SPN story: Somewhere in the sands of the desert (Sam & Dean)
This is the second (and last) of the stories I posted on Dreamwidth for a fest, now open to posting in other places. :) It's also one of those that were started a fairly long time ago, and only recently finished when my writing mojo dropped in for a visit. And though in my head it is decidedly slash, it has been pointed out to me that it is, in fact, totally gen on the page. :) Oops.
It is:
Kind of a Mystery Spot tag. Sort of. Mostly it's a story about how Sam loves Dean a scary lot, and also about how you really don't want to cross him. In fact while I was searching for a title, luzdeestrellas actually suggested "Sam Loves Dean A Scary Lot (and is also crazy)" -- which, while a bit on the nose, would not have been terribly inappropriate.
Many many thanks to terrio and luzdeestrellas for beta reading and cheerleading. All courtesies to William Butler Yeats for the ever so slightly pretentious title :).
~
Somewhere in the sands of the desert | by Merry
Dean is missing. Sam gets a little lost looking for him.
Sam & Dean, G.
5,760 words
Also available at AO3
somewhere in the sands of the desert | by Merry
Sam wakes up alone in the room. He can tell he's alone before he opens his eyes. He doesn't hear Dean's even breathing across the narrow space between their beds, and he doesn't hear the TV, and he doesn't hear the shower. The room is empty-quiet, bright with sunlight streaming in through the window over the air conditioner.
He rolls out of bed, checks the salt lines, checks the night stand for a note, checks the table, the bathroom mirror: nothing. He checks his phone: no messages, no missed calls. Dean's clothes are still scattered on the floor between the bathroom and the bed, his bag still spilling out underwear and hardware on the floor by the dresser. Sam hits Dean's number on speed dial and waits: no answer, straight to voicemail.
The car is gone.
Dean's gone for coffee before, gone out for a paper, gone out to flirt with the pretty waitress at the waffle house next door. But Sam can't get the quiet out of his head this time. It feels purposeful, imposed -- like the silence at the other end of an open phone line. Like something being done to him, rather than something that just is. It itches at the back of his neck, just under his skin.
Dean's stuck close since Broward County, and Sam appreciates it more than he'll ever say; he knows it's a crutch, but he can't help leaning on it. Dean knows Sam, knows what he needs before Sam knows it most of the time; gives it to him, whenever he can afford it. So, maybe there's a lot that could have pulled Dean out of the room before Sam woke up, but Sam can't think of much that would have kept him out -- not long enough to let Sam wake up alone in an empty motel room, anyway.
There's a Denny's across the street (hey, Sam, you know what La Quinta means in Spanish? Next to Denny's!) and a Shell station on the other side of the highway. Sam brushes his teeth and shaves and packs all their stuff, not thinking of the months when there was only his own stuff to pack, no; he crams Dean's dirty clothes into his bag with a little more force than necessary and thinks of the next thing to do, and the next. He gets the knife out from under Dean's pillow, sheathes it, and puts that in the bag, too.
And anyway, maybe he's wrong. Maybe Dean will come back, any second. Maybe he is out filling up the car, or picking up some crappy gas station coffee, or whatever. Something normal and stupid, and Sam can yell at him about it later, when they're on the road. Whatever it is, he can't leave. They've got a little too much in the way of guns, stakes, and holy water to risk leaving their stuff around for housekeeping to paw through.
Sam tosses both their bags on Dean's bed, props himself up against his own headboard, and turns on the TV to wait.
Half an hour later, Dean hasn't come back, Dean doesn't answer his phone, and Sam can't remember what he's watching. The knot of worry at the base of his skull is something else now, a fear he doesn't want to name.
He shoulders both their bags and opens the door, wanting to see Dean on the other side of it, a cardboard coffee carrier in one hand and a bag of donuts in the other. He doesn't; the doorway is empty.
He breaks the salt line on his way across it, and locks the door behind him.
Dean isn't at the Denny's across the street, and he isn't at the Shell station on the other side of the highway. He isn't passed out in or behind any of the bars nearby. He isn't in jail, and he isn't in either of the town's two hospitals or, God forbid, their morgues. He isn't anywhere. He's just gone.
By the time Sam has checked everywhere, the sun is sinking in the sky to the west and there's a vicious chill in the air. No one has seen Dean. No one recognizes his picture.
He stands in the parking lot, weighed down by the tools of their trade and all the accumulated road trash they can't part with. Dean's forty-six state key rings, Sam's Roadrunner Pez dispenser. Dean's copy of Interview with the Vampire, which he reads out loud to Sam when he's drunk. Sam's copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which Dean can never be allowed to know exists. Sam stands there, the weight of their lives balanced on his shoulders, shivering, and wants, very badly, to pray. It would do him good, he thinks. It used to. It might again.
But he's gone cold inside. The words don't come, and all the reaching out he has in him these days only ever reaches toward Dean.
Back in the room, he starts his research. He opens his laptop on the small table under the window and opens his notebook beside it, lays out a pen. This isn't a job stop, just a nowhere place on the way to somewhere else. Sam has to check the phone book to find out the name of the town.
Bexford, just off I-10 on the dry side of Texas, population 3,792. It wants, very badly, to be a suburb of El Paso. It isn't. It hasn't had any strange weather, no power interruptions, no livestock deaths. No unsolved murders since 1997, and if the local paper can be trusted, that guy was asking for it.
By midnight, Sam has found nothing. He closes the laptop, pulls out his phone, and dials Dean's number again. He lets it ring, and ring, and ring until Dean's voice kicks in and tells him to leave a message. He doesn't. When he lets the line go and the silence closes in again, it feels familiar.
He puts the laptop away, and his notebook, and his pen. He goes to bed. He makes sure his cell phone is on and charged, and sets it on the table by the bed. It's crooked, and knowing it's crooked eats at him in the silent dark until he turns the light on, and lines the phone up straight against the edge of the table.
The second morning that Sam wakes up alone in the motel room, he gets dressed and goes across the street to Denny's for breakfast. New day, new shift. While he's there, he questions his waiter, a bus boy, the manager, six customers, and the lady behind the cash register. After that, the manager asks him to leave. All in all, he spends two hours there, drinks five cups of coffee, and learns nothing.
He goes back to the Shell station and talks to the clerk inside. There's a security camera on either side of the door -- one pointing in, one pointing out -- but the wires aren't connected and the guy says they've been busted since before he started working there. Sam hangs around a while, thinking, expecting something, but nothing happens, nobody who knows anything comes.
Towards evening, he goes back to Denny's. New time, new shift. Same manager, though, and she gives him a go-to-hell look with a side of right now while he picks up his take-out order. He doesn't ask anybody anything; he can wait. He's just across the street, and she's got to go home sometime.
The next day, Sam searches the blank spaces out of sight from the highway, and finds the car.
The land between the Shell station and the motel is nothing but rocks and weeds, but some of the rocks are bigger than others. He wouldn't have seen it if the sun hadn't hit just right: a glint of reflection off glass or chrome or ink-black metal. The sight of it yanks him along, stumbling over dry clods and rock scatter, up and over the top of a small dusty rise. He skids down, choking on grit, momentum slamming him against the passenger door so hard the car rocks on its wheels. Dean's name is in his throat. He needs to see Dean, get his hands on him, shake him, make sure he's okay, and for a second Sam does see him, slanted grin and wide eyes, wrist hooked loose over the steering wheel, just waiting.
But the car is empty.
The driver's side door is open. A thick coat of dust dulls the paint job down to the color of primer. It's a wonder there's anything left bare enough to reflect, but there's a glint of light coming off the windshield; maybe that.
Sam crawls in, not trusting his eyes now, but there's nothing: Dean's keys in the ignition, Dean's cell phone on the dash. No Dean. He checks the back, checks the trunk, and nothing's missing, it doesn't look like anything's been touched. There's no blood, no damage, no sign of any struggle. If Dean left the car in this place, he left under his own power, of his own free will; left everything behind, and never came back.
Sam doesn't believe that.
He gets in the car. It takes a minute for his hands to stop shaking, even clenched tight around the steering wheel. Dean's place, and Dean should be in it, should be with Sam, and the lack of him is filled with a bubble of rising panic. Sam closes his eyes, tries to reach out, push out, call. But he's as empty inside as the land around him, and the doors in his head won't open to let anything through.
The ground is too hard to take a track, and the wind is too strong and constant for the dust to hold a print, but he'd know if Dean had been here; he would feel it. The cell phone on the dash is dead; he knows what it will tell him, but he'll charge it up back in the room anyway, to make sure. The car starts up easily and purrs under the hood, under Sam's hands. He looks at the gas gauge automatically, and his hands tighten on the wheel again.
There's only one station close by, and the gas tank is full.
The guy behind the counter at the Shell station is a different guy this time, but that doesn't matter. Sam walks up to the register, strung so tight he's shaking. He says "Christo," and watches muddy blue eyes go empty black. Holy water next, a hiss as its skin starts to burn and smoke. Then the salt. He lays a line down in front of him as the demon makes its rush and a crazy laugh rips out of him as it bounces back and falls on its ass on the floor. He drops another line of salt, curves it into a circle around him, and waits.
"Too little, too late, Sam," it says. It rises to its feet, more grace than any human ever had, and wipes foam and blood from the corner of its mouth with the back of its hand. "We've had him for days. Not much left to take home by now, but I can get you a plastic baggie and a spoon if you still want him."
Sam's smile opens on his face like a gash. "Come over here and say that."
The demon looks at the salt on the floor and laughs. "Clean-up on aisle five," it calls, and it raises a wind that rattles the windows and scatters the salt.
The second demon comes out of the back at a run. Sam plugs it, head and chest, and then the first one; then he takes them both down at the knees. The bullets barely slow them. More holy water, then, and while they're screaming and clawing at their skin, the wind dies and he lays the salt down again. He can feel Dean close by, just out of sight, and Sam's going to save him, set him free and bring him home. His blood roars like thunder beneath his skin.
"Exorcizamus te," he says, "omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii," and they writhe on the floor before him, their backs forming obscene arches, their throats stretched with screaming, smoke pouring off their bodies where the holy water sinks in and sears. "Omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica..."
His voice rises, and rises. Glass bottles in the cold cases shake and shatter against each other. The shelves lining the aisles jerk and slide hard against the walls, spilling bread and motor oil and junk food across the floor. The bleeding bodies, the corpses he made, shudder and seize and still. Black smoke, oily and repulsively alive, spreads their lips wide and boils out.
"Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis légio diabólica adjuramus te cessa..."
The smoke pools and pulses against the ceiling, thick and heaving and wrong. Sam keeps going. It stretches toward him, making sounds, a chorus of dark voices drenched in pain and twisted pleasure that sweeps over Sam like a dark wave. He keeps going. Their hunger warps the light, clots the air -- sinks into his lungs like poison. It makes him sickeningly hard, turns his stomach, drops him to his knees.
But it doesn't stop him. He closes his eyes against it, shuts out the noise. He breathes, safe within the salt. What's outside doesn't matter. What's inside doesn't matter. Dean does.
Sam gets one foot under himself, not quite steady. Then the other. He stands up. His breathing is ragged, but getting better. He opens his eyes, and looks into the black.
"Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire," he says, low and angry, and then there's another voice with him, lifting his up, making it strong.
Sam falters. His voice fades, attention shattered. He loses the thread of the prayer, loses the focus. His eyes cut away from the smoke, wide with shock.
"...Te rogamos, audi nos!" Dean finishes for him, leaning weakly against a stack of Pepsi cases just inside the door to the back room. "Which means 'fuck off and die' in Latin, you satanic bastards."
He flips them off on their way out, just as he starts to fall.
Sam catches him; of course, he catches him.
He's at Dean's side before he hits the floor. He shoves a shoulder under Dean's arm and lifts. When he's got him -- Christ, he's got him -- he holds Dean against his side and raises a hand to his face. His fingers are shaking; they still when they touch Dean's skin.
There's blood in Dean's hair, dried blood on his throat, and he's pale -- almost white. He's filthy. Three days of stink rise from his clothes, and his hair is matted and greasy under Sam's hand. There's three days worth of beard growth on his face, and his eyes are bloodshot, wild and fever-bright. Anger that runs as deep as anything Sam's ever felt takes hold of him, and he has to look away, follow the progress of his fingers along Dean's scalp. He turns Dean's head carefully, looking for the source of the blood, scared to meet Dean's eyes.
"Sam."
Dean's voice is strong enough; low, raspy, but okay. The best sound Sam's ever heard. He pulls Dean closer and lets his head rest, just for a moment, against the top of Dean's.
"You're okay," Sam says, as much an order to Dean as a reminder to himself. "Jesus, Dean."
Dean nods. He pushes back a little, and Sam lets him go. It's just far enough that when Dean looks at him, Sam can't avoid looking back.
"I'm okay." Dean puts his hand on the side of Sam's neck, squeezes; then he uses that grip to brace himself, get back on his feet. Sam keeps his hands on his brother, and doesn't let him fall.
"You look like shit."
Dean laughs. It turns into a cough part way through, but it's not bad. When he gets his breath back, he says, "Yeah? Well, you should see the other guys."
That's when Sam realizes they're not alone.
His arm closes again around Dean's waist. He yanks Dean in and hauls him back into the broken, useless circle of salt. He takes aim at the woman and his finger tenses on the trigger just as Dean says, "Jesus, Sam -- no!"
The bullet goes into the floor. The woman stumbles back, eyes fixed on the gun -- on Dean's hand on Sam's hand on the gun. Sam could raise it again, but Dean keeps pushing it down. Sam wants to raise it. He could raise it again, if he wanted to. But -- Dean keeps trying to push it down.
"Christo," Sam says. His voice is hard and twisted; he barely recognizes it as his own.
"She's okay, Sam. I got her clean when the others left her to guard me. They all kept out of earshot till you showed up. Come on, man. She let me out of the back room when she could've just run off."
Sam doesn't move.
"Hey." Dean nudges against Sam's side. "Me and her, that's two votes for you not shooting anybody right now. You're outnumbered. So, why don't you put the big scary gun away before you give the nice lady a seizure or something, all right?"
Sam doesn't put the gun away. She's right there, in his sights, and more than he wants his next breath, he wants to kill something, somebody, for what's happened to Dean in this dirty, bloody place.
"Sam," Dean says quietly, and the grip on Sam's gun hand becomes something different. Gentler. Easier.
Sam nods, tries to relax. He makes himself stand down, and tucks the gun into his waistband at the small of his back. He nods at the woman, once -- breath still coming too fast, adrenaline rocketing through him like a drug. He turns his head toward Dean's shoulder, presses down into it for just a second.
"How bad?"
"Hale and hearty," Dean says. "I got knocked out, maybe concussed. I don't know. Don't think anything's broken. And if there's anything wrong with my insides, well." He grins, sharp and bright. "I imagine we'd know by now."
"Okay." Sam lets out a long, slow breath. "How many?"
"Three," Dean says, nodding his head toward the woman. Then he looks down at the floor, eyes wide and impressed. "But apparently, the first two don't count."
There's nowhere to let Dean rest inside the store, and nobody really wants to hang around the bodies anyway. Sam half-carries, half-drags Dean out to the car and pushes him gently into the back seat. He tries to get Dean to lie down, but he won't go; just slumps and tips his head back, one foot wedged under the passenger seat and one stretched out straight to the ground.
Sam checks him over, flinching at some of the bruises. His stomach turns over at the goose egg near the back of Dean's head and the rusty spill of dried blood that spreads down from it. Under his jacket, Dean's shirt is soaked in it, the color almost unrecognizable. Sam's jaw clenches till his teeth ache and he has to look away.
Across the concrete, the woman's just coming out of the store. She's got a heavy, full plastic bag in either hand. She closes in on them cautiously, never taking her eyes off Sam; he feels a little bad about that. He looks away, trying not to scare her.
She crouches down by the door, opening up one of the bags. She's got bottles of water, a roll of paper towels, peroxide, gauze, and tape. She hands a Dasani bottle up to Dean, and more carefully, the peroxide and the towels to Sam.
"Thanks," he says, keeping his voice low and soft.
Dean tips the bottle back and drinks half of it at once, throat working, water dripping down his chin. Sam wonders how long it's been since he had anything to drink. Or eat, for that matter. He's scared to ask.
"Molly," Dean says, "this is my brother, Sam. Sam, this is Molly. She picked a real bad place to get a flat tire, and ended up spending the past few days as a demon suit."
Sam doesn't know what to say to that. Usually, the hosts that live don't stick around for small talk. Nice to meet you doesn't seem appropriate, and isn't really true.
"Sorry about that," he says instead. "And, uh. About almost shooting you, before."
Molly shrugs, looking up at him, and for the first time, Sam notices that she's kind of pretty. Smooth dark skin, tight black curls to her shoulders, wide eyes with slight smile lines at the corners. She's wearing a thin gold cross that didn't do her any good at all back at the mini-mart, and a blue t-shirt that says Green Christians inside a green triangle across her chest. She's got rings on her fingers that look expensive -- she probably lives pretty well, back in her normal life. Not here. Here, she's the kind of clean that almost looks worse than dirty, the kind that comes out of a sink instead of a shower. Sam's seen it on Dean often enough, and on himself.
She shakes her head, like she's not quite sure she believes anything that's happening to her. "I would have shot me. The things I said, and did... I expected Dean to shoot me. I wouldn't have blamed him."
"Dean wouldn't have --"
"Like hell I wouldn't," Dean says firmly, staring Sam down. "Dude, I am a total badass. If I hadn't run out of bullets early on, she'd have more holes than a wiffle ball." He gives up the glare to turn and grin at Molly. "No offense."
Her mouth quirks up on one side. "None taken."
"She wouldn't stick around long enough to get exorcised till you pulled the other one off," he tells Sam confidentially.
Then he passes out.
Molly helps him lay Dean out on the back seat, and stays back there while Sam drives back to the motel. She's a little less wigged out by the time they get there, and together they get Dean up and into the room. She's tall, and takes enough of Dean's weight to be useful, even though it's clearly a strain.
When they've got Dean arranged on the bed, she goes back out to the car for supplies. While she lays out rolls of gauze and tape, Sam closes the door and lays a salt line across the threshold, then the window sill.
"What he said back there," she says. "About the ... demon?"
"It's real."
"I know. It's just." She laughs, and waves her hands awkwardly at nothing. "I just don't believe it."
"It takes some getting used to," he says. He fishes around in Dean's bag, and pulls out a small pouch, and from that draws a thin leather strap with a silver charm on it. He dangles it from his finger, far away from his body so she doesn't have to get too close. "Here. Put this on, and that thing you don't believe in won't happen again."
She takes it and slips it around her neck with no hesitation. It settles next to the cross, just below the hollow of her throat. Sam wonders which one she'll take off first when she goes to bed tonight, then decides it's none of his business, and not his place to judge. Whichever she keeps on, he hopes it keeps her safe.
He moves to the other side of the bed and strips off Dean's jacket and t-shirt, then soaks a wad of paper towels and wipes some of the blood from Dean's throat. Dean's pulse beats under his fingers, even and sure, and Sam's smoothes out with it. The cuts and bruises on Dean's arms, across his ribs, seem minor; most are already closed and healing. Nothing seems broken.
His hands move over Dean slowly, checking, confirming. Trying to convince himself Dean's here, and real, and all right. Molly sits down on the other bed and puts her elbows on her knees, watching him. He cleans and bandages the worst of the cuts and wipes the rest out gently with peroxide.
"That bump on his head," Molly says when Sam gets to it. "I remember doing that. I did that."
Sam looks up, looks her in the eye. "No, you didn't."
"But I remember it."
"Doesn't matter. You weren't in the driver's seat. Anyway, he's okay. He's just sleeping, now."
"I said awful things to him." Molly bites her lip, and looks away. "About you, I think. I didn't understand all of it, but it was -- it was ugly." Her voice catches on the last word. "It was vicious."
Sam squares off the last bandage with a line of tape, just over the top of Dean's forearm. "Demons lie."
She nods. She doesn't seem inclined to get specific about what the demon said, and Sam's just as glad not to hear it. He looks at Dean, still and pale on the bed, the tattoo on his chest so black the ink looks wet. Then he looks at her.
"It came for us, not you," he says. "I'm sorry you got caught up in the crossfire, but you should be safe from now on. If there's someone you need to call, or somewhere you need to go..."
"I need to go home."
Sam nods quickly, trying not to look too happy about it. "You can use my phone."
An hour later, her ride's outside with the engine running. Sam doesn't know what she told the guy, and doesn't really care. She says she hates to leave without thanking Dean but it doesn't slow her down any, and Sam can't say he blames her.
But Dean wakes up, just as Molly's on her way out the door. He insists on standing up to say goodbye. She's got tears in her eyes when she shakes his hand, and she pulls back faster than she has to. Sam winces a little at the shadow that puts in Dean's eyes.
"I'm sorry," she says, but Dean's already shaking his head.
"Wasn't your fault, not any of it. Anyway, I wouldn't have made it out of there if it wasn't for you."
"I'm the one who put you there to start with."
Dean tilts his head and looks over at Sam. "Did I stutter?" he says, and Sam grins and looks away.
"I'm trying to say thank you, you jerk." Molly shakes her head, and moves; Sam looks back in time to see her hug Dean, in time to see Dean's face light up. He gives Sam a thumbs up behind her back, beaming like a little kid; it mends something in Sam to see it -- or makes a start, at least. Sam rolls his eyes and laughs.
When she lets go of Dean, she amazes Sam completely by hugging him next. "Thanks for the charm," she says after, touching the thin strip around her neck. She turns back to Dean, smiling. "And, uh. Thanks for the exorcism?"
Dean laughs. "Yeah, any time," he calls as she walks to her friend's car. Then, quiet, so only Sam can hear: "As long as it's never."
She's barely out of sight when Dean's knees unlock and drop him. He grabs at Sam's shoulder and sways, and Sam has enough time to get an arm around his waist before he falls. He gets Dean back to the bed and helps him sit, tries to make him lie down, but Dean waves him off.
"I feel like the sixth day of a five-day drunk."
Sam shakes his head and pulls a chair up in front of Dean. He tilts his brother's head back to get a better look at his eyes, and it tells him how tired and sore Dean is when he doesn't fight it. It doesn't look like there's anything badly wrong; his pupils react to the overhead light, and seem to track okay. He moves his hands down to Dean's neck, presses gently on either side; Dean doesn't flinch, but he hisses a little when Sam hits a knot of tension. Without asking permission, Sam digs his fingers in a little, and Dean tips his head back with a groan.
"Dean... what the hell happened?"
"I got stupid is what happened. I went in there to pay for some gas, practically naked. Molly comes up to me, says she has a flat tire, wants to borrow my cell to call her boyfriend -- and I handed the damn thing right over. Next thing I know, I'm getting bounced around a freakin' mini-mart like ping pong ball."
"But...you're okay." Sam's hands slide down to Dean's shoulders, squeezing. Dean's skin is warm under his hands, alive and warm. "You're okay."
"They were pretty stupid, too. Any demon worth its salt ought to know better than to throw a Winchester down the condiment aisle, right?"
Sam's eyes widen. "So, I'm supposed to believe you--"
"Held off a pack of demons for days with a nine mil and a box of Morton's?" Dean grins at Sam, and tired as he is, his eyes have a shine of laughter in them. "What can I say? Even caught off guard, I'm pretty awesome." He sighs, and lets himself fall back onto the bed. "You know what I miss? Ghosts."
Stretched out like that, his arms over his head, knees hooked over the edge of the bed, Dean looks more relaxed and open than he has in a long, long time. It's just the exhaustion, and Sam knows it, but he still can't help smiling. "A ghost would knock you on your ass right now."
"Hey. I don't need to get off my ass to take down a measly little ghost, dude."
Sam laughs. "You should sleep." He fishes ibuprofen out of one of the bags Molly left and gets a glass of water from the bathroom. By the time he gets back, Dean's got his shoes off and his head at least pointed toward the pillow. Sam helps him drag himself up a little more and gets him under the covers. Dean doesn't even make a show of fending Sam off. He takes the ibuprofen without comment, and settles back onto the bed.
Sam clicks off the lamp. It's a little over three hours since he walked into the quickie mart at the Shell station. The sun has started to sink behind the horizon and the light that filters through the curtain is weak and red. It plays over the lines of Dean's face, the curve of his shoulder, as Sam watches him. It lights up his eyes when he opens them, and finds Sam staring.
"Hey," Dean says. "You should sleep, too," His voice is soft -- too soft, Sam thinks, and he's not even surprised. Not really. Dean knows him.
Sam shakes his head. He looks down at his hands, clenched and white-knuckled, and forces them to relax. "Not yet."
It takes a while for Dean to fall asleep. Sam watches him. A minute passes, with Dean's breath slowing down, evening out, and then he jerks awake. His eyes snap open, and Sam can tell Dean doesn't know where he is for just a second as he reaches for a gun or a knife that isn't there. When his eyes focus, when he can see Sam, everything in him goes slack.
The first few times it happens, Dean says Sam's name before the room takes shape around him -- a sharp, scared sound that should never come out of Dean's throat. The first few times, Sam leans forward, says, "Hey, I'm here." It seems to help. The time between those panicked breaks gets longer, and the worried edge in Dean's voice gets softer. The last time -- the time before he sinks into real, honest sleep -- his eyes open slow, and only about half-way. They focus on Sam right away, and Dean smiles. Sam says, "Hey," and Dean says something Sam can't quite make out, and then he's under.
That's when Sam's hands start to shake.
He squeezes the arms of the chair, but it doesn't help. He makes fists, but he can still feel the tremble in his arms. He hunches over and presses his fists against his temples, opens his hands and winds his fingers in his hair and pulls. Dull pain throbs in his scalp until he lets go, and his hands are still shaking.
He paces. From the bed to the door and back again, and every time he turns away from Dean it scares him, and every time he reaches the door and turns back, it's a gift. Dean curled in on himself on the bed, one arm under his pillow, one stretched down along his side on top of the covers -- it's a gift, and Sam knows he owes somebody. The only thing he doesn't know is who.
When he stops, so close his legs press against the mattress, he just looks. Sam would like to think God's looking out for them, that there's some kind of plan and he and Dean are playing their part in it, but he doesn't. Not anymore. It's okay, though; Sam's gotten past needing to believe. Dean's back, alive and well. That's enough. Whatever else happens, if Sam can have that, it's enough.
He sighs, and rubs at his eyes. His hands are okay now; not as steady as they will be later, but not bad. He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a measured sigh, lets some of the tension go with it. The spare pillow on Dean's bed looks soft, the garish covers look warm, and Dean will be there in the morning.
Sam lays his phone beside his wallet and his gun on the bedside table, each a perfect inch from the other, each a perfect inch from the edge. He lays down beside Dean on the empty side of the bed, a perfect inch away, close enough to hear his brother's breathing and feel his warmth. Close enough to sleep.
Dean will still be there in the morning. Sam will make sure of that.
.end
~
feedback is a happy thing and always welcomed!
It is:
Kind of a Mystery Spot tag. Sort of. Mostly it's a story about how Sam loves Dean a scary lot, and also about how you really don't want to cross him. In fact while I was searching for a title, luzdeestrellas actually suggested "Sam Loves Dean A Scary Lot (and is also crazy)" -- which, while a bit on the nose, would not have been terribly inappropriate.
Many many thanks to terrio and luzdeestrellas for beta reading and cheerleading. All courtesies to William Butler Yeats for the ever so slightly pretentious title :).
~
Somewhere in the sands of the desert | by Merry
Dean is missing. Sam gets a little lost looking for him.
Sam & Dean, G.
5,760 words
Also available at AO3
somewhere in the sands of the desert | by Merry
Sam wakes up alone in the room. He can tell he's alone before he opens his eyes. He doesn't hear Dean's even breathing across the narrow space between their beds, and he doesn't hear the TV, and he doesn't hear the shower. The room is empty-quiet, bright with sunlight streaming in through the window over the air conditioner.
He rolls out of bed, checks the salt lines, checks the night stand for a note, checks the table, the bathroom mirror: nothing. He checks his phone: no messages, no missed calls. Dean's clothes are still scattered on the floor between the bathroom and the bed, his bag still spilling out underwear and hardware on the floor by the dresser. Sam hits Dean's number on speed dial and waits: no answer, straight to voicemail.
The car is gone.
Dean's gone for coffee before, gone out for a paper, gone out to flirt with the pretty waitress at the waffle house next door. But Sam can't get the quiet out of his head this time. It feels purposeful, imposed -- like the silence at the other end of an open phone line. Like something being done to him, rather than something that just is. It itches at the back of his neck, just under his skin.
Dean's stuck close since Broward County, and Sam appreciates it more than he'll ever say; he knows it's a crutch, but he can't help leaning on it. Dean knows Sam, knows what he needs before Sam knows it most of the time; gives it to him, whenever he can afford it. So, maybe there's a lot that could have pulled Dean out of the room before Sam woke up, but Sam can't think of much that would have kept him out -- not long enough to let Sam wake up alone in an empty motel room, anyway.
There's a Denny's across the street (hey, Sam, you know what La Quinta means in Spanish? Next to Denny's!) and a Shell station on the other side of the highway. Sam brushes his teeth and shaves and packs all their stuff, not thinking of the months when there was only his own stuff to pack, no; he crams Dean's dirty clothes into his bag with a little more force than necessary and thinks of the next thing to do, and the next. He gets the knife out from under Dean's pillow, sheathes it, and puts that in the bag, too.
And anyway, maybe he's wrong. Maybe Dean will come back, any second. Maybe he is out filling up the car, or picking up some crappy gas station coffee, or whatever. Something normal and stupid, and Sam can yell at him about it later, when they're on the road. Whatever it is, he can't leave. They've got a little too much in the way of guns, stakes, and holy water to risk leaving their stuff around for housekeeping to paw through.
Sam tosses both their bags on Dean's bed, props himself up against his own headboard, and turns on the TV to wait.
Half an hour later, Dean hasn't come back, Dean doesn't answer his phone, and Sam can't remember what he's watching. The knot of worry at the base of his skull is something else now, a fear he doesn't want to name.
He shoulders both their bags and opens the door, wanting to see Dean on the other side of it, a cardboard coffee carrier in one hand and a bag of donuts in the other. He doesn't; the doorway is empty.
He breaks the salt line on his way across it, and locks the door behind him.
Dean isn't at the Denny's across the street, and he isn't at the Shell station on the other side of the highway. He isn't passed out in or behind any of the bars nearby. He isn't in jail, and he isn't in either of the town's two hospitals or, God forbid, their morgues. He isn't anywhere. He's just gone.
By the time Sam has checked everywhere, the sun is sinking in the sky to the west and there's a vicious chill in the air. No one has seen Dean. No one recognizes his picture.
He stands in the parking lot, weighed down by the tools of their trade and all the accumulated road trash they can't part with. Dean's forty-six state key rings, Sam's Roadrunner Pez dispenser. Dean's copy of Interview with the Vampire, which he reads out loud to Sam when he's drunk. Sam's copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which Dean can never be allowed to know exists. Sam stands there, the weight of their lives balanced on his shoulders, shivering, and wants, very badly, to pray. It would do him good, he thinks. It used to. It might again.
But he's gone cold inside. The words don't come, and all the reaching out he has in him these days only ever reaches toward Dean.
Back in the room, he starts his research. He opens his laptop on the small table under the window and opens his notebook beside it, lays out a pen. This isn't a job stop, just a nowhere place on the way to somewhere else. Sam has to check the phone book to find out the name of the town.
Bexford, just off I-10 on the dry side of Texas, population 3,792. It wants, very badly, to be a suburb of El Paso. It isn't. It hasn't had any strange weather, no power interruptions, no livestock deaths. No unsolved murders since 1997, and if the local paper can be trusted, that guy was asking for it.
By midnight, Sam has found nothing. He closes the laptop, pulls out his phone, and dials Dean's number again. He lets it ring, and ring, and ring until Dean's voice kicks in and tells him to leave a message. He doesn't. When he lets the line go and the silence closes in again, it feels familiar.
He puts the laptop away, and his notebook, and his pen. He goes to bed. He makes sure his cell phone is on and charged, and sets it on the table by the bed. It's crooked, and knowing it's crooked eats at him in the silent dark until he turns the light on, and lines the phone up straight against the edge of the table.
The second morning that Sam wakes up alone in the motel room, he gets dressed and goes across the street to Denny's for breakfast. New day, new shift. While he's there, he questions his waiter, a bus boy, the manager, six customers, and the lady behind the cash register. After that, the manager asks him to leave. All in all, he spends two hours there, drinks five cups of coffee, and learns nothing.
He goes back to the Shell station and talks to the clerk inside. There's a security camera on either side of the door -- one pointing in, one pointing out -- but the wires aren't connected and the guy says they've been busted since before he started working there. Sam hangs around a while, thinking, expecting something, but nothing happens, nobody who knows anything comes.
Towards evening, he goes back to Denny's. New time, new shift. Same manager, though, and she gives him a go-to-hell look with a side of right now while he picks up his take-out order. He doesn't ask anybody anything; he can wait. He's just across the street, and she's got to go home sometime.
The next day, Sam searches the blank spaces out of sight from the highway, and finds the car.
The land between the Shell station and the motel is nothing but rocks and weeds, but some of the rocks are bigger than others. He wouldn't have seen it if the sun hadn't hit just right: a glint of reflection off glass or chrome or ink-black metal. The sight of it yanks him along, stumbling over dry clods and rock scatter, up and over the top of a small dusty rise. He skids down, choking on grit, momentum slamming him against the passenger door so hard the car rocks on its wheels. Dean's name is in his throat. He needs to see Dean, get his hands on him, shake him, make sure he's okay, and for a second Sam does see him, slanted grin and wide eyes, wrist hooked loose over the steering wheel, just waiting.
But the car is empty.
The driver's side door is open. A thick coat of dust dulls the paint job down to the color of primer. It's a wonder there's anything left bare enough to reflect, but there's a glint of light coming off the windshield; maybe that.
Sam crawls in, not trusting his eyes now, but there's nothing: Dean's keys in the ignition, Dean's cell phone on the dash. No Dean. He checks the back, checks the trunk, and nothing's missing, it doesn't look like anything's been touched. There's no blood, no damage, no sign of any struggle. If Dean left the car in this place, he left under his own power, of his own free will; left everything behind, and never came back.
Sam doesn't believe that.
He gets in the car. It takes a minute for his hands to stop shaking, even clenched tight around the steering wheel. Dean's place, and Dean should be in it, should be with Sam, and the lack of him is filled with a bubble of rising panic. Sam closes his eyes, tries to reach out, push out, call. But he's as empty inside as the land around him, and the doors in his head won't open to let anything through.
The ground is too hard to take a track, and the wind is too strong and constant for the dust to hold a print, but he'd know if Dean had been here; he would feel it. The cell phone on the dash is dead; he knows what it will tell him, but he'll charge it up back in the room anyway, to make sure. The car starts up easily and purrs under the hood, under Sam's hands. He looks at the gas gauge automatically, and his hands tighten on the wheel again.
There's only one station close by, and the gas tank is full.
The guy behind the counter at the Shell station is a different guy this time, but that doesn't matter. Sam walks up to the register, strung so tight he's shaking. He says "Christo," and watches muddy blue eyes go empty black. Holy water next, a hiss as its skin starts to burn and smoke. Then the salt. He lays a line down in front of him as the demon makes its rush and a crazy laugh rips out of him as it bounces back and falls on its ass on the floor. He drops another line of salt, curves it into a circle around him, and waits.
"Too little, too late, Sam," it says. It rises to its feet, more grace than any human ever had, and wipes foam and blood from the corner of its mouth with the back of its hand. "We've had him for days. Not much left to take home by now, but I can get you a plastic baggie and a spoon if you still want him."
Sam's smile opens on his face like a gash. "Come over here and say that."
The demon looks at the salt on the floor and laughs. "Clean-up on aisle five," it calls, and it raises a wind that rattles the windows and scatters the salt.
The second demon comes out of the back at a run. Sam plugs it, head and chest, and then the first one; then he takes them both down at the knees. The bullets barely slow them. More holy water, then, and while they're screaming and clawing at their skin, the wind dies and he lays the salt down again. He can feel Dean close by, just out of sight, and Sam's going to save him, set him free and bring him home. His blood roars like thunder beneath his skin.
"Exorcizamus te," he says, "omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii," and they writhe on the floor before him, their backs forming obscene arches, their throats stretched with screaming, smoke pouring off their bodies where the holy water sinks in and sears. "Omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica..."
His voice rises, and rises. Glass bottles in the cold cases shake and shatter against each other. The shelves lining the aisles jerk and slide hard against the walls, spilling bread and motor oil and junk food across the floor. The bleeding bodies, the corpses he made, shudder and seize and still. Black smoke, oily and repulsively alive, spreads their lips wide and boils out.
"Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis légio diabólica adjuramus te cessa..."
The smoke pools and pulses against the ceiling, thick and heaving and wrong. Sam keeps going. It stretches toward him, making sounds, a chorus of dark voices drenched in pain and twisted pleasure that sweeps over Sam like a dark wave. He keeps going. Their hunger warps the light, clots the air -- sinks into his lungs like poison. It makes him sickeningly hard, turns his stomach, drops him to his knees.
But it doesn't stop him. He closes his eyes against it, shuts out the noise. He breathes, safe within the salt. What's outside doesn't matter. What's inside doesn't matter. Dean does.
Sam gets one foot under himself, not quite steady. Then the other. He stands up. His breathing is ragged, but getting better. He opens his eyes, and looks into the black.
"Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire," he says, low and angry, and then there's another voice with him, lifting his up, making it strong.
Sam falters. His voice fades, attention shattered. He loses the thread of the prayer, loses the focus. His eyes cut away from the smoke, wide with shock.
"...Te rogamos, audi nos!" Dean finishes for him, leaning weakly against a stack of Pepsi cases just inside the door to the back room. "Which means 'fuck off and die' in Latin, you satanic bastards."
He flips them off on their way out, just as he starts to fall.
Sam catches him; of course, he catches him.
He's at Dean's side before he hits the floor. He shoves a shoulder under Dean's arm and lifts. When he's got him -- Christ, he's got him -- he holds Dean against his side and raises a hand to his face. His fingers are shaking; they still when they touch Dean's skin.
There's blood in Dean's hair, dried blood on his throat, and he's pale -- almost white. He's filthy. Three days of stink rise from his clothes, and his hair is matted and greasy under Sam's hand. There's three days worth of beard growth on his face, and his eyes are bloodshot, wild and fever-bright. Anger that runs as deep as anything Sam's ever felt takes hold of him, and he has to look away, follow the progress of his fingers along Dean's scalp. He turns Dean's head carefully, looking for the source of the blood, scared to meet Dean's eyes.
"Sam."
Dean's voice is strong enough; low, raspy, but okay. The best sound Sam's ever heard. He pulls Dean closer and lets his head rest, just for a moment, against the top of Dean's.
"You're okay," Sam says, as much an order to Dean as a reminder to himself. "Jesus, Dean."
Dean nods. He pushes back a little, and Sam lets him go. It's just far enough that when Dean looks at him, Sam can't avoid looking back.
"I'm okay." Dean puts his hand on the side of Sam's neck, squeezes; then he uses that grip to brace himself, get back on his feet. Sam keeps his hands on his brother, and doesn't let him fall.
"You look like shit."
Dean laughs. It turns into a cough part way through, but it's not bad. When he gets his breath back, he says, "Yeah? Well, you should see the other guys."
That's when Sam realizes they're not alone.
His arm closes again around Dean's waist. He yanks Dean in and hauls him back into the broken, useless circle of salt. He takes aim at the woman and his finger tenses on the trigger just as Dean says, "Jesus, Sam -- no!"
The bullet goes into the floor. The woman stumbles back, eyes fixed on the gun -- on Dean's hand on Sam's hand on the gun. Sam could raise it again, but Dean keeps pushing it down. Sam wants to raise it. He could raise it again, if he wanted to. But -- Dean keeps trying to push it down.
"Christo," Sam says. His voice is hard and twisted; he barely recognizes it as his own.
"She's okay, Sam. I got her clean when the others left her to guard me. They all kept out of earshot till you showed up. Come on, man. She let me out of the back room when she could've just run off."
Sam doesn't move.
"Hey." Dean nudges against Sam's side. "Me and her, that's two votes for you not shooting anybody right now. You're outnumbered. So, why don't you put the big scary gun away before you give the nice lady a seizure or something, all right?"
Sam doesn't put the gun away. She's right there, in his sights, and more than he wants his next breath, he wants to kill something, somebody, for what's happened to Dean in this dirty, bloody place.
"Sam," Dean says quietly, and the grip on Sam's gun hand becomes something different. Gentler. Easier.
Sam nods, tries to relax. He makes himself stand down, and tucks the gun into his waistband at the small of his back. He nods at the woman, once -- breath still coming too fast, adrenaline rocketing through him like a drug. He turns his head toward Dean's shoulder, presses down into it for just a second.
"How bad?"
"Hale and hearty," Dean says. "I got knocked out, maybe concussed. I don't know. Don't think anything's broken. And if there's anything wrong with my insides, well." He grins, sharp and bright. "I imagine we'd know by now."
"Okay." Sam lets out a long, slow breath. "How many?"
"Three," Dean says, nodding his head toward the woman. Then he looks down at the floor, eyes wide and impressed. "But apparently, the first two don't count."
There's nowhere to let Dean rest inside the store, and nobody really wants to hang around the bodies anyway. Sam half-carries, half-drags Dean out to the car and pushes him gently into the back seat. He tries to get Dean to lie down, but he won't go; just slumps and tips his head back, one foot wedged under the passenger seat and one stretched out straight to the ground.
Sam checks him over, flinching at some of the bruises. His stomach turns over at the goose egg near the back of Dean's head and the rusty spill of dried blood that spreads down from it. Under his jacket, Dean's shirt is soaked in it, the color almost unrecognizable. Sam's jaw clenches till his teeth ache and he has to look away.
Across the concrete, the woman's just coming out of the store. She's got a heavy, full plastic bag in either hand. She closes in on them cautiously, never taking her eyes off Sam; he feels a little bad about that. He looks away, trying not to scare her.
She crouches down by the door, opening up one of the bags. She's got bottles of water, a roll of paper towels, peroxide, gauze, and tape. She hands a Dasani bottle up to Dean, and more carefully, the peroxide and the towels to Sam.
"Thanks," he says, keeping his voice low and soft.
Dean tips the bottle back and drinks half of it at once, throat working, water dripping down his chin. Sam wonders how long it's been since he had anything to drink. Or eat, for that matter. He's scared to ask.
"Molly," Dean says, "this is my brother, Sam. Sam, this is Molly. She picked a real bad place to get a flat tire, and ended up spending the past few days as a demon suit."
Sam doesn't know what to say to that. Usually, the hosts that live don't stick around for small talk. Nice to meet you doesn't seem appropriate, and isn't really true.
"Sorry about that," he says instead. "And, uh. About almost shooting you, before."
Molly shrugs, looking up at him, and for the first time, Sam notices that she's kind of pretty. Smooth dark skin, tight black curls to her shoulders, wide eyes with slight smile lines at the corners. She's wearing a thin gold cross that didn't do her any good at all back at the mini-mart, and a blue t-shirt that says Green Christians inside a green triangle across her chest. She's got rings on her fingers that look expensive -- she probably lives pretty well, back in her normal life. Not here. Here, she's the kind of clean that almost looks worse than dirty, the kind that comes out of a sink instead of a shower. Sam's seen it on Dean often enough, and on himself.
She shakes her head, like she's not quite sure she believes anything that's happening to her. "I would have shot me. The things I said, and did... I expected Dean to shoot me. I wouldn't have blamed him."
"Dean wouldn't have --"
"Like hell I wouldn't," Dean says firmly, staring Sam down. "Dude, I am a total badass. If I hadn't run out of bullets early on, she'd have more holes than a wiffle ball." He gives up the glare to turn and grin at Molly. "No offense."
Her mouth quirks up on one side. "None taken."
"She wouldn't stick around long enough to get exorcised till you pulled the other one off," he tells Sam confidentially.
Then he passes out.
Molly helps him lay Dean out on the back seat, and stays back there while Sam drives back to the motel. She's a little less wigged out by the time they get there, and together they get Dean up and into the room. She's tall, and takes enough of Dean's weight to be useful, even though it's clearly a strain.
When they've got Dean arranged on the bed, she goes back out to the car for supplies. While she lays out rolls of gauze and tape, Sam closes the door and lays a salt line across the threshold, then the window sill.
"What he said back there," she says. "About the ... demon?"
"It's real."
"I know. It's just." She laughs, and waves her hands awkwardly at nothing. "I just don't believe it."
"It takes some getting used to," he says. He fishes around in Dean's bag, and pulls out a small pouch, and from that draws a thin leather strap with a silver charm on it. He dangles it from his finger, far away from his body so she doesn't have to get too close. "Here. Put this on, and that thing you don't believe in won't happen again."
She takes it and slips it around her neck with no hesitation. It settles next to the cross, just below the hollow of her throat. Sam wonders which one she'll take off first when she goes to bed tonight, then decides it's none of his business, and not his place to judge. Whichever she keeps on, he hopes it keeps her safe.
He moves to the other side of the bed and strips off Dean's jacket and t-shirt, then soaks a wad of paper towels and wipes some of the blood from Dean's throat. Dean's pulse beats under his fingers, even and sure, and Sam's smoothes out with it. The cuts and bruises on Dean's arms, across his ribs, seem minor; most are already closed and healing. Nothing seems broken.
His hands move over Dean slowly, checking, confirming. Trying to convince himself Dean's here, and real, and all right. Molly sits down on the other bed and puts her elbows on her knees, watching him. He cleans and bandages the worst of the cuts and wipes the rest out gently with peroxide.
"That bump on his head," Molly says when Sam gets to it. "I remember doing that. I did that."
Sam looks up, looks her in the eye. "No, you didn't."
"But I remember it."
"Doesn't matter. You weren't in the driver's seat. Anyway, he's okay. He's just sleeping, now."
"I said awful things to him." Molly bites her lip, and looks away. "About you, I think. I didn't understand all of it, but it was -- it was ugly." Her voice catches on the last word. "It was vicious."
Sam squares off the last bandage with a line of tape, just over the top of Dean's forearm. "Demons lie."
She nods. She doesn't seem inclined to get specific about what the demon said, and Sam's just as glad not to hear it. He looks at Dean, still and pale on the bed, the tattoo on his chest so black the ink looks wet. Then he looks at her.
"It came for us, not you," he says. "I'm sorry you got caught up in the crossfire, but you should be safe from now on. If there's someone you need to call, or somewhere you need to go..."
"I need to go home."
Sam nods quickly, trying not to look too happy about it. "You can use my phone."
An hour later, her ride's outside with the engine running. Sam doesn't know what she told the guy, and doesn't really care. She says she hates to leave without thanking Dean but it doesn't slow her down any, and Sam can't say he blames her.
But Dean wakes up, just as Molly's on her way out the door. He insists on standing up to say goodbye. She's got tears in her eyes when she shakes his hand, and she pulls back faster than she has to. Sam winces a little at the shadow that puts in Dean's eyes.
"I'm sorry," she says, but Dean's already shaking his head.
"Wasn't your fault, not any of it. Anyway, I wouldn't have made it out of there if it wasn't for you."
"I'm the one who put you there to start with."
Dean tilts his head and looks over at Sam. "Did I stutter?" he says, and Sam grins and looks away.
"I'm trying to say thank you, you jerk." Molly shakes her head, and moves; Sam looks back in time to see her hug Dean, in time to see Dean's face light up. He gives Sam a thumbs up behind her back, beaming like a little kid; it mends something in Sam to see it -- or makes a start, at least. Sam rolls his eyes and laughs.
When she lets go of Dean, she amazes Sam completely by hugging him next. "Thanks for the charm," she says after, touching the thin strip around her neck. She turns back to Dean, smiling. "And, uh. Thanks for the exorcism?"
Dean laughs. "Yeah, any time," he calls as she walks to her friend's car. Then, quiet, so only Sam can hear: "As long as it's never."
She's barely out of sight when Dean's knees unlock and drop him. He grabs at Sam's shoulder and sways, and Sam has enough time to get an arm around his waist before he falls. He gets Dean back to the bed and helps him sit, tries to make him lie down, but Dean waves him off.
"I feel like the sixth day of a five-day drunk."
Sam shakes his head and pulls a chair up in front of Dean. He tilts his brother's head back to get a better look at his eyes, and it tells him how tired and sore Dean is when he doesn't fight it. It doesn't look like there's anything badly wrong; his pupils react to the overhead light, and seem to track okay. He moves his hands down to Dean's neck, presses gently on either side; Dean doesn't flinch, but he hisses a little when Sam hits a knot of tension. Without asking permission, Sam digs his fingers in a little, and Dean tips his head back with a groan.
"Dean... what the hell happened?"
"I got stupid is what happened. I went in there to pay for some gas, practically naked. Molly comes up to me, says she has a flat tire, wants to borrow my cell to call her boyfriend -- and I handed the damn thing right over. Next thing I know, I'm getting bounced around a freakin' mini-mart like ping pong ball."
"But...you're okay." Sam's hands slide down to Dean's shoulders, squeezing. Dean's skin is warm under his hands, alive and warm. "You're okay."
"They were pretty stupid, too. Any demon worth its salt ought to know better than to throw a Winchester down the condiment aisle, right?"
Sam's eyes widen. "So, I'm supposed to believe you--"
"Held off a pack of demons for days with a nine mil and a box of Morton's?" Dean grins at Sam, and tired as he is, his eyes have a shine of laughter in them. "What can I say? Even caught off guard, I'm pretty awesome." He sighs, and lets himself fall back onto the bed. "You know what I miss? Ghosts."
Stretched out like that, his arms over his head, knees hooked over the edge of the bed, Dean looks more relaxed and open than he has in a long, long time. It's just the exhaustion, and Sam knows it, but he still can't help smiling. "A ghost would knock you on your ass right now."
"Hey. I don't need to get off my ass to take down a measly little ghost, dude."
Sam laughs. "You should sleep." He fishes ibuprofen out of one of the bags Molly left and gets a glass of water from the bathroom. By the time he gets back, Dean's got his shoes off and his head at least pointed toward the pillow. Sam helps him drag himself up a little more and gets him under the covers. Dean doesn't even make a show of fending Sam off. He takes the ibuprofen without comment, and settles back onto the bed.
Sam clicks off the lamp. It's a little over three hours since he walked into the quickie mart at the Shell station. The sun has started to sink behind the horizon and the light that filters through the curtain is weak and red. It plays over the lines of Dean's face, the curve of his shoulder, as Sam watches him. It lights up his eyes when he opens them, and finds Sam staring.
"Hey," Dean says. "You should sleep, too," His voice is soft -- too soft, Sam thinks, and he's not even surprised. Not really. Dean knows him.
Sam shakes his head. He looks down at his hands, clenched and white-knuckled, and forces them to relax. "Not yet."
It takes a while for Dean to fall asleep. Sam watches him. A minute passes, with Dean's breath slowing down, evening out, and then he jerks awake. His eyes snap open, and Sam can tell Dean doesn't know where he is for just a second as he reaches for a gun or a knife that isn't there. When his eyes focus, when he can see Sam, everything in him goes slack.
The first few times it happens, Dean says Sam's name before the room takes shape around him -- a sharp, scared sound that should never come out of Dean's throat. The first few times, Sam leans forward, says, "Hey, I'm here." It seems to help. The time between those panicked breaks gets longer, and the worried edge in Dean's voice gets softer. The last time -- the time before he sinks into real, honest sleep -- his eyes open slow, and only about half-way. They focus on Sam right away, and Dean smiles. Sam says, "Hey," and Dean says something Sam can't quite make out, and then he's under.
That's when Sam's hands start to shake.
He squeezes the arms of the chair, but it doesn't help. He makes fists, but he can still feel the tremble in his arms. He hunches over and presses his fists against his temples, opens his hands and winds his fingers in his hair and pulls. Dull pain throbs in his scalp until he lets go, and his hands are still shaking.
He paces. From the bed to the door and back again, and every time he turns away from Dean it scares him, and every time he reaches the door and turns back, it's a gift. Dean curled in on himself on the bed, one arm under his pillow, one stretched down along his side on top of the covers -- it's a gift, and Sam knows he owes somebody. The only thing he doesn't know is who.
When he stops, so close his legs press against the mattress, he just looks. Sam would like to think God's looking out for them, that there's some kind of plan and he and Dean are playing their part in it, but he doesn't. Not anymore. It's okay, though; Sam's gotten past needing to believe. Dean's back, alive and well. That's enough. Whatever else happens, if Sam can have that, it's enough.
He sighs, and rubs at his eyes. His hands are okay now; not as steady as they will be later, but not bad. He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a measured sigh, lets some of the tension go with it. The spare pillow on Dean's bed looks soft, the garish covers look warm, and Dean will be there in the morning.
Sam lays his phone beside his wallet and his gun on the bedside table, each a perfect inch from the other, each a perfect inch from the edge. He lays down beside Dean on the empty side of the bed, a perfect inch away, close enough to hear his brother's breathing and feel his warmth. Close enough to sleep.
Dean will still be there in the morning. Sam will make sure of that.
.end
~
feedback is a happy thing and always welcomed!