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Let’s go on a roadtrip to hunt down this zombie, Dean said. It’ll be just like old times - well, like that one time, he said.
Which meant that, just like that one time, Sam got in an altercation with said zombie, and injured his leg in a way that hurt really, really badly. And now he was stranded in a motel because no contortion of his body made sitting in a car bearable.
Okay, maybe calling it “stranded” was a bit unfair, but when Dean had turned earnest eyes on him, about to offer to hole up in a hotel until he was a bit better, Sam didn’t want to deal with it.
“No big, dude, it’ll just be a few days.”
“Sammy-”
“Isn’t this weekend Macho Cars Anonymous or whatever? You miss it every year -- just go, I’ll catch up with you.”
Dean had sighed and relented and Sam felt triumphant until 15 minutes of twiddling his thumbs later, when he had started to feel stranded instead. Whatever. It was still Dean’s fault.
*
He was beyond grateful he’d brought his laptop because, if anything, it meant he could order takeout. First on the agenda, though, was crafting a tower of pillows to support his leg and passing out.
When he woke up two hours later, there was a hamburger on the side table.
He glared at it and wondered why Dean had the pathological need to help him when Sam asked him not to.
Three hours of fruitlessly staring at the back of his eyelids later, he turned on the TV to a Law and Order marathon and ate the burger.
Jerk, he texted to Dean.
Dean texted back bitch several hours later, half an hour after he’d managed to fall back asleep. Sam woke up to the vibration and threw the phone across the room. His skin felt hot and itchy and too tight and there was only position that wasn’t agony for his leg and it was really uncomfortable not being able to shift around.
By the end of the day, he had a lot of opinions about Law and Order, the first and foremost being his deep relief at having not gone to law school. That would have made the show unbearable.
*
The second day and five fitful hours of sleep later, he woke up to another hamburger and a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho sitting between the lamp and the clunky, beige telephone. It was good to know Dean thought he was a teenage girl from the 19th century.
Law and Order had given way to CSI, and Sam had to change the channel; it was still too weird to watch shows that Gabriel had made him act in.
If he lay back and listened, he could hear the steady drip drip drip of a leaky showerhead in the other room. It was a steady companion while he surfed the web and maintained Charlie’s LARPing site as requested and a soothing metronome during the sleepless hours of two to five AM. It wasn’t frustrating until Rango was on TV and he became thirstier and thirstier. He looked from his swollen leg to the bathroom door and the drip drip drips during the muted commercials taunted him. Eventually, he slid off the bed and made his way, hop by ungainly hop, across the room until he hit his shin on a chair, cursed and fell over.
Maybe he should have gone to the hospital, he mused as he stared up at the popcorn ceiling. But in addition to an injured leg, he also had bruised ribs. Which meant the doctor would want to take x-rays. Which always lead to the awkward conversation about the Enochian carved into his bones. Doctors were usually very weird about that.
He lay on the floor, defeated, swallowed some pills from a nearby bottle on the ground dry and slung his arm over his face. Even the ceiling was too depressing to look at. He woke up an indeterminate time later and ate the hamburger Dean had silently snuck in to creepily leave by his head. What was his problem, seriously.
*
At 4AM during the third night, deep in a chatroom with conspiracy theories about bigfoot and UFOs, he had an epiphany. The painkillers he was taking were causing his insomnia. He picked up the bottle and, sure enough, it said “daytime” and “non-drowsy” in cheerful, yellow letters on the label. All of his pillows were being used to support his leg (which still hurt a lot, despite the anti-inflammatories that were making him miserable) so he put his jacket over his face and yelled into it.
*
The fourth night came, and O! How Sam rejoiced! Earlier that day, he’d called the motel manager and promised the bored secretary $20 to fetch him different painkillers (and more pillows). Sam was so excited to fall into a sleep unfettered by pernicious drugs tethering him to consciousness. He was so tired he was thinking in sentences like that.
Sam went to turn off the TV, only to find that the batteries in the remote were dead, or something, because the TV wouldn’t respond no matter what angle he tried to use it from. He optimistically threw the remote, aiming for the TV's power button. It flew into pieces, which scattered across the room. The battery cover fell into an empty Chinese takeout box. Sam eventually fell asleep to the swelling orchestral stylings of the Miss Universe pageant.
When he woke up the next morning, the room was silent, birds were chirping outside the window – had there even been any trees outside when he checked in? – and the remote was on the bed stand, reassembled. He picked it up warily. It successfully turned the TV on and off.
Okay, this was passing creepy and getting really, really weird. He called Dean.
“Hey, Sammy, how’s the leg?” Sam could hear the loud indistinct hum of a crowded area in the background. “Are you dying of boredom?”
“Dean, you are the least subtle person I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something.”
“You got me, I was totally going to tune you out if you had wanted to talk. There are some seriously sweet rides here, you’re really missing out.”
“Wait, what?” Dean had actually left when Sam had told him to? He wasn’t silently breaking into Sam’s hotel room to leave him things and fix remote controls?
“I’d love to stick around and chit chat, but I’ve gotta go. See ya at the batcave, kid.”
The call disconnected.
So if his silent benefactor wasn’t Dean, it could only be – “Cas!”
“Yelling is unnecessary, I’m right here.”
Sam glared up at him and tried to pretend he hadn’t jumped a little in surprise.
Cas held out his empty hand. Sam blinked, and then there was a hamburger in it.
"What is with the hamburgers??”
Cas waggled it in his direction and frowned when Sam didn’t take it. “You have been unhappy and in pain.”
“So you offered me fast food?” Sam knew he was probably making what Brady (and then later, Crowley. Fucking demons.) had called his bitchface, but dammit, his leg really hurt and he didn’t have the patience to interpret angel.
“Hamburgers have never failed to make this body feel better.” Cas paused and reconsidered. “Well, hamburgers and sexual congress.”
Sam stared. Cas’s stint as a human hadn’t changed him very much.
Cas blithely continued, “And since you’ve chosen your own treatment for your broken leg, this was the only way I could help.” He shrugged and took a bite into the burger.
“Well, you could have – wait, did you say my leg was broken?”
“Yes. In two places, actually.” Cas squinted at his leg, presumably to facilitate x-ray vision, and pointed these spots out helpfully with his free hand.
Sam did not feel helped. In fact, he could feel quite a lot of blood rushing to his head. Angry, was what he felt. “Cas, you’ve been watching me lie around, in pain, with a broken leg,” he paused for emphasis, “and you didn’t just heal it?”
“I have learned from Dean that you no longer want to be saved.”
Sam opened his mouth, and then closed it.
“And I have been appraised of the works of your philosophers, Hobbes and Calvin. I have learned that humans sometimes do unnecessary things to ‘build character.’” He gingerly added the airquotes.
“Cas, Calvin and Hobbes is a comic.”
Cas looked at him, uncomprehending. “Yes, a pictographic representation of the laws and values of your society. Your kind has recorded things this way for thousands of years.”
Sam just looked at him helplessly and shifted his leg around on its pillow platform. This was one of the most futile conversations he’d ever had.
Cas finally seemed to feel the weight of his silent disapproval, because he awkwardly (for him) said, “I confess, I did replace your stomach lining. I don’t think it’s character building if you don’t notice when you’re suffering.” He picked up the half empty ibuprofen bottle and shook it. “For capsules of healing, these have quite an adverse effect.”
Sam rubbed his hand across his face. “Please, just. Heal my leg, already. Ignore the no saving thing for now.”
Cas cocked his head in that way that made him look like a velociraptor, but waved his hand and Sam’s leg resumed its original size and color. Once he’d been healed, he realized how much pain he’d been in. He tried to be grateful for the relief rather than annoyed that the past five days could have been avoided.
He stood up and marveled at being able to distribute his weight evenly on both legs. “Let’s go eat something that isn’t hamburgers and you can tell me why you thought I needed The Mysteries of Udolpho.”
“Okay,” Cas said.
And they did.