FIC: - Blind Spot - 14/14, COMPLETE
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 14/14
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Yikes. She’s all done, folks. *blinks* Holy cow. Many, many thanks to you all for sharing the ride. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologist and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say? Special thanks also to
chocca2 for peeking and pointing.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12 Ch 13
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Fourteen
Soft blue horizons reach far into my childhood days
As you are rising to bring me my forgotten ways.
- Enya, On Your Shore
There was a lot of blood. Dean couldn’t tell what was Meg’s and what was Sam’s, but his brother’s chest was slick with it. He could feel more of the stuff wanting out against the heel of his hand on the wound.
Dean passed his tongue across his teeth, felt the loose molar at the back shift, and a fresh flood of rusted warmth filled his own mouth. A cough rattled in his throat, and he leaned so he could lose the mess down past Sam’s shoulder onto the floor of the car.
Bobby twisted in the driver seat. “Dean?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Drive the fuckin’ car.”
There were worse ways this morning could have ended. Worse ways than straddling his brother in the backseat of the car, hand against a gunshot wound in his chest. There must have been worse ways for this to turn out. He just couldn’t think of any right now. Bobby took the corner back onto the highway a little fast, and Dean had to lift the hand from Sam’s chest, brace to keep the mess of his shoulder from impacting against the seatback.
“Bobby,” he gritted, as he returned the slippery palm to Sam’s chest.
When he bore down, Sam’s eyes flashed black and he made a harsh, angry sound through his teeth. Dean fought back his rising horror, tamped down on a cold sense of dread.
“Hey, Sam. Sammy. Look at me.”
Sam blinked and wheezed, eyes clearing. Darkness replaced by panic. He got a hand up and gripped Dean’s forearm.
“Sorry, man. I know. We got a bit of drive, so you gotta hold on, okay?” He nodded, kept it up until Sam did too. “Good. Good, good. This is nothin’. You’re okay.”
Dean dipped his bleeding nose to the shoulder of his jacket, wiped the warm wet from his top lip. He snorted back and sent another mouthful of bloodied debris to the boards. A wave of dizzy washed over him, put him on notice. The shoulder was gone; the feeling in his left arm reduced to a distant tingle where his hand rested in the pocket of his jacket. The crumpled fingers of his right hand throbbed and sang back up through the underside of this forearm. Internal picket lines were forming at every ignored and untreated abuse.
Dean locked eyes with Sam, fixed on his face. Anchored himself against the fear and need he found there.
“This is nothin’,” he repeated, tasted copper on his lips again. “You’re okay.”
**********************************************************************************************
Ten minutes out from the hospital, Sam lost the tug of war; slipped over the line. When Dean couldn’t rouse him, he lost the thin veneer of control that had been damming the swell of his anger.
“Goddamn you, Bobby. I swear to God, if he--”
“Keep pressure on it. We’re nearly there.”
At the ER, Bobby threw the car into park and was out the door in one motion.
Dean stared down at Sam’s crimson-drenched shirt, the spatters and flecks of blood on his ashen face and grey throat. Blinked at his brother’s blue tinged lips.
For a long minute there was just the panicked huff of his own desperate breaths in the car’s silent interior. Then a stampede of feet, hands slapping at the enamel of the Impala, doors opening.
Dean pushed up from his knee, got his weight off Sam as they dragged his slack brother from beneath him. He fumbled out of the car after them, tottered on unsteady legs beside the gurney as they whisked Sam inside.
Someone was asking him questions. A lab coat and a clipboard wanted information and Dean couldn’t listen or answer. He dodged the headless obstruction distractedly, kept his eyes on Sam’s face.
They passed through a doorway and there was another barrier, this one small and insistent.
“You have to stand back, sir.”
Dean’s gaze traveled from the hand against his chest to the nurse’s face. He swallowed. “His lips are blue.”
“You need to keep out of the way. Let them work.”
Dean heard the words, stepped back compliantly, and was rewarded with a swinging door to the face. He stared dumbly at the wood panel, mouth working around an unformed question.
“Dean.”
It was Bobby coming down the hallway, and Dean couldn’t deal with that right then. He turned blindly, headed down the corridor on suddenly belligerent legs. He swayed, veered and caught the wall with his right shoulder. Bounced off and kept going.
“Kid, you gotta stop.”
Dean did. He whirled around and shot out with his right; flexed his wrist to spare the fingers and smacked Bobby hard in the jaw with the heel of his palm. Sent him snapping backwards and onto the tiles with a hollow sounding thunk.
He was standing there, thinking that had felt pretty good, when someone shouted and security descended on him like a ton of bricks. Two thickset heavy guys with zero respect for a shoulder dislocation. They frog-marched him past Jo and Marcus as they came in the foyer doors.
Jo skidded to a halt. “Oh, shit. Hey, what’s going on? He’s with us.”
“He’s outside, is what he is,” barked the guy on Dean’s left, and they tossed him loose at the door, sent him staggering onto the asphalt.
Marcus headed inside to find Bobby, and Jo made a frantic dash to catch Dean as he crumpled on the hospital driveway.
“Nononono. Not on the road. Over here.” Jo steered him to the building, choreographed his clumsy slide down the wall to his ass, back against brick. She sat on her heels, surveyed him with growing concern. “Okay, you really need a doctor. I’m gonna get someone to come take a look at you. Stay here.”
Dean got the back of his hand up, wiped the blood from his nose. An elderly couple gave him a wide berth on the pavement, exchanged noises of shock and disapproval as they passed by.
He closed his eyes, let his head drop back against the wall. Snapped his lids open when the world seemed to tip and slide. He thought he might throw up, and the nausea didn’t ease any when Bobby crouched in front of him, jaw ruby-red and beginning to swell beneath his whiskers.
“Ah, shit. Dean?”
“Get the fuck away from me.” Dean hit him with all the ice he could muster, saw from the look on Bobby’s face it was plenty.
The old man nodded, eyes dark and sad. “Okay, you got it. I know you don’t want me anywhere near you right now. And you got that look about ya like I might be real sorry I opened my trap in a few. But I gotta say it. And then I’m gonna leave ya both alone.”
Bobby shifted on the balls of his feet, looked back toward the hospital entrance.
“I know what I did back there crossed all kinds of lines with you. And you’re either gonna get past this, or you’re not. I got no control over that. Ball’s in your court there, Dean. And I ain’t gonna try and force it. But before I take off, I need you to know somethin’.”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Figured the tilt-a-whirl and the nausea were preferable to hearing whatever Bobby was peddling. He didn’t want to hear why. He didn’t care why.
Bobby’d taken the shot. Period.
“I promised your Dad a long time ago that if it came down to it, I’d look out for you boys.”
That got Dean’s eyes open again, his glare a thrown machete.
Bobby nodded. “And yeah, you can look at me like that. ‘Cause you’re right. I shot your brother today. Dean, I didn’t pull that trigger because your brother asked me to, or because he’s a demon, or because I want him dead. I took that shot cause he’s not how you go.” Bobby stood up, looked down at him. “He might be why, but Sam is not how you go, kid.”
Dean dipped his chin, let his lids fall shut. Managed to keep the tremor out of his lips until he heard Bobby turn and leave. When he cracked his hot, stinging eyes he was alone. He tilted his skull back against the rough of the brick and wept.
**********************************************************************************************
The doctor Jo dragged out with her was in his mid-fifties, graying, and exhausted. Dean heard him clarify the name with Jo, felt a spark of unease that she hadn’t used an alias.
“Dean?” He squatted down. “I’m Ben. How’re you doing out here?”
He wasn’t doing so great; was actually quaking enough that the back of his head was tap-dancing off the wall behind him. The doctor reached out for his left shoulder, and Dean blocked the advance with his right forearm. He was pretty sure if anyone touched anything, he was going to black out.
And he needed to know about Sam. He had to stay awake. “Don’t.”
“Okay,” Ben agreed, his voice low and easy. He took Dean’s wrist with a latexed hand instead, flattened the pads of two fingers against his radial pulse. He was silent for a moment, eyes traveling the wrecked course of Dean’s body.
“Alright,” he said finally, “here’s the deal. You see those guys over there?” Ben pointed to the hospital entrance at the two security guards who were standing - arms folded - staring intently in their direction. “They don’t want you back in there. Those boys have seen some pretty crazy stuff the last couple of days. We all have. So, they’re not real big on risk-taking right now. And just so we’re straight, I’ve done worse things in the last twenty-four hours than leave a man to die in the parking lot. You understand what I’m saying to you?”
Dean nodded. He did. He got that.
“That was your brother? Came in before with the gunshot wound?”
Another nod, and a wave of grief to go with it. Dean was beyond caring about the tear he felt track down his face. He swallowed, hitched in a breath.
Ben squinted at him. “Okay. I’m gonna give you a shot of Demerol. It’s gonna make you feel pretty good, and it’s gonna make those guys over there a lot happier about letting you back in the door. We’ll pop that shoulder, straighten up the fingers and see where else you’re banged up. When we’ve got you sorted, I’ll find out what’s going on with your brother. How’s that sound?”
Dean was sitting on his ass, busted up and crying in a parking lot. So he nodded. Doctor Ben and his Demerol sounded alright.
**********************************************************************************************
They left Dean in some hall for a while, waiting on someone to take him for X-rays. Jo found a stool and sat with him.
She looked like hell. Hair a tangled mess of blonde, bruised cheek. Her eyes were bloodshot and bleary. There was a thick smear of God-knew-who’s blood near her jaw, smudges and flecks of mud from the field across her face and down her neck.
Dean gazed at her, thought: Ellen’d have a fuckin’ fit.
He felt thick and weighted, lids heavy against the fluorescent glare. But he needed to stay awake. He needed to know what was going on with Sam.
“Sam.”
“Marcus’s with him. Marcus’s gonna stay with him.”
Jo’s fingernails tracked steady circles in the hair above his ear. Slow and soothing. Dean was warm. Buzzed and numb. For the first time since he could remember, there wasn’t any pain. He blinked long.
Sam.
He struggled against the narcotic fuzz, shifted until he got enough movement to rustle some dormant sensation in his body. He hit the jackpot with the shoulder, levered off the pain back into wakefulness. He grunted, and Jo’s palm flattened against his hair.
“Stay still. Don’t move.”
“Where’s Sam?” He turned his head against the gurney, tilted his chin up and tried to get a look down the hallway.
Jo’s fingers went back to their circuit against his skull. “Upstairs. As soon as we can see him, we’ll go. I swear.”
He twisted his face back to her, confused and suspicious. “Where is he?”
“They’re fixing him up. They’re still fixing him up.”
Dean licked his lips, mouth desert-dry. Grimaced through a swallow. Jo’s knuckles grazed his cheek. “I’m gonna see if they’ll let you have some water. Okay? I’ll be back in a second.”
He studied the wall while she was gone, followed the IV line from the clear bag hanging above his head to where it tapped into the back of his hand. He didn’t remember that going in. Stretched his top lip down over his dry teeth and tried to dislodge the annoyance of the nasal cannula.
When Jo came back she had ice chips, and they were so goddamn awesome he nearly forgot about Sam. When he remembered, he asked how long they’d been in the hospital, and Jo checked her watch, told him a couple of hours. She threaded her fingers back through his hair, and he wanted to tell her to get them out. It was going to put him to sleep and he couldn’t have that.
“You don’t have to stay awake,” Jo said, and it rocked him with such a visceral blast of guilt and grief that he closed his eyes, turned his face to the wall. The breath he took shuddered in and out of him. He got his taped fingers up over his face.
“I’ll wake you. I promise.” Jo’s nails snicked behind his ear, curled at the nape of his neck. “Go to sleep.”
He did. Let the entire mess go, sank someplace else.
**********************************************************************************************
When Dean woke, he had a headache and a pounding throb in his shoulder. It was a deep protestation of muscle and joint, the sort of profound bodily objection that smacked of surgery. Jo sat impatiently in a chair beside the bed, thumbnail between her teeth, while Dean tolerated the attentions of the nurse. She acquainted him the limitations of the sling that held his arm, tucked the PCA unit into his right hand, and told them the doctor would be in to see him later. After she left, Jo filled him in.
Sam hadn’t woken up yet.
Portland’s population had been halved in the space of twenty-four hours. The seven other towns hosting symbols had been completely emptied. Authorities had found no survivors, no bodies. No sign of what had happened. The burned sigils in the ground were all that remained.
Dean brushed the information aside. He didn’t have the headspace for the magnitude of that. Sam hadn’t woken up yet.
He didn’t argue when they insisted on the wheelchair to get him to Sam’s room.
“Whatever,” he told the reluctant nurse who wheeled it in. “Just get me up there.”
Jo took him.
He grappled with an acute anxiety in the elevator, Sam’s blackball eyes and bloodied hands on loop inside his skull. But there was another Sam in there, too. The clear-eyed, panicked Sam clutching at his forearm in the back of the Impala. The Sam who couldn’t breathe; who wheezed and bled against the heel of Dean’s palm. The Sam who held on while his lung slowly filled because that’s what Dean told him to do.
The sheer assault of equipment was gut-punch enough to clear it all at the door. Dean didn’t know which Sam lay in wait beneath the mess of tubes and wires and blips and beeps. But he knew he didn’t care.
He just needed him to wake up.
Marcus scrabbled out of the chair beside the bed as they came in. “Oh, hey. How’re you feeling?”
Dean didn’t answer. Didn’t mean to be rude. He knew Marcus had been there since Sam had come out of surgery. Knew he’d watched and stood guard in Dean’s stead, and he was going to be grateful about that sometime soon. But not now. He couldn’t be thankful right now.
He blinked at Sam’s still face, hand fisting inside the cotton sling against his chest. He struggled with a wild, protective urge to rip everything loose. Put a stop to the multiple invasions and intrusions being perpetrated against his unconscious brother.
It was a good thing, Dean thought, that Bobby was long gone. He felt like it would be a satisfying exercise, getting his Glock up close to Bobby Singer’s face.
He buried that new brand of sorrow somewhere deep, forced himself back to the here and now. Back to Sam.
Jo leaned down over his shoulder, got her lips close to his ear. “You want us to go?” she asked.
He nodded, didn’t trust himself to speak. He found his voice when they were almost to the door.
“I’m not leavin’ this room.” He kept his eyes on Sam, didn’t turn around. “Tell ‘em I’m not movin’ till he wakes up.”
Jo knew better than to argue. “Okay,” she said. “You got it.”
**********************************************************************************************
It was three days before Sam opened his eyes and when he did, it was as if he’d never shut them. Three blinks and he was straight back to the blind panic with which he’d bled all over the Impala.
Dean leapt to his feet beside the bed, got his clumsy, strapped fingers up against Sam’s clammy forehead. His brother choked against the respirator, and Dean moved his hand to the call button; punched it to bring the nurse.
“Hey, hey. Calm down. You’re alright.” Dean replaced his hand against Sam’s face and blew out a long breath. “Thank God.” He stared intently into his brother’s blood-shot, confused eyes, drank in his distress. Distress was a giant step up on comatose. Hell, distress was fucking beautiful. “You know where you are?”
Sam’s eyes traveled around the room. He shook his head a little.
“You’re in the hospital. You remember what happened?”
Sam’s gaze grew soft, focus shifting to the internal. Dean saw it dawn on him, the detail coming back. He remembered. Dean watched the horror growing in those green eyes, nodded down at his brother’s stricken face. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Sam’s face crumpled. He blinked a silver tear down the side of his face, and Dean didn’t know why it was such a relief to see him crying, but it was. He bent closer as the nurse came into the room, locked eyes with his brother and smiled. “You’re a ginormous girl, you know that? Quit cryin’, you fuckin’ pussy.”
**********************************************************************************************
Dean signed himself out of the hospital that afternoon. The Impala was waiting for him at Jo’s, fully detailed and ignition replaced. Jo directed him to Marcus when he went looking for the culprit.
He brushed off Dean’s heartfelt thanks.
“You avert an apocalypse, we clean your car. It’s how we do it here in Oregon.”
Dean headed back to the motel. The owners of the Rosemont were apparently among the missing. The place was deserted. He collected what little of their belongings remained in the room, and took up Jo’s offer of a roof and a couch back at her apartment.
Jo seemed to be taking it all in stride. She’d lost her job, but no one seemed to know where her landlord was, so she argued six of one, half dozen of the other. Either way, it left her sitting pretty for a week or two, financially.
Dean sprang for groceries anyway, told her to shut the fuck up when she complained about being a beneficiary of his fraudulent income.
Marcus threw himself into some research on the Dagger of Andromalius. Dean knew his motives were probably a little darker than simply wanting to help out, but he couldn’t really blame the guy. Besides, information was power. The more eyes they had on books, the better.
Those first few days of relative normalcy disclosed to Dean the worst of Meg’s crimes. Without the focus of the job and the immediacy of the multiple threats they had been facing, he was confronted with the more mundane aftershocks of her assault.
His hands shook, and not just every now and then. It was a constant, almost imperceptible tremor. Enough that he noticed when he was doing anything requiring a fine touch. It was more annoying than debilitating, but it bugged him on a deeper level than the purely physical.
There were dances in the periphery of his vision, too. Flashes of indistinct people who were never actually there. He excused himself on more than one occasion for almost walking into nobody. Had woken on Jo’s couch a couple of heart-stopping times, thinking someone was standing beside it.
And straight out of left field, even the furniture was pissing in his cornflakes. It took him four days and three close calls over the kitchen sink to figure out the sound of a chair leg scraping on the floor was tickling his gag reflex.
None of it was particularly incapacitating, but it was there. Which meant so was Meg.
**********************************************************************************************
He was pulling a two a.m. shift in front of some black and white horror film when Jo padded out from her bedroom. There was clunking in the kitchen, and then she offered him a whiskey over the back of the couch.
“Can’t sleep?”
Dean took the glass, rested it on the peak of his right hip bone. “Nope.”
“You’ve been doin’ that a lot. Not sleeping, I mean.”
“Sorry.”
Jo rounded the coffee table, plonked down in the armchair across from him. She cracked another glass and the bottle of whiskey decisively onto the tabletop. “Well, I can’t sleep either. Let’s get drunk.”
Dean regarded her pajamas, eyed the fluffy rabbit slippers that squished under her knees as she folded her legs beneath her. He cocked an eyebrow and huffed out a laugh. “This bar could use a dress code.”
Jo pursed her lips as she poured herself two fingers, made a face. “Look who’s talking. You know, those sweats have sag-ass. You look like you have a load in your pants.”
He blinked at her, nodded smugly. “You’ve been lookin’ at my ass.”
Jo threw back the whiskey, slapped her glass back onto the table. “Shut the fuck up, Winchester.” She rolled her hand at him, lifted the bottle in readiness with the other. “Come on. Drink.”
Dean obliged, leaned to shoot the glass across the wooden tabletop for a refill. He had a brief guilty flash of Jo’s jaw smacking off the carpet, his hands closing the cuffs around her wrist.
“I keep thinking it’s not really over,” she admitted.
Dean laughed out loud at that. “That’s cause it never is, Jo.” He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand, and his chuckle took on an exhausted edge. “Jesus Christ, it so never is.” He sighed. “I gotta figure out a way to get Sam outta this hospital.”
“What’s the hurry?” Jo emptied her glass, poured again.
Dean shifted against the couch. “Well, this whole city-in-disaster, paperwork-be-damned insurance moratorium isn’t gonna last, and since we’re on a first name basis with these people,” he shot Jo a reproachful look, “we’re gonna blip up on some radars when they start faxing shit around. I gotta find some place we can lay low while Sam gets his sea legs.”
“Dean, you guys are welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
“To be perfectly honest, the sooner I get this fuckin’ city in my rear view mirror, the better. No offence, Jo, but…” he shook his head, “I gotta get outta here.”
“None taken. Understandable.” She thought for a second, then ventured hesitantly. “Maybe you guys should head on back to South Dakota. I mean, Bobby’d--”
“We’re not goin’ to Bobby’s.” Dean said it quietly and without animosity, but he meant it.
She took the hint. “Okay.”
“I just feel like we need some space. So we can sit down and figure out what’s goin’ on.”
Jo slid another whiskey across the table to him. “If anyone deserves a holiday…” she toasted, brought her own glass to her lips.
They let the quiet drone of the TV fill the silence between them for a spell. Then Jo said: “I get the feeling this is all gonna be okay. I mean, I don’t know how, or why, but I just… I have this really strong feeling this is all gonna work out.”
Dean sniffed a laugh into his whiskey. “Yeah, that’s cause you’re tipsy.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“You’re beltin’ those back like a shore-leave sailor. If you were Sam right now? You’d have your panties on your head and you’d be dry-humpin’ the bunny slippers.”
“Well, thank God I’m not Sam, then,” Jo said slowly. “I really mean it, Dean. I just feel like… it’s Sam, you know?”
Dean drained his whiskey, felt the warm burn of alcohol seeping and softening the sharp edges. He sent the empty glass over the table to Jo and dragged his index finger across his cheek, below the cut there.
“This cut on my face? She looked like Sam when she did that. I don’t know how, but… she was Sam.”
Jo froze, mid-pour, then continued slowly. “Okay,” she said carefully, clapped the top onto the bottle and placed it on the table. She pushed his glass back to him, picked her own up and settled back.
“She was talking about you and Duluth, and… I don’t know. I was pretty messed up by then. I wasn’t thinkin’ real straight but… I knew it wasn’t Sam. You know? And yeah, it hurt like a sonuvabitch, but that wasn’t him. It’s not who he is.”
“Maybe you have to trust that. Maybe we all do.”
“Maybe.” Dean stalled the whiskey en route to his lips, waggled his taped fingers against the glass. “Then again.”
Jo bit her lip, nodded. “Yeah. There is that.”
“I keep thinking about what Gaap said. Sam being some flame that’s gonna cleanse the forest.”
Jo brought her knees up, rested her chin against the flannel of her pajama pants. “Dean, has it even occurred to you that whatever’s happening to Sam, it might help us?”
It had. It had been occurring to him non-stop, since the tip of the dagger had breached Meg’s chest.
His actions rely upon your fate. Those words had been volleying back and forth over the taut net of his resolve. They hovered like specters in the shadowy wings of the Deal; both threat and promise, damnation and deliverance.
But there was hope in those words, somewhere. A hope Dean wasn’t ready to acknowledge or embrace. A possibility too distant and indistinct to be examined in any detail. But still, a seed planted.
Don’t you give up on your brother, Dean.
“Gaap said there was choice in all things.”
“Then maybe we need to trust that Sam’ll make the right choice.”
Dean shook his head slowly, nursed his whiskey. “You saw it too, Jo. That was some dark broke-my-fingers shit he had goin’ on. If we’re talkin’ about tryin’ to control something like that? He’s got some scary fuckin’ choices to make there.”
Jo swished her drink around the bottom of her glass, contemplated. “I dunno, Dean. You said it yourself. It’s not who he is. And if someone has to make the scary choices?” She shrugged. “Then, yeah: I vote Sam Winchester. Any day and twice on Sundays.”
Dean shifted his head on the arm of the couch to look at her. He narrowed his eyes at her open genuine expression, and felt a ridiculously painful stab of pride. The corner of his mouth tugged up.
“Hell, yes,” he agreed, tipped his whiskey toward her before he drank.
**********************************************************************************************
“So, Gaap just said no?”
Sam punched off the TV, threw the remote down on the bed beside his leg.
Dean didn’t look up from his magazine. “Uh-huh.”
Sam frowned at him. “Just like that?”
Dean licked his thumb, made an exaggerated show of turning the page. “Just like that,” he echoed.
Sam’s knee twitched beneath the sheet. “As in, gee thanks, but I’m tryna cut back?”
He was laughing. Dean looked up slowly from the periodical, studied his brother blankly for a moment. Then he lifted a finger, pointed at the PCA unit hanging off the rails of Sam’s bed. “You know, you’re only supposed to press that button once.”
Sam tilted his head back against the pillow, shoulders shaking, and gave the ceiling a lazy peal of laughter. “I’m sorry. I just…”
He let loose a high-pitched giggle, and that was enough for Dean.
“Oh, my God. Did someone leave a tank of nitrous on in here?” He slapped the magazine shut against his thigh, threw it on the bedside table. “I think I preferred it when you were fucked up on sedatives and blubbering.”
Sam’s head snapped up. “I did not,” he objected indignantly.
Dean tilted his temple, cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, you did.”
“Well, I got shot in the chest.”
“Really?” Dean picked at the heel of his boot where it rested on his knee. “I hadn’t noticed that.” He looked up into Sam’s goofy grin.
“I’m really glad you’re still here, man.”
Dean gave him a single nod. “Right back atcha.”
They stared at each other long enough for the smile to falter on Sam’s lips. “You gonna be okay?”
Dean dipped his gaze to the floor, studied the linoleum for a while. He sniffed, forced a twist out of his top lip as he met Sam’s eye again. “You know me. I’ll be fine.”
Sam regarded him carefully, smile gone. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do know you.”
“Morning, gentlemen.”
Dean dropped his boot from his knee to the floor, twisted in his chair as the doctor from the ER came through the door, empty wheelchair leading. He frowned.
“Doctor Ben, right?” Dean stood up. He hadn’t seen the man since that night in emergency almost a week ago.
The doctor smiled cheerfully. “The very same. How’s the shoulder?”
Dean glanced down at the sling. “It’s a pain in the ass. Thanks for asking. What can we do for you?” He pointed at the wheelchair.
Ben leaned on the backrest. “We’ve had a bit of backlog of paperwork downstairs the last week. Mandy in admin? She’s just getting on top of it. Been sending a few reports through. We have these reports we have to fill out.”
Dean felt himself tightening. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, we didn’t have a lot of information on you two, but the rules say: GSW, we gotta send it through to the PD.”
Goddamn it.
Dean shifted and widened his stance a little, eyes traveling to the open door behind the doctor. He wasn’t going to enjoy this. The guy had actually been pretty decent - fair - in the ER that night. Dean had a vague recollection of being a shithead about Ben removing his jacket, and he doubted his behavior had improved once it was off. But Ben had kept his word, brought Dean an update on Sam’s surgery like he’d promised.
Dean didn’t relish the idea of dropping him on the tiles, having to mission impossible Sam out of here single-handedly. And belting him was going to hurt like a sonuvabitch.
“So, your brother’s signing out. AMA.”
Dean blinked. “S’cuse me?” He whirled to look at Sam, saw his brother’s brow furrowed in consternation. He turned back to Ben, his own face scrunching. “What?”
Ben pushed the wheelchair around to the side of Sam’s bed, started disconnecting lines, removing sensors. Sam looked from the doctor to Dean, face stricken. “What’s going on?”
“Half of my city went nuts and then just disappeared last week, guys. Poof! Just like that. Quarter of a million people just…gone. And I saw a lot of messed up folks coming through the doors of my ER while that was happening. A lot of scared, confused, messed up people. All of a sudden it just stops? And then an hour later I get five more people through the door, and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking: These guys aren’t scared. They’re hurt, and they’re nervous, and they’re mad. But why the hell are these guys not scared?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a wary look.
Ben paused, stared at Dean. “I know a bit of Latin. You dished it up pretty fluent after that hit of Demerol.”
Dean closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. Fuck.
“I don’t know what any of this means, any more than the authorities do. And they’re on all the stations blaming everyone from God to al-Qaida. But what I do know? Half an hour after Mandy faxes off that report, I got the switchboard lighting up with some very keen members of this country’s law enforcement agencies. And they’re all requesting physical descriptions of the mysterious Dean and Sam I’ve got in my hospital.”
Dean cut eyes to Sam, saw the unspoken question in his face. FBI? Dean didn’t know, gave him a miniscule shake of the head as he turned his attention back to Ben.
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because you’ve got about three hours before they turn up looking for you. And I might be putting two and two together here and getting twenty-two, but the way I see it? You guys know what happened here. And I don’t think I want to get in your way.” Ben motioned to him. “You want to give me a hand here?”
Dean got moving. Between the two of them, they manhandled Sam as carefully as they could into the wheelchair. It must have hurt, turned Sam’s pale face a few impossible shades whiter, but he sucked it up.
“You alright?” Dean clapped a palm against his cheek.
Sam bit his lip, blinked furiously. He nodded.
Ben thrust a brown paper bag at Dean. “Painkillers, antibiotics. Enough to get you through until you get someplace you can have him looked at. Don’t try and do this alone. Get him to a doctor when you get where you’re going.”
Dean took it a little suspiciously. They didn’t catch breaks like this. It just never really happened.
“Thank you,” he heard himself say.
Ben shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling I should be saying that to you. Let’s get you guys out of here.”
**********************************************************************************************
Marcus’s parents owned a hobby farm in New Hampshire. No one was using the place, and Dean thought it sounded good location-wise. They couldn’t get much further away from Oregon without flashing a passport or getting seriously wet. Marcus was more than happy to organize the favor, and a couple of calls later the key was waiting with a neighbor.
“Just… dial down the scary when you grab the key. Please?” Marcus handed the address to Dean through the Impala’s open window.
Dean flashed him a charming smile. “How’s this?”
Marcus pointed at him. “That’s pretty good. Do that. Oh, and try not to… shoot anything. It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood.” He smiled apologetically.
Sam ducked down in the passenger seat beside Dean, caught Marcus’s eye. “I’ll keep the guns in a child-safe location. Thanks, Marcus. Really.”
“No problem.” He extended a hand, and Dean reached out of the Impala’s window to shake it. “Well, it’s been… an experience.”
Dean cocked his head, nodded. “That it has. Take it easy, Marcus.” He pointed to where Jo rested a hip against the hood of the Impala. “Don’t piss her off. Watch your balls.”
“I will. I mean, I won’t.” He frowned. “Okay. I think.”
Jo pushed off from the car, came to the window. “So, we’re gonna head to Mom’s for a bit. Get out of Portland for a while.”
Dean raised both eyebrows. “No shit?”
“Yeah, I think so. Let this all blow over.” She shrugged her shoulders, screwed up her nose as she glanced down the street. “Kinda creepy around here. You guys get done in New Hampshire, you should swing by.”
“Sounds like a plan. We might just do that.” He flapped a finger over the steering wheel towards Marcus. “Your mom’s gonna eat him alive. You know that, right?”
Jo grimaced. “Yeah. I know.”
“Seriously, your mom scares the crap outta me, and I’m fully armed.”
She chuckled, leaned in and planted her lips above his ear. “Take care.”
“You, too, Jo.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Dean.”
He nodded. It was a lie. But there was something to be said for liars like Jo Harvelle.
**********************************************************************************************
Sam slept for most of the three days it took them to get to New Hampshire. Dean didn’t mind. By the time they hit Omaha, he was firmly of the opinion there wasn’t much you couldn’t fix with a long drive and some Zeppelin.
It was good to be back on the road.
He hit a garage just inside the New Hampshire border, racked up two hundred bucks on parts to service the Impala, left Sam sleeping in the car while he stocked up on enough food to last them a week. He went heavy on the veggies, told himself he’d cook. It just about wiped out his last credit card, but Dean was pretty sure Sam was still sitting on one. The lanky little ass-monkey always was. Besides, he figured once they were settled at this place, he’d have time to head out and find some tables, play some shark.
Get some space and chill out.
Sam stirred as he threw the last of the grocery bags into the backseat.
“We there?”
“Just about. Hour or so to go.” Dean shut the door, slid in behind the wheel. “You alright? You’ve got a real powernap thing goin’ on over there.”
Sam rubbed his eyes, straightened. “Yeah. I think I want coffee. Can we get coffee?”
“Sure.”
Juggling coffee and car was still beyond his healing shoulder. They sat in the parking lot of the café while Dean downed his brew. It seemed as good a time as any to bring it up.
“So, in the interest of our new and improved No Secrets Policy…” Dean trailed off, could tell from Sam’s slow nod that he didn’t need to clarify any further.
“It’s still there. It’s not gone. I mean, I can feel it.”
“Okay. Feel it, as in: salt lines down while we sleep?”
Sam squinted out the window, thought about that some. “I don’t think that’s such a bad idea. For now. Just till we get a handle on what’s going on.”
“You think you’re gonna…?”
“Hurt anyone?” Sam balked, shook his head. “No. Jesus. No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t feel like it’s a… It doesn’t feel like that. It feels… different. I just don’t wanna take any chances until I’ve done some research.”
“Fair enough. Precautions it is.” Dean drained the last of his coffee, threw the cup out the window as he started the car.
Sam pitched a fit. “Dean!”
“What?”
“Your cup?”
“Yeah?”
“You just threw it out the window, you jackass.”
Dean peered over the frame. “Did I?”
“Yes! Go get it.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. Jesus. What’s wrong with you?”
“Dude, we just saved the fuckin’ world from a psycho-demon virus. I can’t lose one lousy cup out my window? There isn’t one grateful sonuvabitch out there who’s gonna pick that up for me?”
“No. There isn’t.” Sam motioned urgently. “Pick it up, you asshole.”
Dean rolled his eyes, sighed dramatically as he opened his door and leaned out. He bounced the cup off the side of Sam’s head as he pulled the door shut again.
“S’all yours, Captain CleanFreak.”
**********************************************************************************************
Marcus’s parents had money. And not just some. Wads and wads of the stuff, if the hobby farm was anything to go by. It was a two-storey homestead, perched on the leeside of a twenty acre sloping pasture. The house was immaculately presented and tastefully decorated.
At some point in the next week or so, Dean was going to break something priceless. Sam was sure of it. He certainly didn’t show much regard for the carpet putting down the salt lines.
When Sam pointed this out, Dean punched a finger at him from across the room. “Just sit on the couch and quietly have your chest wound. Martha Stewart.”
“It’s not our house.”
“Well, I plan on gettin’ some sleep while we’re here, so… I’m not really concerned about the shagpile’s sodium intake.”
The salt didn’t make any difference. Sam didn’t know if the quiet made Dean worse, or if it was just more obvious without any distractions around.
After a week on the farm, he still wasn't sleeping. Sam laid in his bed on the seventh night, listened again to the three a.m. hiss of a beer can being opened in the kitchen and then the soft mumble of the TV as it went on in the living room.
Three empties could buy him a couple of hours. Sam had it figured out from the trash in the mornings.
Meg’s death hadn’t healed anything in Dean. Might have given him one less thing to worry about, but it hadn’t undone anything that had happened in that warehouse. Killing Meg had been no more curative than the thread that had closed Dean’s wounds.
Healing was something that happened by degrees, beneath the surface. It recognized no calendar -no schedule - and could be neither summoned nor rushed.
And Sam knew Dean was making his inroads the best way he knew how. He worked on the Impala, drank too much, and slept too little. Sam left him to his own devices; half trusting him to correct before he hit the wall, half hoping he’d slam into it. Either way, it seemed like progress.
For his own part, he didn’t stray far from the living room couch, slept and surfed the net and watched TV. The doctor had warned him it would be a while before the breathlessness and fatigue left him. It had been the better part of two weeks since the seal had been broken and it was still a major feat getting to the john and back unassisted. Sam found the process frustrating, but knew there was little to be done besides exercising patience.
It was turning into the word of the month.
Dean headed into Concord on Saturday night, called late and drunk to say he wouldn’t be back until the morning. He rolled back through the door around ten, slapped three hundred dollars on the kitchen table in front of Sam.
“I take it the shoulder didn’t hold you back.”
Dean popped a soda from the fridge, leaned on the counter. “Oh, it held me back plenty. They just played worse. Fuckin’ tourists. ‘S like shooting fish in a goddamn barrel.” His bloodshot gaze lingered on Sam. “You look like I feel. You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve been outside. I think I might have overdone it.”
Dean took a swig of his drink. “Sorry. I shouldna stayed out. I just…”
“…did your shirt up in the dark?” Sam finished, gave him a wry smile as he pointed.
Dean dipped his chin, dropped the soda can onto the counter and moved his fingers to the mismatched buttons at his chest.
“Apparently,” he frowned, and Sam caught a flash of the hickey at his neck as he realigned buttons and holes.
There was a time when Sam would have been accosted with the unsolicited and graphic detail of Dean’s tryst. But his brother didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he drained the can of soda and threw it into the sink.
“I’m gonna grab a shower, hit the sack. You gonna be alright?”
“Sure.”
Dean pushed off from the counter, headed down the hall. Sam watched him go, figured it was going to be a while before a random chick in a bar was just that again.
**********************************************************************************************
Dean was nursing a coffee on the porch, boot heels resting on the railing, when Sam found him at sunrise the next morning.
“You sleep at all last night?”
“Coupla hours. Yeah.” Dean brought the mug to his lips, sent a frosty breath across the steam that rose from the black brew.
Sam pulled up a chair from against the house front, eased down into it with a sigh. “I wish there was something I could do, man. I really do.”
Dean sipped his coffee, nodded. “There is. You’re doin’ it.”
Sam squinted out across the misty field, rubbed his chilled fingers together. “I had a dream about Dad last night.”
Dean turned to look at him, didn’t say anything.
“I dreamed we were at a Knicks game, and halfway through he pitches a fit at me cause I’m supposed to be scoring or something. And here I am, just sitting there, watching the game. And I’m bitchin’ to you about his form and you’re all: talk to the hand, Sam. This’s between you and the old man.”
Sam dropped his voice an octave for the mimic, and Dean sniffed a laugh over the lip of his mug. “What the fuck would you be doin’ at a Knicks game?”
“I know.”
Dean tugged at his ear, shivered a little against the cold air.
Sam plucked a twig off the porch boards, scratched at the woodgrain. “You looked like you were gonna say something, then.”
Dean scratched the back of his head. “No, it’s just… you said you had a dream about Dad, and I thought… I had some dreams about the old man back in Oregon.”
“Yeah, I remember you saying.”
“Before we found out about the book, before I met Christine Picoult, I had a dream about you gettin’ into Stanford, ‘cept you were flashin’ the black eyes and talkin’ about Hell…”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular ray of sunshine. Anyway, the old man’s there, and he’s leaning on this meter and he’s tellin’ me I should crack a book sometime.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. Didn’t really think about it at the time, but…”
“You think he might be..?”
“I think Dad’s dead, Sam. That’s what I think.”
“No, I know. I just mean… you think maybe there’s some way he was trying to tell you something?”
Dean raised his eyebrows, shook his head. “I dunno.”
“We’ve seen a hell of a lot of stranger things, Dean.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But if that’s true, you know what I keep thinkin’?”
“What’s that?”
“He really wanted to help me out, I coulda used a hand in that warehouse.”
Sam picked at his knee. “Well, you’re still alive, Dean. Maybe he did.”
Dig deep, kid. You’re brother’s on his way.
Dean cleared his throat. “Maybe.”
He saw out the rest of his coffee lost in thought. He wondered about his father, about Christine Picoult, and about Tristan Bradley. He had a feeling none of them were done surprising him. He wondered what was waiting for them in the pages of that book.
Sam tapped the end of his stick on the porch, seemed to be working up to something. “You know what I keep thinking?” he asked finally, and Dean’s brow knitted at the tremble in his voice.
“What?”
“I keep thinking he sure knew what he was talking about, when he said you might have to kill me.”
Dean dropped his boots down off the railing, was shaking his head before Sam finished speaking. “No,” he responded emphatically. “No, I don’t believe that.”
Don’t give up on your brother, Dean.
“Why do you seem so calm about this?” Sam lifted the stick, tossed it over the rails. “I could be the fucking Anti-Christ for all we know.”
“No, you couldn’t be.”
“How can you know that?”
“Gaap said you had a choice. And if you got a choice, then you’ll make the right one, Sam.”
Sam jiggled his knee, got a finger up and twisting in the hair at his temple. “How can you be so sure about me after everything that’s happened?”
Dean pointed at his head. “Because the Anti-Christ doesn’t twiddle.”
Sam’s fingers froze in his hair and his features twisted in disgust. “You’re making a joke about this?”
Dean threw a hand in the air. “Alright, Jesus. Because all of it happened, and you still made the right choice. I mean, you broke my fuckin’ fingers, but you made the right call.”
Sam’s knee jumped, boot heel tapping on the porch. He seemed dubious, looked out across the field.
Dean leaned forward, shrugged a little.
“It’s what you do, Sam. You make good calls. On the job and off. You’ve got good instincts. You always have. It’s how you found me in that warehouse and it’s why we’re sittin’ here havin’ this conversation. Your choices might’ve just got a little harder, and maybe you’re gonna have to make ‘em more often. But you’re gonna do the right thing.”
“I don’t understand where you get all this faith in me.”
“Best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, Sam.”
“Oh, fuck me. Did you just quote Dr. Phil?”
Dean cocked an eyebrow, nodded slowly. “Yes, I did.”
“We gotta get you away from this daytime television.”
Dean kept nodding. “Yes, we do.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“I haven’t thanked you for that.” Dean narrowed his eyes at the porch railing.
“Thanked me for what?”
“Meg.”
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” he mumbled.
Dean leaned back and stretched against the chair. “Yeah, I do. And I will. When I figure out how.”
It hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d planned or hoped, but Dean was grateful. There was a stubborn whisper of regret inside him that it hadn’t been his hand around the hilt of the blade. But then again, he wasn’t getting any of those hours back, whoever sliced and diced. Shelley and her roommate were still dead. Maybe it was all the same in the end. Meg was gone, and he was still going to Hell.
SNAFU.
Sam seemed eager for a change of subject. “So, I’ve been thinking about our No Secrets Policy. Since our conversation on the way out here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s still some stuff I need to tell you. About the Yellow-Eyed Demon, what happened back in Wyoming. I mean, not right now, but... soon. I’m starting to think it could be important. Might help us find out what’s going on with me.”
Dean sniffed, dropped his empty mug down between his boots. “Careful, Sammy. That almost sounds like a job.” He didn’t try to curb the smile that arced his lips.
Sam frowned at him incredulously. “You wanna get going, don’t you?”
Dean grimaced, shifted in his seat. “Dude, I know you’re still fucked up the wahzoo and it’s probably the last thing you wanna do right now, but…”
“You wanna get going.”
Dean gave him a dose of the Cheshire Cat. “I’m sorry, man, it’s just… this sittin’ around is killin’ me. I thought it sounded pretty good - some open space, a bit of downtime - but actually? I just don’t think I’m any good at it.”
Sam’s shoulders shook with laughter. He plucked at his eyebrow. “You never have been.” He pointed at Dean. “I still get to pick the jobs. You don’t get to pick any jobs. Ever. Again.”
“Okay.” Dean held up a hand in acknowledgement.
“You suck at it.”
Dean chuckled. “Okay.”
“And you have to do all the work. Because it takes me half an hour to get to the bathroom right now if I wanna take a piss.”
“No problem.”
“Fine. Okay then. Pack our shit.”
“Please.”
“Okay, pack our shit, please. We’re going to South Dakota.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Uh, no. We’re not.”
“Dean!” Sam slapped both palms on his thighs.
Dean was on his feet, heading back into the house. He spun on his heel and jabbed a finger in the air between them. “He shot you in the chest, Sam!” he snapped.
“Yeah, he did,” Sam agreed, nodding enthusiastically. “Because he thought I was about to kill you.”
Dean did a cross sweep, sent both palms wide. “I don’t care. I don’t want him anywhere near you. And you definitely don’t want me anywhere near him. Trust me on that.”
Sam blew out an exasperated breath. “Dean, that man has been like a father to you since Dad died. And you’re mad at him right now for what? For treating you like his son. You’re mad at Bobby for putting you first. He put you before the job, before himself, and before me.”
“Yeah, he shot you.”
“I asked him to!” Sam howled. “He did exactly what I asked him to.” He was getting out of breath. He paused, sucked in a few careful lungfuls of air, palm against his chest. “I can’t argue with you about this. It’s making me dizzy. You’ve got five months left, Dean. I’m not letting you two buttheads run it down playing Mexican stand-off. We’re going to South Dakota. You and Bobby are gonna sort your shit out. And after that? I’m gonna tell you about Wyoming. Then trust me, you’re gonna be so angry at me, you’ll forget anyone ever pointed a gun anywhere near me. Might even take a shot at me yourself.”
He had that tone. The don’t-fuck-with-me timbre. He was gonna ride Dean’s ass until he snapped and shot something.
They were going to South Dakota.
Dean screwed up his nose. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” He started back into the house, turned as he wrenched open the door. “And Jesus Christ, exactly how big is this fuckin’ secret of yours?”
Sam bit his thumbnail nervously. “Big.”
Author's Notes
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Yikes. She’s all done, folks. *blinks* Holy cow. Many, many thanks to you all for sharing the ride. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologist and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say? Special thanks also to
chocca2 for peeking and pointing.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12 Ch 13
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Fourteen
Soft blue horizons reach far into my childhood days
As you are rising to bring me my forgotten ways.
- Enya, On Your Shore
There was a lot of blood. Dean couldn’t tell what was Meg’s and what was Sam’s, but his brother’s chest was slick with it. He could feel more of the stuff wanting out against the heel of his hand on the wound.
Dean passed his tongue across his teeth, felt the loose molar at the back shift, and a fresh flood of rusted warmth filled his own mouth. A cough rattled in his throat, and he leaned so he could lose the mess down past Sam’s shoulder onto the floor of the car.
Bobby twisted in the driver seat. “Dean?”
“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Drive the fuckin’ car.”
There were worse ways this morning could have ended. Worse ways than straddling his brother in the backseat of the car, hand against a gunshot wound in his chest. There must have been worse ways for this to turn out. He just couldn’t think of any right now. Bobby took the corner back onto the highway a little fast, and Dean had to lift the hand from Sam’s chest, brace to keep the mess of his shoulder from impacting against the seatback.
“Bobby,” he gritted, as he returned the slippery palm to Sam’s chest.
When he bore down, Sam’s eyes flashed black and he made a harsh, angry sound through his teeth. Dean fought back his rising horror, tamped down on a cold sense of dread.
“Hey, Sam. Sammy. Look at me.”
Sam blinked and wheezed, eyes clearing. Darkness replaced by panic. He got a hand up and gripped Dean’s forearm.
“Sorry, man. I know. We got a bit of drive, so you gotta hold on, okay?” He nodded, kept it up until Sam did too. “Good. Good, good. This is nothin’. You’re okay.”
Dean dipped his bleeding nose to the shoulder of his jacket, wiped the warm wet from his top lip. He snorted back and sent another mouthful of bloodied debris to the boards. A wave of dizzy washed over him, put him on notice. The shoulder was gone; the feeling in his left arm reduced to a distant tingle where his hand rested in the pocket of his jacket. The crumpled fingers of his right hand throbbed and sang back up through the underside of this forearm. Internal picket lines were forming at every ignored and untreated abuse.
Dean locked eyes with Sam, fixed on his face. Anchored himself against the fear and need he found there.
“This is nothin’,” he repeated, tasted copper on his lips again. “You’re okay.”
**********************************************************************************************
Ten minutes out from the hospital, Sam lost the tug of war; slipped over the line. When Dean couldn’t rouse him, he lost the thin veneer of control that had been damming the swell of his anger.
“Goddamn you, Bobby. I swear to God, if he--”
“Keep pressure on it. We’re nearly there.”
At the ER, Bobby threw the car into park and was out the door in one motion.
Dean stared down at Sam’s crimson-drenched shirt, the spatters and flecks of blood on his ashen face and grey throat. Blinked at his brother’s blue tinged lips.
For a long minute there was just the panicked huff of his own desperate breaths in the car’s silent interior. Then a stampede of feet, hands slapping at the enamel of the Impala, doors opening.
Dean pushed up from his knee, got his weight off Sam as they dragged his slack brother from beneath him. He fumbled out of the car after them, tottered on unsteady legs beside the gurney as they whisked Sam inside.
Someone was asking him questions. A lab coat and a clipboard wanted information and Dean couldn’t listen or answer. He dodged the headless obstruction distractedly, kept his eyes on Sam’s face.
They passed through a doorway and there was another barrier, this one small and insistent.
“You have to stand back, sir.”
Dean’s gaze traveled from the hand against his chest to the nurse’s face. He swallowed. “His lips are blue.”
“You need to keep out of the way. Let them work.”
Dean heard the words, stepped back compliantly, and was rewarded with a swinging door to the face. He stared dumbly at the wood panel, mouth working around an unformed question.
“Dean.”
It was Bobby coming down the hallway, and Dean couldn’t deal with that right then. He turned blindly, headed down the corridor on suddenly belligerent legs. He swayed, veered and caught the wall with his right shoulder. Bounced off and kept going.
“Kid, you gotta stop.”
Dean did. He whirled around and shot out with his right; flexed his wrist to spare the fingers and smacked Bobby hard in the jaw with the heel of his palm. Sent him snapping backwards and onto the tiles with a hollow sounding thunk.
He was standing there, thinking that had felt pretty good, when someone shouted and security descended on him like a ton of bricks. Two thickset heavy guys with zero respect for a shoulder dislocation. They frog-marched him past Jo and Marcus as they came in the foyer doors.
Jo skidded to a halt. “Oh, shit. Hey, what’s going on? He’s with us.”
“He’s outside, is what he is,” barked the guy on Dean’s left, and they tossed him loose at the door, sent him staggering onto the asphalt.
Marcus headed inside to find Bobby, and Jo made a frantic dash to catch Dean as he crumpled on the hospital driveway.
“Nononono. Not on the road. Over here.” Jo steered him to the building, choreographed his clumsy slide down the wall to his ass, back against brick. She sat on her heels, surveyed him with growing concern. “Okay, you really need a doctor. I’m gonna get someone to come take a look at you. Stay here.”
Dean got the back of his hand up, wiped the blood from his nose. An elderly couple gave him a wide berth on the pavement, exchanged noises of shock and disapproval as they passed by.
He closed his eyes, let his head drop back against the wall. Snapped his lids open when the world seemed to tip and slide. He thought he might throw up, and the nausea didn’t ease any when Bobby crouched in front of him, jaw ruby-red and beginning to swell beneath his whiskers.
“Ah, shit. Dean?”
“Get the fuck away from me.” Dean hit him with all the ice he could muster, saw from the look on Bobby’s face it was plenty.
The old man nodded, eyes dark and sad. “Okay, you got it. I know you don’t want me anywhere near you right now. And you got that look about ya like I might be real sorry I opened my trap in a few. But I gotta say it. And then I’m gonna leave ya both alone.”
Bobby shifted on the balls of his feet, looked back toward the hospital entrance.
“I know what I did back there crossed all kinds of lines with you. And you’re either gonna get past this, or you’re not. I got no control over that. Ball’s in your court there, Dean. And I ain’t gonna try and force it. But before I take off, I need you to know somethin’.”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Figured the tilt-a-whirl and the nausea were preferable to hearing whatever Bobby was peddling. He didn’t want to hear why. He didn’t care why.
Bobby’d taken the shot. Period.
“I promised your Dad a long time ago that if it came down to it, I’d look out for you boys.”
That got Dean’s eyes open again, his glare a thrown machete.
Bobby nodded. “And yeah, you can look at me like that. ‘Cause you’re right. I shot your brother today. Dean, I didn’t pull that trigger because your brother asked me to, or because he’s a demon, or because I want him dead. I took that shot cause he’s not how you go.” Bobby stood up, looked down at him. “He might be why, but Sam is not how you go, kid.”
Dean dipped his chin, let his lids fall shut. Managed to keep the tremor out of his lips until he heard Bobby turn and leave. When he cracked his hot, stinging eyes he was alone. He tilted his skull back against the rough of the brick and wept.
**********************************************************************************************
The doctor Jo dragged out with her was in his mid-fifties, graying, and exhausted. Dean heard him clarify the name with Jo, felt a spark of unease that she hadn’t used an alias.
“Dean?” He squatted down. “I’m Ben. How’re you doing out here?”
He wasn’t doing so great; was actually quaking enough that the back of his head was tap-dancing off the wall behind him. The doctor reached out for his left shoulder, and Dean blocked the advance with his right forearm. He was pretty sure if anyone touched anything, he was going to black out.
And he needed to know about Sam. He had to stay awake. “Don’t.”
“Okay,” Ben agreed, his voice low and easy. He took Dean’s wrist with a latexed hand instead, flattened the pads of two fingers against his radial pulse. He was silent for a moment, eyes traveling the wrecked course of Dean’s body.
“Alright,” he said finally, “here’s the deal. You see those guys over there?” Ben pointed to the hospital entrance at the two security guards who were standing - arms folded - staring intently in their direction. “They don’t want you back in there. Those boys have seen some pretty crazy stuff the last couple of days. We all have. So, they’re not real big on risk-taking right now. And just so we’re straight, I’ve done worse things in the last twenty-four hours than leave a man to die in the parking lot. You understand what I’m saying to you?”
Dean nodded. He did. He got that.
“That was your brother? Came in before with the gunshot wound?”
Another nod, and a wave of grief to go with it. Dean was beyond caring about the tear he felt track down his face. He swallowed, hitched in a breath.
Ben squinted at him. “Okay. I’m gonna give you a shot of Demerol. It’s gonna make you feel pretty good, and it’s gonna make those guys over there a lot happier about letting you back in the door. We’ll pop that shoulder, straighten up the fingers and see where else you’re banged up. When we’ve got you sorted, I’ll find out what’s going on with your brother. How’s that sound?”
Dean was sitting on his ass, busted up and crying in a parking lot. So he nodded. Doctor Ben and his Demerol sounded alright.
**********************************************************************************************
They left Dean in some hall for a while, waiting on someone to take him for X-rays. Jo found a stool and sat with him.
She looked like hell. Hair a tangled mess of blonde, bruised cheek. Her eyes were bloodshot and bleary. There was a thick smear of God-knew-who’s blood near her jaw, smudges and flecks of mud from the field across her face and down her neck.
Dean gazed at her, thought: Ellen’d have a fuckin’ fit.
He felt thick and weighted, lids heavy against the fluorescent glare. But he needed to stay awake. He needed to know what was going on with Sam.
“Sam.”
“Marcus’s with him. Marcus’s gonna stay with him.”
Jo’s fingernails tracked steady circles in the hair above his ear. Slow and soothing. Dean was warm. Buzzed and numb. For the first time since he could remember, there wasn’t any pain. He blinked long.
Sam.
He struggled against the narcotic fuzz, shifted until he got enough movement to rustle some dormant sensation in his body. He hit the jackpot with the shoulder, levered off the pain back into wakefulness. He grunted, and Jo’s palm flattened against his hair.
“Stay still. Don’t move.”
“Where’s Sam?” He turned his head against the gurney, tilted his chin up and tried to get a look down the hallway.
Jo’s fingers went back to their circuit against his skull. “Upstairs. As soon as we can see him, we’ll go. I swear.”
He twisted his face back to her, confused and suspicious. “Where is he?”
“They’re fixing him up. They’re still fixing him up.”
Dean licked his lips, mouth desert-dry. Grimaced through a swallow. Jo’s knuckles grazed his cheek. “I’m gonna see if they’ll let you have some water. Okay? I’ll be back in a second.”
He studied the wall while she was gone, followed the IV line from the clear bag hanging above his head to where it tapped into the back of his hand. He didn’t remember that going in. Stretched his top lip down over his dry teeth and tried to dislodge the annoyance of the nasal cannula.
When Jo came back she had ice chips, and they were so goddamn awesome he nearly forgot about Sam. When he remembered, he asked how long they’d been in the hospital, and Jo checked her watch, told him a couple of hours. She threaded her fingers back through his hair, and he wanted to tell her to get them out. It was going to put him to sleep and he couldn’t have that.
“You don’t have to stay awake,” Jo said, and it rocked him with such a visceral blast of guilt and grief that he closed his eyes, turned his face to the wall. The breath he took shuddered in and out of him. He got his taped fingers up over his face.
“I’ll wake you. I promise.” Jo’s nails snicked behind his ear, curled at the nape of his neck. “Go to sleep.”
He did. Let the entire mess go, sank someplace else.
**********************************************************************************************
When Dean woke, he had a headache and a pounding throb in his shoulder. It was a deep protestation of muscle and joint, the sort of profound bodily objection that smacked of surgery. Jo sat impatiently in a chair beside the bed, thumbnail between her teeth, while Dean tolerated the attentions of the nurse. She acquainted him the limitations of the sling that held his arm, tucked the PCA unit into his right hand, and told them the doctor would be in to see him later. After she left, Jo filled him in.
Sam hadn’t woken up yet.
Portland’s population had been halved in the space of twenty-four hours. The seven other towns hosting symbols had been completely emptied. Authorities had found no survivors, no bodies. No sign of what had happened. The burned sigils in the ground were all that remained.
Dean brushed the information aside. He didn’t have the headspace for the magnitude of that. Sam hadn’t woken up yet.
He didn’t argue when they insisted on the wheelchair to get him to Sam’s room.
“Whatever,” he told the reluctant nurse who wheeled it in. “Just get me up there.”
Jo took him.
He grappled with an acute anxiety in the elevator, Sam’s blackball eyes and bloodied hands on loop inside his skull. But there was another Sam in there, too. The clear-eyed, panicked Sam clutching at his forearm in the back of the Impala. The Sam who couldn’t breathe; who wheezed and bled against the heel of Dean’s palm. The Sam who held on while his lung slowly filled because that’s what Dean told him to do.
The sheer assault of equipment was gut-punch enough to clear it all at the door. Dean didn’t know which Sam lay in wait beneath the mess of tubes and wires and blips and beeps. But he knew he didn’t care.
He just needed him to wake up.
Marcus scrabbled out of the chair beside the bed as they came in. “Oh, hey. How’re you feeling?”
Dean didn’t answer. Didn’t mean to be rude. He knew Marcus had been there since Sam had come out of surgery. Knew he’d watched and stood guard in Dean’s stead, and he was going to be grateful about that sometime soon. But not now. He couldn’t be thankful right now.
He blinked at Sam’s still face, hand fisting inside the cotton sling against his chest. He struggled with a wild, protective urge to rip everything loose. Put a stop to the multiple invasions and intrusions being perpetrated against his unconscious brother.
It was a good thing, Dean thought, that Bobby was long gone. He felt like it would be a satisfying exercise, getting his Glock up close to Bobby Singer’s face.
He buried that new brand of sorrow somewhere deep, forced himself back to the here and now. Back to Sam.
Jo leaned down over his shoulder, got her lips close to his ear. “You want us to go?” she asked.
He nodded, didn’t trust himself to speak. He found his voice when they were almost to the door.
“I’m not leavin’ this room.” He kept his eyes on Sam, didn’t turn around. “Tell ‘em I’m not movin’ till he wakes up.”
Jo knew better than to argue. “Okay,” she said. “You got it.”
**********************************************************************************************
It was three days before Sam opened his eyes and when he did, it was as if he’d never shut them. Three blinks and he was straight back to the blind panic with which he’d bled all over the Impala.
Dean leapt to his feet beside the bed, got his clumsy, strapped fingers up against Sam’s clammy forehead. His brother choked against the respirator, and Dean moved his hand to the call button; punched it to bring the nurse.
“Hey, hey. Calm down. You’re alright.” Dean replaced his hand against Sam’s face and blew out a long breath. “Thank God.” He stared intently into his brother’s blood-shot, confused eyes, drank in his distress. Distress was a giant step up on comatose. Hell, distress was fucking beautiful. “You know where you are?”
Sam’s eyes traveled around the room. He shook his head a little.
“You’re in the hospital. You remember what happened?”
Sam’s gaze grew soft, focus shifting to the internal. Dean saw it dawn on him, the detail coming back. He remembered. Dean watched the horror growing in those green eyes, nodded down at his brother’s stricken face. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Sam’s face crumpled. He blinked a silver tear down the side of his face, and Dean didn’t know why it was such a relief to see him crying, but it was. He bent closer as the nurse came into the room, locked eyes with his brother and smiled. “You’re a ginormous girl, you know that? Quit cryin’, you fuckin’ pussy.”
**********************************************************************************************
Dean signed himself out of the hospital that afternoon. The Impala was waiting for him at Jo’s, fully detailed and ignition replaced. Jo directed him to Marcus when he went looking for the culprit.
He brushed off Dean’s heartfelt thanks.
“You avert an apocalypse, we clean your car. It’s how we do it here in Oregon.”
Dean headed back to the motel. The owners of the Rosemont were apparently among the missing. The place was deserted. He collected what little of their belongings remained in the room, and took up Jo’s offer of a roof and a couch back at her apartment.
Jo seemed to be taking it all in stride. She’d lost her job, but no one seemed to know where her landlord was, so she argued six of one, half dozen of the other. Either way, it left her sitting pretty for a week or two, financially.
Dean sprang for groceries anyway, told her to shut the fuck up when she complained about being a beneficiary of his fraudulent income.
Marcus threw himself into some research on the Dagger of Andromalius. Dean knew his motives were probably a little darker than simply wanting to help out, but he couldn’t really blame the guy. Besides, information was power. The more eyes they had on books, the better.
Those first few days of relative normalcy disclosed to Dean the worst of Meg’s crimes. Without the focus of the job and the immediacy of the multiple threats they had been facing, he was confronted with the more mundane aftershocks of her assault.
His hands shook, and not just every now and then. It was a constant, almost imperceptible tremor. Enough that he noticed when he was doing anything requiring a fine touch. It was more annoying than debilitating, but it bugged him on a deeper level than the purely physical.
There were dances in the periphery of his vision, too. Flashes of indistinct people who were never actually there. He excused himself on more than one occasion for almost walking into nobody. Had woken on Jo’s couch a couple of heart-stopping times, thinking someone was standing beside it.
And straight out of left field, even the furniture was pissing in his cornflakes. It took him four days and three close calls over the kitchen sink to figure out the sound of a chair leg scraping on the floor was tickling his gag reflex.
None of it was particularly incapacitating, but it was there. Which meant so was Meg.
**********************************************************************************************
He was pulling a two a.m. shift in front of some black and white horror film when Jo padded out from her bedroom. There was clunking in the kitchen, and then she offered him a whiskey over the back of the couch.
“Can’t sleep?”
Dean took the glass, rested it on the peak of his right hip bone. “Nope.”
“You’ve been doin’ that a lot. Not sleeping, I mean.”
“Sorry.”
Jo rounded the coffee table, plonked down in the armchair across from him. She cracked another glass and the bottle of whiskey decisively onto the tabletop. “Well, I can’t sleep either. Let’s get drunk.”
Dean regarded her pajamas, eyed the fluffy rabbit slippers that squished under her knees as she folded her legs beneath her. He cocked an eyebrow and huffed out a laugh. “This bar could use a dress code.”
Jo pursed her lips as she poured herself two fingers, made a face. “Look who’s talking. You know, those sweats have sag-ass. You look like you have a load in your pants.”
He blinked at her, nodded smugly. “You’ve been lookin’ at my ass.”
Jo threw back the whiskey, slapped her glass back onto the table. “Shut the fuck up, Winchester.” She rolled her hand at him, lifted the bottle in readiness with the other. “Come on. Drink.”
Dean obliged, leaned to shoot the glass across the wooden tabletop for a refill. He had a brief guilty flash of Jo’s jaw smacking off the carpet, his hands closing the cuffs around her wrist.
“I keep thinking it’s not really over,” she admitted.
Dean laughed out loud at that. “That’s cause it never is, Jo.” He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand, and his chuckle took on an exhausted edge. “Jesus Christ, it so never is.” He sighed. “I gotta figure out a way to get Sam outta this hospital.”
“What’s the hurry?” Jo emptied her glass, poured again.
Dean shifted against the couch. “Well, this whole city-in-disaster, paperwork-be-damned insurance moratorium isn’t gonna last, and since we’re on a first name basis with these people,” he shot Jo a reproachful look, “we’re gonna blip up on some radars when they start faxing shit around. I gotta find some place we can lay low while Sam gets his sea legs.”
“Dean, you guys are welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
“To be perfectly honest, the sooner I get this fuckin’ city in my rear view mirror, the better. No offence, Jo, but…” he shook his head, “I gotta get outta here.”
“None taken. Understandable.” She thought for a second, then ventured hesitantly. “Maybe you guys should head on back to South Dakota. I mean, Bobby’d--”
“We’re not goin’ to Bobby’s.” Dean said it quietly and without animosity, but he meant it.
She took the hint. “Okay.”
“I just feel like we need some space. So we can sit down and figure out what’s goin’ on.”
Jo slid another whiskey across the table to him. “If anyone deserves a holiday…” she toasted, brought her own glass to her lips.
They let the quiet drone of the TV fill the silence between them for a spell. Then Jo said: “I get the feeling this is all gonna be okay. I mean, I don’t know how, or why, but I just… I have this really strong feeling this is all gonna work out.”
Dean sniffed a laugh into his whiskey. “Yeah, that’s cause you’re tipsy.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“You’re beltin’ those back like a shore-leave sailor. If you were Sam right now? You’d have your panties on your head and you’d be dry-humpin’ the bunny slippers.”
“Well, thank God I’m not Sam, then,” Jo said slowly. “I really mean it, Dean. I just feel like… it’s Sam, you know?”
Dean drained his whiskey, felt the warm burn of alcohol seeping and softening the sharp edges. He sent the empty glass over the table to Jo and dragged his index finger across his cheek, below the cut there.
“This cut on my face? She looked like Sam when she did that. I don’t know how, but… she was Sam.”
Jo froze, mid-pour, then continued slowly. “Okay,” she said carefully, clapped the top onto the bottle and placed it on the table. She pushed his glass back to him, picked her own up and settled back.
“She was talking about you and Duluth, and… I don’t know. I was pretty messed up by then. I wasn’t thinkin’ real straight but… I knew it wasn’t Sam. You know? And yeah, it hurt like a sonuvabitch, but that wasn’t him. It’s not who he is.”
“Maybe you have to trust that. Maybe we all do.”
“Maybe.” Dean stalled the whiskey en route to his lips, waggled his taped fingers against the glass. “Then again.”
Jo bit her lip, nodded. “Yeah. There is that.”
“I keep thinking about what Gaap said. Sam being some flame that’s gonna cleanse the forest.”
Jo brought her knees up, rested her chin against the flannel of her pajama pants. “Dean, has it even occurred to you that whatever’s happening to Sam, it might help us?”
It had. It had been occurring to him non-stop, since the tip of the dagger had breached Meg’s chest.
His actions rely upon your fate. Those words had been volleying back and forth over the taut net of his resolve. They hovered like specters in the shadowy wings of the Deal; both threat and promise, damnation and deliverance.
But there was hope in those words, somewhere. A hope Dean wasn’t ready to acknowledge or embrace. A possibility too distant and indistinct to be examined in any detail. But still, a seed planted.
Don’t you give up on your brother, Dean.
“Gaap said there was choice in all things.”
“Then maybe we need to trust that Sam’ll make the right choice.”
Dean shook his head slowly, nursed his whiskey. “You saw it too, Jo. That was some dark broke-my-fingers shit he had goin’ on. If we’re talkin’ about tryin’ to control something like that? He’s got some scary fuckin’ choices to make there.”
Jo swished her drink around the bottom of her glass, contemplated. “I dunno, Dean. You said it yourself. It’s not who he is. And if someone has to make the scary choices?” She shrugged. “Then, yeah: I vote Sam Winchester. Any day and twice on Sundays.”
Dean shifted his head on the arm of the couch to look at her. He narrowed his eyes at her open genuine expression, and felt a ridiculously painful stab of pride. The corner of his mouth tugged up.
“Hell, yes,” he agreed, tipped his whiskey toward her before he drank.
**********************************************************************************************
“So, Gaap just said no?”
Sam punched off the TV, threw the remote down on the bed beside his leg.
Dean didn’t look up from his magazine. “Uh-huh.”
Sam frowned at him. “Just like that?”
Dean licked his thumb, made an exaggerated show of turning the page. “Just like that,” he echoed.
Sam’s knee twitched beneath the sheet. “As in, gee thanks, but I’m tryna cut back?”
He was laughing. Dean looked up slowly from the periodical, studied his brother blankly for a moment. Then he lifted a finger, pointed at the PCA unit hanging off the rails of Sam’s bed. “You know, you’re only supposed to press that button once.”
Sam tilted his head back against the pillow, shoulders shaking, and gave the ceiling a lazy peal of laughter. “I’m sorry. I just…”
He let loose a high-pitched giggle, and that was enough for Dean.
“Oh, my God. Did someone leave a tank of nitrous on in here?” He slapped the magazine shut against his thigh, threw it on the bedside table. “I think I preferred it when you were fucked up on sedatives and blubbering.”
Sam’s head snapped up. “I did not,” he objected indignantly.
Dean tilted his temple, cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, you did.”
“Well, I got shot in the chest.”
“Really?” Dean picked at the heel of his boot where it rested on his knee. “I hadn’t noticed that.” He looked up into Sam’s goofy grin.
“I’m really glad you’re still here, man.”
Dean gave him a single nod. “Right back atcha.”
They stared at each other long enough for the smile to falter on Sam’s lips. “You gonna be okay?”
Dean dipped his gaze to the floor, studied the linoleum for a while. He sniffed, forced a twist out of his top lip as he met Sam’s eye again. “You know me. I’ll be fine.”
Sam regarded him carefully, smile gone. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do know you.”
“Morning, gentlemen.”
Dean dropped his boot from his knee to the floor, twisted in his chair as the doctor from the ER came through the door, empty wheelchair leading. He frowned.
“Doctor Ben, right?” Dean stood up. He hadn’t seen the man since that night in emergency almost a week ago.
The doctor smiled cheerfully. “The very same. How’s the shoulder?”
Dean glanced down at the sling. “It’s a pain in the ass. Thanks for asking. What can we do for you?” He pointed at the wheelchair.
Ben leaned on the backrest. “We’ve had a bit of backlog of paperwork downstairs the last week. Mandy in admin? She’s just getting on top of it. Been sending a few reports through. We have these reports we have to fill out.”
Dean felt himself tightening. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, we didn’t have a lot of information on you two, but the rules say: GSW, we gotta send it through to the PD.”
Goddamn it.
Dean shifted and widened his stance a little, eyes traveling to the open door behind the doctor. He wasn’t going to enjoy this. The guy had actually been pretty decent - fair - in the ER that night. Dean had a vague recollection of being a shithead about Ben removing his jacket, and he doubted his behavior had improved once it was off. But Ben had kept his word, brought Dean an update on Sam’s surgery like he’d promised.
Dean didn’t relish the idea of dropping him on the tiles, having to mission impossible Sam out of here single-handedly. And belting him was going to hurt like a sonuvabitch.
“So, your brother’s signing out. AMA.”
Dean blinked. “S’cuse me?” He whirled to look at Sam, saw his brother’s brow furrowed in consternation. He turned back to Ben, his own face scrunching. “What?”
Ben pushed the wheelchair around to the side of Sam’s bed, started disconnecting lines, removing sensors. Sam looked from the doctor to Dean, face stricken. “What’s going on?”
“Half of my city went nuts and then just disappeared last week, guys. Poof! Just like that. Quarter of a million people just…gone. And I saw a lot of messed up folks coming through the doors of my ER while that was happening. A lot of scared, confused, messed up people. All of a sudden it just stops? And then an hour later I get five more people through the door, and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking: These guys aren’t scared. They’re hurt, and they’re nervous, and they’re mad. But why the hell are these guys not scared?”
Dean and Sam exchanged a wary look.
Ben paused, stared at Dean. “I know a bit of Latin. You dished it up pretty fluent after that hit of Demerol.”
Dean closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. Fuck.
“I don’t know what any of this means, any more than the authorities do. And they’re on all the stations blaming everyone from God to al-Qaida. But what I do know? Half an hour after Mandy faxes off that report, I got the switchboard lighting up with some very keen members of this country’s law enforcement agencies. And they’re all requesting physical descriptions of the mysterious Dean and Sam I’ve got in my hospital.”
Dean cut eyes to Sam, saw the unspoken question in his face. FBI? Dean didn’t know, gave him a miniscule shake of the head as he turned his attention back to Ben.
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because you’ve got about three hours before they turn up looking for you. And I might be putting two and two together here and getting twenty-two, but the way I see it? You guys know what happened here. And I don’t think I want to get in your way.” Ben motioned to him. “You want to give me a hand here?”
Dean got moving. Between the two of them, they manhandled Sam as carefully as they could into the wheelchair. It must have hurt, turned Sam’s pale face a few impossible shades whiter, but he sucked it up.
“You alright?” Dean clapped a palm against his cheek.
Sam bit his lip, blinked furiously. He nodded.
Ben thrust a brown paper bag at Dean. “Painkillers, antibiotics. Enough to get you through until you get someplace you can have him looked at. Don’t try and do this alone. Get him to a doctor when you get where you’re going.”
Dean took it a little suspiciously. They didn’t catch breaks like this. It just never really happened.
“Thank you,” he heard himself say.
Ben shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling I should be saying that to you. Let’s get you guys out of here.”
**********************************************************************************************
Marcus’s parents owned a hobby farm in New Hampshire. No one was using the place, and Dean thought it sounded good location-wise. They couldn’t get much further away from Oregon without flashing a passport or getting seriously wet. Marcus was more than happy to organize the favor, and a couple of calls later the key was waiting with a neighbor.
“Just… dial down the scary when you grab the key. Please?” Marcus handed the address to Dean through the Impala’s open window.
Dean flashed him a charming smile. “How’s this?”
Marcus pointed at him. “That’s pretty good. Do that. Oh, and try not to… shoot anything. It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood.” He smiled apologetically.
Sam ducked down in the passenger seat beside Dean, caught Marcus’s eye. “I’ll keep the guns in a child-safe location. Thanks, Marcus. Really.”
“No problem.” He extended a hand, and Dean reached out of the Impala’s window to shake it. “Well, it’s been… an experience.”
Dean cocked his head, nodded. “That it has. Take it easy, Marcus.” He pointed to where Jo rested a hip against the hood of the Impala. “Don’t piss her off. Watch your balls.”
“I will. I mean, I won’t.” He frowned. “Okay. I think.”
Jo pushed off from the car, came to the window. “So, we’re gonna head to Mom’s for a bit. Get out of Portland for a while.”
Dean raised both eyebrows. “No shit?”
“Yeah, I think so. Let this all blow over.” She shrugged her shoulders, screwed up her nose as she glanced down the street. “Kinda creepy around here. You guys get done in New Hampshire, you should swing by.”
“Sounds like a plan. We might just do that.” He flapped a finger over the steering wheel towards Marcus. “Your mom’s gonna eat him alive. You know that, right?”
Jo grimaced. “Yeah. I know.”
“Seriously, your mom scares the crap outta me, and I’m fully armed.”
She chuckled, leaned in and planted her lips above his ear. “Take care.”
“You, too, Jo.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Dean.”
He nodded. It was a lie. But there was something to be said for liars like Jo Harvelle.
**********************************************************************************************
Sam slept for most of the three days it took them to get to New Hampshire. Dean didn’t mind. By the time they hit Omaha, he was firmly of the opinion there wasn’t much you couldn’t fix with a long drive and some Zeppelin.
It was good to be back on the road.
He hit a garage just inside the New Hampshire border, racked up two hundred bucks on parts to service the Impala, left Sam sleeping in the car while he stocked up on enough food to last them a week. He went heavy on the veggies, told himself he’d cook. It just about wiped out his last credit card, but Dean was pretty sure Sam was still sitting on one. The lanky little ass-monkey always was. Besides, he figured once they were settled at this place, he’d have time to head out and find some tables, play some shark.
Get some space and chill out.
Sam stirred as he threw the last of the grocery bags into the backseat.
“We there?”
“Just about. Hour or so to go.” Dean shut the door, slid in behind the wheel. “You alright? You’ve got a real powernap thing goin’ on over there.”
Sam rubbed his eyes, straightened. “Yeah. I think I want coffee. Can we get coffee?”
“Sure.”
Juggling coffee and car was still beyond his healing shoulder. They sat in the parking lot of the café while Dean downed his brew. It seemed as good a time as any to bring it up.
“So, in the interest of our new and improved No Secrets Policy…” Dean trailed off, could tell from Sam’s slow nod that he didn’t need to clarify any further.
“It’s still there. It’s not gone. I mean, I can feel it.”
“Okay. Feel it, as in: salt lines down while we sleep?”
Sam squinted out the window, thought about that some. “I don’t think that’s such a bad idea. For now. Just till we get a handle on what’s going on.”
“You think you’re gonna…?”
“Hurt anyone?” Sam balked, shook his head. “No. Jesus. No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t feel like it’s a… It doesn’t feel like that. It feels… different. I just don’t wanna take any chances until I’ve done some research.”
“Fair enough. Precautions it is.” Dean drained the last of his coffee, threw the cup out the window as he started the car.
Sam pitched a fit. “Dean!”
“What?”
“Your cup?”
“Yeah?”
“You just threw it out the window, you jackass.”
Dean peered over the frame. “Did I?”
“Yes! Go get it.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. Jesus. What’s wrong with you?”
“Dude, we just saved the fuckin’ world from a psycho-demon virus. I can’t lose one lousy cup out my window? There isn’t one grateful sonuvabitch out there who’s gonna pick that up for me?”
“No. There isn’t.” Sam motioned urgently. “Pick it up, you asshole.”
Dean rolled his eyes, sighed dramatically as he opened his door and leaned out. He bounced the cup off the side of Sam’s head as he pulled the door shut again.
“S’all yours, Captain CleanFreak.”
**********************************************************************************************
Marcus’s parents had money. And not just some. Wads and wads of the stuff, if the hobby farm was anything to go by. It was a two-storey homestead, perched on the leeside of a twenty acre sloping pasture. The house was immaculately presented and tastefully decorated.
At some point in the next week or so, Dean was going to break something priceless. Sam was sure of it. He certainly didn’t show much regard for the carpet putting down the salt lines.
When Sam pointed this out, Dean punched a finger at him from across the room. “Just sit on the couch and quietly have your chest wound. Martha Stewart.”
“It’s not our house.”
“Well, I plan on gettin’ some sleep while we’re here, so… I’m not really concerned about the shagpile’s sodium intake.”
The salt didn’t make any difference. Sam didn’t know if the quiet made Dean worse, or if it was just more obvious without any distractions around.
After a week on the farm, he still wasn't sleeping. Sam laid in his bed on the seventh night, listened again to the three a.m. hiss of a beer can being opened in the kitchen and then the soft mumble of the TV as it went on in the living room.
Three empties could buy him a couple of hours. Sam had it figured out from the trash in the mornings.
Meg’s death hadn’t healed anything in Dean. Might have given him one less thing to worry about, but it hadn’t undone anything that had happened in that warehouse. Killing Meg had been no more curative than the thread that had closed Dean’s wounds.
Healing was something that happened by degrees, beneath the surface. It recognized no calendar -no schedule - and could be neither summoned nor rushed.
And Sam knew Dean was making his inroads the best way he knew how. He worked on the Impala, drank too much, and slept too little. Sam left him to his own devices; half trusting him to correct before he hit the wall, half hoping he’d slam into it. Either way, it seemed like progress.
For his own part, he didn’t stray far from the living room couch, slept and surfed the net and watched TV. The doctor had warned him it would be a while before the breathlessness and fatigue left him. It had been the better part of two weeks since the seal had been broken and it was still a major feat getting to the john and back unassisted. Sam found the process frustrating, but knew there was little to be done besides exercising patience.
It was turning into the word of the month.
Dean headed into Concord on Saturday night, called late and drunk to say he wouldn’t be back until the morning. He rolled back through the door around ten, slapped three hundred dollars on the kitchen table in front of Sam.
“I take it the shoulder didn’t hold you back.”
Dean popped a soda from the fridge, leaned on the counter. “Oh, it held me back plenty. They just played worse. Fuckin’ tourists. ‘S like shooting fish in a goddamn barrel.” His bloodshot gaze lingered on Sam. “You look like I feel. You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve been outside. I think I might have overdone it.”
Dean took a swig of his drink. “Sorry. I shouldna stayed out. I just…”
“…did your shirt up in the dark?” Sam finished, gave him a wry smile as he pointed.
Dean dipped his chin, dropped the soda can onto the counter and moved his fingers to the mismatched buttons at his chest.
“Apparently,” he frowned, and Sam caught a flash of the hickey at his neck as he realigned buttons and holes.
There was a time when Sam would have been accosted with the unsolicited and graphic detail of Dean’s tryst. But his brother didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he drained the can of soda and threw it into the sink.
“I’m gonna grab a shower, hit the sack. You gonna be alright?”
“Sure.”
Dean pushed off from the counter, headed down the hall. Sam watched him go, figured it was going to be a while before a random chick in a bar was just that again.
**********************************************************************************************
Dean was nursing a coffee on the porch, boot heels resting on the railing, when Sam found him at sunrise the next morning.
“You sleep at all last night?”
“Coupla hours. Yeah.” Dean brought the mug to his lips, sent a frosty breath across the steam that rose from the black brew.
Sam pulled up a chair from against the house front, eased down into it with a sigh. “I wish there was something I could do, man. I really do.”
Dean sipped his coffee, nodded. “There is. You’re doin’ it.”
Sam squinted out across the misty field, rubbed his chilled fingers together. “I had a dream about Dad last night.”
Dean turned to look at him, didn’t say anything.
“I dreamed we were at a Knicks game, and halfway through he pitches a fit at me cause I’m supposed to be scoring or something. And here I am, just sitting there, watching the game. And I’m bitchin’ to you about his form and you’re all: talk to the hand, Sam. This’s between you and the old man.”
Sam dropped his voice an octave for the mimic, and Dean sniffed a laugh over the lip of his mug. “What the fuck would you be doin’ at a Knicks game?”
“I know.”
Dean tugged at his ear, shivered a little against the cold air.
Sam plucked a twig off the porch boards, scratched at the woodgrain. “You looked like you were gonna say something, then.”
Dean scratched the back of his head. “No, it’s just… you said you had a dream about Dad, and I thought… I had some dreams about the old man back in Oregon.”
“Yeah, I remember you saying.”
“Before we found out about the book, before I met Christine Picoult, I had a dream about you gettin’ into Stanford, ‘cept you were flashin’ the black eyes and talkin’ about Hell…”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular ray of sunshine. Anyway, the old man’s there, and he’s leaning on this meter and he’s tellin’ me I should crack a book sometime.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. Didn’t really think about it at the time, but…”
“You think he might be..?”
“I think Dad’s dead, Sam. That’s what I think.”
“No, I know. I just mean… you think maybe there’s some way he was trying to tell you something?”
Dean raised his eyebrows, shook his head. “I dunno.”
“We’ve seen a hell of a lot of stranger things, Dean.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But if that’s true, you know what I keep thinkin’?”
“What’s that?”
“He really wanted to help me out, I coulda used a hand in that warehouse.”
Sam picked at his knee. “Well, you’re still alive, Dean. Maybe he did.”
Dig deep, kid. You’re brother’s on his way.
Dean cleared his throat. “Maybe.”
He saw out the rest of his coffee lost in thought. He wondered about his father, about Christine Picoult, and about Tristan Bradley. He had a feeling none of them were done surprising him. He wondered what was waiting for them in the pages of that book.
Sam tapped the end of his stick on the porch, seemed to be working up to something. “You know what I keep thinking?” he asked finally, and Dean’s brow knitted at the tremble in his voice.
“What?”
“I keep thinking he sure knew what he was talking about, when he said you might have to kill me.”
Dean dropped his boots down off the railing, was shaking his head before Sam finished speaking. “No,” he responded emphatically. “No, I don’t believe that.”
Don’t give up on your brother, Dean.
“Why do you seem so calm about this?” Sam lifted the stick, tossed it over the rails. “I could be the fucking Anti-Christ for all we know.”
“No, you couldn’t be.”
“How can you know that?”
“Gaap said you had a choice. And if you got a choice, then you’ll make the right one, Sam.”
Sam jiggled his knee, got a finger up and twisting in the hair at his temple. “How can you be so sure about me after everything that’s happened?”
Dean pointed at his head. “Because the Anti-Christ doesn’t twiddle.”
Sam’s fingers froze in his hair and his features twisted in disgust. “You’re making a joke about this?”
Dean threw a hand in the air. “Alright, Jesus. Because all of it happened, and you still made the right choice. I mean, you broke my fuckin’ fingers, but you made the right call.”
Sam’s knee jumped, boot heel tapping on the porch. He seemed dubious, looked out across the field.
Dean leaned forward, shrugged a little.
“It’s what you do, Sam. You make good calls. On the job and off. You’ve got good instincts. You always have. It’s how you found me in that warehouse and it’s why we’re sittin’ here havin’ this conversation. Your choices might’ve just got a little harder, and maybe you’re gonna have to make ‘em more often. But you’re gonna do the right thing.”
“I don’t understand where you get all this faith in me.”
“Best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, Sam.”
“Oh, fuck me. Did you just quote Dr. Phil?”
Dean cocked an eyebrow, nodded slowly. “Yes, I did.”
“We gotta get you away from this daytime television.”
Dean kept nodding. “Yes, we do.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“I haven’t thanked you for that.” Dean narrowed his eyes at the porch railing.
“Thanked me for what?”
“Meg.”
Sam shifted uncomfortably. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” he mumbled.
Dean leaned back and stretched against the chair. “Yeah, I do. And I will. When I figure out how.”
It hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d planned or hoped, but Dean was grateful. There was a stubborn whisper of regret inside him that it hadn’t been his hand around the hilt of the blade. But then again, he wasn’t getting any of those hours back, whoever sliced and diced. Shelley and her roommate were still dead. Maybe it was all the same in the end. Meg was gone, and he was still going to Hell.
SNAFU.
Sam seemed eager for a change of subject. “So, I’ve been thinking about our No Secrets Policy. Since our conversation on the way out here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there’s still some stuff I need to tell you. About the Yellow-Eyed Demon, what happened back in Wyoming. I mean, not right now, but... soon. I’m starting to think it could be important. Might help us find out what’s going on with me.”
Dean sniffed, dropped his empty mug down between his boots. “Careful, Sammy. That almost sounds like a job.” He didn’t try to curb the smile that arced his lips.
Sam frowned at him incredulously. “You wanna get going, don’t you?”
Dean grimaced, shifted in his seat. “Dude, I know you’re still fucked up the wahzoo and it’s probably the last thing you wanna do right now, but…”
“You wanna get going.”
Dean gave him a dose of the Cheshire Cat. “I’m sorry, man, it’s just… this sittin’ around is killin’ me. I thought it sounded pretty good - some open space, a bit of downtime - but actually? I just don’t think I’m any good at it.”
Sam’s shoulders shook with laughter. He plucked at his eyebrow. “You never have been.” He pointed at Dean. “I still get to pick the jobs. You don’t get to pick any jobs. Ever. Again.”
“Okay.” Dean held up a hand in acknowledgement.
“You suck at it.”
Dean chuckled. “Okay.”
“And you have to do all the work. Because it takes me half an hour to get to the bathroom right now if I wanna take a piss.”
“No problem.”
“Fine. Okay then. Pack our shit.”
“Please.”
“Okay, pack our shit, please. We’re going to South Dakota.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Uh, no. We’re not.”
“Dean!” Sam slapped both palms on his thighs.
Dean was on his feet, heading back into the house. He spun on his heel and jabbed a finger in the air between them. “He shot you in the chest, Sam!” he snapped.
“Yeah, he did,” Sam agreed, nodding enthusiastically. “Because he thought I was about to kill you.”
Dean did a cross sweep, sent both palms wide. “I don’t care. I don’t want him anywhere near you. And you definitely don’t want me anywhere near him. Trust me on that.”
Sam blew out an exasperated breath. “Dean, that man has been like a father to you since Dad died. And you’re mad at him right now for what? For treating you like his son. You’re mad at Bobby for putting you first. He put you before the job, before himself, and before me.”
“Yeah, he shot you.”
“I asked him to!” Sam howled. “He did exactly what I asked him to.” He was getting out of breath. He paused, sucked in a few careful lungfuls of air, palm against his chest. “I can’t argue with you about this. It’s making me dizzy. You’ve got five months left, Dean. I’m not letting you two buttheads run it down playing Mexican stand-off. We’re going to South Dakota. You and Bobby are gonna sort your shit out. And after that? I’m gonna tell you about Wyoming. Then trust me, you’re gonna be so angry at me, you’ll forget anyone ever pointed a gun anywhere near me. Might even take a shot at me yourself.”
He had that tone. The don’t-fuck-with-me timbre. He was gonna ride Dean’s ass until he snapped and shot something.
They were going to South Dakota.
Dean screwed up his nose. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” He started back into the house, turned as he wrenched open the door. “And Jesus Christ, exactly how big is this fuckin’ secret of yours?”
Sam bit his thumbnail nervously. “Big.”
Author's Notes