For The Cause (1/3)
part one
“Hey, Sam, you hanging in there kid?”
Dean glanced up at his father’s words, and Sam’s hand twitched in a vague impression of a thumbs up. Dean tightened his grip on the teenager as his breath hitched, tendons in his neck standing out as he arched his back in agony. The older boy’s hand slipped from its position on the side of the kid’s head to his neck, and he grimaced.
“Dad…” He muttered quietly, feeling the younger boy trembling in his arms. He was eerily pale, skin almost translucent, and blood had soaked through the towels wrapped around his leg. Recalling the sickening sight of snapped bone peeking up through torn skin, Dean knew better than to try and shift the blood-soaked fabric in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the wound, but the heat that he could feel radiating from the slim form of his brother suggested that infection might already be settling in.
The car lurched forwards, the engine roaring slightly as the Impala surged forwards. Dean didn’t have to ask to know that his father’s foot was pressed to the floor, pushing the Impala to her limits in an attempt to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
Sam shifted slightly, a weak groan drifting out from between pale lips, but a glance at the sixteen-year-old’s face was more than enough proof that the kid was still just as incoherent as he had been from the moment that they’d first managed to rouse him.
His pulse was thready and weak, body trembling against Dean’s, and it was all the young hunter could do to press his forehead to his brother’s head and do his best to reassure him. The hospital was still twenty minutes away.
Dean hoped desperately that Sam had that long left in him.
**“So what are we thinking?” Dean asked, leaning over his father’s shoulder to try and get a better look at the pages of notes sprawled across the surface of the rickety motel table. “Black dog? It’s an awful lot of kills for one of them.”
John made a vague noise that Dean interpreted to mean that he was just as puzzled.
“What if it wasn’t just one of them?” Sam offered from the other side of the table. His maths homework was open in front of him, calculus textbook neatly underlined and highlighted in places, but his concentration was locked on the characteristic messy scrawl of his father’s notes. “I mean, they must reproduce somehow. What if it’s a breeding pair? Maybe with pups? If they’re hunting together, it could explain the amount of cows they’ve taken down, and maybe even why they’ve started taking out hikers.”
Dean felt his eyebrows raise at the suggestion, turning his questioning look on his father.
“It’s possible,” The older man frowned. “But I highly doubt it. There’s never been another case of anything like this… it’s more likely to be a large male specimen. If he’s above the average size, he’s going to need more than the average amount of food.”
Dean glanced at his brother in time to see Sam’s knuckles tighten around his pen at the blatant dismissal, but rather than pick a fight, the teenager wordlessly turned back to his homework. The slump of his shoulders screamed defeat.
Dean couldn’t hold back a sigh.
**“Easy, Sammy,” Dean muttered softly, running a hand through the teenager’s hair. Sam was shifting slightly against his brother’s chest, and the older man knew that each movement must have been sending waves of agony through his leg. The familiar feel of a fever was bleeding through the kid’s shirt and his skin was dry and hot to the touch. Dean knew that definitely wasn’t a good thing. “Just a few more minutes, alright? Then the doctors will dose you up with the good stuff.”
He glanced at the front seat, the sharp cut of his father’s jaw illuminated by the streetlights.
“Five minutes,” His father offered without glancing back at them. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, just like Sam’s had been around his pen only a few hours before. “Maybe six.”
Sam’s movements slowed to a stop, the kid’s weight against Dean’s chest growing just that little bit heavier, and the twenty-year-old’s eyes immediately flew to his brother’s face. His chest was visibly heaving with every rasping breath that he drew in, and his face was completely slack.
“Sam.” Dean called, lightly slapping the kid’s face. “Sammy, hey! Open your eyes, kid.”
“Dean?”
The young man couldn’t keep the fear from his voice. “He’s out, Dad… and I’m pretty sure his leg’s still bleeding.”
John swore quietly, slamming a hand off the steering wheel as he flew through a red light, seemingly oblivious to the cacophony of blaring horns that followed in the wake of the Impala’s sleek form. Dean didn’t know if it was Sam’s worrying stillness or the fear he could glimpse in his father’s face that had his hands shaking against his brother’s throat.
“Come on, Sam,” He whispered to his brother. “Just a little bit longer.”
**Their father had been right. The black dog was bigger than Dean could possibly have anticipated, standing easily over a head taller than the biggest one he’d ever seen previously. It charged from the brush with a ferocious intensity, eyes glinting red in the faint light of the moon, and almost instantly the night was alive with the sound of gunshots.
For a moment, the creature didn’t seem to slow, and Dean was just starting to wonder whether they were faced with some kind of mutant black dog with bullet-proof skin when the animal’s brain seemed to catch up with its body and it toppled to the ground with a thud.
For a moment the clearing was eerily silent, and then John dropped his gun to his side with a grin of triumph, giving the carcass a swift kick in the side as he reached for his lighter fluid.
It was then, and only then, that Dean came to the sudden realisation that Sam had been right, too - because the carcass at their father’s feet was definitely dead, but the creature lunging for the man’s throat was smaller and slimmer and had the same distinctive black coat and red eyes. In the moment where he should have raised his gun and fired, taken the shot to the flank that the animal had unwittingly presented him with, Dean’s brain instead struggled to process just how badly they’d messed up.
He never even saw Sam move.
One moment the sixteen-year-old was crouched a few feet from their father, digging through his pack for his water bottle, and the next he was tumbling over the edge of the ravine that bordered one side of the clearing, limbs tangled with the slick black fur of the creature. It wasn’t until the two of them disappeared from view that Dean registered what had just happened - Sam had seen the dog coming, and somehow launched at himself at it just in time to stop its teeth tearing out his father’s throat.
And then they’d fallen.
**The Impala screeched to a stop with an ear-ringing squeal of breaks, haphazardly parked diagonally across two bays that were standing directly opposite the ER doors. Dean twisted his body, gathering Sam into his arms even as their father yanked the door open and reached for him. It was a testament to how screwed up their lives were that they made the transfer without banging the either kid’s leg or head off the back of the seat or the door frame, and seconds later they were storming through the automatic doors.
The room fell silent at their harried arrival, two nurses leaning against the reception pausing mid-discussion with the man perched in front of the computer, jaws dropping open in a way that might have been comedic in any other situation. In the plastic chairs around the room, other patients watched with apparent interest and surprise.
“Hey!” John snapped. “You think you could give me a hand instead of gawking?”
His attitude seemed to startle the nurses into action and one of them ran for help even as the other jogged forwards, eyes scanning Sam’s prone form and cataloguing the blood-stained towels wrapped around the middle of his leg.
“What happened?” She demanded, pressing the back of her hand to the kid’s face and manoeuvring her stethoscope underneath the kid’s shirt. If the look on her face was any indication, she wasn’t pleased by what she heard.
“Hunting accident,” Their father retorted, voice sharp with fear. “He, uh… he tripped. Fell over the edge of a ravine… he’s messed his leg up pretty bad. We could see bone.”
A doctor nudged the young woman aside, hand automatically reaching out to brace the foot of Sam’s injured leg as John lay him on the soft surface.
“How long ago?” The doctor demanded. “Any medical allergies?”
“No, no allergies. And, uh… about two hours. About ten PM, so two and a half.”
The blonde-haired woman nodded, muttering something to the two people with her too fast for Dean to catch what she was saying. They started wheeling Sam away, and Dean stepped forward instinctively, but the nurse had an arm across his chest and she started talking softly, nudging him towards the small waiting area.
“You can’t go with him,” She repeated firmly. “And I don’t want to have to call security. Sit down and they’ll call you as soon as they know something, okay?”
It wasn’t okay. It was nowhere near okay, but Dean found himself sitting anyway.
Above the nurses station, the clock ticked away the seconds mockingly.
**“Sam!” Dean yelled, scrambling blindly over the edge of the ravine, eyes frantically searching for his brother. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of his father’s heavy boots hitting the rocky edge, following him onto the steep slope. His hand was clenched tightly around his flashlight, though he had no memory of grabbing it from his pack, and he swung the beam wildly, heart leaping into his throat as he caught sight of slick black fur.
He veered left, towards the animal, and it wasn’t until he was a few feet away that he took in the knife embedded deep into the creature’s chest and the sickening flash of pale skin just a few feet further down, resting in the small ditch-like crevice at the bottom of the slope.
“Sam!” Dean stumbled for purchase under his feet, blindly leaping over the black dog’s carcass as he closed the gap between himself and his brother. “Dad! He’s over here!”
His feet hit the soft mud next to his brother and he skidded, falling to his knees with a faint splash. Sam’s face was pale, eyes closed and face smeared with blood and dirt - Dean’s head sought out a wound, relieved to find a shallow cut just above the younger man’s temple rather than the gaping gash he’d half expected to see, and it was only then that he turned his attention to the rest of the young man’s body.
The assessment had him gagging weakly, swallowing hard against the urge to lose his lunch at the sight of torn skin and bone. The younger man’s jeans were torn beyond any hope of saving, revealing the distorted angle of the limb underneath - there was no doubt that the leg was broken, but it was the position of the break that had Dean’s head spinning dizzily, because it was his brother’s knee.
John dropped next to him, shoving him hard in the shoulder.
“Keep your eyes on his face,” He barked, having apparently picked up on just how close Dean was to giving into the urge to throw up in the dirt. “Try and wake him up. We want him conscious, Dean - this is a bad break, and we still have to get him out of here. You keep him awake, and I’ll worry about the leg, okay?”
Dean nodded dazedly, obediently hunching over the younger man’s head and smacking his face as lightly as he dared.
“Sam!” He called. “Sammy, come on, you’ve gotta open those eyes for me, Kiddo. Please, Sammy, just open those eyes.”
**It was an hour and a half after they’d arrived at the hospital that a nurse handed them a pair of scrubs and a plastic bag each and pointed them towards a bathroom. Dean stripped mechanically, shoving his clothes into the bag without daring to look at them - he’d burn them the first chance that he got, and he couldn’t even muster relief at the realisation that he’d left his leather jacket safely inside of the motel room.
He washed his hands and face clinically and quickly, barely glancing into the mirror to check that his face was free of blood and grime before shrugging the on scrubs and heading back into the waiting room. The other people dotted around watched his return with interest, a few of them shooting him sympathetic smiles. He didn’t have the energy to return them, simply dropped the bag of blood-stained clothes on the floor and sank into the seat next to his father.
It was another four hours before the nurse returned and headed in their direction, and John and Dean rose to greet her.
“How is he?” John demanded, voice gruff with disuse.
The nurse smiled softly. “He’s doing okay, all things considered. He had two breaks in his lower leg, plus the one in his knee that required surgery. He lost a lot of blood before you got him in, which is a huge concern at this point, but we’re fairly confident that we’ve caught the infection before it could fully set in. He’ll be on antibiotics for a couple of weeks, but it shouldn’t take long for it to clear up.”
Dean nodded, and hesitated before opening his mouth. “So he’s going to be okay? And his leg… it’ll be good as new?”
“We’re pretty optimistic about his recovery,” The nurse smiled. “The leg’s going to need a lot of physical therapy, and it’ll probably take a few months for him to regain full use of it, but if he responds well to therapy there’s no reason that he can’t make a full recovery. He’ll just have a habit of setting off metal detectors from here on out.”
Dean felt sick with relief.
**Sam looked small and pale.
His injured leg had been casted from thigh to foot and propped up on a pillow underneath the thin hospital blanket that the teenager had been covered with, and there was a thin square of gauze over the cut on his temple. The nurse had informed them that aside from his leg and his head, the only other injuries that Sam had sustained were grazes on his palms from trying to catch his fall and some nasty bruises along the side of his right arm.
Dean didn’t envy him that - it’d sure make using crutches uncomfortable as hell when he was recovered enough to be on his feet.
They’d been warned that Sam would likely still be sleeping off the sedation, and already Dean could see the tell-tale signs of his brother starting to wake up - the familiar scrunching of his brow and wrinkling of his nose, and for the first time since the second black dog had made itself known, Dean finally allowed himself to smile.
Finally, nearly nine hours after Dean had first laid eyes on Sam lying still and pale in the mud, the teenager’s eyes opened and locked on his brother’s face with a level of comprehension. Next to him, Dean caught his father’s wide grin as Sam blinked foggily, wrinkling his nose again - this time in distaste at the nasal cannula tucked underneath it.
He blinked slowly, before his eyes began to roam the room, finally focusing on their father.
“You ‘kay?” He slurred quietly, forehead pulling together in apparent concentration.
Dean and their father laughed in synchronisation. Only Sam would come out of anaesthesia, still weak and sick from potentially one of the worst hunting injuries Dean had ever witnessed, and ask if someone else was okay before he was even fully aware of what was happening.
“I’m fine, kid,” Their father answered, and Dean could hear the pride in his voice. “That was a pretty spectacular move, launching yourself at that black dog the way that you did. Perfect shot to the heart with your knife… you saved my life, son.”
“Mmm.” Sam mumbled, smiling a little even as his eyes began to slip shut. He forced them back open a few moments later, apparently determined to stay awake, and Dean leant over to run a hand through the tangled chestnut strands of his hair.
“Go to sleep, Sammy. We’ll be here when you wake up.”
part two -->
A/N: Just wanted to say a huge thank you for all of the birthday wishes! This is the first of three fills I took on for the ohsam fic challenge, although I'm not sure that the other two will make it in before the deadline - I was surprised by a trip away from home that my parents kept a huge secret! The wonderful prompt was masterminded by merrymack, who asked for: Sam, broken leg (knee injury...really any leg injury will do), preseries, crutches, worried Dean and John. Pointless fluff and pain. Hopefully this is what you wanted! I had fun and tried out a few new things with this one... let me know what you guys think!