winter experience (comment-fic fill)
winter experience
“Can you believe this snow?” Jason laughed. “My mom was totally freaking out this morning - kept talking about how it wasn’t supposed to snow until January and that she can’t afford to miss any more time off work because she can’t get there.”
Sam nodded vaguely, eyeing the slippy floor beneath him with distrust.
“I hate snow.” He offered grouchily, flinching a little when the salted ice underfoot crackled with his weight, regardless of the fact that Dean always reprimanded him for being far too skinny. For a moment, he thought that he might slip, and then the tense moment passed and his next step found him on ground that felt a lot sturdier.
“No way,” The other teenager laughed, apparently oblivious to Sam’s attention being divided between his friend and the floor. Rather than sharing the same caution, the older boy simply strolled along, chuckling when every so often one of his feet slipped and he nearly lost his balance. “Why would you hate snow? Think about it, dude - snowball fights, snowmen with their fugly faces and carrot noses and, on top of that, day closures. Now how could you possibly hate that?”
Sam didn’t point out that snow also came with slippy floors, hidden pieces of sharp ice just waiting to stab or impale you and extra-busy waiting rooms in the ER. He also didn’t mention that he hated day closures.
“You telling me that you’ve never slipped and fallen on your ass?” Sam settled for asking instead, raising an unbelieving eyebrow, before quickly turning his gaze back to the floor when the ground seemed to shift beneath him. “Because that is not fun.”
Jason shrugged. “All part of the winter experience, dude. Look, I gotta book. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Sam nodded, waving a hand at his friend before muttering bitterly underneath his breath, “If I haven’t fallen and died by then.”
He sighed, flicking his hood up and shaking a little of the snow from his hair in a vain attempt to keep his ears warm. He missed the good old days when he was young enough that wearing ear muffs wouldn’t make him the laughing stock of the whole school - he hated having cold ears.
Of course, when Sam complained about having cold ears, his brother usually just called him a pussy and cuffed him affectionately on the back of the head. At fourteen, Sam knew that he should have outgrown the feeling of trepidation every time he woke up to find a blanket of white covering the world outside of the window, but he figured that he has a pretty valid point in hating the stuff.
He wasn’t lying when he’d said that it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d slipped and fallen on his ass. More than once, he’d done that very thing in front of the whole school.
Sam was raised a hunter. He was taught to be lithe and swift and deadly; he was taught to move without sound and to always keep his balance. Snow made that very hard.
Dean, like always, didn’t seem to have a problem with it. The eighteen-year-old was pretty much the perfect hunter, sharp and deadly and witty - not to mention the fact that he shared the exact same sense of humour as their father. Sam couldn’t ever compete with that, which was a sad reality that he’d long since accepted, but at least on solid ground he could just about keep up.
“Hey!” A voice shouted. “New kid!”
Sam frowned, glancing up from the floor and cursing inwardly the second he lay eyes on the familiar shapes of five (much bigger) guys from the grade above him. As always, Sam had sussed the school bullies out on the first day and gone out of his way to avoid them, but it seemed that Jake Freen and his friends were reluctant to show him the same courtesy.
“Can I help you?” Sam called back politely, gripping the shoulder strap of his backpack tightly and resisting the urge to duck his head and continue walking. Jake struck him as the kind of guy that wouldn’t hesitate to take things to a more physical level, and whilst Sam was fairly certain that, ordinarily, he’d have been able to handle himself against all five of them, today that almost certainly wouldn’t be the case.
Jake leered.
“Sure you can.” He grinned, and - before Sam had a chance to react - nodded to someone stood behind Sam. “Catch.”
The youngest Winchester turned his head just quickly enough to see the large snowball careening towards him, seconds before it impacted with the side of his head, and then he saw nothing at all.
*
4.15.
The motel clock seemed to gloating, teasing Dean with the knowledge that his brother should have been home over an hour ago… and that was after factoring in the kid’s freakishly slow walking place when it had been snowing.
Sam was never late.
Perhaps that was simply because their father was late so often. Dean couldn’t count the number of times that their father had been late home when they were kids - from staying out an hour later than he said he would at the local bar, to crawling home from a hunt a week late without so much as an apology. Perhaps it was simply because, like Dean liked to see that his brother had made it safely home from school, Sam liked to make sure that Dean was home.
Whatever the reason, Dean could count on one hand the amount of times that Sam had been late home from anything, and all of those instances had come hand-in-hand with an apologetic phone call. Which meant that, no matter how much Dean tried to deny it to himself, something was wrong.
Tucking a gun into the back of his jeans and a third knife into his pocket, he barely wasted the time to tug his jacket on before heading out into the snow to search for his wayward brother.
He couldn’t help but glance longingly towards the Impala, but he knew better than to run the risk of skidding on the roads. Ending up stuck in a ditch somewhere wouldn’t exactly be conducive to finding his brother.
Hunching his shoulders against the harsh breeze, Dean tucked his hands into his pockets and headed in the direction of his brother’s school, fingers clasped tightly around his cell phone in case his brother called. He considered shouting for his brother, but the wind was strong enough that he’d be able to see the kid long before they could hear each other, so he turned his focus to scanning the horizon for him instead.
Of course, it didn’t help that at fourteen Sam was still small enough that bullies often looked on him as an easy target. Whilst Dean knew without a shadow of a doubt that the runt could take care of himself, he wasn’t as easily convinced that - if the situation called for it - Sam would.
Raised a hunter though he had been, Sam had somehow managed to grip to his stringent morality with a tenacity that - honestly - amazed him. Whilst Dean wouldn’t think twice about engaging in a bar fight or laying out a bully, Sam was the kind to try and talk things through beforehand. Unfortunately for the kid, that gave people a lot less moral than him a chance to get the upper hand.
Sighing, Dean stuffed his hands further in his pockets as he hopped a fence into a field, one that he knew Sam routinely cut through to get home faster - the two of them had worked out that, in doing so, the kid could cut out just over a mile from his journey, and the brief interaction they’d had with the farmer who owned it had clued them into the fact that he was happy to turn a blind eye.
Dean figured that Sam’s puppy dog eyes and dimpled smile might have had something to do with that.
A glimpse of tan caught his attention and Dean frowned, remembering the light jacket that Sam had been wearing that morning. He broke into a run.
“Sammy?” He called. “Sammy!”
The shape that was his brother didn’t move, and Dean felt his heart beat a sickly rhythm in his chest. The kid was sprawled on his side, the hood of his hoodie twisted awkwardly, as if he’d had it pulled up when he’d fallen; snow had settled in the creases and crevices of his jacket, and there was a patch under his head stained red, big enough that Dean’s stomach flipped nauseatingly.
There was also the fact that the kid’s skin was pale, his lips were blue and - despite the fact that he was lying in the snow - he wasn’t even shivering. Everything was adding up to a picture that Dean didn’t like in the least, and he reached shaking hands out to press two fingers against his brother’s neck.
For a few terrifying seconds he felt nothing, and then there was a reassuring thump-thump of Sam’s heartbeat, more familiar to him than his own. It was slower than he would have liked, but it was there, and the rise and fall of his chest was steady.
“Sam?” Dean called gently, quickly assessing the boy for broken bones before gently tapping him on the face. The kid’s eyelashes fluttered and, when Dean continued to gently rouse him, they eventually fluttered open.
“D’n?” He slurred, twisting his heads to get a glimpse of his brother. The movement had a visible reaction, he face paling impossibly further even as his eyes threatened to roll back into his head.
Trembling, Dean carefully eased the kid’s head onto the other side, exposing the injured temple for the first time.
There was a gash there that Dean knew without question would need a decent amount of stitches, and the area around it was already blackening and swelling as the bruising made itself known. The kid had clearly taken one hell of a knock to the head.
Dean glanced around with a deep frown, assessing the area for a glimpse of what might have caused quite so significant a head injury; his wandering eyes fell on what appeared to be an innocent-looking snowball, slightly blood spattered. Eyebrows raised in confusion, Dean leant away from his brother - keeping one hand there to support his head - and scooped the offending object up.
It became immediately clear what the problem was.
The thing wasn’t, as Dean had initially assumed, made out of snow but rather of ice; hard and unforgiving, the rock-hard ball seemed entirely unaffected by the force with which it must have met Sam’s skull.
Someone had thrown a solid block of ice at Sam’s head, fully aware of what they were doing, and Dean felt anger wash through him. Whoever had done this to his brother was going to pay.
But first, Dean had a little brother to take care of.
*
“-open your eyes for me, kid? Come on, Sammy. You need to wake up.”
Dean’s voice, usually enough to make Sam smile in its own right, was sending sharp jolts of pain vibrating through his skull, and Sam couldn’t help but groan.
Unfortunately, instead of shutting his brother up like he’d intended, Sam’s attempt at speech only seemed to double his brother’s efforts, and the words were now accompanied by a hand patting him on the side of the face.
“Hey, I need you to open your eyes, Sammy.”
There was an urgency in Dean’s tone that had everything in Sam’s body fighting to respond. It was the same urgency that had been there when their dad had taken a header off a steep incline on what was supposed to be a routine salt-and-burn; the same tone he’d taken when a black dog had surprised them all and taken a chunk out of Sam’s back.
“D’n.” He managed to slur, fighting against uncooperative eyelids to pull his brother into focus. He wasn’t entirely successful, the end result being nothing more than a blurry outline of his brother leaning over him.
It was enough for Dean.
“There you go, runt,” He muttered approvingly, with what sounded like relief laced through his voice. “You had me worried for a while there - what were you thinking, taking a nap in the snow?”
Sam hissed in pain as his mouth automatically pulled into a frown, feeling the familiar (and painful) tug of an open wound on his temple. His hand raised in an uncoordinated attempt to touch it, but Dean caught it halfway there, gently rubbing it between his own.
“Uh-uh. No touching, kid, you know the drill. You’re gonna stay there, nice and still, until the nice paramedics get here and we can get you seen by a doctor.”
Sam’s frown deepened, and the resulting pain made him whimper in a distinctly unmanly fashion. Dean didn’t seem to mind, carefully reaching up to smooth away the lines on his brother’s forehead.
“No hosp’l.” Sam muttered, sounding petulant even to his own ears.
Dean grinned, shrugging his shoulders a little. “Sorry, bro. This one’s out of my hands. Unless we get you warmed up soon, I’m gonna have to spend the rest of my life with a popsicle for a brother, and that’s just not cool. Besides, you’ve got a nice little head wound going for you there. I’m not gonna mess with that.”
“No insurance,” Sam forced out, gritting his teeth when the pain in his head spiralled out of control once more. “Get in trouble.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Dean reassured him. “You just concentrate on staying awake, bitch.”
Sam wanted to nod, but it was taking all of his concentration just to stay awake, so he settled for squeezing his brother’s hand.
“Not goin’ anywhere.”
*
Dean hated waiting rooms.
This one was painted a cheerful yellow, fake daisies spread around the room in various brightly-coloured vases, as if people might forget why they were occupying the uncomfortable seats in light of the bright colours. The hunter wondered idly if that worked, though he sincerely doubted it.
“How long can this possible take?” He grumbled, leaning back in his chair and heaving a sigh in relief when his back cracked, relieving the uncomfortable pressure there. In the chair opposite him, his father glanced up and raised an eyebrow.
“We’ve had to sit a lot longer before,” He reminded his eldest son. “And in much less comfortable places. Just give them a chance to take care of your brother.”
Dean nodded distractedly, eyeing the secretary.
“She doesn’t know anything,” John sighed, as if reading his son’s mind. “All that you’re going to achieve by hassling her is to piss her off.”
Dean had to admit that his father was right, and sunk back into his own seat with an irritated grumble.
His butt ached from the hard plastic of the chair and goose bumps had broken out on the exposed skin of his arms; upon his arrival, John had hassled Dean to put his jacket back on. Dean had forced out that the last time he’d seen it, it had been wrapped around the unmoving form of his once-again unconscious baby brother. That had shut his father up.
“Any ideas who might have done this?” John asked suddenly, and a few people glanced over curiously at the dark edge to his voice.
“A few.” Dean acknowledged, recalling Sam mentioning a name - Jack something or other - in passing a few times. He shrugged. “I’ll take care of it.”
John hesitated for a few moments, a large part of him wanting in on the action, before eventually relenting with a nod. At least if word got back to the authorities about the Winchester form of justice, they’d be more likely to hand it off to John than take police action - it would be an entirely different story if the patriarch himself got involved, no matter how much he was just itching to teach the punks who’d hurt his baby boy a lesson.
“Family of Samuel Herth?”
Dean’s head whipped around so fast that, if it wasn’t for the fact that his entire body followed it in a jerk to his feet, he likely would have given himself whiplash.
“Here,” He called, half way towards the stern-faced doctor before his father was even out of his seat. “How’s Sam?”
The doctor politely waited for John to catch up before answering, his frown never leaving his face.
“As you probably know, Sam was both concussed and severely hypothermic when he was brought in. It’s to my understanding that he was hit on the side of the head with a block of ice? Yes? Well, then I’d say that he probably got lucky this time. We were a little worried about the severity of the concussion at first because of the visible trauma to the skull but it appears that, whilst complicated by the hypothermia, the concussion itself was mild.”
Dean blinked. “So Sam’s going to be okay?”
“Hypothermia is tricky to deal with.” The doctor said hesitantly. “However, given how well Sam’s responding to treatment, I’m inclined to believe that Sam is going to be just fine.”
Dean heaved a sigh of relief, shoulders slumped, and the sound was echoed by his father. In light of their obvious relief, the doctor’s face relaxed a little.
“I can take you through to see him, if you’d like? Though I should warn you that he might still be a little out of it.”
Dean nodded eagerly and the doctor smiled for the first time, inclining his head towards the hallway.
“If you’d like to follow me.”
*
“You gonna give me names?”
Sam turned drowsy eyes on his brother, sighing slightly as they drifted shut.
“You gonna beat the crap out of them?” He shot back weakly, tangling his fingers in the thin hospital blanket. His temperature had finally been stable for about an hour, and he was more than ready to drift off to sleep.
“Maybe.” Dean shrugged, knowing that his brother would only call him out on it if he lied. “You got a problem with that?”
“Maybe.” Sam replied evenly, blinking his eyes open to give his brother a disapproving look, before relenting. “I only know one name - Jake Freen. Guess the others will probably be with him, though, if you can find him.
Dean grinned.
“Oh, I’ll find him. Don’t you worry about that.”
Despite the threatening edge to his tone, when his hand slipped into Sam’s it was soft and gentle and the younger man found himself finally drifting into sleep, content in the knowledge that - as long as his brother was there - everything was going to be just fine.
This was a fill for the comment-fic meme over on ohsam, where there are plenty of prompts just begging to be filled! This one was posted by the wonderfully-mineded ladykorana and was as follows: "A bully at school hits Sam in the head with a snowball that is really more like an iceball. It knocks Sam unconscious and Dean finds him lying in the snow after Sammy isn't home from school on time."
I promised myself that I wouldn't write any fills for this until I updated my ongoing projects, but this prompt and a broken heater (stuck on, I'm melting!) conspired to force me to write this in the hope that thinking of snow might cool me down. It didn't work, and now I present you with 3,133 words of personal failure.
Comments are love. Just saying.