With Spit and a Prayer 1/?, Adult
Title: With Spit and a Prayer
Rating: Adult
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Sam
Length: 3,625 words
Warnings: References to rape, incest, suicide. Angst out the wazoo.
Notes: Follow-up to Passenger, and yeah, you gotta read that one first.
Disclaimers: Don't own.
Spoilers: 2x01
Summary: The real tragedy is not the act itself, but the mess it leaves behind.
With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter One
----
Three minutes
----
Dean didn't know how long he had been performing CPR when Sam finally drew in a breath and coughed, but he thought maybe he would fall apart right there and then, on a stained (stained) motel bed in freakin Mississippi.
He didn’t get that option though, because Sam’s eyes flicked open, and Dean was suddenly very aware of how close his face was to his brother’s, and of the fact that Sam was still naked from the waist down and Dean was shirtless and his pants were undone.
Then Dean was scrambling back, scrambling away from the fear in Sam’s eyes, and Sam had fallen off the bed, struggling to stand, his sweatpants still round his ankles, blood and something else dripping down the inside of his thighs.
“Sam, God, Sam,” Dean whispered, and his throat was as dry as freakin Salt Lake City on a Sunday afternoon.
Sam swayed and collapsed against the wall, coughing harshly, his face a mess of blood and swelling. He slid slowly to the floor, and Dean took a step forward to help him, but stopped when Sam said don’t. Don’t.
“Sam,” Dean whispered again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. What could he say?
Sam was trying to back away, crawling backwards along the wall with his knees drawn up, his eyes never leaving Dean. He stopped when he hit the corner of the room and pressed himself into it, fumbling to try and pull up the sweatpants. “Where’s my brother?” he said, and his voice was torn up and ragged.
Dean felt his knees buckle under him, and he let them go, landing on his ass on the coarse motel carpet. “It’s me now, Sam. It’s me. It wasn’t me before.”
Sam blinked a couple of times, as well as he could with one eye swelling shut, and wiped blood from under his nose. “Sh-shapeshifter?” he asked.
Dean closed his eyes and shook his head. “Possession. It’s gone now.”
Sam was quiet for a moment, and Dean didn’t open his eyes to find out what he was doing. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Sam, please.” Please, Dean, don’t. Dean opened his eyes then, because the images playing on the insides of his eyelids were the sort of thing that he thought make make him lose his mind. “I need to check you out, make sure you’re OK.”
Sam turned his face away, breaking eye contact for the first time. “I don’t. I can’t. Don’t.”
Please, Dean, don’t.
“God, Sammy,” Dean whispered. “What can I do?”
Sam hunched over himself like he was trying to disappear. “Please, just... leave me alone.”
And in the end, that was what Dean did, because he didn’t know what else to do.
----
Four hours
----
Dean slept in the car.
At any rate, he told Sam that he was going to sleep in the car. What he actually did was sit on the ground outside the motel room door and stare at nothing. The night was warm, which, given that it was Mississippi, was no real surprise, and Dean felt his shirt sticking to his skin. He resisted the urge to rip it off. He wondered if he would ever be able to go shirtless again without remembering what it was like to hold his brother down. He thought, not for the first time, about the weapons in the trunk of the Impala. So many different ways to die.
From the open window, he heard the sound of retching. That was the fifth time. He wondered if Sam was even bothering to leave the bathroom at all, between the endless showering and the throwing up.
Dean wished he could shower. He wished he could throw up. He wished he could go back to that afternoon and step in front of a truck.
He wished he could just. Forget.
It was only an hour until dawn. Dean had no illusions: this was not going to look any better in daylight. All the same, he longed to feel the sun on his face.
----
Sam leaned back against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall and concentrated on just breathing. His throat felt like it had been ripped to shreds with the combination of stomach acid and strangulation, and every breath hurt. There were painkillers back in the room, in his duffle. In the room where the bed was.
He didn’t go and get them.
He stank. He had stayed under the burning spray of the shower until his vision had started to swim and he had had to sit down, but he could still smell the stench of sweat and sex. It was like it had crawled under his skin, and he wondered dimly if he would ever be free of it. His face ached, his nose throbbing, and he was pretty sure he had a concussion. He wasn’t even going to think about any injuries below the neck.
And Dean. Dean.
He didn’t close his eyes, but he didn’t have to. He could see his brother’s face, looking so tender, so happy. I’ve wanted this for so long.
Demons lie. All the time. It’s as obvious as breathing to them.
And then. And then. Sometimes they tell the truth.
God, he just wanted to sleep. He thought maybe, if he could sleep, then he would wake up and none of this would have happened. Life had been bad lately, bad for a while, actually, but he would give almost anything to have that measure of bad back, because this was so much worse.
Demons lie.
But it had looked like Dean.
----
Seven hours
----
Dean finally screwed up the courage to go back into the room when the mailman arrived at the motel. He hadn’t heard any noise from the bathroom window for a while, and he hoped maybe that might mean that Sam was sleeping. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, though, he saw that both beds were empty and undisturbed, the covers slightly rumpled on the one furthest from the door, and blotched with dark brown stains, as if the entire nightmarish chain of events could be reduced to the level of a laundry challenge.
The bathroom door was closed.
Dean thought about leaving. He could just go, get in the car and drive away, leave Sam be. God knew, it would probably be less painful for both of them.
Yeah. Except Sam would be alone. (And Dean would be alone.)
He knocked on the door gently, but there was no answer. It wasn’t locked, and Dean pushed it open slowly, giving Sam plenty of warning that he was there. In the end, though, it didn’t make any difference, because Sam didn’t even look up when he came in, just sat there on the floor staring into space, giving no indication that he was aware of Dean’s presence at all.
Dean swallowed. The morning light was flooding through the little window, and Sam looked like crap. The blood had been mostly washed off (which, given the sheer amount of time Sam had spent in the shower, was only to be expected), but his face was bruised and swollen, peppered with little cuts, and his nose was clearly broken. Dark bruises ringed his neck, and Dean looked down at his hands. I did that. Me. Yup, Sam pretty much had the right idea with that whole throwing up bit.
“Hey,” he said gently, moving round so that he was in Sam’s line of sight and crouching. “How are you doing?”
Sam blinked and focussed on him. “Dean,” he said. One of his pupils was larger than the other.
Dean cursed. He should have insisted that Sam let him check him over last night. Except insisted sounded an awful lot like forced, and forced was not a word he wanted to think about right now. Whatever, it didn’t matter any more. “Sam, we should take you to the hospital.”
Sam stared at him vaguely. “What for?”
Dean sat back on his heels. “You’re pretty banged up, kiddo. We need to make sure you’re OK.”
“Banged up,” Sam said, and touched his fingers to his face. “My nose hurts.” His words were slightly slurred.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Come on, let’s get you to the car.”
“OK,” said Sam, and clambered to his feet. Dean watched him for a moment. He sure as hell didn’t want to take Sam to the hospital, but he could hear Dad’s voice in his head, telling him that head injuries had to be taken seriously. And then, the last time he had spoken to Sam, Sam hadn’t even looked him in the eye, had just asked him to leave. And now he was acting, well, normal. For someone with concussion. Which was a hell of a lot more normal than the behaviour of someone with a concussion who’s just been raped by their possessed big brother.
Sam was waiting for him at the door of the motel room, swaying a little but standing unaided. Dean frowned, and followed him.
----
Ten hours
----
“Well, you look like you’ve had a hell of a morning,” the doctor said, smiling sympathetically and shining a light into Sam’s eye.
Sam wondered where Dean was. His brother had sat next to him while they waited to be seen, but he had seemed... off. Like something was bothering him, other than Sam’s apparent concussion. Sam was reasonably familiar with the detached feeling of a moderately severe head injury, and figured that was why he couldn’t remember getting beaten up. He wondered what had done it. He hadn’t thought asking his brother in a busy ER would be very discreet, but as soon as he got out of here, he was going to be checking with Dean, because he didn’t even remember that they had been hunting anything.
“Can you follow my finger?” the doctor asked, and Sam obeyed. The doctor seemed satisfied, and started examining his neck. “Care to tell me what happened?”
Sam swallowed. “I got in a fight.” That was what Dean had told the nurse when she had called him up to be examined. “I don’t... remember much.” Better to be at least a little honest, especially since it would get him out of having to answer any more questions.
“Do you have any other injuries?” the doctor asked.
Sam shrugged, and stood up. “Can I go?”
The doctor grinned. “Not so fast,” he started, then stopped as he caught sight of something on the bed behind Sam. His grin faded. “I’d like to do a full-body examination, if you don’t mind.”
Sam sighed, and sat back down on the bed. God, his head felt like it was about to fall off. “Whatever.”
It was pretty awkward when the doctor started examining his ass, though. That hadn’t been what Sam had expected at all. “Wow, when you say full-body, you’re not kidding, huh?” he said thickly. The doctor didn’t laugh, though.
“Mr. Robinson, when was the last time you had sex?”
Sam almost snorted at that. The last time he had had sex had been with Jess, over a year ago now. “Uh, long enough ago to not be relevant?” He didn’t really want to be a pain in the ass, but this doctor was starting to get on his nerves.
The doctor paused a second, then said, “Sir, you need to be honest with me. Does your partner frequently penetrate you violently?”
“Penetrate...?” Sam said, running the doctor’s words through his mind, trying to make them make sense. “My partner?”
“If it was him who beat you up and raped you, I can get you help. You don’t need to suffer in silence.”
“I... what?” If anything, this latest pronouncement just served to confuse Sam further. “What are you talking about?” This whole day was just totally weird. Maybe he was just having a bizarre dream.
The doctor’s hands paused again. He took a breath, and Sam tensed in the sudden knowledge that whatever he was going to say next, it wasn’t going to be good.
----
Dean stopped pacing when a nurse came and called his (fake) name. “Doctor Marcus wants to talk to you,” he said, and Dean squared his shoulders and stepped towards the exam room, only to have the doctor come out to meet him, glaring at Dean like he’d just scratched his BMW or wrecked his golf swing or whatever.
“Mr. Newman,” he said, and boy, he sounded pissed. Good thing it took more than a steaming mad doc to intimidate Dean.
“Yeah. How’s Sam?”
“You tell me,” the doctor said.
Dean stared at him in confusion. “Uh, you’re the doc, doc. I kinda think that’s your job.”
“You told the admitting staff he was in a fight,” the doctor said. “You didn’t mention he was raped.”
Dean swallowed. Shit. He hadn’t thought Sam would tell them. Now he had to think of a way to play this. Ignorance was probably his best bet. “Raped?” he said, doing his best to look shocked (which actually wasn’t too hard, because he wasn’t exactly the picture of zen right now).
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Newman, are you aware that the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by friends or relatives of the victim?”
Shit. The guy thought Dean had done it.
Which was fair enough, since Dean had done it.
Relatives of the victim. And Sam... Sam was kind of out of it.
“What did he say?” Dean asked, and immediately knew it was the wrong response, that it threw the doctor’s suspicions right back onto him. Right now, though, he had more important things to worry about, like why the hell Sam had told the doc the truth, and how much of the truth he had told. Maybe he told them everything. Maybe they’re going to lock me up.
Maybe I deserve it.
The doctor shook his head. “Mr. Newman, anything you can tell me about what happened to Sam will help me in my treatment of him. The police will want to talk to you when they get here as well.”
“Police?” Oh, this was getting better and better.
“It’s a legal requirement for us to contact them in all cases of sexual assault.”
Dean licked his lips. “Can I see Sam?”
For a moment, he thought the doctor was going to refuse, and he tried to picture his defence at trial. A demon made me do it. Yeah, that would go down real well. Then the guy stepped aside, and Dean stepped into the exam room in relief.
Sam was sitting on the bed in a gown, looking kind of pissed. He stood up when he saw Dean.
“Hey, man, we gotta get out of here,” he said. “That doctor is nuts.”
Dean frowned. “Not saying I object to the sentiment there, but could you be a bit more specific?” He was already moving around the room, finding Sam’s clothes and tossing them to him, checking the chart to see what meds he’d been prescribed, keeping one eye on the door. The chart said Sam was meant to have tests, give blood samples to check for STDs, for HIV. It said they were going to swab him for foreign DNA, and Dean caught himself feeling grateful that they hadn't done that yet, because the DNA would be too similar to Sam's and they would know.
Sam shook his head. “He kept saying I’d been raped,” he said, and laughed. “He wanted to know if my partner had done it, can you believe that?”
Dean froze. Holy crap. He hadn’t expected that.
“Sam,” he started, unsure.
Sam turned to look at him, the eye that wasn't swollen shut radiating utter trust. “Yeah?”
Dean blinked. “Uh, I've got your stuff. Let's go.”
Sam sort of grinned and jumped off the bed, moving ahead of Dean into the corridor. Dean watched him go and wondered what it would feel like to smash his own head against the metal doorframe.
----
Twenty-four hours
----
Dean realised he was pressing his fingernails so hard against his palm that blood was running down his hands, but he didn't stop doing it. Biloxi was two states and fourteen hours of silence away, and he might as well have never left, because there was Sam, sleeping on top of the covers in the heat of a summer night, and if it hadn't been for the bruises on his face and neck, Dean would swear that it was last night all over again.
And what if it was? Dean had been possessed once, there was no reason it couldn't happen again. He wasn't strong enough, not strong enough to keep it out, not strong enough to fight it when it was in. He wasn't strong enough to protect his little brother.
Hell, he wasn't even strong enough to tell his little brother the truth about what happened.
And what kind of person did that make him, really? Sam was clearly suffering some kind of physical or psychological consequences from the attack (and Dean was honest enough with himself to know it had to be mainly psychological, because there was no way Sam would just be able to pretend his less savoury injuries didn't exist unless he was in some serious denial), and Dean was just letting it happen. OK, so maybe some of it was because he just wished Sam could forget it had ever happened, that it could be like it never happened, but a lot of it was purely out of a need to never see that look of terror directed at him again. And if it meant turning a blind eye to potential damage to Sam's mental health, well, right now Dean was willing to live with that.
So, what kind of a person did that make him?
Sam sighed, turning over in his sleep, and Dean stiffened, just like he had the last fifteen times. It was different this time, though, because this time Sam started to toss restlessly, his hands making fists at his sides. Dean stood up, the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
“Dean,” whispered Sam. “Dean, don't.”
Dean fought the urge to throw up. He crossed to Sam's bed and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him roughly. “Wake the hell up,” he growled, and Sam's uninjured eye flickered open, staring at Dean in horror. This is it, thought Dean. He remembers.
And then the fear in Sam's eye dissolved into grogginess and he shivered and curled onto his side. “Jesus,” he said. “Thanks for waking me up.”
Dean took a step back, feeling his knees tremble slightly. “What was it?” he asked.
Sam shook his head, already halfway back into sleep. “I don't remember,” he murmured. “But it scared the crap out of me.”
Dean took another step away, feeling a wild desire to just start running and never stop, but Sam's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Don't leave me,” he said, an undertone of urgency in his voice. “Feel like something bad's going to happen.”
Dean swallowed. “OK, Sam,” he said. “I won't let anything bad happen to you.” The words hung in the air like sulphur, and Dean remembered the last time they had come out of his mouth.
It was all he could do to wait for Sam to fall back to sleep before he staggered to the bathroom and lost everything he had eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
Chapter Two.
Rating: Adult
Pairing/Characters: Dean/Sam
Length: 3,625 words
Warnings: References to rape, incest, suicide. Angst out the wazoo.
Notes: Follow-up to Passenger, and yeah, you gotta read that one first.
Disclaimers: Don't own.
Spoilers: 2x01
Summary: The real tragedy is not the act itself, but the mess it leaves behind.
With Spit and a Prayer, Chapter One
----
Three minutes
----
Dean didn't know how long he had been performing CPR when Sam finally drew in a breath and coughed, but he thought maybe he would fall apart right there and then, on a stained (stained) motel bed in freakin Mississippi.
He didn’t get that option though, because Sam’s eyes flicked open, and Dean was suddenly very aware of how close his face was to his brother’s, and of the fact that Sam was still naked from the waist down and Dean was shirtless and his pants were undone.
Then Dean was scrambling back, scrambling away from the fear in Sam’s eyes, and Sam had fallen off the bed, struggling to stand, his sweatpants still round his ankles, blood and something else dripping down the inside of his thighs.
“Sam, God, Sam,” Dean whispered, and his throat was as dry as freakin Salt Lake City on a Sunday afternoon.
Sam swayed and collapsed against the wall, coughing harshly, his face a mess of blood and swelling. He slid slowly to the floor, and Dean took a step forward to help him, but stopped when Sam said don’t. Don’t.
“Sam,” Dean whispered again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. What could he say?
Sam was trying to back away, crawling backwards along the wall with his knees drawn up, his eyes never leaving Dean. He stopped when he hit the corner of the room and pressed himself into it, fumbling to try and pull up the sweatpants. “Where’s my brother?” he said, and his voice was torn up and ragged.
Dean felt his knees buckle under him, and he let them go, landing on his ass on the coarse motel carpet. “It’s me now, Sam. It’s me. It wasn’t me before.”
Sam blinked a couple of times, as well as he could with one eye swelling shut, and wiped blood from under his nose. “Sh-shapeshifter?” he asked.
Dean closed his eyes and shook his head. “Possession. It’s gone now.”
Sam was quiet for a moment, and Dean didn’t open his eyes to find out what he was doing. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Sam, please.” Please, Dean, don’t. Dean opened his eyes then, because the images playing on the insides of his eyelids were the sort of thing that he thought make make him lose his mind. “I need to check you out, make sure you’re OK.”
Sam turned his face away, breaking eye contact for the first time. “I don’t. I can’t. Don’t.”
Please, Dean, don’t.
“God, Sammy,” Dean whispered. “What can I do?”
Sam hunched over himself like he was trying to disappear. “Please, just... leave me alone.”
And in the end, that was what Dean did, because he didn’t know what else to do.
----
Four hours
----
Dean slept in the car.
At any rate, he told Sam that he was going to sleep in the car. What he actually did was sit on the ground outside the motel room door and stare at nothing. The night was warm, which, given that it was Mississippi, was no real surprise, and Dean felt his shirt sticking to his skin. He resisted the urge to rip it off. He wondered if he would ever be able to go shirtless again without remembering what it was like to hold his brother down. He thought, not for the first time, about the weapons in the trunk of the Impala. So many different ways to die.
From the open window, he heard the sound of retching. That was the fifth time. He wondered if Sam was even bothering to leave the bathroom at all, between the endless showering and the throwing up.
Dean wished he could shower. He wished he could throw up. He wished he could go back to that afternoon and step in front of a truck.
He wished he could just. Forget.
It was only an hour until dawn. Dean had no illusions: this was not going to look any better in daylight. All the same, he longed to feel the sun on his face.
----
Sam leaned back against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall and concentrated on just breathing. His throat felt like it had been ripped to shreds with the combination of stomach acid and strangulation, and every breath hurt. There were painkillers back in the room, in his duffle. In the room where the bed was.
He didn’t go and get them.
He stank. He had stayed under the burning spray of the shower until his vision had started to swim and he had had to sit down, but he could still smell the stench of sweat and sex. It was like it had crawled under his skin, and he wondered dimly if he would ever be free of it. His face ached, his nose throbbing, and he was pretty sure he had a concussion. He wasn’t even going to think about any injuries below the neck.
And Dean. Dean.
He didn’t close his eyes, but he didn’t have to. He could see his brother’s face, looking so tender, so happy. I’ve wanted this for so long.
Demons lie. All the time. It’s as obvious as breathing to them.
And then. And then. Sometimes they tell the truth.
God, he just wanted to sleep. He thought maybe, if he could sleep, then he would wake up and none of this would have happened. Life had been bad lately, bad for a while, actually, but he would give almost anything to have that measure of bad back, because this was so much worse.
Demons lie.
But it had looked like Dean.
----
Seven hours
----
Dean finally screwed up the courage to go back into the room when the mailman arrived at the motel. He hadn’t heard any noise from the bathroom window for a while, and he hoped maybe that might mean that Sam was sleeping. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, though, he saw that both beds were empty and undisturbed, the covers slightly rumpled on the one furthest from the door, and blotched with dark brown stains, as if the entire nightmarish chain of events could be reduced to the level of a laundry challenge.
The bathroom door was closed.
Dean thought about leaving. He could just go, get in the car and drive away, leave Sam be. God knew, it would probably be less painful for both of them.
Yeah. Except Sam would be alone. (And Dean would be alone.)
He knocked on the door gently, but there was no answer. It wasn’t locked, and Dean pushed it open slowly, giving Sam plenty of warning that he was there. In the end, though, it didn’t make any difference, because Sam didn’t even look up when he came in, just sat there on the floor staring into space, giving no indication that he was aware of Dean’s presence at all.
Dean swallowed. The morning light was flooding through the little window, and Sam looked like crap. The blood had been mostly washed off (which, given the sheer amount of time Sam had spent in the shower, was only to be expected), but his face was bruised and swollen, peppered with little cuts, and his nose was clearly broken. Dark bruises ringed his neck, and Dean looked down at his hands. I did that. Me. Yup, Sam pretty much had the right idea with that whole throwing up bit.
“Hey,” he said gently, moving round so that he was in Sam’s line of sight and crouching. “How are you doing?”
Sam blinked and focussed on him. “Dean,” he said. One of his pupils was larger than the other.
Dean cursed. He should have insisted that Sam let him check him over last night. Except insisted sounded an awful lot like forced, and forced was not a word he wanted to think about right now. Whatever, it didn’t matter any more. “Sam, we should take you to the hospital.”
Sam stared at him vaguely. “What for?”
Dean sat back on his heels. “You’re pretty banged up, kiddo. We need to make sure you’re OK.”
“Banged up,” Sam said, and touched his fingers to his face. “My nose hurts.” His words were slightly slurred.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Come on, let’s get you to the car.”
“OK,” said Sam, and clambered to his feet. Dean watched him for a moment. He sure as hell didn’t want to take Sam to the hospital, but he could hear Dad’s voice in his head, telling him that head injuries had to be taken seriously. And then, the last time he had spoken to Sam, Sam hadn’t even looked him in the eye, had just asked him to leave. And now he was acting, well, normal. For someone with concussion. Which was a hell of a lot more normal than the behaviour of someone with a concussion who’s just been raped by their possessed big brother.
Sam was waiting for him at the door of the motel room, swaying a little but standing unaided. Dean frowned, and followed him.
----
Ten hours
----
“Well, you look like you’ve had a hell of a morning,” the doctor said, smiling sympathetically and shining a light into Sam’s eye.
Sam wondered where Dean was. His brother had sat next to him while they waited to be seen, but he had seemed... off. Like something was bothering him, other than Sam’s apparent concussion. Sam was reasonably familiar with the detached feeling of a moderately severe head injury, and figured that was why he couldn’t remember getting beaten up. He wondered what had done it. He hadn’t thought asking his brother in a busy ER would be very discreet, but as soon as he got out of here, he was going to be checking with Dean, because he didn’t even remember that they had been hunting anything.
“Can you follow my finger?” the doctor asked, and Sam obeyed. The doctor seemed satisfied, and started examining his neck. “Care to tell me what happened?”
Sam swallowed. “I got in a fight.” That was what Dean had told the nurse when she had called him up to be examined. “I don’t... remember much.” Better to be at least a little honest, especially since it would get him out of having to answer any more questions.
“Do you have any other injuries?” the doctor asked.
Sam shrugged, and stood up. “Can I go?”
The doctor grinned. “Not so fast,” he started, then stopped as he caught sight of something on the bed behind Sam. His grin faded. “I’d like to do a full-body examination, if you don’t mind.”
Sam sighed, and sat back down on the bed. God, his head felt like it was about to fall off. “Whatever.”
It was pretty awkward when the doctor started examining his ass, though. That hadn’t been what Sam had expected at all. “Wow, when you say full-body, you’re not kidding, huh?” he said thickly. The doctor didn’t laugh, though.
“Mr. Robinson, when was the last time you had sex?”
Sam almost snorted at that. The last time he had had sex had been with Jess, over a year ago now. “Uh, long enough ago to not be relevant?” He didn’t really want to be a pain in the ass, but this doctor was starting to get on his nerves.
The doctor paused a second, then said, “Sir, you need to be honest with me. Does your partner frequently penetrate you violently?”
“Penetrate...?” Sam said, running the doctor’s words through his mind, trying to make them make sense. “My partner?”
“If it was him who beat you up and raped you, I can get you help. You don’t need to suffer in silence.”
“I... what?” If anything, this latest pronouncement just served to confuse Sam further. “What are you talking about?” This whole day was just totally weird. Maybe he was just having a bizarre dream.
The doctor’s hands paused again. He took a breath, and Sam tensed in the sudden knowledge that whatever he was going to say next, it wasn’t going to be good.
----
Dean stopped pacing when a nurse came and called his (fake) name. “Doctor Marcus wants to talk to you,” he said, and Dean squared his shoulders and stepped towards the exam room, only to have the doctor come out to meet him, glaring at Dean like he’d just scratched his BMW or wrecked his golf swing or whatever.
“Mr. Newman,” he said, and boy, he sounded pissed. Good thing it took more than a steaming mad doc to intimidate Dean.
“Yeah. How’s Sam?”
“You tell me,” the doctor said.
Dean stared at him in confusion. “Uh, you’re the doc, doc. I kinda think that’s your job.”
“You told the admitting staff he was in a fight,” the doctor said. “You didn’t mention he was raped.”
Dean swallowed. Shit. He hadn’t thought Sam would tell them. Now he had to think of a way to play this. Ignorance was probably his best bet. “Raped?” he said, doing his best to look shocked (which actually wasn’t too hard, because he wasn’t exactly the picture of zen right now).
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Newman, are you aware that the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by friends or relatives of the victim?”
Shit. The guy thought Dean had done it.
Which was fair enough, since Dean had done it.
Relatives of the victim. And Sam... Sam was kind of out of it.
“What did he say?” Dean asked, and immediately knew it was the wrong response, that it threw the doctor’s suspicions right back onto him. Right now, though, he had more important things to worry about, like why the hell Sam had told the doc the truth, and how much of the truth he had told. Maybe he told them everything. Maybe they’re going to lock me up.
Maybe I deserve it.
The doctor shook his head. “Mr. Newman, anything you can tell me about what happened to Sam will help me in my treatment of him. The police will want to talk to you when they get here as well.”
“Police?” Oh, this was getting better and better.
“It’s a legal requirement for us to contact them in all cases of sexual assault.”
Dean licked his lips. “Can I see Sam?”
For a moment, he thought the doctor was going to refuse, and he tried to picture his defence at trial. A demon made me do it. Yeah, that would go down real well. Then the guy stepped aside, and Dean stepped into the exam room in relief.
Sam was sitting on the bed in a gown, looking kind of pissed. He stood up when he saw Dean.
“Hey, man, we gotta get out of here,” he said. “That doctor is nuts.”
Dean frowned. “Not saying I object to the sentiment there, but could you be a bit more specific?” He was already moving around the room, finding Sam’s clothes and tossing them to him, checking the chart to see what meds he’d been prescribed, keeping one eye on the door. The chart said Sam was meant to have tests, give blood samples to check for STDs, for HIV. It said they were going to swab him for foreign DNA, and Dean caught himself feeling grateful that they hadn't done that yet, because the DNA would be too similar to Sam's and they would know.
Sam shook his head. “He kept saying I’d been raped,” he said, and laughed. “He wanted to know if my partner had done it, can you believe that?”
Dean froze. Holy crap. He hadn’t expected that.
“Sam,” he started, unsure.
Sam turned to look at him, the eye that wasn't swollen shut radiating utter trust. “Yeah?”
Dean blinked. “Uh, I've got your stuff. Let's go.”
Sam sort of grinned and jumped off the bed, moving ahead of Dean into the corridor. Dean watched him go and wondered what it would feel like to smash his own head against the metal doorframe.
----
Twenty-four hours
----
Dean realised he was pressing his fingernails so hard against his palm that blood was running down his hands, but he didn't stop doing it. Biloxi was two states and fourteen hours of silence away, and he might as well have never left, because there was Sam, sleeping on top of the covers in the heat of a summer night, and if it hadn't been for the bruises on his face and neck, Dean would swear that it was last night all over again.
And what if it was? Dean had been possessed once, there was no reason it couldn't happen again. He wasn't strong enough, not strong enough to keep it out, not strong enough to fight it when it was in. He wasn't strong enough to protect his little brother.
Hell, he wasn't even strong enough to tell his little brother the truth about what happened.
And what kind of person did that make him, really? Sam was clearly suffering some kind of physical or psychological consequences from the attack (and Dean was honest enough with himself to know it had to be mainly psychological, because there was no way Sam would just be able to pretend his less savoury injuries didn't exist unless he was in some serious denial), and Dean was just letting it happen. OK, so maybe some of it was because he just wished Sam could forget it had ever happened, that it could be like it never happened, but a lot of it was purely out of a need to never see that look of terror directed at him again. And if it meant turning a blind eye to potential damage to Sam's mental health, well, right now Dean was willing to live with that.
So, what kind of a person did that make him?
Sam sighed, turning over in his sleep, and Dean stiffened, just like he had the last fifteen times. It was different this time, though, because this time Sam started to toss restlessly, his hands making fists at his sides. Dean stood up, the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
“Dean,” whispered Sam. “Dean, don't.”
Dean fought the urge to throw up. He crossed to Sam's bed and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him roughly. “Wake the hell up,” he growled, and Sam's uninjured eye flickered open, staring at Dean in horror. This is it, thought Dean. He remembers.
And then the fear in Sam's eye dissolved into grogginess and he shivered and curled onto his side. “Jesus,” he said. “Thanks for waking me up.”
Dean took a step back, feeling his knees tremble slightly. “What was it?” he asked.
Sam shook his head, already halfway back into sleep. “I don't remember,” he murmured. “But it scared the crap out of me.”
Dean took another step away, feeling a wild desire to just start running and never stop, but Sam's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Don't leave me,” he said, an undertone of urgency in his voice. “Feel like something bad's going to happen.”
Dean swallowed. “OK, Sam,” he said. “I won't let anything bad happen to you.” The words hung in the air like sulphur, and Dean remembered the last time they had come out of his mouth.
It was all he could do to wait for Sam to fall back to sleep before he staggered to the bathroom and lost everything he had eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
Chapter Two.