fire. He felt like someone had lit him up with a blowtorch. "Ah, fuck. Dad. Dad."
"I know, son," John said calmly. "Just ride it out."
Which was when Dean realized his dad not only knew the pain was getting worse, he expected it. "Oh, fuck," Dean whispered. "Jesus. Son of a fucking bitch. Oh, Jesus, Dad. Jesus."
"I know. You’re almost through it. Just another minute. Another thirty seconds, son."
"It burns," Dean whined, his throat seizing up on him. "Oh, God. Jesus, Dad. Jesus." His throat closed down, clenched up so tight he couldn’t speak through it, couldn’t breathe through it.
"It should be easing up, Dean," John said, still talking in the same quiet, calm voice. "Try to relax. Try to breathe through it."
Dean put every ounce of energy he had into doing what his dad told him to do. He tried to believe it was easing up, tried to feel the agony of it lessening enough to let him breathe again.
It was another eternity passing before the burning actually did ease up a little. Another forever until his throat started unclenching, until he started to breathe again, until he started to be aware of something other than the convulsions of pain and panic flailing about under his lungs and in his head, desperate to find a way out as a scream, or a curse, or just a wordless scree like a furious spirit might make when you put their bones to kerosene and fire.
His skin had gone so cold it felt like ice, but his dad’s hand was still warm in his. Hot even. An inferno compared to how cold Dean was, how much he felt like he’d just taken a swim in a polar icecap, naked as a jaybird and as stupid as those whack Russian geezers who did shit like that just for the hell of it. Just to prove how tough they were. Just to prove how much they could take while inflicting their dead white bellies on the unsuspecting world around them, their teeny-tiny, black speedos hanging like empty sacks as polar ice-capped testicles filed a change of venue for permission to move in next door to their fucking eyeballs.
"Holy fuck," Dean whispered when he could speak again. "That fucking hurt."
"It was supposed to," John said. He let go of Dean’s hand, untangled their fingers when Dean didn’t follow suit as quickly as he should have. "If it burns like that, you know it’s working."
"Working?" Dean repeated.
John didn’t clarify. He was busy doing something, busy scrounging around in the medic pack, trying to find something he wasn’t finding.
Dean struggled to focus on what his dad was doing, on what his dad might be thinking. It was so hard to concentrate he couldn’t manage anything even close to following a line of logic to an inevitable conclusion, but at least the effort of doing so helped him focus on something other than how cold he was getting, how much deeper the cold was sinking than just the surface of his skin.
"What was in the water?" he managed after a moment.
"Just a little good juju," John said. He found what he was looking for, tore the package open and pulled out a very specific kind of pressure bandage.
"Holy water?" Dean asked.
"A little love, courtesy of Pastor Jim," John verified.
That scared Dean twice as much as the pain. It scared him to the bones. Holy water didn’t burn Humans. All holy water did to Humans was get them a little wet. "That can’t be good," he whispered, closing his eyes, trying not to think about what it meant if his gut was still on fire, what it meant if he felt like somebody was torching him from the inside out.
"We’re doing fine," John said. Then, "Open your eyes, Dean."
Dean heard him, but the words didn’t really make any sense. They didn’t mean anything so much as they were just a nonsensical jumble of sounds all jammed up against one another.
"Open your eyes," John said again, his tone a little more demanding.
Dean sorted through the letters, through the sounds. They still didn’t make any sense to him. He still couldn’t figure out what his dad was telling him to do.
John’s hands were on his face, his thumbs pressing into Dean’s eyelids, pulling them up, forcing him to blink himself back to awareness. "Still with me, son?" he asked.
Dean made sense of that, figured out what he was asking enough to formulate an answer. "Yeah. I’m still here. Where else am I going to be?"
"You need to keep your eyes open for me," John said, the pressure of his thumbs still serving that purpose while Dean tried to blink and failed. "Can you do that, Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean managed. "I can do that."
John released his eyelids, and they fell shut again.
"Dean."
He was falling away, losing ground. His dad’s voice was fading in the distance, becoming weaker with every passing moment.
"Dean!"
The snap of anger in John’s tone startled Dean awake, forced his brain to pay attention. "What?" he asked, opening his eyes, looking around. "What’d I do? What’s wrong?"
"Keep your eyes open," John ordered. He was soaking the bandage in his hand with water from the canteen. "Do you hear me? Keep your damn eyes open, or I’m going to kick your ass."
Dean blinked at him. "Dude. Your bedside manner sucks."
"Tell it to your therapist," John said. "What I want to know is how you’re feeling."
"I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy and very close to you right now," he said. He wanted to close his eyes again, but didn’t because he thought his dad might be serious about kicking his ass. But even without closing them, he was losing track of what he could see.
"Dean, I need you to focus for a minute," John said.
"I’m focused," Dean lied.
"Dammit, Dean. Focus."
"Okay, okay." He did the best he could, but it wasn’t enough to accomplish much more than bringing back shades of light and dark. What little detail he could discern was soft, indistinct. He felt like he was watching the world through a layer of jello, or through a film of clear jelly applied directly to the surface of his eyes.
"Tell me how you feel," John ordered.
Dean just looked at him.
"Tell me how you feel," John repeated, his voice harder, almost angry.
Dean heard something that sounded almost like a whimper. He hoped that wasn’t him, but he was pretty sure it had to be. "I’m sorry, Dad," he said, trying to apologize for being a pansy-ass bitch at the same time as he tried to explain why he was failing. "I don’t know what you’re asking. I’m trying, but I can’t … I can’t figure out … nothing makes any … any sense, Dad."
He heard that sound again, and he knew it was him this time by the way his dad’s eye twitched. Like he’d been hit. Like hearing it was more painful to him than it was embarrassing to Dean.
He wanted to go to sleep. All he wanted to do was just go to sleep.
"Don’t close your eyes," John ordered.
"I’m not," Dean said, and then he realized they were closed, so he opened them, revising, "I’m trying, Dad. I’m really trying."
"I know you are, son. But you’re going to have to try harder. I need you to tell me what you feel. Are you hot? Cold? Where does it hurt? How does it hurt?"
"It hurts everywhere," Dean admitted.
"Anywhere in particular?"
"Everywhere," he said again.
"How does it hurt? Sharp? Burning? Aching?"
"Everywhere," Dean muttered.
"Are you hot? Cold? Is anything numb?"
"My lips are numb" Dean whispered. "Brain is numb. I can’t think. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m trying, but I can’t think, can’t concentrate."
"Look at me, Dean."
He forced his eyes open again. "I’m cold," he whispered. "I’m really cold, Dad." It was the understatement of the century. His bones had to be frosting over. His blood was pumping slow and thick like oil in the Impala after it spent the night parked outside at Bobby’s. "Really, really cold," he revised, trying to be true to the accuracy of his yardstick.
"Okay. Good. You’re doing good, Dean."
"Good for you maybe," Dean said. "I’m fucking freezing."
"Open your eyes, Dean."
"They are open."
"If they were open, I wouldn’t be telling you to open them."
That made sense to him, so he opened his eyes, only realizing he’d closed them again after they were back to open. "See?" he said, looking at his dad. "They’re open."
"This is going to hurt, son," John said. He had the pressure bandage in his hand, ready to rock and roll.
Something flickered inside Dean’s brain, tried to panic him but failed in mustering up the energy to accomplish it. "What’s that?" he whispered. "Not holy water, is it?"
"You ready?" John asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pressed the bandage to the wound, and Dean’s body imploded.
The ignition started at the wound and consumed him like a wildfire in dry grass. He could hear himself screaming, but he couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t have stopped it if his life depended on it.
He lost all track of time, lost all sense of up and down. Something was trying to tear him apart from the inside out. It boiled like acid in his veins; crawled across his skin and under it at the same time. The burn of it engulfed him, assaulting him in waves, slamming through his body like the heat wash of a house torched to an inferno right in front of his eyes as he stood on the lawn and prayed for his daddy to come.
Prayed for his daddy to save him.
Somewhere under the shrieking of his own voice, he knew John was speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying, couldn’t make out a single word or even really discern the actual sound of his voice. But even so, he could feel the familiar texture of his dad talking, feel the comforting sound of his dad’s voice resonating in his bones.
Dean clung to that, holding on with everything he had just to make it through.
He was still screaming when the agony finally let up enough to find a way to stop. He clamped his mouth shut like a steel trap, grinding his teeth down to bite himself to silence.
Or if not silence, and least not full-on screaming.
"There you go, Dean," his dad was saying, his voice calm, stable, confident. "You’re coming out of it now. The worst of it is over, son. The rest of this thing is all downhill from here."
Dean tried to answer him, but whined instead.
"It’s okay, Dean," John said. "Let it out if it helps at all. No shame in that, son. Scream your ass off if it helps even a little bit."
Dean swallowed to keep from puking his guts out, to keep from sobbing like a little girl. "Dad," he managed finally. His voice was shaking, breaking, falling apart with every letter of every word. "Oh, God, Dad."
"I know. Just hang on, son. It’s getting better. You have to believe me when I say it’s getting better. You’re through the worst of it, now. Everything’s downhill from here."
His dad wasn’t just holding his hand any more, he was holding him. He had Dean wrapped up like he was five again. Wrapped up and pulled in tight, both arms folded across his chest, his body curled up into a ball so John could keep all his bones together, keep him from just coming apart at the joints like some pitiful meat sack torn limb from limb by a predator hungry enough to do it.
"Dad," he whispered again.
"I’m right here, son. The worst of it’s over now. Everything’s downhill from here."
Dean wondered how many times he’d said that. How many times he’d repeated the same promise, saying it before it was true, saying it now even though it probably still wasn’t true.
"Don’t do that again," Dean pleaded. His teeth rattled against one another when he spoke, he was shaking that hard. "Please, Dad. Don’t do it again."
"I won’t, son," John told him, speaking calmly, speaking quietly. "The worst of it is over now. Just keep believing me when I say that, okay? The worst of it is over. It’s all downhill from here."
"Please, Dad," Dean whispered. "Please."
"We’re done. No more holy water, I promise."
Dean nodded, tried to make himself settle down. It hurt so much to breathe he didn’t want to do it any more. It hurt so much to live he wasn’t sure he even wanted to do that any more.
"How you doing there, buddy?" John asked. "Give me an update on what you’re feeling."
"It hurts," Dean whispered.
"Hurts how, Dean? Try and be specific."
"Burns," he said. He was a little ashamed of the way his voice was shaking, of the way it sounded like he was crying when he wasn’t. How stupid was it to worry about his dad thinking he was a punk bitch at this point? But he couldn’t help it. He didn’t want his dad to see him this way. He would have done almost anything to keep his dad from seeing him this way.
Anything except face the holy water again.
"It will for a while," John said. "Are you still cold?"
Dean nodded. "Not as bad though," he said. "Not as deep." He closed his eyes.
"Don’t close your eyes," John snapped.
Dean forced them open again. "I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry."
"It’s all right. You're doing fine, Dean. Just don’t close your eyes. You have to keep that in your head. You have to concentrate on it, okay?"
"Yeah. Don’t close my eyes. I’ve got it."
"You’re tracking better," John noted after a beat.
"Easier to think. Not so hard to focus."
"Good. I’m going to let you go now. Can I do that, Dean? Can I let you go without you nodding off on me?"
Dean swallowed, resisted the urge to ask him to stay, to keep holding on. "Sure," he said. "I’m good. Setting a guy on fire wakes him up pretty good."
"I didn’t set you on fire. I gave you a bit of a bath is all. Baptized a little sin out of your soul." He let Dean go carefully, settled him back to the ground like a fragile thing made of flesh and glass. "You good?" he asked.
"I’m … turning evil or something?" Dean whispered.
"No," John said quickly. "I’m sorry. I was just joking."
"But … holy water …."
"It’s an infection of some sort," John said, his voice grim. "Like getting bitten by a lycan. You remember what that did to me, right? How my body reacted to you sluicing out the wounds with holy water?"
"Yeah."
"Same thing, son. Just a different contagion."
He was lying. Dean could tell he was lying, but he believed it because he needed to believe it. "Okay. Well … I only did that to you once, so no more payback, okay?"
John smiled at him a little. "Yeah, but you lit me on fire once, too."
"Saved your ass," Dean pointed out.
"There is that. Keep your eyes open." Leaving Dean to stare up at the dawn-soft sky, John turned away, started re-packing the medi-pack scattered on the ground beside them, shoving the contents back inside, zipping it shut again.
"Dad?" Dean whispered.
"Yeah, Dean," John answered without turning. "I’m right here, son."
"You have any Jack?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. Thanks for reminding me." John slung the strap of the medi-pack over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to Dean. "I’ll have a drink later, but right now, let’s get you to your feet."
"My feet?" Dean repeated.
John slipped under Dean’s arm, getting a good grip on the belt loop of his jeans. "Look at you with the quippy comebacks," he said. "You ready?" He didn’t wait for an answer, he just stood up, taking Dean with him.
If his dad wasn’t such a strong mother fucker, Dean would have bent them both double with the way his body tried to cramp itself into non-existence. He wasn’t holding any of his own weight, depending entirely on his dad’s support to stay on his feet. John stood up under the burden like he didn’t even feel it.
"Holy fuck," Dean wheezed when he could speak again. "Yer killing me here, Dad. I thought you said the worst of it was over."
"Guess I’m not such a bad liar after all, eh?" He adjusted Dean’s weight a little, encouraged his feet to find the ground, to make contact and start bearing some of their own weight. "Come on, kiddo," he said. "One foot in front of the other. No big step for a high roller. You’ve been doing it since you were a pup."
"Dude," Dean said, whining a little as he leaned harder into his dad, depended more solely on his dad’s capacity to keep him upright. "You just called me kiddo."
"I’m allowed. Try and walk, Dean. I need you to keep your feet moving, even if they aren’t taking much of your weight. Can you do that for me?"
"Okay. I can do that. Just rub a little dirt on it, right?" It felt like being torn out of his skin when they started to move. He whined again, his head falling to hang boneless from his neck, bumping against his dad’s chest with every step they took. He did his best to keep his feet moving, but within five steps, all they were doing was dragging. John kept going, walking for the both of them rather than expecting Dean to carry any weight beyond the weight of staying conscious.
"You’re doing fine, son," John lied. Then, charging his fee for the lie, he added, "Keep your eyes open. Keep them open, and keep your feet moving."
They passed the twisted corpse of the aswang, still knotted to a pile of fugly on the ground, one arm out flung like it was trying to trip them as they dragged by.
"Dad," Dean muttered. "Dad. The aswang."
"Don’t worry about it," John said.
"Don’t worry about it, my ass. Sun’s almost up. You’ve got to stop and burn it, or it’ll re-animate."
"The hell I do. Re-animation’s a myth. The fucker’s dead. Job’s done."
"Dad." Dean tried to shift his weight a little, didn’t accomplish much except making himself whine like a pantywaist little bitch. "Dad, stop. Stop."
"Quit fighting me, Dean," John snapped. "If you’ve got enough energy for that, then use it a little more productively. Help me out a little here, take some of your own damn weight. You’re not a ten-year-old any more, and I’m not twenty-five."
"Dad."
"What?"
"Dad."
John turned his head, met Dean’s eyes. Dean was struggling to hold his head up, working hard to keep his eyes open. "You’ve got to burn it," he said, panting a little with how hard it was to strain against his dad’s will, how much it hurt to fight when it would have been so much easier to just relax into the unshakable grip John had on him, just let it go and let his dad carry him home. "Can’t come this far and stop one step short. Have to burn it. You have to."
John glanced up at the sky. It was gray now, the sun announcing its imminent arrival by throwing light up into thick, heavy clouds.
"Please, Dad," Dean said. "If it's not a myth, kids will start going missing again."
"God dammit, Dean," John swore. But he stopped, adjusted Dean’s weight on his shoulder, slipped it off to lean him against a tree, balance him there. Grabbing a handful of leaves and pulling the small limb to which they were attached over, he put it in Dean’s hand, wrapped Dean’s fingers around it before he let go. "Hold on to this," he ordered. "Keep yourself on your feet. If you fall on your ass, I’m going to leave you here."
"Dude," Dean murmured, trying to smile, almost making it. "You are such a bad liar."
"And you’re a real pain in the balls," John retorted. He moved away, started dousing the corpse with kerosene. "Keep your eyes open," he reminded Dean as he worked. "And don’t let go of those damn leaves."
"Great bedside manner, there, Dad." His tongue was getting heavy again, thick, slurring his words as he spoke. "You could get a TV show with that. The Compassionate Curmudgeon. It would suit you."
"Curmudgeon, huh?" John struck a match and dropped it to the twisted corpse as he stepped back, a dance of ignition he’d done so many times it was a natural part of the way he moved. The aswang went up like a monster soaked in kerosene. John tossed the can on the fire, then strode back to Dean’s side. "That sounds like a Sammy word."
"Hey," Dean protested, not even trying to help as John slipped back under his arm again, as he re-adjusted Dean’s weight to something he could keep in motion without much, if any, assistance. "I read. You just going to leave it burning like that?’
John grunted a little with the effort of getting them moving, putting them back on the path they’d cut through the groundcover to get here from the Impala less than an hour ago. "Left the marshmallows in the car," he said.
"That’s kind of irresponsible," Dean said. Then he laughed, a raw sound that came out sounding like a cough.
"Forgetting the marshmallows, you mean?"
"W.W.S.D?" Dean asked.
"W.W.S.D?" John repeated, a question to his question.
"What Would Smokey Do?" Dean laughed again. Instead of a cough this time, it was very nearly a sob.
"Probably get his ass put to a burn right along side the aswang," John said. "I don’t have a lot of patience for talking bears. Especially ones who presume to chide me about being an irresponsible camper."
"Chide," Dean repeated. He was getting cold again. His gut was cramping, and his eyelids were working their way back to maximum density. "You said ‘chide,’ you fucking curmudgeon."
"Do comic book characters chide each other for being curmudgeonly these days?" John asked.
"Graphic novels," Dean corrected. "And that isn’t all I read."
"Playboy doesn’t count," John told him.
"I read the articles, too." The ground dropped out from under him suddenly. It was like somebody flipped a switch, throwing every circuit in his body off, shutting him down, putting his muscles to absolute dark. He had to stop talking for a moment, catch his breath.
"Articles, huh?" John was trying to keep him talking. "Likely story. Name one."
"Well … the letters at least." He wheezed a little, half laughing, half coughing. "And the playmate profiles. Did you hear Ms. October wrote a book?"
John could tell it was a setup, so he played along. "She did, did she? You read it?"
"Well, it was more of a picture book. She called it I Fucked a Curmudgeon." His knees gave out, and he almost took his dad down with him.
"Easy, Dean. Easy." John was steadying him, getting him back on his feet.
"Sorry," he mumbled. His lips had gone as numb as his tongue now. His eyes were starting to go numb, too, starting to spill in blackness from the corners of his field of view. His thoughts started playing bumper cars in his head, slamming into one another, jumbling the shit out of everything his senses tried to tell him.
"Nothing to be sorry for. Just help me get your feet back under you and let’s keep moving."
"How far to the car?" he asked.
"Not far."
"Getting cold again," he said. "Getting really cold."
"We’re almost there, Dean. The worst of it’s over."
Dean couldn’t lift his head any more. It was back to bumping against his dad’s chest with every step they took. Or with every step his dad took at least. He couldn’t move his feet any more either. They were dragging through the groundcover, leaving gutters in the dead leaves, catching on small rocks, nearly tripping them both up, making everything much harder than it had to be.
"Sorry, Dad," he mumbled dully.
"Nothing to be sorry for, son. Just keep talking to me."
"Where are we?" he whispered.
"We’re almost there, Dean."
"What’s going on? Why is it so cold?"
"Almost there, son. Another fifty yards."
He wasn’t lying this time. The Impala was sitting right where they left it. John leaned him against the back quarterpanel, pinned him there while he opened the back door, then manually horsed Dean into the back seat. He eased him back gently, propping him against the far door as he said, "Open your eyes, son."
"Cold," Dean returned.
"I know you are. But I need another five minutes, Dean. Bobby will meet us half way, but I need five minutes to get you to him. Can you give me five more minutes, son?"
"Yeah. Sure, Dad. Five minutes."
"Open your eyes, Dean."
"They’re open, Dad. I swear to you, they’re open."
"Okay, son. Good job. You’re doing great, Dean."
"Cold," Dean whispered.
"I know."
He felt the pressure before he felt the fire. He didn’t have the strength to scream this time. Didn’t have the strength to do anything but hold on to his dad and try to survive it. He would have sold his soul to just slip away into the sweet dark of unconsciousness, but it wouldn’t have him.
Never a demon around to make a deal when you needed one. No one around but his dad and holy water. Just that and nothing more.
"You promised," Dean whispered when he could.
"I know I did. I lied."
"Fucker."
"You aren’t the first to think so. Open your eyes, son; or I’ll do it again."
Dean opened his eyes, focused on his dad’s face with an effort. "Fucker," he said again.
"There you go," John said. "Good boy."
"I Fucked a Curmudgeon," Dean whispered. "That was a pretty good one, wasn’t it?"
"Yeah, son. That was pretty good. You’re quite the comedian. Too bad you aren’t better at dodge ball."
"Your fault," Dean barely breathed. "Should have made me train harder."
"I’ll keep that in mind for my next kid," John eased him back to the car door again, wedged him there, then backed out of the Impala, slammed the door, made it back into the driver’s seat before Dean’s eyes slipped shut again.
"Open your eyes, son."
Dean opened his eyes. He watched his Dad in the rearview mirror, kept his eyes focused there so he wouldn’t lose track of the only thing he was holding on to.
"Five minutes, Dean," John said, kicking the Impala to life and peeling nine months worth of life off the tires by the way he burned rubber to get back up on the asphalt and headed down the road.
"Five minutes," Dean agreed dully.
"Open your eyes, son."
It took almost fifteen because it wouldn’t have done a fuck-load of good to have Bobby meet them half way when everything he needed was at the junkyard. Dean kept his eyes open the whole way because he knew if he closed them, his dad would do exactly what he’d threatened to do: pull over again and baptize his belly with the hellfire of holy water.
He couldn’t speak by the time the Impala kicked up a cloud of dust and debris, skidding to a bone-jarring halt in the dirt and gravel lot of Singer’s Auto Salvage. He could hear Rumsfeld raising a hell of an I’m-going-to-eat-your-ass stink on the subject of uninvited guests while John bellowed directions to Bobby about things Dean couldn’t follow.
The car door jerked open, and John dragged him out by his boots. Throwing him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry this time, his dad carried him inside, laid him out on the bare wood floor of Bobby’s shack.
Rumsfeld was still pitching a fit. His flappy, black jowls were flecked with fury as he snarled and snapped, doing everything short of actually eating them to make his case that his master was not someone with whom they wanted to fuck. He looked like a damned hell hound, he was that ferocious, that wild-eyed serious as his huge teeth gnashed like the jaws of a bear trap scant inches from John’s face, John’s shoulder, John’s throat.
It was a pretty impressive display of pissed-off puppy, especially given that Rumsfeld liked them when they showed up under the color of Bobby’s invite instead of skidding in on their own, unexpected and unannounced. Hell, the damn dog spent the majority of the past week with his enormous head flopped on Dean’s leg, getting his ears scratched while he listened to Dean, John and Bobby drink beer and trade lies.
He might be a full-grown Rottie with the spirit of a Spartan warrior and a brutal background that pretty much defined the concept of evil put to human form until Bobby rolled along and stole him to salvation; but he was a big fucking baby, too. He spent at least as much time sprawled on his back on Bobby’s couch as he did patrolling the yard outside, threatening strangers with a good eat-down if they dared cross the line between his and he-doesn’t-care.
"Get your dog off me or I will shoot his ass, Bobby," John snarled, as ferocious as Rumsfeld and twice as serious about any threat he was making. He had Dean’s body blocked with his own, a posture that left him completely vulnerable should more than a hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and teeth decide to escalate his savage objections from pissed-as-hell to gonna-kill-your-ass-dead … something all three of them had, on occasion, seen the big Rottie do.
"Shoot my dog, and I will shoot you, John," Bobby returned mildly. His hands were full of ritual shit and circumstance, but once he set them down, he snapped his fingers once, and Rumsfeld just stopped. "Get the fuck out of here, you loud-mouthed blowhard," Bobby said, but it wasn’t until Rumsfeld turned and trotted out the door that Dean was entirely sure he meant the dog instead of his father.
Bobby knelt beside him, thumbed an ash sigil on his forehead, then one on each of his hands in turn. "Open your eyes, boy," he said, his voice calm, unhurried. "This isn’t going to be much fun, but it will work a hell of a lot better if you’re alive when I do it."
Dean struggled to obey. He knew he’d accomplished it when John said, "Good boy, Dean. Good boy."
Dean tried to speak again. Failed again.
"No need to tell me how handsome I look by the early morning light." Bobby’s voice was soothing; a gentle comfort despite the gruff of its Rumsfeldian façade. "You just lie there and marvel at my beauty while I do all the work." He muttered several incantations in Latin, then glanced at John. "You want to move the fuck out of my way, John?"
When John moved, Dean lost track of him. He shifted on the hard wood, a sense of panic swelling through him, making hard-to-breathe almost impossible-to-breathe. He tried to speak, tried to call out to make sure his dad was still close by; but no matter how hard Dean tried, he couldn’t seem to make any sound. He didn’t have the energy it took to force air from his lungs through his vocal cords and out past his teeth. The panic got worse, bad enough his hands started twitching, started trying to find something, started searching for a way to connect with what they’d lost.
"I’m right here, son."
Just the sound of his dad’s voice was enough to calm him down, settle him back to still.
Bobby drifted into his line of sight again. Dean watched Bobby bend to an examination of the wound, closed his eyes in response to the almost unbearable heat of Bobby’s fingers on skin that had gone so cold he wasn’t sure it hadn’t turned to ice, wasn’t sure it wouldn’t melt to blood and slush as Bobby probed the wound, then drew a series of new sigils on his chest, his belly, his side.
"Open your eyes, son," John said. "Just a little longer, then you can sleep for days if you want to."
Dean tried and failed. He tried again, failed again.
"It’s all right, John," Bobby said. "Let him be; I’ve got it covered."
Dean felt them slipping away. He lost track of his father’s hand, lost track of his father’s voice. He wanted to hold on, but he couldn’t do it any longer. All he could do was feel the quiet hush of still settling into the pain, draining it to bearable. The cold knotted into his guts eased, the panic thrumming in his veins fell quiet. Somewhere far away, he heard Bobby speaking in tongues, and the sound of the incantations soothed him, made him feel safe, made him feel warm.
He didn’t feel the holy water burning it’s way through the wound this time. All he felt was nothing, and the peace of that alone was enough to let him sleep.
*
Bobby studied the wound with a critical eye, shaking his head in disbelief. "You do this with holy water?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Both inside and out?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, John. Without any glyphs or sigils at all? You’re lucky you didn’t kill the kid yourself.
"Fuck you, Singer," John snapped. "I did the best I could. Not all of us are walking grimoires."
"Well then maybe not all of us ought to be hunting aswangs until we’re damn sure they’re not carrying resheph," Bobby countered.
"Carrying what?"
"Resheph, John. As in plague and pestilence put to the intention of sucking a man’s soul out through his bloodstream?" When John just looked at him, Bobby sighed. "You didn’t even know what it was, and you’re pouring holy water down his throat and into his gut?"
John looked down, studied the calm of Dean’s face, pale and drawn, but at peace now, rather than in agony. "I didn’t have to know what it was," he said quietly. "I could see what it was doing. The infection spread so fast you could track its progress with the naked eye."
"It’s not an infection, John. It’s a … a … a biblical fucking plague, dammit."
"Fine. Whatever. The biblical fucking plague was spreading so fast you could track its progress with the naked eye then. It looked sulfur based, so I figured holy water was my best recourse until I could actually get him to a walking grimoire so the sanctimonious son of a bitch could tell me what an incompetent fuck I am."
Bobby snorted. "Yeah. You’re welcome for saving your son’s life, John. Don’t mention it, and for God’s sake, don’t thank me for it."
"Help me get him to a bed," John said rather than responding.
Together, the two of them carried Dean’s limp body to the bedroom, settled him in, covered him in blankets from toes to chin, leaving only the deep puncture in his side exposed.
John pulled a chair up, settled in beside the bed.
Bobby watched him for a long moment before saying, "He’ll be fine now, John. I’ve exorcised the flesh clean. Without the resheph, it’s nothing more dangerous than any other puncture wound."
John nodded. "Yeah. I know. I’m just … I’m going to sit with him for a while."
Bobby hesitated, then offered, "I might have been a little harsh with you before. Really no way you could have known to expect something like this. Thinking about resheph when you’re hunting an aswang is a bit like worrying about getting rabies from a werewolf. Not that it couldn’t happen, but there aren’t many who would consider that the primary danger to plan for."
John nodded again, but didn’t answer.
"And for a layman, you didn’t do half bad," Bobby added. "You got him here without losing him. Under the circumstances, that’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve seen resheph take down grown men in under twenty minutes. You holding it at bay for as long as you did’s the only reason he made it, the only reason I had a chance to pull him through."
"If you’re looking for a thank you," John said, "then thank you."
Bobby shook his head. "You are one serious ass, John Winchester."
"So I’ve been told. Just leave us alone for a while, will you? Just let me sit here and … and …." His voice fell to silence. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, trying to hide the tremble of it snaking up his arm, invading his shoulders and his spine like a biblical fucking plague whose progress could be tracked with the naked eye. "Just get out of here, Bobby," John whispered. "Leave me alone with my son."
Bobby left because John would never have forgiven him if he hadn’t. Sitting on the porch with Rumsfeld, watching the morning break bright and clear and warm, he listened to the sound of a friend grieving what might have been, pretending he didn’t hear what a man like John Winchester would never actually say.
finis
Author: Dodger Winslow
Challenge: Bat out of Kansas Ficathon
Prompt: You hold me so close that my knees grow weak, but my soul is flying high above the ground. I’m trying to speak, but no matter what I do, I just can’t seem to make any sound.
Word Count: 8,500
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: I’m don’t own the boys, I’m just stalking them for a while.
Summary: "I uh … I think I’m hit, Dad," Dean managed a little shakily. John stopped what he was doing. He came over, knelt down; all business, no emotion, when he asked, "Where?" Dean looked at him, blinked again to stay focused. "I’m a … not … not really sure." He held out the bloody hand, saying, "I’m … I’m bleeding, though. So I guess that … I think … maybe … I think I must be hit."
Open Your Eyes
You hold me so close that my knees grow weak,
But my soul is flying high above the ground.
I’m trying to speak, but no matter what I do,
I just can’t seem to make any sound.
"Shake it off, boy," John said. "We need to put this thing to a burn before sun-up."
Dean grunted. He rolled over slowly, surprised the aswang had managed to hit him at all, let alone hit him hard enough to knock his ass into next Thursday. He’d thought he was a little tougher than that, a little less related to some pansy-ass bitch pantywaist who’d go down for the count just because some fugly monster charged him hard enough to hurt.
But damn, that son of a bitch hurt. It felt like his ribs had been knocked out through his back, like his teeth were going to be rattling around in his head for some time to come. He was having a little bit of trouble thinking, a little more trouble breathing. Wiping a haze of disoriented fog out of his eyes with the back of one hand, he watched his dad drag the carcass free of the ground cover, twist it in on itself to form a compact lump of butt-fuck ugly, then start kicking sticks and kindling clear so putting the aswang to a good toasting wouldn’t put the surrounding real estate to one, too.
John glanced over at him, a flicker of disapproval in his expression. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Just got the wind knocked out of me."
John grunted. It was his way of calling Dean a pantywaist little bitch.
Dean took the criticism to heart. He pushed to his elbows first, allowed another indulgent moment of rest-and-regroup before sitting up to brush dead leaves and debris out of his hair, out of his jacket. He was trying to give himself a chance to gather his wits; trying to set himself to drag his sorry ass up to help his dad finish what they’d started.
But his sorry ass didn’t want to drag. He wasn’t gathering so much as he was losing. He was still dazed. More than dazed even, he felt like he was fading in and out, slipping away then jerking back. It was still hard to breathe - maybe harder than before - and he was getting vaguely nauseous, almost like he’d been kicked in the balls, only without the pain.
Or more accurately, with the pain dislocated a little north of where the kicking would have been done. There was a stitch from hell cramping up his gut, pulling on his insides as if he’d run too far, too fast, for too long, and without enough air to do the job right.
He wanted to consider it more of an aggravation than an actual pain, more of a warning that he might be overdoing it than the burn of a torn muscle, but it wasn’t. It was more than just aggravating as hell, it hurt like a son of a bitch, and it was getting worse fast.
Dean reached down, tried to rub the stitch out. It surprised him to feel the danger of a warm wet, to look down and see his hand sticky with blood.
Oh, crap. That couldn’t be good.
Almost as if to oblige his assessment, the pain escalated from son of a bitch to fucking hell. He had to blink half a dozen times in rapid succession just to keep his eyes focused, just to keep from losing his balance and falling over. It got harder to think, harder to focus. He thought maybe his tongue was swelling. It felt thick and awkward and useless.
"I could use a hand here any time you’re done napping, son," John said, his tone terse, irritated.
"I uh … I think I’m hit, Dad," Dean managed a little shakily.
John stopped what he was doing. He came over, knelt down; all business, no emotion, when he asked, "Where?"
Dean looked at him, blinked again to stay focused. "I’m a … not … not really sure." He held out the bloody hand, saying, "I’m … I’m bleeding, though. So I guess that … I think … maybe … I think I must be hit."
It embarrassed him a little to sound that stupid. His dad liked concise answers: as many details in as few words as possible. But there wasn’t much concise in him right now. It was like his brain was trying to shut down all of a sudden. Like it had no intention of letting him actually form a cohesive thought; let alone put a cohesive thought to words.
John barely glanced at the hand. He’d already run a whole recon while Dean stumbled around his teeth with his tongue. He’d narrowed his search to a list of likely suspects, then pared it down to only one. As accurately as a heat-seeking missile on seek, John reached out and found the wound with a single touch.
Dean gasped at the intensity of the pain that jolted through him. Fire radiated out from the point of contact as he fell back to his elbows. His dad’s fingers were light, exploratory; but it felt like he was being gutted. The air slicked to a startling cold against his skin. His elbows gave way, and he hit the ground hard, one of his shoulders bruising against a rock, his head bouncing a little on the spongy groundcover.
"Uh … right there, I guess," he managed, his tongue slurring the words, barely pushing them past his teeth
"You think?" John said like his collapse was no big deal.
Dean stared up at the half-dark sky, wondering how much longer they had until true dawn hit. "What is it?" he asked.
"Not sure yet." John ripped the hole in Dean’s shirt a little wider to get a better look at the damage.
"Dude," Dean protested weakly. "That’s my favorite shirt."
"I thought the N*Sync one was your favorite," John said.
Dean snorted, groaned, snorted again. "Oh. Low blow. I’m wounded here. Show a little compassion, will ya?"
"I was showing compassion. I could have gone with Hanson."
"It is so wrong that you even know who Hanson is."
John looked up, met Dean’s eyes. "This is going to hurt, son," he said.
Dean nodded.
John spent the next three minutes re-defining what "this is going to hurt" meant. He worked quickly, carefully, but the exploration still lasted forever and hurt so bad it made Dean want to stand up and start singing hymns to the choir.
By the time he was finished, Dean was panting, his eyes closed, his teeth aching with how hard he had to clench them to keep from crying out. "Jesus, Dad," he hissed. "Gonna hurt, my ass. Try ‘gonna fucking kill you’ or something next time."
John flicked him a glance. "Sorry," he said, wiping bloody hands on his jacket.
Which told Dean it was bad. Worse than bad, even. His dad didn’t apologize. He wasn’t sorry for much, and those few things he might be sorry for, he didn’t admit.
"’T’s okay," Dean managed. "Didn’t hurt as much as the N*Sync crack."
"Mmm hmmm." John was taking Dean’s pulse, but he was distracted, still watching the wound, still studying it like it was doing something other than just sitting there bleeding. After almost three minutes of taking a pulse that could have been counted and multiplied in fifteen seconds, John pulled a penlight from his pocket and flicked it across Dean’s eyes. It was SOP for checking pupil response, but there was nothing SOP in how much a simple flick of light felt like the blade of a knife cutting across Dean’s face.
"Holy fuck, Dad."
"Sorry," John said again.
Which scared him. One sorry was cause for concern. Two was justifiable grounds for panic. His dad was still watching the wound, still studying it with a concentration intense enough it was hard for Dean to keep his voice level when he asked, "So … bad?"
"I’ve seen worse," John said.
"Yeah. That’s encouraging, given that you’ve seen dead, too."
John glanced at him again, said, "I’ve seen worse on little girls who didn’t bitch about it as much as you’re bitching." Then he lifted an eyebrow. "That more encouraging?"
It was the worst thing his dad could have said. As much as John Winchester didn’t believe in apologies, he really didn’t believe in lying. Not about wounds, not about degrees of bad when it came to what was hurt and how much it hurt. Informed is warned, he always said. Pain’s a yardstick to measure by, and only a fool measures three feet and calls it one out of ego.
But he was lying now. Lying out his ass, and it showed.
Dean dropped his head back to the ground. "Dude. You are such a bad liar."
John grunted. "I’ll work on that."
Dean closed his eyes, listened to the sound of his own heartbeat. "So … how long?" he asked.
"How long what?"
He opened his eyes again, tried to keep his tone casual. "How long until you’re going to have to burn my bones so I don’t haunt you over that N*Sync crack?"
John put a little effort into sounding disgusted. "Jesus, Dean," he snorted as he pushed to his feet. "Don’t be such a drama queen. You got hit. It happens. I know it hurts, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to die. Rub a little dirt on it, you’ll be fine."
Then he walked away.
Just walked away.
For a moment, Dean thought he’d left. For just a moment, he thought maybe his dad really was disgusted; thought maybe he really was serious about rubbing a little dirt on it, about not being such a drama queen, about thinking his son was bitching like a little girl over nothing more than a broken fingernail.
Dean tried to sit up - tried to see where John had gone - but the effort was more than he had in him. It required more energy than he had left to spare; it hurt more than he was willing to suffer.
"Dad?"
"I’m right here, son." John dropped down beside him again. He had the medic pack in one hand and an open canteen in the other. Setting the pack to one side, he put the canteen to Dean’s lips and reached around to support his head, helping Dean sit up just enough to drink without drowning himself to a coughing fit. "Here. Drink this."
Because it was an order, not a suggestion, Dean obeyed. He didn’t want a drink - all he wanted was to close his eyes for a minute and catch his breath - but his dad was tipping the canteen, so he took the water in, swallowed it with an effort. The metal was cold. Bitter. The water felt good going down, but it burned like hell when it hit bottom.
"Keep drinking," his dad said.
Again, an order, not a suggestion. But it was a gentle order; the kind he used to issue when Dean was a kid, worrying too much about something John didn’t want him to worry about. You let me deal with that, son, he used to say. And Who’s the father here again? which was as coy as John Winchester ever got with a command directive he laid down, expecting it to be obeyed without discussion, if not without hesitation.
It hurt to swallow, so Dean started letting the water collect in his mouth, pushing it through in a single gulp rather than taking it down in several smaller sips.
"Slowly," his dad warned. "You suck it down the way you chug a Bud, and you’ll look like Wiley Coyote after a run-in with the Acme Pin Cushion Maker."
Dean took a couple more sips, then stopped.
"Keep drinking," his dad instructed.
Dean tried. He took another five or six sips before his throat closed down on him completely, refusing to pass another drop whether his dad kept tipping the canteen or not.
"Just a little more, Dean," John urged.
"Can't," Dean muttered.
"Do it anyway," John told him.
Dean turned his face, let water spill down his chin until his dad gave in and quit trying to force something that wasn't going to happen. "Okay," John conceded, setting the canteen aside. "Fine. You made your point."
"I can’t believe you remember Acme," Dean said, his voice coarse with the effort it took to speak. "You’re not holding out on me, are you? Watching the cartoon channel on the sly?"
"I used to watch those with you when you were a kid," John said. "You remember? You thought that damn coyote was a riot. I never could figure out what you thought was so funny about him. Poor guy couldn’t buy a break with a Visa gold card."
"Wasn’t funny so much as …" Dean cleared his throat, "… so much as appreciation for his … his situation. He’s the only guy I’ve ever saw who … saw who got beat up more than you did." His gut was burning - burning bad - but he was doing his best to ignore it. His dad took his hand, held on like he knew the pain was getting worse. "Used to crack me up, the way he’d … damnit … the way he’d fall off a cliff or something, and all you’d … all you’d see … all you’d see is this … crap … little puff of … ah, crap. Fuck. Dad. Dad." His insides were on fire. He felt like someone had lit him up with a blowtorch. "Ah, fuck. Dad. Dad."
"I know, son," John said calmly. "Just ride it out."
Which was when Dean realized his dad not only knew the pain was getting worse, he expected it. "Oh, fuck," Dean whispered. "Jesus. Son of a fucking bitch. Oh, Jesus, Dad. Jesus."
"I know. You’re almost through it. Just another minute. Another thirty seconds, son."
"It burns," Dean whined, his throat seizing up on him. "Oh, God. Jesus, Dad. Jesus." His throat closed down, clenched up so tight he couldn’t speak through it, couldn’t breathe through it.
"It should be easing up, Dean," John said, still talking in the same quiet, calm voice. "Try to relax. Try to breathe through it."
Dean put every ounce of energy he had into doing what his dad told him to do. He tried to believe it was easing up, tried to feel the agony of it lessening enough to let him breathe again.
It was another eternity passing before the burning actually did ease up a little. Another forever until his throat started unclenching, until he started to breathe again, until he started to be aware of something other than the convulsions of pain and panic flailing about under his lungs and in his head, desperate to find a way out as a scream, or a curse, or just a wordless scree like a furious spirit might make when you put their bones to kerosene and fire.
His skin had gone so cold it felt like ice, but his dad’s hand was still warm in his. Hot even. An inferno compared to how cold Dean was, how much he felt like he’d just taken a swim in a polar icecap, naked as a jaybird and as stupid as those whack Russian geezers who did shit like that just for the hell of it. Just to prove how tough they were. Just to prove how much they could take while inflicting their dead white bellies on the unsuspecting world around them, their teeny-tiny, black speedos hanging like empty sacks as polar ice-capped testicles filed a change of venue for permission to move in next door to their fucking eyeballs.
"Holy fuck," Dean whispered when he could speak again. "That fucking hurt."
"It was supposed to," John said. He let go of Dean’s hand, untangled their fingers when Dean didn’t follow suit as quickly as he should have. "If it burns like that, you know it’s working."
"Working?" Dean repeated.
John didn’t clarify. He was busy doing something, busy scrounging around in the medic pack, trying to find something he wasn’t finding.
Dean struggled to focus on what his dad was doing, on what his dad might be thinking. It was so hard to concentrate he couldn’t manage anything even close to following a line of logic to an inevitable conclusion, but at least the effort of doing so helped him focus on something other than how cold he was getting, how much deeper the cold was sinking than just the surface of his skin.
"What was in the water?" he managed after a moment.
"Just a little good juju," John said. He found what he was looking for, tore the package open and pulled out a very specific kind of pressure bandage.
"Holy water?" Dean asked.
"A little love, courtesy of Pastor Jim," John verified.
That scared Dean twice as much as the pain. It scared him to the bones. Holy water didn’t burn Humans. All holy water did to Humans was get them a little wet. "That can’t be good," he whispered, closing his eyes, trying not to think about what it meant if his gut was still on fire, what it meant if he felt like somebody was torching him from the inside out.
"We’re doing fine," John said. Then, "Open your eyes, Dean."
Dean heard him, but the words didn’t really make any sense. They didn’t mean anything so much as they were just a nonsensical jumble of sounds all jammed up against one another.
"Open your eyes," John said again, his tone a little more demanding.
Dean sorted through the letters, through the sounds. They still didn’t make any sense to him. He still couldn’t figure out what his dad was telling him to do.
John’s hands were on his face, his thumbs pressing into Dean’s eyelids, pulling them up, forcing him to blink himself back to awareness. "Still with me, son?" he asked.
Dean made sense of that, figured out what he was asking enough to formulate an answer. "Yeah. I’m still here. Where else am I going to be?"
"You need to keep your eyes open for me," John said, the pressure of his thumbs still serving that purpose while Dean tried to blink and failed. "Can you do that, Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean managed. "I can do that."
John released his eyelids, and they fell shut again.
"Dean."
He was falling away, losing ground. His dad’s voice was fading in the distance, becoming weaker with every passing moment.
"Dean!"
The snap of anger in John’s tone startled Dean awake, forced his brain to pay attention. "What?" he asked, opening his eyes, looking around. "What’d I do? What’s wrong?"
"Keep your eyes open," John ordered. He was soaking the bandage in his hand with water from the canteen. "Do you hear me? Keep your damn eyes open, or I’m going to kick your ass."
Dean blinked at him. "Dude. Your bedside manner sucks."
"Tell it to your therapist," John said. "What I want to know is how you’re feeling."
"I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy and very close to you right now," he said. He wanted to close his eyes again, but didn’t because he thought his dad might be serious about kicking his ass. But even without closing them, he was losing track of what he could see.
"Dean, I need you to focus for a minute," John said.
"I’m focused," Dean lied.
"Dammit, Dean. Focus."
"Okay, okay." He did the best he could, but it wasn’t enough to accomplish much more than bringing back shades of light and dark. What little detail he could discern was soft, indistinct. He felt like he was watching the world through a layer of jello, or through a film of clear jelly applied directly to the surface of his eyes.
"Tell me how you feel," John ordered.
Dean just looked at him.
"Tell me how you feel," John repeated, his voice harder, almost angry.
Dean heard something that sounded almost like a whimper. He hoped that wasn’t him, but he was pretty sure it had to be. "I’m sorry, Dad," he said, trying to apologize for being a pansy-ass bitch at the same time as he tried to explain why he was failing. "I don’t know what you’re asking. I’m trying, but I can’t … I can’t figure out … nothing makes any … any sense, Dad."
He heard that sound again, and he knew it was him this time by the way his dad’s eye twitched. Like he’d been hit. Like hearing it was more painful to him than it was embarrassing to Dean.
He wanted to go to sleep. All he wanted to do was just go to sleep.
"Don’t close your eyes," John ordered.
"I’m not," Dean said, and then he realized they were closed, so he opened them, revising, "I’m trying, Dad. I’m really trying."
"I know you are, son. But you’re going to have to try harder. I need you to tell me what you feel. Are you hot? Cold? Where does it hurt? How does it hurt?"
"It hurts everywhere," Dean admitted.
"Anywhere in particular?"
"Everywhere," he said again.
"How does it hurt? Sharp? Burning? Aching?"
"Everywhere," Dean muttered.
"Are you hot? Cold? Is anything numb?"
"My lips are numb" Dean whispered. "Brain is numb. I can’t think. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m trying, but I can’t think, can’t concentrate."
"Look at me, Dean."
He forced his eyes open again. "I’m cold," he whispered. "I’m really cold, Dad." It was the understatement of the century. His bones had to be frosting over. His blood was pumping slow and thick like oil in the Impala after it spent the night parked outside at Bobby’s. "Really, really cold," he revised, trying to be true to the accuracy of his yardstick.
"Okay. Good. You’re doing good, Dean."
"Good for you maybe," Dean said. "I’m fucking freezing."
"Open your eyes, Dean."
"They are open."
"If they were open, I wouldn’t be telling you to open them."
That made sense to him, so he opened his eyes, only realizing he’d closed them again after they were back to open. "See?" he said, looking at his dad. "They’re open."
"This is going to hurt, son," John said. He had the pressure bandage in his hand, ready to rock and roll.
Something flickered inside Dean’s brain, tried to panic him but failed in mustering up the energy to accomplish it. "What’s that?" he whispered. "Not holy water, is it?"
"You ready?" John asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pressed the bandage to the wound, and Dean’s body imploded.
The ignition started at the wound and consumed him like a wildfire in dry grass. He could hear himself screaming, but he couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t have stopped it if his life depended on it.
He lost all track of time, lost all sense of up and down. Something was trying to tear him apart from the inside out. It boiled like acid in his veins; crawled across his skin and under it at the same time. The burn of it engulfed him, assaulting him in waves, slamming through his body like the heat wash of a house torched to an inferno right in front of his eyes as he stood on the lawn and prayed for his daddy to come.
Prayed for his daddy to save him.
Somewhere under the shrieking of his own voice, he knew John was speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying, couldn’t make out a single word or even really discern the actual sound of his voice. But even so, he could feel the familiar texture of his dad talking, feel the comforting sound of his dad’s voice resonating in his bones.
Dean clung to that, holding on with everything he had just to make it through.
He was still screaming when the agony finally let up enough to find a way to stop. He clamped his mouth shut like a steel trap, grinding his teeth down to bite himself to silence.
Or if not silence, and least not full-on screaming.
"There you go, Dean," his dad was saying, his voice calm, stable, confident. "You’re coming out of it now. The worst of it is over, son. The rest of this thing is all downhill from here."
Dean tried to answer him, but whined instead.
"It’s okay, Dean," John said. "Let it out if it helps at all. No shame in that, son. Scream your ass off if it helps even a little bit."
Dean swallowed to keep from puking his guts out, to keep from sobbing like a little girl. "Dad," he managed finally. His voice was shaking, breaking, falling apart with every letter of every word. "Oh, God, Dad."
"I know. Just hang on, son. It’s getting better. You have to believe me when I say it’s getting better. You’re through the worst of it, now. Everything’s downhill from here."
His dad wasn’t just holding his hand any more, he was holding him. He had Dean wrapped up like he was five again. Wrapped up and pulled in tight, both arms folded across his chest, his body curled up into a ball so John could keep all his bones together, keep him from just coming apart at the joints like some pitiful meat sack torn limb from limb by a predator hungry enough to do it.
"Dad," he whispered again.
"I’m right here, son. The worst of it’s over now. Everything’s downhill from here."
Dean wondered how many times he’d said that. How many times he’d repeated the same promise, saying it before it was true, saying it now even though it probably still wasn’t true.
"Don’t do that again," Dean pleaded. His teeth rattled against one another when he spoke, he was shaking that hard. "Please, Dad. Don’t do it again."
"I won’t, son," John told him, speaking calmly, speaking quietly. "The worst of it is over now. Just keep believing me when I say that, okay? The worst of it is over. It’s all downhill from here."
"Please, Dad," Dean whispered. "Please."
"We’re done. No more holy water, I promise."
Dean nodded, tried to make himself settle down. It hurt so much to breathe he didn’t want to do it any more. It hurt so much to live he wasn’t sure he even wanted to do that any more.
"How you doing there, buddy?" John asked. "Give me an update on what you’re feeling."
"It hurts," Dean whispered.
"Hurts how, Dean? Try and be specific."
"Burns," he said. He was a little ashamed of the way his voice was shaking, of the way it sounded like he was crying when he wasn’t. How stupid was it to worry about his dad thinking he was a punk bitch at this point? But he couldn’t help it. He didn’t want his dad to see him this way. He would have done almost anything to keep his dad from seeing him this way.
Anything except face the holy water again.
"It will for a while," John said. "Are you still cold?"
Dean nodded. "Not as bad though," he said. "Not as deep." He closed his eyes.
"Don’t close your eyes," John snapped.
Dean forced them open again. "I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry."
"It’s all right. You're doing fine, Dean. Just don’t close your eyes. You have to keep that in your head. You have to concentrate on it, okay?"
"Yeah. Don’t close my eyes. I’ve got it."
"You’re tracking better," John noted after a beat.
"Easier to think. Not so hard to focus."
"Good. I’m going to let you go now. Can I do that, Dean? Can I let you go without you nodding off on me?"
Dean swallowed, resisted the urge to ask him to stay, to keep holding on. "Sure," he said. "I’m good. Setting a guy on fire wakes him up pretty good."
"I didn’t set you on fire. I gave you a bit of a bath is all. Baptized a little sin out of your soul." He let Dean go carefully, settled him back to the ground like a fragile thing made of flesh and glass. "You good?" he asked.
"I’m … turning evil or something?" Dean whispered.
"No," John said quickly. "I’m sorry. I was just joking."
"But … holy water …."
"It’s an infection of some sort," John said, his voice grim. "Like getting bitten by a lycan. You remember what that did to me, right? How my body reacted to you sluicing out the wounds with holy water?"
"Yeah."
"Same thing, son. Just a different contagion."
He was lying. Dean could tell he was lying, but he believed it because he needed to believe it. "Okay. Well … I only did that to you once, so no more payback, okay?"
John smiled at him a little. "Yeah, but you lit me on fire once, too."
"Saved your ass," Dean pointed out.
"There is that. Keep your eyes open." Leaving Dean to stare up at the dawn-soft sky, John turned away, started re-packing the medi-pack scattered on the ground beside them, shoving the contents back inside, zipping it shut again.
"Dad?" Dean whispered.
"Yeah, Dean," John answered without turning. "I’m right here, son."
"You have any Jack?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. Thanks for reminding me." John slung the strap of the medi-pack over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to Dean. "I’ll have a drink later, but right now, let’s get you to your feet."
"My feet?" Dean repeated.
John slipped under Dean’s arm, getting a good grip on the belt loop of his jeans. "Look at you with the quippy comebacks," he said. "You ready?" He didn’t wait for an answer, he just stood up, taking Dean with him.
If his dad wasn’t such a strong mother fucker, Dean would have bent them both double with the way his body tried to cramp itself into non-existence. He wasn’t holding any of his own weight, depending entirely on his dad’s support to stay on his feet. John stood up under the burden like he didn’t even feel it.
"Holy fuck," Dean wheezed when he could speak again. "Yer killing me here, Dad. I thought you said the worst of it was over."
"Guess I’m not such a bad liar after all, eh?" He adjusted Dean’s weight a little, encouraged his feet to find the ground, to make contact and start bearing some of their own weight. "Come on, kiddo," he said. "One foot in front of the other. No big step for a high roller. You’ve been doing it since you were a pup."
"Dude," Dean said, whining a little as he leaned harder into his dad, depended more solely on his dad’s capacity to keep him upright. "You just called me kiddo."
"I’m allowed. Try and walk, Dean. I need you to keep your feet moving, even if they aren’t taking much of your weight. Can you do that for me?"
"Okay. I can do that. Just rub a little dirt on it, right?" It felt like being torn out of his skin when they started to move. He whined again, his head falling to hang boneless from his neck, bumping against his dad’s chest with every step they took. He did his best to keep his feet moving, but within five steps, all they were doing was dragging. John kept going, walking for the both of them rather than expecting Dean to carry any weight beyond the weight of staying conscious.
"You’re doing fine, son," John lied. Then, charging his fee for the lie, he added, "Keep your eyes open. Keep them open, and keep your feet moving."
They passed the twisted corpse of the aswang, still knotted to a pile of fugly on the ground, one arm out flung like it was trying to trip them as they dragged by.
"Dad," Dean muttered. "Dad. The aswang."
"Don’t worry about it," John said.
"Don’t worry about it, my ass. Sun’s almost up. You’ve got to stop and burn it, or it’ll re-animate."
"The hell I do. Re-animation’s a myth. The fucker’s dead. Job’s done."
"Dad." Dean tried to shift his weight a little, didn’t accomplish much except making himself whine like a pantywaist little bitch. "Dad, stop. Stop."
"Quit fighting me, Dean," John snapped. "If you’ve got enough energy for that, then use it a little more productively. Help me out a little here, take some of your own damn weight. You’re not a ten-year-old any more, and I’m not twenty-five."
"Dad."
"What?"
"Dad."
John turned his head, met Dean’s eyes. Dean was struggling to hold his head up, working hard to keep his eyes open. "You’ve got to burn it," he said, panting a little with how hard it was to strain against his dad’s will, how much it hurt to fight when it would have been so much easier to just relax into the unshakable grip John had on him, just let it go and let his dad carry him home. "Can’t come this far and stop one step short. Have to burn it. You have to."
John glanced up at the sky. It was gray now, the sun announcing its imminent arrival by throwing light up into thick, heavy clouds.
"Please, Dad," Dean said. "If it's not a myth, kids will start going missing again."
"God dammit, Dean," John swore. But he stopped, adjusted Dean’s weight on his shoulder, slipped it off to lean him against a tree, balance him there. Grabbing a handful of leaves and pulling the small limb to which they were attached over, he put it in Dean’s hand, wrapped Dean’s fingers around it before he let go. "Hold on to this," he ordered. "Keep yourself on your feet. If you fall on your ass, I’m going to leave you here."
"Dude," Dean murmured, trying to smile, almost making it. "You are such a bad liar."
"And you’re a real pain in the balls," John retorted. He moved away, started dousing the corpse with kerosene. "Keep your eyes open," he reminded Dean as he worked. "And don’t let go of those damn leaves."
"Great bedside manner, there, Dad." His tongue was getting heavy again, thick, slurring his words as he spoke. "You could get a TV show with that. The Compassionate Curmudgeon. It would suit you."
"Curmudgeon, huh?" John struck a match and dropped it to the twisted corpse as he stepped back, a dance of ignition he’d done so many times it was a natural part of the way he moved. The aswang went up like a monster soaked in kerosene. John tossed the can on the fire, then strode back to Dean’s side. "That sounds like a Sammy word."
"Hey," Dean protested, not even trying to help as John slipped back under his arm again, as he re-adjusted Dean’s weight to something he could keep in motion without much, if any, assistance. "I read. You just going to leave it burning like that?’
John grunted a little with the effort of getting them moving, putting them back on the path they’d cut through the groundcover to get here from the Impala less than an hour ago. "Left the marshmallows in the car," he said.
"That’s kind of irresponsible," Dean said. Then he laughed, a raw sound that came out sounding like a cough.
"Forgetting the marshmallows, you mean?"
"W.W.S.D?" Dean asked.
"W.W.S.D?" John repeated, a question to his question.
"What Would Smokey Do?" Dean laughed again. Instead of a cough this time, it was very nearly a sob.
"Probably get his ass put to a burn right along side the aswang," John said. "I don’t have a lot of patience for talking bears. Especially ones who presume to chide me about being an irresponsible camper."
"Chide," Dean repeated. He was getting cold again. His gut was cramping, and his eyelids were working their way back to maximum density. "You said ‘chide,’ you fucking curmudgeon."
"Do comic book characters chide each other for being curmudgeonly these days?" John asked.
"Graphic novels," Dean corrected. "And that isn’t all I read."
"Playboy doesn’t count," John told him.
"I read the articles, too." The ground dropped out from under him suddenly. It was like somebody flipped a switch, throwing every circuit in his body off, shutting him down, putting his muscles to absolute dark. He had to stop talking for a moment, catch his breath.
"Articles, huh?" John was trying to keep him talking. "Likely story. Name one."
"Well … the letters at least." He wheezed a little, half laughing, half coughing. "And the playmate profiles. Did you hear Ms. October wrote a book?"
John could tell it was a setup, so he played along. "She did, did she? You read it?"
"Well, it was more of a picture book. She called it I Fucked a Curmudgeon." His knees gave out, and he almost took his dad down with him.
"Easy, Dean. Easy." John was steadying him, getting him back on his feet.
"Sorry," he mumbled. His lips had gone as numb as his tongue now. His eyes were starting to go numb, too, starting to spill in blackness from the corners of his field of view. His thoughts started playing bumper cars in his head, slamming into one another, jumbling the shit out of everything his senses tried to tell him.
"Nothing to be sorry for. Just help me get your feet back under you and let’s keep moving."
"How far to the car?" he asked.
"Not far."
"Getting cold again," he said. "Getting really cold."
"We’re almost there, Dean. The worst of it’s over."
Dean couldn’t lift his head any more. It was back to bumping against his dad’s chest with every step they took. Or with every step his dad took at least. He couldn’t move his feet any more either. They were dragging through the groundcover, leaving gutters in the dead leaves, catching on small rocks, nearly tripping them both up, making everything much harder than it had to be.
"Sorry, Dad," he mumbled dully.
"Nothing to be sorry for, son. Just keep talking to me."
"Where are we?" he whispered.
"We’re almost there, Dean."
"What’s going on? Why is it so cold?"
"Almost there, son. Another fifty yards."
He wasn’t lying this time. The Impala was sitting right where they left it. John leaned him against the back quarterpanel, pinned him there while he opened the back door, then manually horsed Dean into the back seat. He eased him back gently, propping him against the far door as he said, "Open your eyes, son."
"Cold," Dean returned.
"I know you are. But I need another five minutes, Dean. Bobby will meet us half way, but I need five minutes to get you to him. Can you give me five more minutes, son?"
"Yeah. Sure, Dad. Five minutes."
"Open your eyes, Dean."
"They’re open, Dad. I swear to you, they’re open."
"Okay, son. Good job. You’re doing great, Dean."
"Cold," Dean whispered.
"I know."
He felt the pressure before he felt the fire. He didn’t have the strength to scream this time. Didn’t have the strength to do anything but hold on to his dad and try to survive it. He would have sold his soul to just slip away into the sweet dark of unconsciousness, but it wouldn’t have him.
Never a demon around to make a deal when you needed one. No one around but his dad and holy water. Just that and nothing more.
"You promised," Dean whispered when he could.
"I know I did. I lied."
"Fucker."
"You aren’t the first to think so. Open your eyes, son; or I’ll do it again."
Dean opened his eyes, focused on his dad’s face with an effort. "Fucker," he said again.
"There you go," John said. "Good boy."
"I Fucked a Curmudgeon," Dean whispered. "That was a pretty good one, wasn’t it?"
"Yeah, son. That was pretty good. You’re quite the comedian. Too bad you aren’t better at dodge ball."
"Your fault," Dean barely breathed. "Should have made me train harder."
"I’ll keep that in mind for my next kid," John eased him back to the car door again, wedged him there, then backed out of the Impala, slammed the door, made it back into the driver’s seat before Dean’s eyes slipped shut again.
"Open your eyes, son."
Dean opened his eyes. He watched his Dad in the rearview mirror, kept his eyes focused there so he wouldn’t lose track of the only thing he was holding on to.
"Five minutes, Dean," John said, kicking the Impala to life and peeling nine months worth of life off the tires by the way he burned rubber to get back up on the asphalt and headed down the road.
"Five minutes," Dean agreed dully.
"Open your eyes, son."
It took almost fifteen because it wouldn’t have done a fuck-load of good to have Bobby meet them half way when everything he needed was at the junkyard. Dean kept his eyes open the whole way because he knew if he closed them, his dad would do exactly what he’d threatened to do: pull over again and baptize his belly with the hellfire of holy water.
He couldn’t speak by the time the Impala kicked up a cloud of dust and debris, skidding to a bone-jarring halt in the dirt and gravel lot of Singer’s Auto Salvage. He could hear Rumsfeld raising a hell of an I’m-going-to-eat-your-ass stink on the subject of uninvited guests while John bellowed directions to Bobby about things Dean couldn’t follow.
The car door jerked open, and John dragged him out by his boots. Throwing him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry this time, his dad carried him inside, laid him out on the bare wood floor of Bobby’s shack.
Rumsfeld was still pitching a fit. His flappy, black jowls were flecked with fury as he snarled and snapped, doing everything short of actually eating them to make his case that his master was not someone with whom they wanted to fuck. He looked like a damned hell hound, he was that ferocious, that wild-eyed serious as his huge teeth gnashed like the jaws of a bear trap scant inches from John’s face, John’s shoulder, John’s throat.
It was a pretty impressive display of pissed-off puppy, especially given that Rumsfeld liked them when they showed up under the color of Bobby’s invite instead of skidding in on their own, unexpected and unannounced. Hell, the damn dog spent the majority of the past week with his enormous head flopped on Dean’s leg, getting his ears scratched while he listened to Dean, John and Bobby drink beer and trade lies.
He might be a full-grown Rottie with the spirit of a Spartan warrior and a brutal background that pretty much defined the concept of evil put to human form until Bobby rolled along and stole him to salvation; but he was a big fucking baby, too. He spent at least as much time sprawled on his back on Bobby’s couch as he did patrolling the yard outside, threatening strangers with a good eat-down if they dared cross the line between his and he-doesn’t-care.
"Get your dog off me or I will shoot his ass, Bobby," John snarled, as ferocious as Rumsfeld and twice as serious about any threat he was making. He had Dean’s body blocked with his own, a posture that left him completely vulnerable should more than a hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and teeth decide to escalate his savage objections from pissed-as-hell to gonna-kill-your-ass-dead … something all three of them had, on occasion, seen the big Rottie do.
"Shoot my dog, and I will shoot you, John," Bobby returned mildly. His hands were full of ritual shit and circumstance, but once he set them down, he snapped his fingers once, and Rumsfeld just stopped. "Get the fuck out of here, you loud-mouthed blowhard," Bobby said, but it wasn’t until Rumsfeld turned and trotted out the door that Dean was entirely sure he meant the dog instead of his father.
Bobby knelt beside him, thumbed an ash sigil on his forehead, then one on each of his hands in turn. "Open your eyes, boy," he said, his voice calm, unhurried. "This isn’t going to be much fun, but it will work a hell of a lot better if you’re alive when I do it."
Dean struggled to obey. He knew he’d accomplished it when John said, "Good boy, Dean. Good boy."
Dean tried to speak again. Failed again.
"No need to tell me how handsome I look by the early morning light." Bobby’s voice was soothing; a gentle comfort despite the gruff of its Rumsfeldian façade. "You just lie there and marvel at my beauty while I do all the work." He muttered several incantations in Latin, then glanced at John. "You want to move the fuck out of my way, John?"
When John moved, Dean lost track of him. He shifted on the hard wood, a sense of panic swelling through him, making hard-to-breathe almost impossible-to-breathe. He tried to speak, tried to call out to make sure his dad was still close by; but no matter how hard Dean tried, he couldn’t seem to make any sound. He didn’t have the energy it took to force air from his lungs through his vocal cords and out past his teeth. The panic got worse, bad enough his hands started twitching, started trying to find something, started searching for a way to connect with what they’d lost.
"I’m right here, son."
Just the sound of his dad’s voice was enough to calm him down, settle him back to still.
Bobby drifted into his line of sight again. Dean watched Bobby bend to an examination of the wound, closed his eyes in response to the almost unbearable heat of Bobby’s fingers on skin that had gone so cold he wasn’t sure it hadn’t turned to ice, wasn’t sure it wouldn’t melt to blood and slush as Bobby probed the wound, then drew a series of new sigils on his chest, his belly, his side.
"Open your eyes, son," John said. "Just a little longer, then you can sleep for days if you want to."
Dean tried and failed. He tried again, failed again.
"It’s all right, John," Bobby said. "Let him be; I’ve got it covered."
Dean felt them slipping away. He lost track of his father’s hand, lost track of his father’s voice. He wanted to hold on, but he couldn’t do it any longer. All he could do was feel the quiet hush of still settling into the pain, draining it to bearable. The cold knotted into his guts eased, the panic thrumming in his veins fell quiet. Somewhere far away, he heard Bobby speaking in tongues, and the sound of the incantations soothed him, made him feel safe, made him feel warm.
He didn’t feel the holy water burning it’s way through the wound this time. All he felt was nothing, and the peace of that alone was enough to let him sleep.
*
Bobby studied the wound with a critical eye, shaking his head in disbelief. "You do this with holy water?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Both inside and out?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, John. Without any glyphs or sigils at all? You’re lucky you didn’t kill the kid yourself.
"Fuck you, Singer," John snapped. "I did the best I could. Not all of us are walking grimoires."
"Well then maybe not all of us ought to be hunting aswangs until we’re damn sure they’re not carrying resheph," Bobby countered.
"Carrying what?"
"Resheph, John. As in plague and pestilence put to the intention of sucking a man’s soul out through his bloodstream?" When John just looked at him, Bobby sighed. "You didn’t even know what it was, and you’re pouring holy water down his throat and into his gut?"
John looked down, studied the calm of Dean’s face, pale and drawn, but at peace now, rather than in agony. "I didn’t have to know what it was," he said quietly. "I could see what it was doing. The infection spread so fast you could track its progress with the naked eye."
"It’s not an infection, John. It’s a … a … a biblical fucking plague, dammit."
"Fine. Whatever. The biblical fucking plague was spreading so fast you could track its progress with the naked eye then. It looked sulfur based, so I figured holy water was my best recourse until I could actually get him to a walking grimoire so the sanctimonious son of a bitch could tell me what an incompetent fuck I am."
Bobby snorted. "Yeah. You’re welcome for saving your son’s life, John. Don’t mention it, and for God’s sake, don’t thank me for it."
"Help me get him to a bed," John said rather than responding.
Together, the two of them carried Dean’s limp body to the bedroom, settled him in, covered him in blankets from toes to chin, leaving only the deep puncture in his side exposed.
John pulled a chair up, settled in beside the bed.
Bobby watched him for a long moment before saying, "He’ll be fine now, John. I’ve exorcised the flesh clean. Without the resheph, it’s nothing more dangerous than any other puncture wound."
John nodded. "Yeah. I know. I’m just … I’m going to sit with him for a while."
Bobby hesitated, then offered, "I might have been a little harsh with you before. Really no way you could have known to expect something like this. Thinking about resheph when you’re hunting an aswang is a bit like worrying about getting rabies from a werewolf. Not that it couldn’t happen, but there aren’t many who would consider that the primary danger to plan for."
John nodded again, but didn’t answer.
"And for a layman, you didn’t do half bad," Bobby added. "You got him here without losing him. Under the circumstances, that’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve seen resheph take down grown men in under twenty minutes. You holding it at bay for as long as you did’s the only reason he made it, the only reason I had a chance to pull him through."
"If you’re looking for a thank you," John said, "then thank you."
Bobby shook his head. "You are one serious ass, John Winchester."
"So I’ve been told. Just leave us alone for a while, will you? Just let me sit here and … and …." His voice fell to silence. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, trying to hide the tremble of it snaking up his arm, invading his shoulders and his spine like a biblical fucking plague whose progress could be tracked with the naked eye. "Just get out of here, Bobby," John whispered. "Leave me alone with my son."
Bobby left because John would never have forgiven him if he hadn’t. Sitting on the porch with Rumsfeld, watching the morning break bright and clear and warm, he listened to the sound of a friend grieving what might have been, pretending he didn’t hear what a man like John Winchester would never actually say.
finis