Little White Lies - part II
Part 2 of Little White Lies. Part 1 is here.
"Dean, son. Dean, wake up!"
Someone is jostling his bad shoulder, breathing right into his ear, and Dean wakes up with a yelp.
"Thank God," it's Bobby who's kneeling beside him.
"You really here?" Dean asks.
"I'm really here," Bobby pats his good shoulder and helps him sit up. Dean nearly topples back down, he feels light-headed and nauseous, Bobby holds him steady.
"Careful, son," he says softly, "You two have been out in the cold a long time."
Dean takes in the grim look on his face and feels himself grow stiff. He had promised he wouldn't leave Sam; he had promised he'd stay with him, but he had fallen asleep instead of keeping watch.
Sam is still not awake, he's translucently pale, going blue around his eyes and mouth. He looks…
"Is he...?" Dean can't finish his question.
"He's still alive," that's his dad, crouched over the other side of Sam. Dean hadn't noticed that anyone else was there, but he spots that nameless hunter at the mouth of the cave, talking into a radio.
"How did you find us?"
"We got back to the watch-point but you two weren't there, when we couldn't find you at the car we came back here and saw the rock crumbled away. Abraham's a good tracker, said he thought you two went down here."
Dean looks back up to the hunter by the cave entrance, Abraham. He catches his eye and gives him a grateful nod.
"Helicopter's on its way," John says, not looking away from Sam.
Finally, Dean cries.
*
He doesn't know why expects to go with Sam in the helicopter, but apparently that isn't the case. Not even their dad is allowed in because there isn't enough room, so the remainder of them have to trek back to the parking lot and make their own way over to the hospital.
When the rescue team had arrived they had gone straight for Sam, getting him onto a stretcher, strapping him down, placing an oxygen mask over his face. Not once did Sam make a sound, not even a twitch. Dean had listened to the medics shout to each other over the storm in some medical language that made no sense to him, it was only by the urgency in their voices that he had known things were serious.
And Dean hadn't noticed that anyone had tied his arm up in a makeshift sling until he was sitting in the Impala's passenger seat. He leaned his forehead against the window's cool glass, watching the road flash by in a blur. He had thought about Sam's shattered bones until he fell asleep with tears in his eyes.
Dean doesn't expect to be checked in as a patient, but it turns out he's suffering from mild shock and a broken shoulder. It's painful when they wrestle him out of his shirts for x-rays, whatever had smacked him in the storm had cracked his bone, they say. They tell him he's lucky that surgery isn't required considering how much he had jostled it back in the forest. But none of that phases him because all he wants to know is if Sam will be okay.
The staff just tell him that they'll go and find out for him, but no one ever follows through on their promises, no one tells him anything. He is left on his own, mostly. He's on a ward with a few other patients, a couple of them spend most of their time sleeping, a couple of others try to get Dean join in on their conversation, to no avail.
When his dad finally appears in his cubicle, drawing the curtain around them, grim-faced and tired, he can only tell Dean that Sam is in the OR, he needs surgery on both legs, things are touch-and-go at the moment.
Whatever the nurses are feeding into Dean's IV had make sure he sleeps, despite his efforts not to.
When he wakes up, five hours later, his father had been sitting in the chair by his bed, red-eyed like it was November 2nd, and for a short moment Dean is been sure Sam is gone.
The first thing his dad says to him is, "Remember that you saved his life, Dean. You saved his life."
And then he tells him what happened in surgery, he tells Dean what the doctors had to do to save Sam. Once John is finished speaking, Dean vomits down the side of the bed.
Dean is supposed the be in a wheelchair, but he's walking just fine, if a little unsteady, as he enters Sam's room. And Sam is alive. Sam is unconscious and filled up with drugs and hooked up to machines but he is breathing on his own.
Even though Dean was told, warned, what to expect, it still hurts when he lays eyes on the empty space where Sam's left leg used to be. He eyes the sheet covering the stump, where the leg now ends just below the knee, and he tries not to cry, for Sammy's sake.
The doctors and nurses are going on about how lucky Sam is, that no one would have survived what he went through. Not even an adult could have survived a nearly seventeen-foot drop, or even the cold weather and blood loss. Most people would have died before the Heli rescue had arrived.
They congratulate Dean on his quick thinking back in the forest, but Dean just ignores them in favour of focusing every ounce of his attention on his brother. His brother who doesn't know what has happened, yet.
Dean eats when he's told, crappy hospital food, and he takes medication when he's told, little white pills that he doesn't know the purpose of, but if anyone tries to get him to leave Sam's bedside they're in for a difficult time, as one doctor found out. He's lucky the doctor hadn't wanted to get him kicked out by security. Of course, his dad is the only one with any real authority, and Dean reluctantly goes back to bed when he's ordered to.
Most of the time when he's meant to be sleeping, Dean thinks. He thinks about Sam's face when he finally wakes up and realises what has happened. He thinks about the likelihood that their dad will leave Sam behind to continue the hunt. He thinks about what he'll say when that time comes.
When he sleeps, he dreams of sleeping curled around Sam's cold, stiff body back in that cave, he dreams of his little brother being taken away in a black bag. And every night he wakes up drenched in his own sweat.
John barely leaves Sam, and if he does it's to check on Dean. Dean, who is only in the hospital for two nights. He's not in bad shape but the doctors want to monitor him, they say. When one of them offers for Dean to talk to a councillor about his traumatic experience, Dean laughs right in their face, because he isn't the one that needs a councillor, Dean isn't the one that lost his leg.
It must have been the wrong reaction because they hand him a phone number, just in case.
They release him in the morning, two days after the rescue, his dad drives him over to the motel and sets him up in bed with hot soup and the TV remote, John doesn't stick around long before he's heading back to the hospital. He comes back a couple of hours later. Sam still hasn't woken up, he tells Dean. Even worse, Sam develops an infection, despite his leg being removed to prevent just that, and no one is allowed to visit him until he's out of the woods.
John drinks himself to sleep that night.
Dean takes to spending his time hanging out in the waiting area, arm held up by a more secure sling, reading one of Sam's books. He figures that maybe it will be something for the two of them to talk about when Sam wakes up, something Sam likes rather than their usual conversations that revolve around hunting or Dean's adventures with women.
It's been a day since he checked out and he's already halfway through The Great Gatsby, and Dean admits, he actually kind of likes it. Hospital staff shoo him away eventually, as they do every night he's there, telling him to get some rest, and Dean finishes the book in his motel bed with plenty of things in mind to discuss with his brother.
He's been sleeping more than usual lately, and it's one in the afternoon the next day when he's woken up by his dad calling from the hospital.
"Dad? Is everything okay?" Dean asks, holding his breath.
"The fever broke last night. Sam's awake," he says, "Bobby's on his way to bring you over."
He hangs up before Dean can say anything. Is he okay? Has he asked for me? Does he know what has happened?
It takes him a while to wrangle himself into clean clothes one-handed. He just about manages to get his teeth cleaned when Bobby knocks on the motel room door. He looks sad, but he smiles at Dean.
"You ready to see you brother?" he asks. Dean nods and Bobby gives him a worried look.
It's quiet in Bobby's truck on the way to the hospital, but Bobby keeps glancing at Dean now and then, eventually it begins to get on his nerves.
"What are you staring at?" he snaps.
Bobby blinks at him, then turns back to the road like Dean's little outburst never happened. "Nothing. It's just that that's the most I've heard you talk in days. I was beginning to worry."
Dean snorts and sinks lower in his seat. "You don't need to worry about me. I've still got both legs."
"I worry about both of you boys," Bobby says, and no one says another word until they get to the hospital.
It's clear that Sam knows very well what has happened. When Dean arrives at the hospital, he can hear grief from the end of the hall, it's Sam's voice and it has Dean sprinting to his little brother's room. Sam is crying in their dad's arms, sobbing loud and breathless. The colourful animals painted on the walls seem to smile down on the scene mockingly.
Bobby has the curtesy to wait in the hallway at a moment like this, he pats Dean comfortingly on the shoulder. But Dean can't make himself move from the doorway, he can't stop staring at the empty space on the bed, where the sheets lie flat when they should be draped over Sam's left leg.
"It's okay, it's alright," John is saying, over and over. Sam just keeps on crying, eyes screwed shut, face buried in his dad's chest. He doesn't even know Dean is there. Dean runs.
He finds himself in a cleaning cupboard and he wedges himself between the shelves of disinfectant and bleach. It's dark in there, but Dean finds it comforting. In there, he can pretend the outside world doesn't exist. He can pretend his brother is fine. A few minutes later light floods in and Dean looks up to Bobby's angry face.
"Don't you dare run out on Sam like that!" He scolds. He flicks on the light and closes the door behind him.
"I needed a minute," Dean says lamely. He avoids Bobby's gaze and stares at his feet.
"Sam needs you," Bobby snaps. "This isn't about you, Dean. I know this has all been hard on you, I get that, but your little brother needs you. He's going to need you for a long while now. He's going to need you through PT, getting a prosthetic. He's going to need you when people stare, when people don't understand. You can't be one of those people, Dean."
Dean nods and something warm and wet slides down his cheek. "If I'd done something different…" he says, voice cracking, "If I hadn't…"
Bobby crouches down in front of him, takes his face between his hands. "This isn't on you."
Sam is asleep when he gets back. John grips his son's lax fingers between his own, a show of affection Dean hasn't seen since they were little. He looks up at Dean now and then, looks like he wants to say something but he never does. There's an unmistakeable look of guilt on his face. It seems everyone is blaming themselves for what's happened to Sam.
After all, Sam was supposed to have been at school that day.
*
Dean has started The Lord of the Rings. It's kind of long and confusing, but Sam seemed to like it when he read it a couple of months ago, wouldn't shut up about elves and wizards and whatever the hell those little dudes are with the big feet.
His dad isn't there, for once. Bobby had taken him off for a coffee, but Dean thinks Bobby was trying to get Sam and Dean alone. But Sam is asleep, like he is most of the time, so Dean has been reading the first chapter while he waits for Sammy to wake up.
Things are actually starting to get interesting when he hears Sam say, "Are you reading?"
Dean closes the book and puts it down on the bedside table. "Well, things were getting pretty boring with you doing your sleeping beauty thing," he says.
Sam's lips twitch upwards and it's the first time Dean has seen him smile in a while.
"How are you doing?" Dean asks, trying not to look at the end of the bed where one bandaged foot sticks out from under the blanket, "We haven't really talked since…"
"Since I took a swan dive," Sam finishes for him. He sighs heavily and leans back into the cushions, closing his eyes. "I guess I'm okay."
Dean raises an eyebrow. "And the real answer?"
"It hurts," Sam admits.
"I know, but you'll heal up soon and that cast will be off in a few weeks."
"No," Sam grits out, eyes still securely shut, "Not the broken one. The other one. The one that isn't there anymore. It hurts."
Dean is struck dumb, because he's heard of phantom pain before but he never knew it was a real thing. He lets himself look down at Sam's stump curiously.
"And no matter how much crap they pump into my IV, it doesn't make a difference because there's no real pain for it to take away. The doctor said it's just something in my head that still thinks the leg is there, but the pain isn't real. I think they're all talking a bunch of shit."
"You talk to dad with that mouth?" Dean asks.
"We don't talk much," Sam says, "He just sort of sits there, holds my hand sometimes. It's weird."
"He's worried about you," Dean points out.
"I know," Sam sighs, "I just… I don't know." He glances down at his only leg, then at the space next to it. "I keep forgetting," he says, "I wake up and I forget that it's gone. Then when I remember, it's like losing it all over again."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Dean blurts out. Sam turns to look at him, confused. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up. I'm sorry I haven't been here much."
Sam frowns. "You have been here," he says, "You were with me in that fucking cave. The nurses said you've been sitting in the waiting room most of the time. You're here now…" he pauses, looks at Dean searchingly, "It's not your fault, you know that, right?"
"I should have watched out for you," Dean says seriously, "If I'd been doing my job you'd never have been hurt."
Sam stares at him for a second, then bursts out laughing. For a moment Dean wonders if he should inform the nurse that Sam's finally cracked.
"Are you kidding?" Sam snorts, "You could blame a million things for this. You could blame the storm, you could blame the damn radio, you could blame me for being dumb enough to get so close to the edge. Shit happens."
"Shit happens?" Dean repeats, "That's what you have to say about this?"
Sam shrugs. "What do you want me to say? Do you want me to weep for my loss? Because I've done plenty of that. I'm already drowning in this, Dean, please don't let yourself drown in guilt that isn't even yours. I need you. I really do."
A crack in his voice cuts him off and Sam ducks his head, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. Dean sits himself down on the edge of the bed and gently tugs Sam into his chest.
"I'm here. I am," he says softly.
"What's going to happen?" Sam asks shakily, "I can't hunt, not like this."
"No one is leaving you. I promise."
"But - "
"But nothing. No one is leaving you," Dean says into Sam's hair. He closes his eyes and hopes he isn't lying.
"Dean, son. Dean, wake up!"
Someone is jostling his bad shoulder, breathing right into his ear, and Dean wakes up with a yelp.
"Thank God," it's Bobby who's kneeling beside him.
"You really here?" Dean asks.
"I'm really here," Bobby pats his good shoulder and helps him sit up. Dean nearly topples back down, he feels light-headed and nauseous, Bobby holds him steady.
"Careful, son," he says softly, "You two have been out in the cold a long time."
Dean takes in the grim look on his face and feels himself grow stiff. He had promised he wouldn't leave Sam; he had promised he'd stay with him, but he had fallen asleep instead of keeping watch.
Sam is still not awake, he's translucently pale, going blue around his eyes and mouth. He looks…
"Is he...?" Dean can't finish his question.
"He's still alive," that's his dad, crouched over the other side of Sam. Dean hadn't noticed that anyone else was there, but he spots that nameless hunter at the mouth of the cave, talking into a radio.
"How did you find us?"
"We got back to the watch-point but you two weren't there, when we couldn't find you at the car we came back here and saw the rock crumbled away. Abraham's a good tracker, said he thought you two went down here."
Dean looks back up to the hunter by the cave entrance, Abraham. He catches his eye and gives him a grateful nod.
"Helicopter's on its way," John says, not looking away from Sam.
Finally, Dean cries.
*
He doesn't know why expects to go with Sam in the helicopter, but apparently that isn't the case. Not even their dad is allowed in because there isn't enough room, so the remainder of them have to trek back to the parking lot and make their own way over to the hospital.
When the rescue team had arrived they had gone straight for Sam, getting him onto a stretcher, strapping him down, placing an oxygen mask over his face. Not once did Sam make a sound, not even a twitch. Dean had listened to the medics shout to each other over the storm in some medical language that made no sense to him, it was only by the urgency in their voices that he had known things were serious.
And Dean hadn't noticed that anyone had tied his arm up in a makeshift sling until he was sitting in the Impala's passenger seat. He leaned his forehead against the window's cool glass, watching the road flash by in a blur. He had thought about Sam's shattered bones until he fell asleep with tears in his eyes.
Dean doesn't expect to be checked in as a patient, but it turns out he's suffering from mild shock and a broken shoulder. It's painful when they wrestle him out of his shirts for x-rays, whatever had smacked him in the storm had cracked his bone, they say. They tell him he's lucky that surgery isn't required considering how much he had jostled it back in the forest. But none of that phases him because all he wants to know is if Sam will be okay.
The staff just tell him that they'll go and find out for him, but no one ever follows through on their promises, no one tells him anything. He is left on his own, mostly. He's on a ward with a few other patients, a couple of them spend most of their time sleeping, a couple of others try to get Dean join in on their conversation, to no avail.
When his dad finally appears in his cubicle, drawing the curtain around them, grim-faced and tired, he can only tell Dean that Sam is in the OR, he needs surgery on both legs, things are touch-and-go at the moment.
Whatever the nurses are feeding into Dean's IV had make sure he sleeps, despite his efforts not to.
When he wakes up, five hours later, his father had been sitting in the chair by his bed, red-eyed like it was November 2nd, and for a short moment Dean is been sure Sam is gone.
The first thing his dad says to him is, "Remember that you saved his life, Dean. You saved his life."
And then he tells him what happened in surgery, he tells Dean what the doctors had to do to save Sam. Once John is finished speaking, Dean vomits down the side of the bed.
Dean is supposed the be in a wheelchair, but he's walking just fine, if a little unsteady, as he enters Sam's room. And Sam is alive. Sam is unconscious and filled up with drugs and hooked up to machines but he is breathing on his own.
Even though Dean was told, warned, what to expect, it still hurts when he lays eyes on the empty space where Sam's left leg used to be. He eyes the sheet covering the stump, where the leg now ends just below the knee, and he tries not to cry, for Sammy's sake.
The doctors and nurses are going on about how lucky Sam is, that no one would have survived what he went through. Not even an adult could have survived a nearly seventeen-foot drop, or even the cold weather and blood loss. Most people would have died before the Heli rescue had arrived.
They congratulate Dean on his quick thinking back in the forest, but Dean just ignores them in favour of focusing every ounce of his attention on his brother. His brother who doesn't know what has happened, yet.
Dean eats when he's told, crappy hospital food, and he takes medication when he's told, little white pills that he doesn't know the purpose of, but if anyone tries to get him to leave Sam's bedside they're in for a difficult time, as one doctor found out. He's lucky the doctor hadn't wanted to get him kicked out by security. Of course, his dad is the only one with any real authority, and Dean reluctantly goes back to bed when he's ordered to.
Most of the time when he's meant to be sleeping, Dean thinks. He thinks about Sam's face when he finally wakes up and realises what has happened. He thinks about the likelihood that their dad will leave Sam behind to continue the hunt. He thinks about what he'll say when that time comes.
When he sleeps, he dreams of sleeping curled around Sam's cold, stiff body back in that cave, he dreams of his little brother being taken away in a black bag. And every night he wakes up drenched in his own sweat.
John barely leaves Sam, and if he does it's to check on Dean. Dean, who is only in the hospital for two nights. He's not in bad shape but the doctors want to monitor him, they say. When one of them offers for Dean to talk to a councillor about his traumatic experience, Dean laughs right in their face, because he isn't the one that needs a councillor, Dean isn't the one that lost his leg.
It must have been the wrong reaction because they hand him a phone number, just in case.
They release him in the morning, two days after the rescue, his dad drives him over to the motel and sets him up in bed with hot soup and the TV remote, John doesn't stick around long before he's heading back to the hospital. He comes back a couple of hours later. Sam still hasn't woken up, he tells Dean. Even worse, Sam develops an infection, despite his leg being removed to prevent just that, and no one is allowed to visit him until he's out of the woods.
John drinks himself to sleep that night.
Dean takes to spending his time hanging out in the waiting area, arm held up by a more secure sling, reading one of Sam's books. He figures that maybe it will be something for the two of them to talk about when Sam wakes up, something Sam likes rather than their usual conversations that revolve around hunting or Dean's adventures with women.
It's been a day since he checked out and he's already halfway through The Great Gatsby, and Dean admits, he actually kind of likes it. Hospital staff shoo him away eventually, as they do every night he's there, telling him to get some rest, and Dean finishes the book in his motel bed with plenty of things in mind to discuss with his brother.
He's been sleeping more than usual lately, and it's one in the afternoon the next day when he's woken up by his dad calling from the hospital.
"Dad? Is everything okay?" Dean asks, holding his breath.
"The fever broke last night. Sam's awake," he says, "Bobby's on his way to bring you over."
He hangs up before Dean can say anything. Is he okay? Has he asked for me? Does he know what has happened?
It takes him a while to wrangle himself into clean clothes one-handed. He just about manages to get his teeth cleaned when Bobby knocks on the motel room door. He looks sad, but he smiles at Dean.
"You ready to see you brother?" he asks. Dean nods and Bobby gives him a worried look.
It's quiet in Bobby's truck on the way to the hospital, but Bobby keeps glancing at Dean now and then, eventually it begins to get on his nerves.
"What are you staring at?" he snaps.
Bobby blinks at him, then turns back to the road like Dean's little outburst never happened. "Nothing. It's just that that's the most I've heard you talk in days. I was beginning to worry."
Dean snorts and sinks lower in his seat. "You don't need to worry about me. I've still got both legs."
"I worry about both of you boys," Bobby says, and no one says another word until they get to the hospital.
It's clear that Sam knows very well what has happened. When Dean arrives at the hospital, he can hear grief from the end of the hall, it's Sam's voice and it has Dean sprinting to his little brother's room. Sam is crying in their dad's arms, sobbing loud and breathless. The colourful animals painted on the walls seem to smile down on the scene mockingly.
Bobby has the curtesy to wait in the hallway at a moment like this, he pats Dean comfortingly on the shoulder. But Dean can't make himself move from the doorway, he can't stop staring at the empty space on the bed, where the sheets lie flat when they should be draped over Sam's left leg.
"It's okay, it's alright," John is saying, over and over. Sam just keeps on crying, eyes screwed shut, face buried in his dad's chest. He doesn't even know Dean is there. Dean runs.
He finds himself in a cleaning cupboard and he wedges himself between the shelves of disinfectant and bleach. It's dark in there, but Dean finds it comforting. In there, he can pretend the outside world doesn't exist. He can pretend his brother is fine. A few minutes later light floods in and Dean looks up to Bobby's angry face.
"Don't you dare run out on Sam like that!" He scolds. He flicks on the light and closes the door behind him.
"I needed a minute," Dean says lamely. He avoids Bobby's gaze and stares at his feet.
"Sam needs you," Bobby snaps. "This isn't about you, Dean. I know this has all been hard on you, I get that, but your little brother needs you. He's going to need you for a long while now. He's going to need you through PT, getting a prosthetic. He's going to need you when people stare, when people don't understand. You can't be one of those people, Dean."
Dean nods and something warm and wet slides down his cheek. "If I'd done something different…" he says, voice cracking, "If I hadn't…"
Bobby crouches down in front of him, takes his face between his hands. "This isn't on you."
Sam is asleep when he gets back. John grips his son's lax fingers between his own, a show of affection Dean hasn't seen since they were little. He looks up at Dean now and then, looks like he wants to say something but he never does. There's an unmistakeable look of guilt on his face. It seems everyone is blaming themselves for what's happened to Sam.
After all, Sam was supposed to have been at school that day.
*
Dean has started The Lord of the Rings. It's kind of long and confusing, but Sam seemed to like it when he read it a couple of months ago, wouldn't shut up about elves and wizards and whatever the hell those little dudes are with the big feet.
His dad isn't there, for once. Bobby had taken him off for a coffee, but Dean thinks Bobby was trying to get Sam and Dean alone. But Sam is asleep, like he is most of the time, so Dean has been reading the first chapter while he waits for Sammy to wake up.
Things are actually starting to get interesting when he hears Sam say, "Are you reading?"
Dean closes the book and puts it down on the bedside table. "Well, things were getting pretty boring with you doing your sleeping beauty thing," he says.
Sam's lips twitch upwards and it's the first time Dean has seen him smile in a while.
"How are you doing?" Dean asks, trying not to look at the end of the bed where one bandaged foot sticks out from under the blanket, "We haven't really talked since…"
"Since I took a swan dive," Sam finishes for him. He sighs heavily and leans back into the cushions, closing his eyes. "I guess I'm okay."
Dean raises an eyebrow. "And the real answer?"
"It hurts," Sam admits.
"I know, but you'll heal up soon and that cast will be off in a few weeks."
"No," Sam grits out, eyes still securely shut, "Not the broken one. The other one. The one that isn't there anymore. It hurts."
Dean is struck dumb, because he's heard of phantom pain before but he never knew it was a real thing. He lets himself look down at Sam's stump curiously.
"And no matter how much crap they pump into my IV, it doesn't make a difference because there's no real pain for it to take away. The doctor said it's just something in my head that still thinks the leg is there, but the pain isn't real. I think they're all talking a bunch of shit."
"You talk to dad with that mouth?" Dean asks.
"We don't talk much," Sam says, "He just sort of sits there, holds my hand sometimes. It's weird."
"He's worried about you," Dean points out.
"I know," Sam sighs, "I just… I don't know." He glances down at his only leg, then at the space next to it. "I keep forgetting," he says, "I wake up and I forget that it's gone. Then when I remember, it's like losing it all over again."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Dean blurts out. Sam turns to look at him, confused. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up. I'm sorry I haven't been here much."
Sam frowns. "You have been here," he says, "You were with me in that fucking cave. The nurses said you've been sitting in the waiting room most of the time. You're here now…" he pauses, looks at Dean searchingly, "It's not your fault, you know that, right?"
"I should have watched out for you," Dean says seriously, "If I'd been doing my job you'd never have been hurt."
Sam stares at him for a second, then bursts out laughing. For a moment Dean wonders if he should inform the nurse that Sam's finally cracked.
"Are you kidding?" Sam snorts, "You could blame a million things for this. You could blame the storm, you could blame the damn radio, you could blame me for being dumb enough to get so close to the edge. Shit happens."
"Shit happens?" Dean repeats, "That's what you have to say about this?"
Sam shrugs. "What do you want me to say? Do you want me to weep for my loss? Because I've done plenty of that. I'm already drowning in this, Dean, please don't let yourself drown in guilt that isn't even yours. I need you. I really do."
A crack in his voice cuts him off and Sam ducks his head, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. Dean sits himself down on the edge of the bed and gently tugs Sam into his chest.
"I'm here. I am," he says softly.
"What's going to happen?" Sam asks shakily, "I can't hunt, not like this."
"No one is leaving you. I promise."
"But - "
"But nothing. No one is leaving you," Dean says into Sam's hair. He closes his eyes and hopes he isn't lying.