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Chapter Text

Dean's looking at him sideways the whole time the nervous but adorable doctor smiles his way through the exam when Sam can tell he doesn't want to be smiling. Sam doesn't either—his arm fucking hurts—but he can't help but be charmed by this man that has Dean's need to hide his pain but also has a gentleness and earnestness that makes Sam calm, makes him want to neither scream nor act obtrusively macho. He just breathes and lets his eyes sink into the doctor's until he can barely feel the throbbing in his arm anymore.

When the doctor leaves, promising to return with X-rays, he leaves a trail of dissatisfaction in his wake—his own, no longer concealed; Sam's, the pain returning to his arm.

But Dean's satisfied. He just smirks like he always does, like he used to when Sam would draw him pictures at school as a kid: amused but touched, if one could see past the defensive leer in that smirk. Dean always looks at him with brotherly concern and love, even if Sam's the only one that can discern such things in his face. Dean's also good at seeing things; he's probably recognized how the doctor's mind is both squarely on Sam's arm and on something else altogether. And then there's the other thing.

"So," Dean says with a grin. "You want me to break the other one?"

"Dean."

"All I'm saying—what is it with you and short guys?"

George is shooting laser beams through Bailey's head right now with his eyes. It's a game he plays, like he believes he can actually cause her physical harm if he thinks about it hard enough. He justifies it by believing he can also fix things with wanting them to be fixed. That and he wouldn't actually want to hurt Bailey. Only now, only when he's so frustrated.

The bad part is he knows exactly why he can't be anywhere near his father's medical care right now, but it doesn't stop him from being angry. This treatment makes him feel like a small child, as if he hasn't been through medical school and hasn't learned how to manage his nerves and his fear. But it's different when it's your own flesh and blood, he thinks. He'd do crazy things now, because this is his father. He's his son.

He knows deep down that it's stupid to be upset when he's chosen to be up here working, not down there with his family. He could just be George, without the charts and doctor talk, but he thinks he can't do that now. He can't be that helpless for yet another day in a row. If he's going to go down there, it's going to have to be as Doctor O'Malley, and he's not allowed to do that. So he's Doctor O'Malley up here, hoping to keep himself sane. 

And so he's standing in the corridor shooting laser beams through Bailey's head, trying not to think about what he's always thinking about now, but his eyes keep fixing on the scene behind the blinds, in that room where the two brothers are giving each other hell. They're made of the same stuff, he thinks. Not like his brothers, so foreign, even if he shares their blood and can look back on a vast but receding stretch of years he lived with them and breathed the same air. Then he went away to be who he is now. Was he always him, or was the leaving the thing that made him? He doesn't know, but he doesn't let himself wish for brothers who might understand him better. They are who he has, and they're loving their father there in that room while he's out here, watching a guy with a pair of brown eyes that would stop anyone who bothered to look into them. He doesn't see physical pain so much as he sees someone lost—but maybe not completely, because of his brother. 

George has brothers, and he has friends. He tells himself he's not alone. It takes a lot of telling.

Dean doesn't want to be here. That's generally true of wherever he is. He thinks he has wanderlust in his veins, like a virus that doesn't hurt him, just makes him itch all over to be where he's not. But he really hates hospitals. Having a gangly, accident-prone brother has meant he's had to be in them too much. And lately…

Sam's trying not to flirt with the doctor, and Dean's not even thinking about flirting. Too much static in his brain. It's a constant fight to not think about it, and he loses this battle every day. He was here in a place like this, life draining away, and then there was his father's life gone in the blink of an eye, no time to mourn or anything. He knows that's best, because he couldn't have handled it if it had been slower. Sam, maybe. He'd've watched Sam fall apart over—

No, he thinks. Sam didn't give up when Dean was almost dead, so why should he have given up on their father? That's why it's best that he was gone before they could protest it, because they'd've done a hell of a lot of protesting. Dean still is. Dean is still so fucking angry he can't speak sometimes.

So he kicks the hell out of the soda machine. 

The blonde girl coming up the stairs is just his type, especially now since she looks like she's about this close to losing it herself or sinking into it so deep she can't get out. He hates seeing that, and it makes him angrier when she slams her fist a little too hard into what looks like the magic spot on the soda machine and smiles only obliquely to hear the can fall loose. Everything's out of joint. He should be giving her the eye, and she should be smiling so widely it could make him blush all over, if he let himself. 

So he tries a smile, and it seems to work. "Thanks," he says.

He thinks she looks so damn soft and beautiful in those blue scrubs. She smiles back and says in a conspiratorial tone, "Fair warning: the snack machine eats dollar bills."

"Got any change?" 

She just shakes her head, and her nose wrinkles. Cute nose. But, hell, everything about her is cute. Then she cocks that head to one side and says determinedly, "I look competent, don't I?"

"Huh?"

"Competent. I don't seem crazy to you, do I?"

"No."

"Good," she says with a nod, about to walk off. Then she whirls around and says, "Do you like Bugles?"

"What?"

'The chips?" She waves her hand: "Or whatever the hell they are…" 

But she's already advancing to the snack machine beside him, and she squats down and he watches her stick her whole arm into the slot at the bottom and snake it up into the cavity of the machine.

When she triumphantly presents him with the bag of Bugles, her smile is for a moment powerful enough to make him feel a little flushed. Then it fades, and he can only say thank you to her back as she retreats. 

So either she's a nurse or a mental patient. Either way, she's been around the hospital long enough to feel at home here. He wishes he could feel that way. He knows he could if he could just fucking make himself remember how to flirt. And if Sam's X-rays are okay.

Izzie is a little tired of this need to pretend that things are fine. Oh, she spent a long time wallowing, unable to pretend, but now that she can, and now that people expect her to, she finds herself pretending all the time. 

And then there's George and his pretending, staring her in the face today like a mirror. He's not fine, and nothing, especially not his eyes, could convince her otherwise. But at least they're talking again. She decided that it's not worth being angry if it means she can't help him right now.

She runs the X-rays to him, because it's better being a lap-dog for her friend than chasing that nitwit shrink around the building, this strange too-nice woman telling her how and when to feel. She almost stops outside the door of the room George is in, and she does for a moment, just to watch a sweetly charming down-to-earth guy with hair hanging down over his eyes doing his best to be noticed by an oblivious doctor. She'd love to stand here and watch as this tall guy goes pink all over with George's hands on him, but she knows the teasing will be better later if she gets a closer view. 

Distraction, she thinks. That's all their life if right now: helpful distraction, for both of them. What's not helpful is walking into the room and finding that strangely captivating, angry one from the vending machine standing in the corner, looking for all the world like he isn't scared out of his mind. 

Figures, she thinks. All the good ones… But the way he watches her when she comes in… And George says brother. 

He also says call me George, and she wonders if perhaps the heretofore Doctor O'Malley is the only one in the room that can't feel the waves of desperation. Maybe it's because he's the most desperate of all, and she suddenly wants to scoop up the entire lot of them, squeeze them all to her chest until they calm down or stop fighting themselves, but she simply calls George into the hallway. Too much.

"Tib-fib fracture," she says. "Actually, two, I think. Older, maybe. But nothing serious. And he's so checking you out."

"What?" He only partly snaps out of his own head, and to make a flat comment, offhand comment, probably just to mess with her. "I'm pretty sure a guy that looks like that could do better than me."

"What? Um, one: you're not a dog, George. And two: you're straight."

He studies the chart intently. "In practice. But I'm pretty sure I'd think long and hard for a guy that hot." This is what they do now, make fake conversation that means to divert them both. Sometimes she doesn’t resent it, because it means they both smile for a moment.

She raises her eyebrows. "Even if he's apparently the clumsy type?"

His mouth rounds into a soundless oh, and he turns back to the window.

She says, "Geez, George. Don't worry about it. Anyway, I was just giving you crap because I didn't think you were into guys."

He just narrows his eyes at her and studies the brothers intently.

"But, yeah, the blonde one was definitely checking me out earlier," she says as she saunters off.

His quiet voice follows her: "Iz, will you…?"

She just nods and heads off to the cardiac wing.

If Dean would just stop looking at him, he could do this, even if the guy's pretty much straight. It's nice just to flirt, even if the person doesn't consciously recognize it's flirtation. First it was Doctor O'Malley, then you can call me George, and even if he likes the thought of doing sloppy, kinky things in some out-of-the-way nook of the hospital with a doctor, it's really George that fascinates him, makes him want to just take him by the wrist and hold him there until he stops fidgeting starts talking lets him touch him until they're both quiet. And maybe until his arm doesn't feel like it's on fire, deep in the bone.

He knows wanting to shake George is at least in part about the need to shake Dean, but he doesn't dwell on that. He watches George's lips purse as he looks over the chart and he lets Dean watch him watching—because it amuses Dean just as much as it freaks him out to see his baby brother wanting needing planning to take, slowly and surely; Sam's always methodical, careful, but especially with this one. 

"I don't need an operation?" Sam asks, knowing the look Dean's giving him.

"No," George replies maybe too curtly, as if the idea is preposterous. Then his face pinches, and he says, "Just a cast for a few weeks. But there's another, older stress showing there…"

"We were in an accident recently. They didn't say anything was broken." It still hurts to think about the accident, as if that's when it happened, not in some room like this and coffee spilled on that floor along with part of his gut he doesn't know if he'll ever get back.

"No," George agrees with a shake of his head, instantly reassuring. "I don't think so. Maybe a hairline fracture. I'll have…the other doctor take a look at the x-rays, but even if it is… Well, it'll all be immobile for a while. It'll heal just fine."

Dean jumps in now, as if Sam needs help wrangling this one, as if Dean would have any fucking clue how to woo a person much less coax out what Sam wants, which is just a flicker of recognition that he might ride a little connection in on. Dean steps up: "See. What I tell you, Sammy."

Sam shoots him a death look, and George almost smiles and says, "My father calls me Georgie. I understand how it is."

"Well, if you heard the names I call Dean…"

Dean says, "What a mouth on this boy," but the half-innuendo, half-banter doesn't seem to faze George, thankfully. Then Dean adds, apparently helping again, "You think this looks bad, you should have seen the son of a bitch Sam put out." 

George looks at him quizzically then, not exactly recoiling from the thought of violence, but as if in disbelief, just like Sam's always in disbelief when he thinks about how he uses guns now and fists, and he wasn't ever supposed to become this person. How did he get here? 

Sam has a choice to make: how does he play this thing? So he gives George a smile that holds the line between mischievous and wicked, maybe a little cocky but entirely buoyant in a way Dean can never manage, and says, "I had to. He called me Sammy."

George tries, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile. Sam does his level best to hold his gaze, and he gets two seconds at least—long enough to really look.

George really, really doesn't need this. 

It's not precisely some sex thing. It's just that he sometimes meets people who seem to slide into some deep pocket inside him, who make him feel vulnerable, almost like an ache. But not fear with this one. Of course, the lack of fear seems…scary. 

He remembers how glowing and happy Izzie was when she went to the hospital to see Denny in that pink dress, and she didn't for one minute expect it to happen the way it did. It blindsided her, just like the cancer and the heart thing and Burke and Christina and all of the rest of the tangled mess of it. He never thought about not being able to trust them. And he never thought to be scared of something happening to his father, who's supposed to live forever. He thinks that if he worries enough now, he won't be tempting the Gods or fate or whatever. Being unafraid is dangerous, but in George's experience when he gets good and freaked out over something, it usually doesn't come to anything.

So he permits himself to freak out a little about this guy flirting with him.

"It was flirting, I think," he tells Izzie. "I don't know. Do guys flirt differently than girls?"

"Everyone flirts differently. Like you. I don't get you. I don't think I've ever seen you flirt. Not even with—" Her eyes and hands say Meredith. He finds that it doesn't wound him like it once would have.

"It's because I don't. I either get completely tongue-tied or I don't know what's happening until it's too late for flirting. I mean… Well, with Callie she just sorta…claimed me."

"The question is, I guess, do you want to flirt back with this guy?"

"I don't know how." He hears the wail in his voice, and he wonders just how tightly wound he must be to get this upset at something innocuous. Or not-innocuous. His mind fixes on the sight of his father in that bed again, and he feels like an extraordinary coward for not being down there. 

"Hands," she says, and he tries to keep himself right here, right now. "You've got great hands."

"Yeah?"

"Trust me."

"But I've already been touching him. You know, to look at his arm."

"Then you've already been flirting with him, haven't you? No wonder he's swooning over you."

He sighs. "He is not swooning. That's ridiculous. Guys like that don't swoon. They…bale hay or load shotguns or something." That's it: he seems like his brothers, except he's not. He maybe seems like George would be if he'd never become this person he is. A doctor. A worried son. Both at the same time? Not possible, but yet it's happening anyway. He continues, "Besides, I just don't think I'm supposed to be doing this right now. I don't even want to. It's not a good time. Things are—"

"Yeah. I know." They've already had the conversation about why he's working instead of haunting the waiting room downstairs, so there's nothing left to say about it. He think it's funny how they're already stepping around this issue of Burke and Christina and the secret, like now that it's out there and Dr. Hahn's prepared to do the surgery, they can't afford to spend time making themselves miserable thinking about this enormous thing that's infecting the whole fucking hospital now, just festering quietly but too painfully to touch. Honestly, he's content to refuse to think about the betrayal for the time being because he has so much hurt and anger he doesn't know what he'd do if he actually let it out. And now isn't the time for anything but prayer.

She's still talking: "This guy, he's probably not looking to make an honest man out of you or anything. He's probably just flirting. I don't really think he's hoping to get in your pants." Then her eyes narrow: confused, searching. "Ohgod, you want him to get in your pants."

"What? No." He gives her the same face he does when she comes in to pee while he's in the shower. "I don't know if I'd be able to do anything like that with a guy, much less right now. But it's not even about that."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. There's something…easy about him."

"Easy?" she says with raised eyebrows.

"I mean…calm. I can't explain it, and I know you're gonna say I'm crazy, but it's like he doesn't want to take anything from me."

"Well, then, it's simple: figure out what you want him to give you." The arch of her eyebrows is getting ridiculous. 

"I'm not gonna go there right now, Izzie," he snaps, but without venom, just hoping to shut down the conversation. "And he's my patient."

He knows the words sink in with them at about the same time, because he's watching her face go blank again as his stomach sinks. He thanks God she doesn't see it as an attack, like the horrible thing he said the day before that he still can't believe he said. This time it's just him talking before he thinks, so she doesn't cut into him with her eyes. But the words still have their effect anyway.

Blindsided. Denny's never really out of her head, but somehow she seems to constantly be blindsided by him. They've moved beyond the point that they discuss these things when they happen, the daily, hourly reminders of Denny and the undeposited check on the refrigerator. If they keep stopping for all those things, she'll never learn how to live with them. 

He's starting to wonder how she lives at all, this nervous knot of feeling hanging over her, absorbing her energy, becoming her days until that's all there is. But he's not at all confused now about how she could do something as reckless as cut his LVAD. Something—anything—to stop the endless waiting.

Dean can tell Sam's in pain, and he hates that, always has (hates it when it's the emotional kind, too, whether or not Sam believes he feels it), but if the son of a bitch is too stubborn to take the pain meds they gave him… 

Hell, he knows he would be too, but it's because for him pain is real. It almost feels purifying somehow because when you move past it, it leaves you feeling victorious. And when you live with it, well, you try to remember that's a victory, too, but it's hard when you're staring into your brother's eyes and he has no idea how fucked up you really are. He thinks you're avoiding your grief—college boy's right on that one—but he doesn't know what else you're carrying. So he has the luxury of giving you a smirky look that only has the power to annoy you because he's your younger brother.

"What?" Dean says. 

"You been out here before? When I was still in school?"

"What? Why?"

"You and that doctor…" Dean frowns at him. Sam prompts: "The cute blonde…"

"She's not a nurse?"

"Dude, you've got to join the rest of us in the 21st century. Her badge said she was a doctor. Intern. And the way she was looking at you…"

"Dude, you're crazy."

"No, I'm not. She looked intrigued but confused. Maybe a little pissed."

"If she's pissed, it's not my fault. I've never seen her before today." Sam gives him the and? face, so he says, "I ran into her upstairs at the drink machine."

"Uh huh."

"You just worry about your doe-eyed doctor."

"But she's cute, right?"

"You tell me, Switch Hitter."

Dean waits for a retort that doesn't come. Instead, Sam's suddenly looking at something over his shoulder and giving him the look of death again, saying through gritted teeth, "If you so much as open your mouth…"

"You'll what? Poke me with your IV? Gimp me to death?" When Sam's eyes narrow even further than he thought they could, he just shakes his head and says, "See if I bring you any coffee then," and strolls out the door.

He's halfway down the hallway when he remembers the last time Sam walked out of a hospital room like that. Sam had been holding—then dropping—a cup of cafeteria coffee when he came back to find their father dead on the floor. Dean comes to a halt, right there in the middle of the hallway. He can't breathe for a second, almost dizzy. Too quickly, he makes himself move, but all he can do is press himself against the clean white space of the cool wall. 

After an interminable moment, he takes a deep breath, and it holds, so he walks on.

Izzie wants to believe it's crazy. Every day, she tells herself she shouldn't feel this lost. She only knew him for a few weeks, but it was enough—or he was enough—to make her pin a lot of things to him. She misses the hell out of Denny, his smile and his laugh and his ability to make her weak in the knees even on his back, pale in a hospital bed, and she misses the things they never got to have. That hurts a lot. But the wracking sobs usually come when she knows she's lost without him. 

She hadn't even known how lost she had been until she wasn't anymore, when she finally laid all her future everything in his large, warm hands. Now the loneliness she feels is just as permanent as that forever was supposed to be, and it scares her more than she thought anything could. Surrounded by friends who would lie on the bathroom floor for hours with her, not even speaking, she still sometimes feels as alone as she did counting the tiles in the linoleum pattern and wishing they'd just go away.

Part of her return to normal, she has decided, is to try to live outside her own mind for a while every day. It will be easier when she has patients again, but right now she has to make do. Today, it's been easy to find something to focus on, especially with George's father's surgery coming up. What's not so easy is deciding what to do about this brother of the guy with the broken arm. She's not sure if she wants to figure out if this Dean she's standing here staring at is fucked up in a way she understands. She's really pretty afraid he is, but she's not sure if it's because he reminds her of herself or of Alex Karev. 

But she hadn't thought about the guy at all until she came upon him looking out a window in the less-traveled back hallway, hands in his pockets and frowning to himself. When she made her decision, quick, without thinking—and that lack of hesitation felt good—she glided up beside him. Now she has to remind herself to be certain as he looks at her out of only the corner of his eyes. 

"I don’t like them, either," she says. He doesn't respond to that, so she adds, "Hospitals."

After a long silence, he turns enough the she can see one of his eyes, but not his expression. "You work in one. Apparently."

"I need them so I can do what I do for people. They're like a…necessary evil."

"I've never met an evil that was necessary." He gives a small shake of his head and says coldly, through a pinched throat, "You're a doctor?"

"Yeah."

"So why are you lurking, not doctoring?"

How could he know? He doesn't, surely. She just replies, "It's a long story."

"I've got the time."

"No offense, but I don't even know you."

His shoulders bounce with a silent snort. "See, this is funny. I'm usually the one who stonewalls people. I'm Dean."

"I know your name."

"Well, seems like if we're civilized people, this is where you tell me yours." She already knows he has hazel eyes that could make a person forget what they're saying. As it is, she can't stop looking at him. It's even harder now that he's looking back, giving her an amused face, those clear eyes twinkling just a little, enough. "You can make one up if you want. I do all the time."

She almost says Bethany, but the joke would be lost on him. Actually, she's more than a little afraid he's the type to have seen those pictures. "I'm Dr. Stevens. Izzie." He nods—strange, almost like he's acknowledging her like he would a guy, not a girl, and she knows with a face and body like that, he's no stranger to a game he's for some reason not playing today. Maybe he's decided he wants something else from her, not that she could make a guess about that. Or maybe he's worried about his brother. "Your brother's going to be fine."

"I know."

"Then how come you're so…?"

"It's a long story," he says, arching his eyebrows and smiling sardonically. 

"Do you think we can have a whole conversation like this if we go for coffee?"

"Somehow, Dr. Stevens, I doubt you've ever met a person you couldn't bullshit…if the mood struck you."

"But it's always harder with a fellow bullshitter," she replies. 

"I'm sure we've got whole areas of discussion that won't involve any bullshit. What I don't know is why you'd even bother." For a second, she thinks he means why would she bother, but he really means, why would she bother with him?

What could she say that would be the real truth? That she's a fixer, hell-bent on doing something today for somebody, and if she can't scrub in on surgeries and George is going to continue to act so closed-off that she feels for the first time since…since all the bad stuff like doing some baking to compensate for a bad thing that's not her own… She thinks this is all too hard, too much, and yet she wants nothing more than to get him out of the hospital, and maybe it's because she wants to get out of the hospital too. Maybe it is why would she bother?

However, more important, and infinitely better as a diversion, is a little gauging of the situation. She cocks her head to the side. "It's simple, Dean Winchester, brother of Sam: George gets anxious when he has an audience."

At that, he finally takes his hands out of his pockets. He doesn't have to chuckle for her to know he understands exactly what she's saying, and he approves, in his own brotherly way. His tone is mock-serious: "But we'll miss a lot of blushing and head-ducking and nervous rambling."

"I don't know about you," she says, and the smile is for the first time in an hour or so not forced, "but I'll hear all about it later, whether he wants to tell me or not." So Dean chuckles again and follows her down the hallway.

He walks down the back stairs so precisely, even if to anyone else it would seem careless, nearly a stomp. She knows that walk well, except her version involves less heavy footfall and more eyes focused straight ahead, even if she's not really seeing where she's going. Dean, she thinks, is always watching where he's going. He's always watching everything.

Chapter Text

Sam doesn't realize it was easier with Dean in the room until George is standing there again and they're alone. Actually alone, at least for the time being. It doesn't at all bother Sam—he likes to talk to people one-on-one; it's easier sometimes—but he sees it bothers George a lot, and he can't tell why: go with the self-centered answer and assume he's having an effect on the guy, or be self-effacing and think that despite the long look, the doctor's mind is definitely elsewhere. Hell, he knows that's the case. What he doesn't know is what to do about it. Should he push for something? Well, Sam doesn't like to push, so he just sits back and waits and tries to ignore the flare of fire that used to be his arm. 

George picks up that arm gingerly and takes off the temporary splint, smoothing over skin that's just on the periphery of the worst of the pain. "You tell me if this hurts," he says as his fingers move over the slightly swollen part of his arm, pink and too hot and he can't really feel George's thumb lightly pressing there, only the burning pain. "I need to know if the medication is working."

"I didn't take it."

George's eyes go wide for a moment, then he shakes his head. He murmurs, almost soothingly, or maybe it's disbelief or fear: "Don't be stupid." His eyes are hard now, but his hands are still there, still probing, but tenderly, not as if he's even testing anything anymore. His voice remains a soft murmur, but there's a evenness and force to it: "I'm serious. They're about to get you up, move you around, drag you down to x-ray again probably, just to make sure about that other possible fracture, and then they have to wrap it. You can sit here and pretend it doesn't hurt, but it does, and it's just going to get worse before it gets better."

"It's just a fracture."

George responds to that by laying his arm down gently across his stomach and scooping up the little cups of pills and of water from the tray at the foot of the bed. "How did you even get around the meds?" he asks, then he checks the chart. "Ah." George makes a face he can't interpret, but it looks an awful lot like knowing sarcasm, the not very well hidden sort. He all but snorts. "Did you have to sweet-talk Olivia, or did you just smile at her?"

"Actually, I think you can blame that one on my brother." 

When George laughs and rattles the pills out and drops them with warm fingers into his palm, he says, "You know I can just have them pump it in through an IV if you won't swallow these."

George is being funny, but he's serious, too, and it suits Sam to obey him. With a quick cock of his head, Sam knocks the pills back into his mouth and drains the little plastic cup of water. When he deposits the cup in George's hand, letting his fingers linger against his palm, he says, "And you didn't have to sweet-talk me. Or even smile."

That does it. George gives him a sheepish but adorable grin as he sets about re-fastening the splint, his hands steady but nervous. Sam doesn't look up at him but at his hands, but he can feel George's eyes occasionally flit over his face. 

"What is it with men and taking pills?" George says.

"I don't know. Do you take medicine if you can help it?"

"No," he says. "Of course not." When Sam gives him a look, he replies, "That's why I was asking you."

"Testosterone makes us stupid?" Sam offers, frowning at the way the splint pinches his skin just before George sets it back down in his lap.

"I'm sure someone's done a study on that. Not that I have time to read medical journals," he mutters. 

"Well, I just thank God some people find male stupidity charming."

George just smiles in response. "I'll be back later to discharge you, once they've got you all fixed up downstairs."

"And then you'll know why I didn't take the pills." George looks at him with concern for a moment, then he seems to realize Sam's giving him shit. "Stuff like this makes me a little…rambly."

"You kidding me? I live with girls," he says with an adorable scrunching of his face, then his eyes go wide again. "You know, girls who are just friends. But, anyway, I've learned the fine art of listening…even to things that don't make sense." 

When he slides out of them room, Sam smiles, but his sense of victory, however small, is short lived. George's face returns to that blank mask of tension before he heads down the hallway. 

George knows Callie's not going to be the one who wraps Sam's arm. It might even be Meredith. Izzie's restricted and Alex is still taking Sloan's abuse and Christina is… He makes two tight fists. Can't think about it. Not again. Not now. Anyway, it's not very probable but it's possible Meredith's with Callie, especially with all the other major players in some downward spiral he can only pray doesn't come within a hundred yards of his father. 

Meredith and Callie. It seems absurd when he thinks about it. One who couldn't love him back; one who he couldn't love back. Not that he dwells on it. It seems like right now he doesn't have the time to think about what's wrong with him and why the stars don't align and let two people want each other the same way and at the same time. There are other things to think about. He's been trying to focus all day on letting the job take over. Everything seems hectic right now, so it feels like the right time to channel that energy and forge ahead and be a doctor without Bailey breathing down his neck. It's either that or sit in the waiting room, and he just can't do it anymore. 

He's there at the intake desk in the pit, like he's in a holding pattern waiting for a clearance he's not going to get, when he sees the brother come back through the swishing doors. And Izzie's with him. It makes him instantly and insanely angry. 

It's been hard with her back at the hospital because he feels like he needs to walk ten feet in front of her and shield her from people being too harsh or too kind…or too hot. He lives in mortal fear of Mark Sloan. He thought Callie was smart, but apparently that man makes miserable women forget misery for a while, right before it returns and knocks them flat. And Izzie is miserable. 

Now he lives in mortal fear of this brother, even if they walk in sedately, small smiles that look a lot more like camaraderie than flirtation. He tells himself to breathe, that it's Meredith's thing to sleep with inappropriate men, not Izzie's, but he feels like a tightly wound ball of nerves and jealousy now, and he can't help stalking up to the brother as Izzie disappears around a corner.

"They've taken Sam back down to x-ray, then to have the cast put on."

"Okay," the brother says, staring at him, waiting.

"You should've made him take his pain medication."

The brother knows he's pissed now, but he's looking at him not exactly with amusement but close enough. How wonderful. "Can't anybody make Sammy do anything." Then he snorts. "No, hell, you could, so why didn't you?"

He doesn't like the implications of that comment, especially since the brother seems so blasé about him. This is not a blasé day. "I did. He might be sleeping if you go back up there."

"If?"

George really hates being short, especially when he's trying to be commanding with hyper masculine men. It makes him think about Denny, how he never made him feel short and inconsequential, even if he could have, even lying in bed in a hospital gown. George imagines that that is the kind of man Izzie really needs: strong without having the prove it so much. It's why he doesn't like Alex and why he has to say something to Dean.

George waits to catch his eyes, hard, then he says, "Dr. Stevens is my friend."

"I see."

"She's had a very bad couple of months."

"She told me."

"She—?"

"Not what. Just that it's been bad. But I could tell that looking at her face. You don't need to play hero here, okay. I've got too much of my own shit to think about making anybody's life suck worse right now. Not hers or yours."

"What did she—"

"You don’t know me, but if you did you'd know that I can read faces, so I don't have to ask questions. And I wouldn't. Neither would Sam."

Dean's ascending the stairs a moment later, and George is left with a lot of wonderings. What exactly does Sam want from him? He still thinks he's right about him, but he wonders. He also thinks about casts and Callie and Meredith, and how love never comes at the right time, even when it comes to both people at once. Even when the stars align and you get what you want, it can be taken away too quickly. Anything can be taken away. Anybody. He feels that horrible heavy feeling in his stomach again, the one that's impossible to live with but equally as impossible not to feel.

He wants to go down to see his father, but he's afraid if he does he won't be able to leave or breathe or stay on his feet anymore. Maybe he's a coward, he thinks. But he just can't, so he goes to find Izzie instead.

She's loitering in the locker room, looking like she's floundering just like he is today. He throws his arms around her from behind. "You're really, really important to me, you know?"

She lets him hug her, and when she finally twists easily out of his arms, her smile is real. "I know."

"Even when I'm an asshole?"

"Especially then." She hands him her half-drunk cup of coffee before she kisses him on the cheek and heads out the door. 

This is not exactly like Sam being wasted. That usually involves a lot of moping and whining, because even if Sam doesn't mean to get drunk to wallow, that's the way things end up. It makes him twice as likely to attempt to engage Dean in serious, emotional discussions, but luckily when he's drunk Sam can take a lot of Dean ignoring him or refusing to answer. He's much worse sober, actually, but Dean still doesn't relish those crying drunks.

But this—this has the potential to be fun. Sam was always a goofy kid, and while it used to drive him nuts, now he likes to see Sam's forehead come uncreased and his mouth stretch into a wide smile. He seems calmer, less anxious about his all-fired need to save the world.

"I don't feel anything," Sam says with a lazy, hazy smile, newly returned from a triumphal tour of the hospital. Dean sometime forgets how Sam's as good at charming people as he is, and he does it without even trying. 

Sam's good arm flops up and off the bed then lands on it again. "Nothing. It's nice."

"You aren't gonna piss yourself, are you?"

"I'm not that out of it." His eyes roll slowly, but they do roll. "Where you been?"

"Just taking a break."

He smiles this big goofy smile, and Dean really hates that he's a bad liar when it comes to petty shit. "You smell like coffee," he says with what might pass for a wink.

"Well, you smell like plaster. So what? I told you I was going for coffee."

"But you've been gone a long time. You had coffee with somebody. The doctor with the…" His eyebrows go up.

"The what?"

"Come on, she's got really nice tits."

This would be great fun if Sam wasn't grilling him even as fell back on language he usually pretended to be above. "As a matter of fact…"

"I knew it." His good arm shoots out, ending in a languid finger point. "I knew you knew her."

"I didn't until today."

"What did you talk about?"

"Nothing."

"Dean..." His voice is a little sing-song now, this short of whiny, but he's too cheerful for that. "I'll tell you about talking to my doctor if you'll tell me about talking to yours."

"Or we could just braid each other's hair; you know, after our pillow fight. Dude, we didn't talk about anything."

"Not even about me?"

Dean lets himself grin now. "Especially not about you and your sexually confused little dude."

When Sam frowns, it's almost hysterical. His intense focus has a tendency to amuse Dean anyway, when it's not ensuring both their asses don't get killed, but this face is the best he's seen in a while. "Confused?" Sam says.

"Bi-curious is the trendy word I think, and we're not even sure about that. But, Romeo, as high as you are right now, you should probably lay off the boy, 'specially since it'll take a little subtlety, and that's not exactly your strong suit."

"Pot."

"What?"

"I'm the kettle here," he says seriously, tapping his finger into his chest, then he gesticulates vaguely at Dean, "and you're the pot. If you're even right, which I really really don't think you are. I'm perfectly…subtle."

"Fine. Whatever. Anyway, something pretty fucking serious is going on in that boy's head that doesn't have anything to do with you."

"I knew it."

"Whatever it is, Izzie figures he'll tell you, if you get enough of a chance to talk to him. He's apparently the over-emotional and talky type. Which makes him perfect for you."

"Bah. Overemotional my ass," he mumbles. Then Dean can almost see the wheels turning. Sam smiles what probably seems to his wasted consciousness like an understated smile, and he says, "Izzie of the nice tits wants me to unconfuse George?"

"Izzie of the amazing tits has her own very vague problems, and she—"

"Sounds like you."

"Sam…"

His eyes roll slowly again, and when he gesticulates, annoyed, he almost looks drunk: "God, Dean. Don't worry. I'm so beyond playing amateur shrink with you it's not funny." But when he sighs, the flippant annoyance drains from his face, then his voice: "I just wonder…"

Dean sighs, unable to put words to it anymore.

But Sam's still saying, "How come you can tell her what's going on inside your head when you can't tell me?"

He wants to yell, really he does. It makes him so fucking angry. Didn't they just have what for Dean constitutes a serious heart to heart? But Sam looks so dead serious, so fucking earnest, and he can still play the broken arm card, whether he realizes it or not. Dean clenches his jaw and says, "I didn't tell her anything. We talked about a lot of shit that doesn't matter, and I didn't say a damn word about dad. And I told you, Sam. All of it." It doesn't hurt him to tell that lie anymore, because he almost has himself convinced it's not a lie, that if it's something Sam can never know, he's not lying. 

Sam's head flops back against the pillow. "I know. I love you, you know." 

This is exactly like drunk Sam now. Dean groans, "Ah, Jesus Christ. Do we have to—?"

"You were almost dead." He grimaces impressively, that constipated look that denotes he's trying to make Dean see how serious something is. Like he doesn't know. "I don't know what I would've done. Did you ever think maybe we don't have time for stupid bullshit?"

"We've got all the time in the world." Their father had bought that time, and Dean didn't plan to squander it worrying.

Sam frowns at him for a few more seconds, then, unexpectedly, he giggles, coming out of that bout of seriousness with a roll of his eyes. "Okay, fine. No more talk. You just be Dean." He tries to flail his arm—his bad arm—until he notices the curious way it's turned into an unwieldy hunk of plaster. "Dude," he whines, "how am I supposed to take showers like this?"

"Don't ask me. But look on the bright side—it'll cut down on our pay-per-view charges." Sam's face begins to come over scarlet, but Dean can resist adding, "The folks at the skin channel will be very very sad, I'm sure."

"Pot."

Dean smirks. "Hey, it won't be a problem if you can get some help for…" When Sam's eyes go wide, even as his face remains that shade of magenta, he knows someone's in the doorway. When Sam's face suddenly looks mischievous, he feels it like a kick in the gut. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Izzie of the Amazing…

Surely, even hopped up on pain pills, he wouldn't call her that to her face.

Izzie isn't even sure why she feels the need to stop in and see Sam. It's not about Dean, she thinks, although he's there, looking sheepish for no good reason. It's cute, but not as cute as Sam's bleary-eyed attempt at keeping his eyes focused on her when she talks.

"Good drugs, huh?" she asks him.

Dean just nods and grins at her, and Sam says, "What do they have me on?"

She checks the chart. "Demerol."

"Am I supposed to feel numb?"

"Yeah. But that's not so bad, is it, considering?" she asks him with a smile.

She had thought about it in those days after Denny's death. They'd prescribed her something to help her sleep, but that bottle sat on top of the refrigerator, unopened—just above the undeposited check, now that she thought about it. What they gave her wouldn't have been strong enough. She wanted something precise, not enough to die, but enough to make her feel like she wasn't, wouldn't. Actually, she already couldn't feel anything; what she needed was a pill that would make her not care. She didn't think there was such a pill. There hadn't even been such a career, such a years of study and future life, to make her stop caring about Denny so much she could do something so monumentally stupid as cut that line. But Denny had been such a man to make her want that to be the last colossal fuck-up of her life. 

Sam says, "It's good. Yep. All good."

Dean smirks and says, "Trust me, you don't want to get him talking when he's like this."

When she looks back at Sam, she realizes there's a reason she hasn't been able to hold his gaze for more than half a second: he's staring rather blatantly at her breasts. Just like Dean had over coffee. She smiles to herself, then she turns to Dean and says in an official sort of tone, "I need you clear out and let me run some final checks on him." It isn't a question.

He raises his eyebrows, but he doesn't argue with her. "Yes ma'am," he says with an almost imperceptible sigh, and, after shooting Sam a look, he darts out the door. 

Sam doesn't waste any time. "He likes you, you know."

"What?"

"If he wasn't—" Something stops him short, and he seems to be putting a lot of effort into concentrating. "Usually, Dean would be all over you."

"It's probably a good thing he's not."

"Hey, I don't know what impression you got of my brother, but he's not stupid."

"I didn't think that."

"He's perceptive. Just because he doesn't say what he sees, that doesn't mean he doesn't get it."

"Get what?"

"I don't know." He seems to have expended all his mental energy. "You need to get more blood or something?"

"No. I was just getting rid of him so we could talk."

"Oh?" Now he looks nervous, just like George gets when she ambushes him.

"Normally, I wouldn't interfere like this, but-- No, wait, scratch that. I always interfere in George's life, but it's because he's like a brother to me. Now, if he noticed something, it's probably there, because he's not really all that perceptive. Empathetic but not perceptive. So, you are gay, aren't you?"

He raises his eyebrows. 

She continues, "I know this is weird, but don't freak out on me. I had to ask, what with the way you've been staring at my boobs since I walked in."

He blushes, and it's cute, because he's not really trying to deny it and he's only somewhat sorry he got caught. "I'm not exactly totally gay," he says with a smiling roll of the eyes.

"Well, I'm beginning to think George isn't exactly totally straight, but I really have no idea. Neither does he. And he doesn't need that right now. He's got a lot of static in his head. A lot. So he's not thinking clearly, and I'd hate to see—"

"Hey, I get it. About the only use I would be to him is as a friend. That's all I want."

She already has her mouth open to argue, but she just closes it. She doesn't need to ask him why, and she doesn't need to wonder if he's serious. She just knows. So she says, "Okay. Okay, then. Well, you're all done. Give him a little while and he'll be up here to get you officially checked out."

"You can't?"

"I can't." He's not even looking at her like he expects her to explain, but she feels compelled to anyway. Something about his sad deeep brown eyes. "I'm on…well, it's like probation. I can't officially do anything but observe."

"That doesn't sound fair."

"Believe me. It's more than fair."

"Well, I hope you get your job back soon."

"Me too," she says.

She's sliding his chart back into place in the door when he says, "I'm sorry I was staring. It's just that you remind me of someone. You know how sometimes things just sorta send you back in time?"

"Yeah, I do," she says, nodding and slipping out the door. 

She thanks God he doesn't have a broad chest and a gravelly drawl that can practically sing through her body, that his eyes are not that same shade of warm hazel brown. There was a time when every man she met reminded her of Denny, but that was back when she dreamed of the medicine storage cabinet, not knowing if she was dreaming of a way to get back to her life or to never have to see it again. 

Sam doesn't like this feeling, the terror he has now when he's alone. It's what happens when you only have one life to tie yours to. No classmates and teachers and dorm mates and acquaintances and friends. No Jess and never really any mother. No father now. Just Dean. When Dean's gone, the panic verges on his consciousness—not quite there, but he can feel it. Even now, especially now, with the drugs.

He's so tired and it's dark in the little room, so he goes to the window, lightheaded at first but soon adjusting to the dull throb in his skull and the numbness in his limbs. Looking over the parking lot, he realizes how much he depends on being in that Impala, always moving, watching the world rush by. Flying is a faster way to travel, but only in a car do you really get a sense of how far you've come. He thinks now that he's come pretty far. When he'd joined Dean, he hadn't been sure about what he was doing. The reasons, yes, those were clear, but the way to do this thing wasn't. 

And he'd had to get over feeling like he was doing what his father wanted. Always, deep in his bones he'd felt that to give in and be the good little soldier Dean was would be a betrayal of something. He was sure now that his father always understood it perfectly even if he resented it. Dean didn't get it, not really. But what it came down to was that even after Jess, after he knew the path he would have to go down—and wanted to go down it—he still had the urge to rebel, to live life on his own terms. 

It's just that it's harder and harder to do now. He knows he's living his father's life over again. His anger over Jess's death still burns like an ulcer somewhere deep inside him he can't find, and he wonders if it will ever go away. Is it okay that he wants it to, that he doesn't want to become his father? Does it mean he didn't love him? Did walking away from the life mean the same thing?

He can never talk to Dean about those things. Really, there's been no one in his life since Jess that he could confide in like that. He knows that's why he feels so alone sometimes. Even Dean, his life, can't be everything. He wonders if he's everything to Dean. He wonders if Dean was everything to his father. 

He wonders if his father would've died for him, too.

He thinks it's probably the drugs that make him want to either cry or kick the dingy glass out of that tiny window and scream out over the parking lot. The tears are already in his eyes when he realizes someone has come into the room. He's let his guard down, and he hates that, then hates that he has to hate it. But he makes himself not whirl around. 

George's voice says, "Did they get you wrapped up good? Explain about everything?"

"Yeah." Then he breathes deep and turns.

"Good. That's…good. Well, you're set then. We just need to walk this paperwork down the hall."

George fidgets with his chart, like he wants to be gone but something's fastened him to the spot. Sam doubts it's him that's made him stick there, but it might be him keeping him, and he's not going to let go of that opportunity.

"You can hang out here for a few minutes if you want," Sam says.

"What?" George snaps to attention.

"I don't know. You seem like you need to…avoid something."

"Oh, I'm already really good at that," he says sardonically, feet still planted firmly on the ground on the other side of the bed. Sam gives him a look, and he says, "It's just that…" Then he sighs and closes his eyes. "Well, it's complicated."

Sam sits back down on the bed gingerly, as if not to startle him, even if his words are firm but friendly. "You know, you don't have to tell me anything. Seriously. But if you don't want to go back to—"

"My father's having surgery," George says like it's one long word, one breath. Then he takes a deep one, caught there like a deer in headlights but seemingly helpless to stop the rush of words. "My father's having surgery on his heart and yesterday I wasn't allowed to come within fifty feet of him, they were that scared I would fuck things up. Sorry," he says, frowning at his language, as though that's the only breach of professionalism that's happening here. "And I keep thinking, what if I did?"

"Did what?"

"Screw things up." His expression is blank, but his eyes are most definitely not, not that Sam can interpret what he sees in them.

"I don't think you would."

"It doesn't matter. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. You've gotta tell somebody, right?"

He smiles, faintly. "Yeah. I guess." He leans himself against the closed door, arms crossed over his chest. Protective, but he's still here, brown eyes wide open and glittering with unshedable tears. "I know why I can't be there, or why I'm not there, but it's making me a little…"

"Nuts?"

He snorts out a laugh. "Yeah."

"I think I understand. It's hard when staying away is the only thing you can do."

"It's just so stupid, because I've been away from him for too long. Medical school and…everything. But I just can't…"

The conversation's stalling. Sam can feel him slipping away, but he can't come up with anything helpful to say, especially since this all sounds like an echo of thoughts he's had a million times before without really making sense of them. So he offers: "I was in college for a while."

"Yeah?"

"I had to leave it to be with my brother." 

"Family's important," George says like he's trying to convince himself.

"Yeah."

"So why did I leave my family?"

"Do you think maybe you're only feeling this way because of what's happening?"

"I know I am. I do."

George gets quiet again, and Sam knows—can feel it, almost physically, just from the tension rolling off him—that George still has more to say, but he's afraid of talking, and it's not because he's afraid of Sam. So Sam doesn’t have a clue whether talking will help him or not, but he can't just stand here and watch him roll up into himself.

"George," he says finally, cautiously. "I know you don't know me, but I can listen. If you want. As much as you want."

"I get that."

"Okay."

"But I can't. I think I'm worrying too much."

"Is it a surgery that you should be really really worried about?"

"It can be dangerous. Sometimes. I don’t know," he says too fast. "I can't tell. It's easier when I'm talking to somebody about their father, you know. Not mine."

Sam can see the shift in him, watch it in the slope of his shoulders. Dean does the same thing. Sam almost picks up his cast-covered arm and knocks everything off the bedside table. But it wouldn't be a loud enough crash. He's growing tired of this quiet, muffled, numb feeling and men with their stupid testosterone keeping them from talking even when things are killing them. Sam is only beginning to understand how that's possible, because it's what he does for Dean a lot of the time now.

Sam tells himself this doctor is not his responsibility, but he can't help but feel like he is, somehow. And there's not a damn thing he can do. The only distraction he knows is his own life and…

He doesn't reply, so George motions to have him follow him out into the hallway. Sam walks slowly and unsteadily beside him, and he starts to tell him all the things he needs to know about cleanly mending a bone. Maybe that's the only kind of telling he can do right now, Sam thinks, so he listens intently.

If it's possible, Sam made him feel better and worse, all at the same time. More grounded, but grounded in this tension, he thinks. He can't concentrate at all anymore. His fists are in balls at his sides, knuckles white, and he can't stand in one place for any length of time. He can't go down there and be George, but he can't stay away and be Doctor O'Malley anymore either, apparently.

He runs across Izzie outside the NICU.

He says, "I need you to distract Bailey for a while."

Izzie's never easy to read anymore, but today's she's particularly inscrutable, probably because her emotions seem to be bouncing around as much as his own are. 

"George…"

"I just want to look at his chart. I need to."

"Why don't you just go down there and see him. You'd—"

"I can't."

"George."

"I just think I'd feel better if I could…"

"It won't make any difference."

"Don't say that. I have to do something. I can't just keep standing there and watching and not doing anything. You should know that."

Her eyes shut him down so fast it makes his stomach flip in panic. He hadn't meant it that way, had he? No, of course he had. Not to wound her but to make her realize how bad this is, how it feels. But it doesn't matter. Everything wounds her, even when he doesn't mean it to, and it always feels like this: helpless. It's like watching someone drop down a hole, watching them falling, watching them knowing you missed the chance you had to reach out an arm to catch them.

"Izzie…" He says.

It's worse than her getting angry. If she would just yell or shove him or something… But she looks at him dispassionately and says, "I can't help you."

That's what makes him slip into the back stairwell and barely stop himself putting his fist through a wall. Stupid doctor's hands that can't be broken. I can't help you. It only produces maniacal laughter, and he just keeps laughing and laughing, because if he stops, he'll cry. Or he'll just stop. 

He stands there on the landing between three and four, holding himself off the wall with his hands, breathing too fast. Is this hyperventilating? he wonders. He's only seen it, never felt it. Like so much about his life now. He's so angry, but he can't move anymore, nothing except his impossible ribcage. 

The wall feels cool against his forehead. Solid. Impenetrable. Devoid of anything. The echoey silence only leaves room for his immediate thoughts, and they're what keep him rooted despite the way his shoulders still shake with laughter or pain.

Sam throws his bag into the Impala, and Dean can see that he's not happy, and he's going to be not happy until he does whatever it is he's furrowed his brow into. Sam's not nervous and fidgeting; he's simply standing there, immobile, unyielding as a rock. It's not just the drugs, he thinks. 

Dean's arms feel warm against the top of the car as he looks over it at his brother. Psychic abilities don't make sense for him. If Dean were to guess Sam had a superpower, it would be ESP, or maybe just simply empathy, even if that doesn't seem like much of a superpower to Dean. He'd thought for a long time it was simply Sam being in tune with him because he knows him, has been right by his side for months now, and months and years before that. But he's starting to see that Sam has the same ability that babies and dogs do to pick up on people's energy, their pain.

And he's damn good at broadcasting it, and on a frequency even Dean can't tune out. Sam's gonna be unbearable for days if they leave now, Dean can see that. Sam gets in the car and half slams the door. Dean slinks into his own seat and Sam says, "It's his father."

"What?"

"The doctor. His father's about to have major surgery."

"Who is that freaking out more: you or him?"

"I didn't tell him."

"Okay."

"I couldn't."

"Okay."

"He thinks he'll fuck it up just by being near him. So he's worried and, really, there's not a damn thing he can do."

Sam leans his head back against seat and his whole faces pinches up. Oh, does Dean sympathize with not being able to do anything. The only cure they've ever known for that feeling is to just dive into the problem.

But what's he gonna accomplish going in there now? Dean just sighs. He needs to do it anyway, even if it's stupid. Wouldn't be the first stupid thing either one of them did, would it?

Dean takes his hand off the wheel and says, "So here's what I figure. You go find him, while I get a hold of his father's chart."

Sam's head whips around. "What?"

"You're above stealing things now?"

"Why would you want to do this?"

Dean could say a lot of things about brothers and fathers and pain and fear, but he doesn't. He just frowns defensively and says, "I'm not allowed to help you sometimes?"

"No. I guess." He sighs, from deep in his chest. It doesn't seem to really help the tension. "I don't know what I would even say if I could find him."

"How about, 'Wanna get out of here and grab some coffee?'"

"'…while my brother steals your father's chart and photocopies it?'"

Dean just grins, shoves the door open, and heaves himself up and out of the car. He says, "You'll be all right. You think pretty good on your feet. If you can stay up on 'em right now." 

Dean has no idea how he's gonna steal the chart, really, given he's already been in the hospital without a disguise. But he figures actually getting his hands on the chart isn't nearly as important as Sam finding his doctor.

Chapter Text

He's subtle. She'll give him that. He's subtle enough she can't tell what the hell he's trying to do. She knows only that he should've been gone a long time ago, yet he's still here, slinking around and trying to pretend he knows exactly where he's going and he's supposed to be going there.

Even his flirtation is subtle, or what passes for subtlety with Billie at the desk. It would be really easy for a woman to let herself believe he's this sincere soul who's just being friendly. Izzie still believes he has that side—or else what was that over coffee?—but now there's no mistaking it: he's turning on the charm for a reason, and she sees that reason soon enough when, as Billie retrieves something from the back desk, Dean slides half off a patient's chart off a clipboard and underneath his jacket.

Billie is none the wiser, and Izzie's too shocked to move, much less intervene. But she doesn't take her eyes off him. He stands there talking for a few more minutes—is he making up a story about a sick grandmother, or is he pretending to be a delivery boy? she wonders—until he gives Billie a smile and slips off toward the back of the building.

She catches up with him after he lets himself into a currently unoccupied records room. He's already set the pile of papers on the photocopier, to be sucked through and scanned, when she says, "What the hell are you doing?"

When he turns, smoothly, like he had expected her, it shocks her how quickly he lays on the bullshit. "Hey there, Dr. Stevens."

"Shut up. Don't you 'hey there' me. What is that?" She can't wait to see what kind of lie he'll come up with.

"Just some insurance paperwork," he says with a shake of his head, eyes wide and innocent, but not enough to strain credulity.

"You're not supposed to be in here."

"Probably not." He turns back, but before he can push the button, she's leaping across the room and squeezing herself between him and the copy machine.

"What kind of person steals a sick person's chart?"

"A stupid person," he says with a roll of his eyes. "Obviously."

"This isn't funny."

"'Course it is. I do the right thing for once, and it gets me bitten in the ass. I wonder why I even bother."

"What are you talking about?"

He backs away now, shaking his head. "Just let me get the hell out of here. I ain't hurt anybody, so you don't have any reason to report me."

"That remains to be seen." But when she snatches the papers from the copier and reads the name, it sends a shudder through her whole body, and she can't tell if she's freaked out or amazed. Or both.

She says, "This-- this is…"

"Your doctor friend's father's chart."

"What are you doing with it?"

"I care about my brother. He cares about George."

"He doesn't even know George," she squeaks. 

"Well, with Sam, that doesn't matter."

She curls her hands into fists. Stupid. This is stupid. Of all the cocky, idiotic…

"You shouldn't have done it."

"Well, I knew that before I came in here."

"This is insane. Even if it worked, there's nothing in these charts that George doesn't already know. He knows exactly what his father's blood pressure is, and his cat scans and EKG and liver enzymes and…everything else here. What he wants is to do something, and he just can't. He can't. It's too dangerous."

She knows she's starting to get hysterical because Dean suddenly looks really worried, for the first time since she's come in. 

"Okay," he says with his hands up. "Got it. I'll be a good boy. Swear."

"Jesus, Dean, this isn't funny. If you got caught—right now—this is serious. Really serious!"

"What's the harm in it, though?" She gives him the death look, and he puts up his hands again. "You've got the charts, okay. Just humor me. I mean, ethically. What's the harm? It's his dad."

"It doesn't matter! You can't do whatever the hell you want and think it's okay just because you mean well!"

She clutches the pages in her hands, and she's so incensed her vision focuses tightly on them. They're all she can see for a moment. She wonders how she’ll get them back without anyone noticing they're gone. And how will she ever get the wrinkles out of the pages. She can't. 

"You need to get out of here," she says with shaking hands, reining in her voice as much as she can without croaking. "Before I call security."

"Yes, ma'am," he says to her back as she goes out the door, still shaking, and she's still not sure why. Was it a gesture of friendship or simply reckless? She's sure like she hasn't been sure in a long time that the difference is so slight as to be nonexistent.

Sam believes this is probably just a little nuts. Really. Even if he can find George, and that seems like an ever bigger if as he wanders the halls of the hospital, trying to look nonchalant with a cast in a sling and a bloodstream full of painkillers; even if finds him, he doesn’t know what he's going to accomplish. There's no way to make it seem like chance. George is going to know exactly what he's doing, and Sam has to trust that he'll understand he isn't trying to…stalk him.

"Jesus," Sam mutters to himself. "What the hell am I doing?"

This is probably about a lot of things besides George. But isn't everything always a mix of motives? Intentions, he thinks. That's what's important. Unless your intentions lead you to do something that just makes things worse.

His cell phone beeps suddenly, startling him out of that stream of relentless thoughts that go in circles. A text message: no go

So that's it. He has nothing to put in George's hands. George is a doctor, and when Sam thinks about every pre-med he knew at college, he thinks about faith in tangibles, in numbers and predictable patterns that help you keep a handle on whatever you're dealing with. Sam understands that. Law students are the same way. So are hunters. Why else would Sam practically have to tear their father's book out of Dean's hands sometimes. But, then again, Sam knows that isn't so much about the information there as the fact that it was their dad's, his handwriting and his sweat and his blood on some pages. All they had of him those months he was gone; all they have of him now.

Sam can feel the drugs beginning to wear off. He's got a whole bottle of pills in his pocket somewhere, but he wants to be lucid because that has to be better than this wandering, feeling like his brain and his body are both dulled but somehow still rattled with dizzying adrenaline, like he's trapped in a bad dream. When he's not dreaming of things to come, sometimes his dreams are just like this: walking the halls of a building, unable to find the exits or the stairs, sure of what he's looking for but unable to get to it. Now, here, he tries to make it feel less frantic. Methodically, he skirts all the major wings—cardiac, ICU, rehab, NICU—in an endless loop of blank white hallways, floor by floor; east elevators when he goes up, west when he goes down. 

His arm throbs and he's a little dizzy as he finally breaks the cycle and pushes his way out the back exit door. Maybe then he'll be able to breathe. 

Once outside in the piercing light of closing day, he gives it up. It's crazy. He doubts he can do anything useful anyway. He puts himself in George's place and knows exactly how this would seem. But he doesn’t know how to stop. He needs…

As hard as he can, he kicks the wall, which sends a shock of pain through his toe and up into his whole foot. "Sure as hell not for him," he mutters, knocking his head back into the brick, and it only vaguely hurts. "I'm doing this because I'm sick. And tired. And I need…" 

He drops to the concrete then, scrunching his back up against the wall, and his head sways forward and he cries.

There are still tears hanging in his eyes when the back door opens and he knows he's crazy. But apparently not stupid. Maybe just lucky.

George sometimes curses the windows in the hospital. On days of gorgeous clear blue skies like this, he stands and looks out the large windows at the front of the building and feels how distinctly mocked, he and everyone else stuck inside. He hadn't considered until today as he looked out over the parking lot how truly awful the sight of the sunlight could be to someone waiting and worried. He thanks God as his gaze falls across the parking lot now, so different from ground level, from outside where it's just a little cool and the sun's setting hard over the buildings and horizon; he thanks God that he's still in a position to resent the brightness of the sun. Because he has anger and he has hope. He could easily be beyond that.

He also thanks God for the windows in the stairwell, or whatever architect ensured, however accidentally, that they provide a bird's eye view of that ill-used back fire door. He sits now on the cold concrete between Sam and that door and the only reason he feels like he could actually let himself cry is Sam didn't wipe away his own tears. But George has already let go enough for a little while, as much as is sane. As much as he can stand.

After a long pause: "What are you doing, Sam?"

He laughs sardonically, his head shaking unevenly. "God, I really have no idea."

"Why are you still—" He cuts himself off as Sam sucks in a shaky breath.

"I was worried about you, okay. I know I have no right, but…"

"No. It's fine." It really is, and he doesn't even want to think about how little sense that conviction makes. His eyes might be able to explain it to Sam, but Sam's looking at him like they're not even from the same planet. Planet I’m-Sorry to planet Sick-Father. 

George picks at the hem of his scrub pants, still trying to find a way to batten down the nerves and emotion and that one tentacle of despondency that keeps clutching cold around his heart. It comes out in his voice anyway, in frustration: "It's fine that you're here. I like you. I do. But you can't be worried about me. Everybody else is. Everybody in that whole goddamn hospital is walking around on tiptoe around me. I think I'm walking around on tiptoe around me, too. And I can't stand it anymore." He wonders if this is how Izzie's been feeling.

"Okay," Sam says quietly. "I won't."

"I'm sorry."

"No," he replies resolutely. "No sorries. If I don't tiptoe, you can't apologize for being upset."

"Okay."

"I know I don't know you, but I have this feeling that you don't get like this unless you're really, really freaked out. So no apologizing for that, okay?"

"Okay. So what's wrong with you?"

"Aside from the broken arm and the Demerol that's wearing off?"

"Aside from."

"That's not why I came back."

George smiles involuntarily, and it seems to help him if not Sam. "How do you know that if you don't even know what you're doing here?"

But Sam's face sets, solemn. "I'm here because I get it."

"Get what?"

As Sam turns to look him, he finally wipes at his eyes with his sleeve, a brief, practical gesture because his focus is completely on George. "Dean almost died a few weeks ago."

"What? Of what?"

"That car accident. He had some internal injuries, and he was in a coma for a few days. They didn't know if he would come out of it. I thought he was going to die. I'd never been that scared before."

"What did you do?"

"Treated the nurses and the hospital staff like crap. Yelled at my father. Hovered and obsessed, trying to find something I could do. Freaked out and ran off."

George feels that tightness in his chest again, but he finds his legs shifting around, and he's sitting cross-legged now, facing him, his knees almost touching Sam's as though this will help him talk better or be better understood. He says, "I just keep thinking about how I'm always on the other side of it. I watch them tell people every day that this really horrible thing could happen to somebody they love. And I didn't get it. I didn't know how it feels."

"George," he says. "Do you really have a reason to believe something awful is going to happen to your father? What would you say to someone in your place, if you were talking to them like a doctor?"

"I'd say the surgery is commonplace now. It has risks, but it's not experimental. And Dr. Hahn is the best there is." It's true now.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'd tell the patient's son that it's a serious procedure, but there's no reason to panic. The rate of success is really pretty high considering."

"That doesn't sound awful."

"But that's the problem. We say all that, but we know every time we go into the OR that something weird might happen and that person might not come out of surgery."

He expects Sam to reassure him on that point, and for a moment those brown eyes squinted against the setting sun seem to contemplate some vague platitudes about hope and faith. But instead he says, "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Operate on people. How do you cut somebody open and do what you do?"

"You're sure about what you know. You know what you're doing, and you do it."

"And if you didn't, you couldn't go in, could you?"

"If you were unsure?"

"Yeah."

"No. It just doesn’t work like that," he says firmly. Then he sighs. "It doesn’t matter, Sam. This is different. This is my father."

"Yeah," he replies with his head down. Then his large left hand, the one that isn't wrapped up in that cast, settles on George's knee, just rests there, steady and warm. "I'm just saying, it's not all bullshit, what doctors say, is it? You know that. And especially not with you. They'd tell you the truth, right? Because they know you." 

"Yeah." When he can manage to be objective, he knows they're treating him with the respect he would expect them to with anybody, and compassion, too. "But even if it's as…hopeful as they say, it's still not easy. I haven't-- I haven't told you all of it."

"Okay."

"Do you want me to?"

"I listen to anything you want to tell me."

"Well, it's not just the operation. I mean, that's scary enough, that he's got a valve in his heart that doesn't work."

"Wow."

"Yeah. But that's not the worst of it. We also just found out he has stomach cancer."

For a moment, Sam's eyes pinch up even further, and he lets out a soundless exhalation. "Is it—"

"Bad. Yeah. I mean, not hopeless, but…somehow saying 'not hopeless' sounds pretty fucking scary anyway."

Sam doesn't say anything, just pulls his knees up to his chest, that one hand still lying on his knee. He doesn't want him to move it, really, and he doesn’t know why except this feels right somehow. He's sitting here vacillating between panic and numbness, bouncing around in that space in between where he doesn't know where he is or what he's doing. But Sam's right there with him, literally and otherwise. He feels it—Sam's dealing with something that has him floating between fear and resignation too. George feels like Sam's grounding him. Or maybe they're grounding each other, as they are pushed and pulled across this space. Or at least they're trying, which is something. All he can think is that Sam should just keep that steady hand on his knee and he should stop thinking about what it all means. Really, they've got so many demands on them right now, but this isn't one of them. All this requires is to sit here on this cold patch of concrete and watch the sun go down.

George thinks about sliding his hand over Sam's but he can't make himself do it, and he doesn't know what else to say anymore. Then his feet start to fall asleep, and he has to shift around to put his back to the wall again. His shoulder slides up beside and against Sam's shoulder, the one with the good arm, and it's warm and solid, and he needs to find a way to keep talking as Sam's hand is forced to slide off his knee.

"What made your brother wake up?"

"I don't know. He wasn't supposed to, but he did."

"Have you stopped wondering about it?"

"No," he says with a wry smile. "But the wondering is a hell of a lot easier when things are okay again."

Okay again sounds so much better than not hopeless, and it warms something in the pit of his stomach. It still feels bad—still hurts and is too tight and heavy and nauseating —but he feels a momentary relief. Maybe it's the way Sam's low, slow voice drawls out hell of a lot, or maybe it's that this is the first time all day he has stopped moving without feeling like the weight of the world is trying to absolutely flatten him without giving him the oblivion he wants. He wants more than this, more of this. 

"Sam?"

"Yeah."

"You were flirting with me before, weren't you?"

His face lights into a sheepish smile. "Yeah. Look, George, if I'd known—"

"You didn't. It's okay."

"Yeah? Really, I— I didn't mean to spook you."

"Everything spooks me right now. But you really don't."

When Sam's head turns, George doesn't know he's going to do it until he finds his face tilting toward Sam's. What's even more surprising is how quickly Sam responds, like he's been waiting for it, and George would probably never have known except now he's feeling warm, firm lips slide over his, a light scratch of stubble against his upper lip.

It's not until he's kissing him already, as Sam's fingers crawl along his jaw and settle there, that he realizes this isn't how a man like Sam should kiss. Or maybe it's exactly how he should. Sam doesn't force him into anything, but he doesn't give him any way to argue with this either, to pull away or freak out about it. He just draws his bottom lip between his, then his top, then he dips his tongue into his mouth, sliding it soft and wet over the fleshy part of his bottom lip and then swirling lightly over the tip of his tongue, making him want more of it. Sam's completely in charge here, which is good because George knows nothing about kissing guys, but he soon realizes this isn't that different. Sam smells like a whole host of male smells—deodorant and shampoo and sweat—and his hands are large and rough and strong, but, after all, he's just a new person holding tight to him, needing him. No matter what Sam's giving him, George can feel how much Sam needs to be kissing him right now. It's only the tiniest bit frightening, but then again, everything is right now. 

When Sam pulls back for a second, his thumb still stroking lazy circles over George's jaw, George rests his forehead against Sam's, unable to really pull away, but he says, "I don’t know what we're doing."

"It's okay."

"I’m not—"

"Hey," Sam says, pulling his face back just enough so he can look him in the eyes. "I'm not asking you for anything."

"I know. But things are…"

"I don’t think there's anything wrong with us not wanting to stop. But if you…" He shakes his head. "Yeah." His eyes squint up into miserable slits. "Shit. I'm sorry." With his good hand, Sam awkwardly pushes himself to his feet.

George doesn't even think about it. He just climbs up after him and grabs him by the arm, then his hands slide around his neck. Tall. So fucking tall, he thinks as he has to pull his face down to kiss him.

Sam's good arm pulls him closer, and after an initial burst of awkward energy, they settle down again into the rhythm of it, slow at first and light, but then growing more and more quietly frantic. George feels like he's drawing something out of Sam, and Sam's kissing him deeper and deeper until he thinks maybe he won't be able to breathe anymore. That's okay. He doesn't want to breathe or think or do anything but this, and he won't be sorry about it, because they both know exactly what they're doing, and this is not like Meredith sleeping with inappropriate men because George thinks this thing isn't kissing, it isn't hormones, it isn't discarding self-esteem like that's a cure—it's holding and knowing and taking something away from each other that needs to be taken, giving something in return. This is Sam. He knows Sam, he thinks, and he's aware that the idea is completely absurd, but it's true, somehow, and he's kissing him anyway.

When Sam's back falls against the wall, it's like it jars him, and he breaks away. Panting against his forehead, he mumbles, "I don't want to take advantage of—"

"Stop." Sam's hand starts to pull away, but George clutches him tighter and says, "No, not that. I mean stop worrying. It's fine."

Until now, George had thought he was the only person in the world with the kind of intense wide brown-eyed stare that he's receiving. Sam says, "I don't want to make things more confusing for you."

So George gives him the same look in return. "Do I seem confused?"

Sam shakes his head and replies softly, "No," and it's a smile that shatters him, somehow; but he can't look away from it, because as much as it hurts, it feels like the healing kind, at least for this moment. 

"Okay, then," George says with a nod of his head. 

Sam's still looking at him skeptically, and he finds that he doesn't know what else to say. He's never been good at this, and after the past few days, he's surprised he can form sentences anymore. Really, all he has is this—one hand around Sam's neck and the other on his chest, above his sling, over his heart. Sam's left hand cradles the back of his head, the simplest touch that suddenly seems to wake him from his numbness like nothing else has all day, but it's too much, and he has to pull Sam's face down toward his again so they can find that space that's somewhere between total adrenaline and dead hollowness, that feels just alive enough. 

Later, when their mouths part and he opens his eyes again, he's shocked to find the sun has gone down completely and the parking lot lights look like muted haloes over the rows and rows of cars. His face falls against Sam's shoulder for a moment. This is not unlike the timelessness of surgery—the hands of the clock continuing to turn and you don't resent it or even notice because what you're doing is more important. Except here the passing of time is the point, and it didn't go by like his never-ending on-call shifts. Or like sitting in the waiting room with his brothers, knowing that even if his father's heart surgery is a success, it may not be enough in the long run. 

When Sam's eyes fix on his again, he knows—like he's known all day, really—that he needs to go down there and be where it's scary as hell and where he has to be George without being able to discard the Doctor O'Malley who isn't allowed to do anything to help. But George can help, he thinks. George should, even if it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do. 

Dean has nothing to do but wait now. He's not good with the waiting. He's the doer, but his latest attempt at doing only got him yelled at, so he's decided maybe he's in some bizarro world where Sam's suddenly the proactive one and he gets to sit on the sidelines and brood.

He doesn't like being alone with his thoughts like this. It's not that he doesn't think about shit; he thinks all the fucking time, actually. But it's easier to have these honest conversations with himself when he's moving, breaking, finding, killing, saving. Not when he's researching and certainly not when he's sitting on the hood of his car, watching the sun set. Thoughts without distracting action to temper them are dangerous.

He thinks about how violently angry he gets sometimes and why. Sure, Sam pisses him off to no end with his poking and prodding and questions. Don't you care? he wants to know. Don't you feel? Don't you wonder? Don't you just want to scream and cry and rail against something, anything? Sam's trying to get him going, so he'll let it loose, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work because Dean simply won't let it. It won't do him any good now. And he can't have the boy thinking he can flip some switch in his soul and connect the circuit so the anger flows in a strong, unending current. Sam has no fucking clue what sort of damage Dean could inflict if he said everything he wanted to say every time Sam gets in his face about missing his father.

No, while those heated discussions make him mad, they aren't what make him finally lose it. It's when he's by himself, quiet and without anything to occupy his mind but his mind, that it all comes out. Has he shed tears? Hell yeah. Under the Impala, where his hands were so stained with grease he couldn't wipe the tears away, and he wouldn't have anyway. And now, anytime he gets quiet, he can't shut off that internal voice that is by now playing like a track on repeat. Gone because of me. Gone because you're crazy and I'm not worth it. Gone because you didn't want to fucking be here anymore. Gone and now what the fuck do I do with all this shit you've laid on me?

Dean hates it when he's bored and it's peaceful and he has to face that fact that his life is a constant string of jobs that maybe aren't living but just imitations of it, just place holders, like hunting only really means he's waiting for the next whatever that will never be enough to make a life of. Some days he believes in the job, but those other days are hard because he feels in his bones that he's not gonna be able to keep Sam together. Sam who's just as angry as he is and has even less of a clue how to deal with it.

But, boy, does that motherfucker take it out on him. He knows he's done his share of shutting him out, which is as painful to Sam as Sam's constant questions and need for proof of misery are to him, but he's getting sick and damn tired of Sam venting all his shit on him. If it were physical, that would be fine. He sometimes thinks it would be easier if they just beat the everliving hell out of each other. More satisfying. But Sam gets inside his head. It doesn't make him blow up like he hopes it will, but it hurts anyway. 

Good thing, though, that he's adept at not reacting to hysterics, although he has to admit Izzie's anger had gone beyond what he's used to. For one thing, he doesn't know the predictable patterns of her turmoil. And for two, she's female. There's something about a woman's voice that makes him lose some of his ability to reason, even under the best of circumstances, but a shrill, angry voice cuts him like instinct. 

He's just as sure in this case as he is most of the time with Sam that he is an undeserving target—convenient and reminding her so much of someone else or herself that she doesn't think, she just acts. He can sympathize with that, but it doesn't make him like it any more than he likes Sam using him that way. Like he's that big metal statue in the park near their old house in Lawrence, impervious to all nature of abuse from the elements and the neighborhood kids, a statue which must not be at all bothered by anything if there are no visible scars.

The scars are something only Dean would see: like the small dent near the tire well on the back driver's side. He's just glad he didn't aim his boot for the chrome, because those dents glint in a way that would make him nuts. Not that this dent is particularly easy to ignore. They never ever are.

It's already dark by the time Izzie makes her way out to the car she's been keeping her eyes on. Every time she's passed the window for the last hour, she's looked down to see that he still hasn't moved. She wasn't going to move either, but sometimes you simply have to. 

He lets her approach without comment. 

"Your brother's in there, isn't he?" She holds out a cup of coffee to him.

"Well," he says with an annoyed grimace, but he takes the coffee. "Haven't had time to call the cops yet?"

"I'm not going to."

"Didn't figure," he replies stoically. 

"I still think it was wrong."

"Whatever."

When Izzie perches herself on the back of that old car beside Dean, he doesn't even flinch, and she doesn't know if he doesn't care or he cares so much he's hiding it. She says, "So, your brother is in there?"

"I guess. Hell if I know. That was the plan. But I haven't seen him in an hour or so."

"Nobody's seen George in a while either."

The wind is chill now, but she loves it like this, that hush that seems to come over everything when the world finally plunges into darkness, as all the lights whir and buzz themselves on like they're going into battle. She likes the way they look against the sky. And for no good reason, she likes being here with this fucked-up guy. Less pretense, she supposes. He doesn't seem to care if she isn't normal or perfect or whatever unreasonable bar she's set for herself today. Or maybe he's taken to her because with him she's not this manufactured Izzie that has nothing to do with the person she always was. She thinks, when did I stop remembering how to be her?

Dean sips his coffee and stares out over the rows of cars, and she finds herself curious about him in so many ways. The most pressing question, though: "So, it doesn't bother you to think your brother's holed up somewhere with a guy?"

"Holed up?"

"I don't know. They've been gone a while."

He smiles. "For all you know, they're getting coffee."

"George is on shift. He can't leave."

"So are you, and yet here you are."

"Here I am." Why? she wonders, but she doesn't say anything.

After another few minutes of silence—charged but not exactly awkward—he replies, "No, Izzie, it doesn't bother me to think about what Sam does anymore."

"It did?"

"Yeah. It did. But I don't care now. It's a stupid thing to worry about. People being happy is more important than the bullshit society programs into you about what a man should do or be."

"You know, I can't tell if you're so pragmatic it borders on insane, or if half of the stuff that comes out of your mouth is just a cover for something."

"You figure that one out, you let me know," he says with a tip of his cup.

"You don't think they're shut up in some broom closet, do you?"

"Do you?"

"Maybe."

"Nah. I know Sam."

"Yeah. It doesn't sound like George, either. I was just checking."

"Izzie," he says softly, and it sends a cold chill over her. She's only spent a grand total of an hour with him, but she recognizes that tone. "Obviously, I know what's happening with George and his father. Is that what's got you so…?"

"What?"

"I don't know. You tell me. You're walking around the hospital on some kind of probation, doing shit that probably isn't half as important as what you're able to do. You trail George like you're his watchdog, but every time I see him, he's watching you. And threatening me about you, by the way."

"There's nothing going on between me and—"

He holds up his hand. "I know that. I just can't figure out where you are."

"What do you mean?"

"It's like you're just…aimless. Then all of a sudden, you're looking at me like you're gonna gut me like a fish over some papers you know I wasn't taking for anything awful."

"Dean."

He raises his hand again. "Look. I know. I'm not stupid. I was stealing medical files. It's probably a felony. You have a right to think I'm dangerous or nuts or whatever you think. But it wasn't just that, was it?"

Of course not, she thinks. But he doesn't know the of course, and that presents a world of problems. Can it really be that she hasn't had to tell anyone the story yet? How strange… Everyone who really knows her already knows. 

She feels the tears form like they haven't in a long while. Numb. She's been holding too much in for too long. When she slides herself off the hood of the car and begins to walk away, he doesn’t follow her, but she can hear every one of her footfalls, and she knows he's hearing them, too, and watching her.

Finally, when she's a few yards away, she turns and spits out, "What in the hell is wrong with you?"

Calmly, he says, "If you think I'm gonna beg you to tell me something you don't want to, you're crazy. But you came out here, and you must've had a reason. So you tell me or don't, but I'm sure as hell not gonna let you keep screeching at me over something I don't understand."

She walks back, slowly, and when she slumps back onto the hood of the car, he holds out her cup to her and she says, "It wasn't a screech. Either time."

"No," he says with a snort. "It was way the hell scarier." Then he pauses, and it's a heavy one, hanging in the air. "Who was it?"

"What?"

"Somebody's gone."

Suddenly, her whole throat has closed up. But she needs to say it. "My fiancé. Denny. He-- he died."

"I'm sorry."

He says it so plainly, without any agenda, that she wants to tell it all, but all she can manage is the frame of the thing: "He…he, uh…proposed right before he died. I feel bad saying he's my fiancé because it wasn't… Well, it was so fast. But it wasn't, I guess. I'd been…in love with him for a while, and-- and that happened fast, too, I think."

"Always does, from my limited experience. What did he die of?"

"Heart failure. I was one of his doctors."

"Jesus," he mutters under his breath, and she holds her face absolutely still so the tears don't spill out. 

"You wouldn't think you could be… you could fall for a patient, but if you'd ever met him… Anyway, I know yelling at you about the chart was right. I know it, because I screwed up thinking I was doing something good, and I'm the reason he's gone."

"He was in heart failure…?"

"I made it happen…faster than it should have."

That is as far as she will let herself go—speaking or thinking, or feeling. She's come to terms with the idea that he might've died no matter what she did. What she can't abide is knowing she might've had so many more days with him rather than that startling hope that flashed out like a dead bulb, sudden and plunging her into darkness.

She sits there silently, thankful that as talkative as Dean seems to be when it suits him, he understands silence just as well. George doesn't. Sometimes Meredith does. And Alex, but that's complicated. Christina really understands silence the best, but her silence can be just as hard to take as George's nervous but well-meaning chatter. 

When Dean sits his cup down between them, his voice is again in that tone that makes her nervous. "If I tell you something, can you not tell George?"

"If I have to."

"You have to."

"Okay. What?"

"I understand you better than you think. My dad died a few weeks ago."

"God, I'm—"

"No, I didn't tell you to get sympathy." His head tilts toward the sky, and his green eyes go wide before his head drops again, and he stares out in front of them. "Honest to God, I don't know what the hell I'm doing sometimes. But I wanted you to know I get it. Sam gets it. But we don't wanna tell George because—"

"Yeah. Yeah." She feels like the world has just spun a little too fast, or at least the parking lot. She can't imagine what would make him reveal something like that, because it opens up a whole world of understanding about him, the man who sits on the hood of his car and sips coffee and doesn't look at her for fear of revealing too much.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Like I said, I know something like what you're going through. I know you're not crazy, even if you feel crazy sometimes. And you're not useless, either. Or reckless." For a moment, he seems to retreat inside himself; his hand glides over his hair and down the back of his neck as he ducks his head, but then he looks up, purses his lips, and sighs and continues: "But I really needed you to know because, well, if George's father-- If something happens to him, he should call Sam. Sam's good to talk to, and quite frankly, he needs it just as bad. Now, if I know my brother, George already has his phone number. But he's not gonna know he should call unless you tell him why he should. We travel pretty much all the time, and I have no idea when we'll be in Seattle again. George is gonna have to call him."

"Okay. You need to get out of here tonight, don't you?"

"Yeah. I'd've liked to been on the road a couple hours ago, but…"

"That's your weakness, huh? Sam?"

He rolls his eyes. "If you had to share miles of highway with somebody that moody, you'd understand."

"I could page George."

"Well, then at least we'd know they didn't get locked inside that broom closet."

"I thought you said—"

"Sam's a stand-up guy, I promise you that, but I never said he was a saint."

Izzie smiles and launches herself off the car. She wants to ask why he hasn't made her the same offer: a phone number, a way to talk about the grief hanging between them. But she doesn't need to ask, because she feels like she knows him; or at least she knows herself and how she's been dealing with things, how it's not the same way George is (will?). 

Besides, she thinks, maybe this thing between them is just one of those things that springs up in a moment and always remains frozen there. Doesn't make it less important; maybe makes it more so. 

"I'll see if George will turn up when I page him. If Sam's with him, he should turn up, too."

"Okay." He sighs. "Honest to God, I'd hate to interrupt them, but…"

"No. It's good. George needs to get back to…everything."

"Sam does, too." Then he mumbles, almost like it's an afterthought, "If only there was something to get back to."

Izzie's amazed to see Dean's gaze come up from the pavement then, wide and liquid green. His eyes light on her momentarily, and it's like he's really seeing her, and she thinks maybe he was always really seeing her, she just didn't notice. Then he's looking at the pavement again, like he minds very much that she's seeing him but he's letting her anyway. It makes the tension palpable, and it makes her both glad and sorry he's going. "So, okay, I'll go page him now." 

"Yeah," he says with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. "Okay. Thanks, Doctor Stevens." 

She has no idea what he's thanking her for. 

"Take care, Dean Winchester."

"You too."

Chapter Text

It's dark now, and Sam doesn't really want to move from this spot. 

He can't remember the last time he kissed anyone, like this or at all. It's been that long. He was holding George around the waist when it hit him, almost like a physical blow, but a soft one, maybe a nudge: the last time was Jess. 

He knows, then, that he's moved on. Not now, because of this; this is simply proof. It must've happened sometime before. It's not like he's has ever forgotten her or what it felt like to be in love or especially not what it felt like to watch her die. He's just let go of something, and he's not sure what, only that it lets him kiss George without even thinking he should be guilty, much less actually feeling that emotion. 

George is a sloppy kisser, but that's what he expected, and he doesn't mind. George had been hesitant at first, wondering and adjusting, but once he made up his mind it was what he wanted and it was all right to want it, he gave himself over to it completely. He let him wrap him up as tight as he could despite that one bum arm, and it began to seem like this couldn't have been the first time they did this. George clings to him, but not passively, not as though he were just melting into him. He keeps a firm hand on Sam's neck and his fingers weave into the hair at the nape.

But it isn't anything more than kissing. Sam's sure if he let himself, or if he was in any condition to, he would've already pulled his body tight to George's with a different sort of intimacy, maybe pushed him back into the wall and let his hands and lips wander, just to test the waters. But this isn't the right time or the right feeling. It makes him remember being young enough to feel like kissing was something so important and new he could devote hours to it, just him and some girl or more rarely a guy tangled up in his arms, bodies hinting at more but not trying for it, because it was all there in the slightly wild but unhurried slide of lips, breathing mingled, noses brushing, necks twisting and heads turning, rhythm building charged but languid. He's not superhuman; this is making him half hard. But he doesn't mind. It's been a while for that, too, when he wasn't forcing it.

George pulls back and looks over his shoulder, suddenly looking so serious Sam has a question poised and waiting, but then George rests his forehead against his chest for a moment before he pulls him down again and says in his ear with a giggle, "You're really tall." Before Sam can reply, George's lips settle on his neck and brush over his jaw before they come back to his mouth. George says between kisses, "Yep. So tall. Must hurt your neck."

"I don't mind," Sam drawls.

After a long, deep kiss, George says, "I wish I could stay out here all night, but I've gotta go back in."

"Yeah," Sam says, starting to push him away, but George circles his arms even tighter around his waist.

"I mean, I probably should have like half an hour ago. I can spare…" he smiles, looking suddenly a little flushed and sheepish "…a few more minutes."

So Sam bends down to kiss him again, feeling George's fingers curl into the muscles in his lower back. But something's changed. They're clinging to each other like teenagers who don't want a date to be over; he can tell these kisses mean goodbye. 

When George's pager goes off, he stops long enough to check it, then he smiles but refuses to say anything before he kisses Sam again, long and deep. Sam finally lets his mouth leave George's to kiss down over his jaw and over to that spot just under his ear. He loves the way George sighs into that, but he says anyway, "What was that?"

"What?"

"The page?"

"Oh," he murmurs. "Izzie. They're looking for you."

"They?"

"I think she's with your brother." He says brother the way a person might say slug or arsonist.

It really is adorable and frankly a little hot, this sudden and determined possessiveness that creeps into George's voice when he's talking about Izzie and Dean. Sam backs up, leaning himself against the wall, and pulls George against him as he studies his face. There are a lot of emotions there, and they're not all about Izzie anymore. 

Sam has the fleeting thought that everything would be easier if he could drag George away, plant him in the Impala beside him and let him criss-cross the country with them, just leave it all behind. But that's impossible and absurd, for so many reasons, the greatest of which is he needs to be here. And Sam can't be. Fuck if he hates it when the timing is off, especially when it comes to people he could come to really care about if he had a different life. 

Sam looks deep into George's eyes and finds them still squinted up, his mouth a hard line. Sam says, "I'm sure my brother's not doing anything…like this with Izzie."

"I don't know."

"Trust me. This is what he does. The more something means, the more distance he keeps."

"I can understand that." There is it, finally, in his voice, not just in the sudden and brief but desperate cut of his eyes. "I haven't been downstairs to see my family since this morning. And it's not all because of what Bailey—my attending, my boss—said; you know, not letting me help with his care. I've just been…"

"It's okay."

"No," he says emphatically, sliding out of his arms. "It's not. I should be there."

"Okay, so it's not. But it's understandable. They'll understand."

"No, they won't. They'll—"

Sam pulls him back again and crushes a kiss against his mouth to quiet him, and he feels his stomach flip at the easy way George lets him in now, even as his hands push against him, because he still wants to argue with him, tear himself down because he's been trying to dig himself deeper and deeper into misery all day. So Sam lets his lips slide from George's and says firmly, because George needs that firmness: "I promise you, if you go down there now, they won't be thinking about how you haven't been there all day. They'll be thinking about you being there with them now. But if it would make you feel better, you could tell them you're sorry. They know you. If they're anything like you, they're the kind of people who would forgive you for being who you are and being human."

George smiles and sways into Sam's body for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, they are."

He stands there, looking over the top of George's head at the rows of cars under fluorescent lights, and he has another completely unexpected thought, as though something about the afternoon has loosened something inside him, flipped the world so it settles down differently, so that light glints off things he hasn't seen before. It occurs to him now that maybe he's been asking too much of Dean. There are some things he needs that Dean doesn't give him, and it's not because he doesn't want to. It's because he can't. 

But that's okay, he thinks, and this time he doesn't just want to mean it; he actually does. Dean gives him what he's able. It makes him start to wonder what he might really do for Dean—not for the Dean he wants him to be, but for the Dean he is. 

It's going to take letting go, keeping his hands off, just like it will for George. But that's so fucking hard. He doesn't let go of things or people very easily. Dean thinks he does, because he left them to go away to school, but that was one of the hardest things he's ever had to do. Just like it wasn't easy when he walked away from his father the second time, after the Daeva. Then there was when his father had done the walking…

He prays for George's dad, because if he doesn't, he'll have to be angry at his own again, and he can't do it anymore, not when he'd give anything to be in George's shoes, if only because when he walks back into the building, he will have a chance to say whatever he wants to his father, even goodbye.

Once George finally makes up his mind to take his hands off Sam, he feels that to bridge that gap again would be impossible. It's not Sam, really. It's him. He felt the same way that morning, saying hello to his family. He couldn't make himself cross the room to give his mother a hug. The idea of contact threatened to overwhelm him, so much that his feet simply would not move. But luckily his mother stepped right over to him and squeezed him into her arms, and he forgot how to be scared—of that or of anything, just for a moment.

Now Sam's walking behind him, following him into the heart of the building, and he can't imagine how he was brave enough to claim even a small part of Sam for himself. That's what it feels like today. It's hard to step outside his confusion and fear long enough to make a connection, but it feels even more unfeasible when he thinks about taking what he needs from the people around him. He should know, really he should, that it's okay to lean on them. He hasn't for a day resented Izzie's grief and the demands it makes on his time and emotions. But they are demands, and he's loath to make them, especially of Izzie. 

Or maybe it's that making them means giving himself over to the idea that this is, indeed, a scary path he's walking.

Sam stands at the end of the bench as he digs through his locker to find his cell phone. His hand doesn't even brush Sam's when he hands it over and watches Sam's long fingers work over the buttons.

"We're always traveling," Sam says, "so this is the surest way to find me. Dean's number is one off mine, the last digit plus one. You know, in case something happens to my phone."

"Okay."

Sam hands back the phone and leans his good shoulder against the row of lockers. "So you're going down there now?"

"Yeah. It's a slow day, and my shift's over in an hour anyway. Maybe I can make my mother go back to my house and get some sleep."

"Good luck with that," Sam says with a wry smile. He looks at the ceiling, and George knows he's trying to figure out what to say. Then he takes a deep breath. "You know if it wasn't all-fired weird, I'd go down there with you, but…"

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"Okay."

George has to force himself to transition into that final, awkward tone of goodbye. "Take some more of the Demerol. Cut the pill in half, and at least take that. Don't be stupid and macho, okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says, shaking his head with a smile, handing over his own cell phone. This is strange, isn't it, that Sam would want to be able to reach him too? As if he has something to give. 

"I'm betting Dean does most of the driving anyway."

"Oh yeah."

"So just…sleep."

"I'll try. But I haven't slept so well lately."

George looks up at him for a moment, and he knows there's more going on in Sam's head that he could probably imagine. It amazes him that he can even see that, but it doesn't amaze him at all that he can't worry and wonder about it, not with all the things roiling through his own soul. 

He types himself in as george omalley, and he wonders if Sam's ever done this before. He has to resist the urge to scroll through his address book, see how many people he knows or once knew. It doesn't matter. It's over anyway, and his stomach drops suddenly when he thinks about that. So many emotions right now, all of them jumbled and magnified, and it's all he can do to deposit the phone back in Sam's hand and pray, God, make him leave.

Sam studies him for a long moment, like he's capturing him for future reference. George wonders what he sees. Blue scrubs, white coat, old sneakers, hands that shake, life that feels like it could be nudged right over the edge, to shatter like a glass vase on the floor. Son. Doctor. Friend. He can't read anything in Sam's expression other than a self-protectiveness and a calmness that practically radiates. That calm has to radiate, he decides, because, right now, it's not there on the inside. He's wearing control so well nobody would ever know it was only the outermost layer. 

But he really doesn't understand that difference until Sam steps over to him in two long strides and throws his arms around him. This is solid and unlike anything else that has passed between them in the last hour. It's a hug so substantial it's startling, speaking of both give and take, and he's thankful, after all, that Sam is as brave or as desperate as his mother, and there are small pockets of peace in this day.

"Take care of your arm," he murmurs in Sam's ear.

"Take care of your family." Sam's lips brush suddenly over his temple, then he's drifting toward the door. "It was really good to meet you, George," he says. 

"You too."

As the door clicks shut, his whole body leans back into the lockers behind him, and it hits him hard, right after the ache in his muscles, that he has to decide something, that he's only been able to put off deciding for that brief interval: necessary, he thinks, but necessarily over. What he knows now is he's going to cry until he can't breathe unless he can find energy enough to walk down that hallway and be the one not crying. 

The back of his fist slams the locker once, and it hurts, but these are still—always, even when he's not allowed to use them—surgeon's hands, so he lets out a huff of breath and kicks the locker as hard as he can. Then he takes off his white coat and stuffs it inside. Just be George, he tells himself. Be all the crazy, incongruous parts of George. Because this is a crazy, incongruous day, and your father is maybe going to die, and there is no escaping that. There's only reprieve, and you need to give a little for a while.

Dean's not surprised to see Izzie come out the door, for some reason, but he's surprised to see she has neither Sam nor George in tow. He doesn't know why, but he finds himself grinning at her approach, the way she's walking slowly and casually, as if she's not walking straight to him. 

"So," he says, sliding off the back end of the car, still grinning. "Is it me you can't seem to get away from, or is it the car? Chicks always dig the car."

She shakes her head, and he watches a faint blush creep into her cheeks. She's smiling, as if his smile is infectious, and he can't help but wonder how either of them are smiling, or why. 

She says, "Probably about as much as they dig you, huh?"

"I didn't say that."

"Didn't have to. And I knew it."

"Knew what?"

"That you generally depend on your charm entirely too much to get through life."

"Darlin', you have no idea." Dean leans back against the driver's side door and crosses his arms. "Not all of us can be smart and good-looking."

She smiles again, a mix of mischief and skepticism, and picks up where she left off. "But yet, you haven't hit on me all afternoon."

"Who says I'm hitting on you now?" 

She rolls her eyes, still good-humored, but still with that same sense of pervasive weariness that exemplifies this person she's been all day he knows can't really be her. But he's seen shadows of the real Izzie, especially when she smiles, and he thinks this woman could drive him all sorts of crazy if he could make himself stay still for a while. But he can't. Or won't. He's not never sure. 

She chuckles, finally, and says, dead-pan, "My roommate Meredith—when she's miserable, she goes out and gets laid. First guy she can find. That's crazy, right?"

Dean's chest heaves with silent laughter. "I don't know. But I've found that drinking until I pass out is a hell of a lot less complicated."

"That's funny. I have this feeling like you generally go out of your way to make things more complicated."

"Why would I do that?"

She points toward the building, where he sees Sam lumbering out into the night, still carrying that cast and sling awkwardly. She says, "That one there—he's a fixer. So I'm guessing you do your best to give him something to fix, purposely or not."

"Then you'd be real shocked to know it's usually more like me rescuing him from shit he's gotten himself into."

"No, Dean," she says. "I definitely wouldn't."

He doesn't mind watching her walk away, because that knowing expression that had been on her face looks good on her. Right. "Well, good night then, Izzie," he calls out.

She turns, just whirls around lazily for a moment, long enough to say, "Drive safe."

He watches her stop and have a long exchange with Sam, who somehow looks ethereal and sheepish by turns, ducking his head and scratching at the back of it as he nods several times. His head finally inclines toward the wing of the hospital that stretches out to Dean's left, then he shakes her hand and she disappears through the glass doors that woosh open to invite her in.

Sam drops into the passenger seat without a word, and Dean's halfway tempted to let the silence carry them out of the parking lot and the city. But as he merges onto the interstate and drifts over to the left lane, he can't help it. 

"So, were you subtle?"

Sam doesn't even roll his eyes or look exasperated. He just laughs, and Dean likes to see that. But it makes him oddly curious to know exactly how far those two might've gone in whatever broom closet they locked themselves into. Sam doesn't look 100 percent, but he looks more relaxed than Dean's seen in a long time. 

When Sam stops chuckling, he raises his eyebrows and says firmly, "I'm supposed to take my pill now and try to sleep."

"Ooh, that subtle."

Sam giggles again and slumps against the window, closing his eyes. He's quiet for a long time, then he says, "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Waiting."

"Like I had a choice," he says with a snort, but Sam's mouth stretches into a wide grin.

Sam's asleep by the time they leave the Seattle metro area, and Dean finally turns on the radio, just loud enough to settle his nerves, buzz quiet through the restlessness in him. Sam's fine. That's good—because he's not fine, and this day has been a constant agitation to his soul. Like pulling off a band-aid, and the skin's all pink and new and vulnerable underneath. The worst of it is he can't for the life of him say why he feels this way, only that he does. If there is a process of grief, like he keeps hearing about, he's sure it's not a straight line but a circle. Or a roller coaster, where he seems to always find himself poised at the top again, feeling his stomach drop in anticipation.

He drives fast over the scenery, dull flat and urging speed, towards a land that has more mountains, and he dares any state trooper to even try to pull him over.

Izzie waits until their car disappears from the parking lot before she goes back outside and sits down on the bench that was once her goal. When she first came back to the hospital, she didn't even think of getting in the door, simply to the bench a few yards beyond where she stopped and couldn't move any further. She remembers staring at this bench and thinking she would never get to a place she could rest again, not in any sense of the word. Now she moves between rests, fills her days with things she can put her hands on and problems she can think through, so that when she lays down—or sits down, here under the clear night sky—she has things to put through that mind of hers that churns because if it doesn't, she will stop.

Right now, she's thinking about men and how maybe she'll feel like it's normal to flirt again. Maybe she'll want a man like Dean to try to draw her in with looks and words and hands and the steady beat of a warm heart, and she won't think about whether it's right or wrong or even possible. It just will be—right or wrong or merely possible. 

And she's thinking about Sam and how he can swallow it all down—this pain as fresh as hers—to look George in the eye and not say a word about death. She'd like to say it's impossible, but she knows it's something she could do. Easily. If the entire world didn't ask her every minute of every day to chart her grief. How are you? really means where are you. Are you in the deepest, blackest part of it or are you pushing off from the bottom without knowing you're pushing, until you've floated near enough the surface to see light? What they don't understand—but what Sam and Dean do and she hopes to God George won't have to—is that it's not always possible to know, not about the surface or the depths, until your eyes discern the first pale gleams of light or your feet sink hard into the sucking quicksand at the bottom. 

What she thinks about the most is how to have hope. Hope seems to ask for more optimism than this world warrants. She can sit here and count the squares of concrete over and over, and they'll still add up to 48. Meredith will still ramble, Alex will still be defensive, Bailey will still care more than she would ever be able to admit to. Denny will still be dead and there will still be a check on her refrigerator that scares the hell out of her for reasons she can't even articulate to herself. And she will always cut the line.

She will always cut the line, and that's what she has to learn to live with. She can't blame it on anybody, not on Denny and not on her friends. She didn't do it because they weren't there for her or she was pushing them away. They begged and pleaded with her not to do it, but she did it anyway, and she might again. But when she did it, they refused to let her suffer the consequences alone. They all owned up to making that fatal mistake, even Christina. 

She screws her face up hard and propels herself from the bench. She usually counts the squares as she walks over them, but tonight has a new litany, to ward off tears: even Christina. Christina who was maybe the only one unsusceptible to letting the heart rule the head, and yet… Izzie almost panics sometimes when she knows that she will always cut the wire, but now she fears it even more, if that's possible. She wonders if maybe she will always be the same as Christina is in this moment, choosing love over a brilliant career, even after weighing everything carefully, choosing wrongly. Or will it be like Christina sighing and stamping her feet and still saying she cut the wire, too, because of loyalty and friendship but without bringing destruction?

We're all crazy, she thinks, every last one of us, to have this hope. Especially because the world isn't designed for hope. It's not that there are pieces of the world that suddenly malfunction, fuck up; it's that the whole world is always fucked up and only the collective strength of all the people you love is enough to make it livable. They hope for you.

So she names their names as she steps on each square, and she slips through the sliding doors and heads down the hall to the person that is the most constant strength she knows. He's laid it up in store; he might as well get some of it back.

Sam wakes up long about Portland, and his neck hurts, but George was right—that half a pill was enough to dull the edge of the pain and let him sleep without making him feel so bewildered and almost-drunk. As he looks out over the skyline, he has the strange sensation that he'd only dreamed Seattle, real but unreal, vivid but alien. But so much of his life is this way he's grown used to the sensation. Fight the fight, with brute force and quick wits, with bravery that might be foolishness or stubbornness, and then climb into this car and enter that time out of time where you're nowhere but between and doing nothing but existing until the next time you live again. 

But he does live, here in the time in between. And so does Dean. And he won't be sorry Dean's still alive, however it happened. He honestly doesn't know what he'd do if there wasn't this person who shares his life and watches his back and who can annoy the shit out of him simply by flipping the fucking radio stations every two fucking minutes.

"Dude," he mutters, feeling his voice scratch out over his throat as he finally turns himself in the seat and reveals that he's awake. "How do you listen to classic rock stations if you hate Led Zeppelin so much?"

"I don't hate Led Zeppelin. I hate Robert Plant's whiny-ass voice sometimes. When he sings a song that isn't nonsense about wizards and doesn't involve him screaming like he's dying or having some real kinky sex, I gladly listen to Led Zeppelin."

"Can you just please, for God's sake, not change the station so damn much."

"Did somebody wake up on the wrong side of the shut-your-cakehole,-shotgun?"

Sam sighs. "This cast already itches."

"Get used to it. You've got what—six weeks with that chicken wing?"

"You're gonna enjoy this, aren't you?"

"Probably."

"So where are we headed?"

"Fuck if I know. Isn't that usually your department?"

"I guess. Even though you bitch about it."

"Whatever. So, yeah, I'm waiting on you to dig up some of your usual random bullshit. If you can type on your fancy little laptop one-handed."

"Well, I haven't had as much practice with that as you have," he replies evenly, and he smirks when he sees Dean's neck blossom with red that threatens to overtake his face. 

Then Dean tries the stern expression he's used on him all his life, one that still looks as ridiculous as it did when he was fourteen-going-on-forty. "Why don't you go back to sleep, Gimpy."

"I'm not tired."

"Well, then, find us a place to be or I'm taking you back to the Roadhouse so Ellen and Jo can fuss over you."

Between the bad arm and the pain medication, it takes him nearly five minutes to get his laptop out of his bag and opened and turned on. Dean only laughs for maybe half that time. 

George has been sure of little in his life. For a person with a safe, sheltered childhood and an early adulthood that led him down most any path he wanted to go, he's still always been curiously uneasy about living this life. He's learned that professors are prickly and bosses are impossible; family is a challenge, friends are inconstant, and women are insane. Rain always comes when you absolutely don't need it to—especially in Seattle—and your car will indeed fuck up when you're trying to get somewhere important. Because you're always trying to get somewhere important.

He doesn't think of himself as a pessimist, though. Being unsure, expecting calamity or at the very least a hard way to go, doesn't necessitate pessimism. George has always been good at dealing with the uncertainties of life. Perhaps, he thinks as he stands outside his father's hospital room, it's because he's always been the island of calm in the middle of the storm—his own life relentlessly centered despite the attempts of nature and other people to spin it off course. The momentary storms, however fierce, have always left him unscathed. A few shingles loose, maybe. The trash can blown into the neighbor's yard. Never devastation that might leave him utterly homeless.

He's seriously redefined his view of himself in the last 72 hours, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with finally finding a guy worth kissing. It's not that he's discarded his philosophy, his deep-seated conviction that the big things will turn out okay. They have to. There's no other way they can. It's just that he's learning what that means and what it's always meant for his life. It's not always good. It keeps him from giving up, but it makes the despair he sometimes deals with slap across his face like a wind hard and cold enough to burn. Like with Meredith. Maybe deep in his soul he didn't think he'd ever have her, but the largest part of him did, and when it blew up spectacularly, it had been crippling, almost a physical thing. He's had several reversals like that in his life, now that he looks back over it—now that he can see the pattern—and he always got over them without permanently going to pieces. Perhaps it's because he could make himself believe what he was losing—friends, girls, his first choice for med school, his first car after that stupid accident—was meant to be, somehow. When he looks into his father's room and thinks about that potential loss, he can't imagine his usual coping mechanisms will work. 

They're already failing. Ignore the problem and hope it goes away. If it doesn't, wallow in it until you've burned out all the pain. Neither thing will work when he's got his father in a hospital bed and his mother and brothers in a huddle around him, offering support but needing it just as much. It exhausts him. There is no easy way to do this. He can't imagine how Izzie dealt with all of them constantly around her all the time.

He takes a deep breath and walks into the room.

"Hey there, Georgie," his father says. This just isn't his father, on his back looking so tired and nerve-shot.

"Hi, Dad. How are you feeling?"

"Oh, tired. But I'm fine."

"Good. That's…good."

"You've sure been real busy. What did you get done today?" It's not an accusation but the same sort of curiosity his father's always showed for his life, even when he didn't understand a damn bit of what he was doing. He used to mind answering because it took a lot of explaining. Now he simply thinks it's not the question he ought to be asking.

"A lot of stuff. Not important."

"Why don't you tell me anyway. It's not like I've got anyplace else to be," he says jovially.

"Dad, I-- I don't know why I haven't—"

"I know."

George just stops, and he's not entirely sure his father does know, really, what kind of guilt he's been pulling on top of himself all day long, like a thick warm blanket; or like a suffocating shroud. But it doesn't seem to matter. His father's palm lies face-up on the bed, and he curls his fingers and says, "Come here."

"I'm sorry," he says as his feet move.

"For what? You had things you could be doing today. I know how it is. I do." His father may be an uneducated man, but he's not stupid, and he kinder than George could ever remember to give him credit for. 

"I'm glad to see you, though, Georgie. Tell me what you did today." His father takes his hand, and it's clear now that he's got him here, he's not going to let go until George can figure out how to make George and Doctor O'Malley meet in the middle.

They head east, because east is really the only logical direction to go. Dean doesn't know why this seems so hard now. For years he's been out here doing this job, and for months he and Sam have been planning their own course without even knowing where their father is. Perhaps it's the knowing that makes it hardest now.

Sam suddenly remembers somewhere in Utah that he hasn't eaten all day, so Dean pulls off at the exit for some podunk, no-name mountain town. There's only the one truck-stop still open, and although he always feels akin to those men propping themselves up with another cup of cheap coffee before climbing back into their rig, he knows they wouldn't recognize him as a fellow traveler. He's young and attractive and maybe a little too smug, too much swagger in his walk, and he drives a sweet car. Usually it earns him misjudgment, unless Sam works his Sam magic simply by sitting down and introducing himself. Sam can make Dean and his Impala suddenly seem as blue-collar and approachable and real as they are. How could this person who can make the world roll up easy in the palm of his hand ever…

He drops the keys beside Sam at the counter. "I'll be back."

"Okay," Sam says skeptically, and Dean knows his eyes follow him all the way out the door.

It's cool here. Up in the mountains, it's chilly enough to cut through the cloying, claustrophobic feeling that sometimes sneaks up on him now. He walks out past the gas pumps and into the grass-covered lot beside the building. Light falls on the grass, and he crosses over to the shadow beyond it, because everything feels like it's bathed in shadow lately. Everything but that one clear thing he refuses to believe. Maybe his father was wrong. He stands here looking out into the darkness and knows it, feels it deep in his gut. He was wrong. If he wasn't wrong, how in the hell could he leave them to fend for themselves?

The darkness should be just as overwhelming as the tension in his chest, but it feels open. The air's so dry and cool he can't help thinking there's a lot more ahead of them to do, even if he can't see it. He has to believe that. For all his cynicism, the kind Sam makes mythic, he's really the most optimistic of the Winchesters, if only because he's so pragmatic. He really sees the darkness, unlike Sam, and he still refuses to let it win, unlike his father. 

As he moves back into the light and walks past the row of windows, he sees that Sam's sitting contentedly at the counter inside, probably making up stories to tell the middle-aged waitress about how he broke his arm. Dean lets himself into the small one-pisser bathroom outside before he goes in. Too much coffee. Maybe that's why he's been on edge all day.

After he's done, he splashes water on his face—tired and already showing wrinkles even if he looks far from his 27 years. There are no towels, so he lets his face drip off for a moment before he wipes the remainder of the water away with the tail of his shirt. When he drops his hand, it bangs hard against the side of the dirty off-white sink, and he curses. But it feels good and before he even knows what he's doing, he's banging his fist into the sink again, then into wall behind him.

The toe of his boot catches the small metal trash can and sends it cowering behind the toilet, so he just kicks into the wall over and over, slapping his palms against it until they sting and it doesn't sting enough, not even the metal paper-towel dispenser stings enough when it cuts into his hands, and maybe he screams, but he doesn't think so, because he doesn’t have enough breath to do that. He just keeps his body in motion until he's wrung all of it out, whatever it is that's been clinging to him since Seattle. 

He laughs for no reason as he rinses the blood from his knuckles. There are still no paper towels. He splashes water on his red face again and decides maybe he should eat, even if he's not hungry.

When he slinks in through the door, he pulls a wad of napkins from the dispenser on the nearest table and clutches them around his hand. But, blood or napkins, it's obvious and it'll mean questions. His life's so anonymous, but there's always that one person who will ask questions about everything. He thanks God for him, even for the questions.

His food's still warm and Sam continues his chatter with the waitress until he really gets a look at Dean, his hand and then his face.

"You all right?" Sam asks.

"Yep."

Sam gives it away with his eyes, which squint up and then refuse to widen to their customary questioning gaze; they just pop back open to normal. It's a glassy, forced normal, but he does it anyway, then he taps the back of his good hand against Dean's leg and goes on talking to the waitress.

Dean eats his chicken fried steak slowly, and Sam doesn't introduce him. He just lets him be. 

He's just where Izzie expected to find him, uncomfortably ensconced with his brothers, talking cars and football and not about surgery or pain or fear. Izzie receives exactly the welcome she expected, too: his mother opens up the circle so she can squeeze in right beside George. George nudges her shoulder with his and smiles that slight smile he uses that Izzie can never interpret, probably because it expresses a lot of things he can't make sense of either.

She only halfway listens to them talk over each other, recalling past victories and defeats, everything sounding mythic. She doesn't have to know what they're saying, only that they're speaking as if in code, that language of the past that binds them, and she has the strange sensation of not knowing but somehow belonging anyway. One of George's brother's taps her on the knee and tells her something else she can embarrass George with later, and she feels it, how they're all trying to pull her in, adopt her as an O'Malley, one of George's O'Malley's. It's just hard for them to really do that with the uncertainty and fear hanging over them. She knows exactly what this feels like because for a long time now, this has been her life. She sits down to share a meal with George and Meredith, and Alex (and Christina) and all the people the interns have pulled into their orbit. Though with them she knows the code—invented some of it—she's had a hard time speaking in it lately. It's as if she's forgotten.

But you never really do. You never lose the family you have unless you want to, even if it's one you've created. Really, is there any other kind but that: people who otherwise wouldn't know how to speak, but they share a set of circumstances that frame their lives the same way, give them means to speak the same words and to laugh and cry and get drunk with each other and drive each other insane? With some people you feel it quicker than with others, some deeper. You don't choose your family—blood or not—but you choose to keep them. And protect them as best you can.

Finally the din dies down as the brothers make a trip to the cafeteria for coffee, leaving Izzie missing their chatter. Really, that's all it is, people filling up each other's silences down here, trying to forget to be afraid for a while. They sit without talking for a few minutes until his mother seems to decide she can leave. She smiles tiredly at Izzie (she's probably still convinced Izzie will some day be her daughter-law) and goes to see if George's father is still asleep, and peacefully. 

The nervous tension she can feel coming off George is powerful. She doesn’t know what to say, so she waits for him. After a time, he asks quietly, "How did you stand it?" 

"What?"

"Or maybe it's how do you stand it?"

"George…?"

"I've only been down here for an hour, but it's exhausting. If I had any idea…" He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.

"I know it's hard, but you've gotta—"

"You. I'm talking about you," he hisses. "God, how much worse must we have made it, constantly hovering over you."

"George…"

"I'm serious. You on the bathroom floor for so long. I don't know how you didn't just…put somebody's eye out with the toilet brush or something."

Izzie tries not to laugh, but she does anyway, and for a moment George looks at her like it's blasphemous, then he sighs and shakes his head, the ghost of a smile fleeting across his face. 

Izzie says, "It's only so hard because they need you. They're scared, and even if you're not the parent, you're the doctor."

"I know that."

"But what I'm saying is, it wasn't like that for me."

"Didn't it make you tired?"

"Yeah. I mean, it would have no matter who was with me. But you all weren't depending on me, so there was no pressure. Lately, though…yeah, lately it's been harder because everyone expects…"

"I'm sorry."

"No. You don't get to be sorry. You're the person who's bothered me the least, George. You haven't expected me to get better."

"I've wanted it, though."

"Yeah. I know." She finds her eyes welling up with tears for the second time during this long day, and she forces them back. This isn't about her, not now. And, God, doesn't that feel so fucking good. "I want your father to get better, too." 

The chairs in the waiting room are a dull green, just like everything about this waiting is dull but not dull enough not to hurt. George lays himself back over two or three of them, and his pulls his legs up until they're stretched out over Izzie's lap. 

"When are you on tomorrow?" he asks.

"It doesn't matter. You couldn't get rid of me if you tried."

He smiles at that, with some of that usual quirk of his lips and eyes, even if he doesn't think he knows how to smile right now, and he closes his eyes against the harsh fluorescent lighting. Izzie takes one of his ankles in both her hands and starts to rub her way up into the tense muscles in his calf, not knowing anything more important to do.