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The last thing Dean says for a while is “sonofabitch.”
He’s referring to the blood inching stickily into Sam’s right eye. Sam has sat on the end of his bed and lifted one boot off the floor. Something about the move has gone wrong. His hand wavers in empty space, unable to reach its target. The boot flumps back on the carpet. He is thinking of trying the maneuver again, because his feet hurt like almighty crap.
The room is quiet and dark. It goes darker yet as a hand makes contact with the back of Sam’s head and a wad presses over his eye. He makes a discontented noise with his tongue against his teeth, unable to speak just yet. Jesus but his gums ache. Without having to be told he raises his own hand to take over the wad, and while he’s doing that Dean deals with the boots.
Ramrod-stiff in the spine, Sam sits on the bed, his good eye closing against the drumming pain. He hears Dean moving around slowly, shrugging off his jacket, kicking his own boots under the bed, padding into the bathroom, flicking the light on. Objects spill randomly on top of the other bed, then Sam inhales an unexpected whiff of metal and liquor, and jumps. His free hand moves up sluggishly to take hold of Dad’s old flask. He hesitates, but then the mouth of the flask is nudged insistently against his lips and he takes a swig.
And coughs. Expletes colorfully about the bad-but-good taste searing the back of his throat. Wonders fuzzily how this got to be part of their first aid routine in the first place. The hand he’s been using to hold the wad of gauze in place feels numb all of a sudden and he can’t stop its boneless slide off his forehead. When it’s pushed back and held in place with what feels like too much pressure Sam grunts in protest.
The flask gets whisked away. They are supposed to deal with each other in the strict order of emergency services arriving at a multiple RTA, but Dean’s default is to put Sam first in line.
“Think I’m fine,” Sam says through cottonwool as fingers rush across his back, across his ribs.
“’Part from your brains leaking out,” Dean huffs from behind.
“It’s blood, Dean.”
“Brains, blood, whatever. Supposed to be inside.”
The wad is whipped away again and Sam chinks both eyes cautiously. Still dark in the room. Dean is on his haunches, hands on Sam’s knees, staring intently. Dried blood dots his lips and there's a contusion flowering on his chin. His eyes glitter as he moves in and out of focus.
“Fingers, Sam?”
“Fuck’s sake, Dean. One finger. You always do one finger.”
They are both tired, the burn and ache of hunting making them cross with one another.
Dean is on to clean-up now anyway. A new wad. Sam would like to tell him to stop, to ask if he’s taken care of himself at all, but the smell of antiseptic and the scalding touch of it on his head makes him nauseous and he gags.
“Shit,” Dean mutters. “Can you just wait a freakin minute before you barf, Sam? Let’s do one fluid at a time here.”
Sam is beyond that and throws up on the carpet, neatly, between his feet. He can feel Dean’s light grip on the back of his neck as he stares down at the puddle he’s made. A little pat tells him not to sweat it. Afterwards he gets dragged up the bed and there’s a pillow under his ear. It feels good. Dean gets some pills down him by trial and error. What with the dim light and his own lack of coordination half a cup of water ends up down his front and he doesn’t do a great job on swallowing.
“Help me out here,” he hears from far away. “Ya need to swallow ‘em, Sam, not gargle with ‘em.” He misses a bit of time. Next he’s lying under the sheets and his shredded jeans have been dragged off him. One knee hurts. The room is still dark. The skin tingles and itches above his eyebrow. He can’t tell if Dean’s stitched it or not. He knows the second he closes his eyes he will be out of it again.
Twice he's woken from his buzzing pit by Dean leaning over him, fingers touching gently on his forehead. His brother’s face is hidden by shadows but the voice is soft and clear.
“OK, Sammy?”
“Hey, Dean,” Sam says.
The next time he wakes by himself when Dean is crashing about in the bathroom.
“What year is it, Sam?” comes from behind the door.
The last few times he swears Dean has managed to poke him awake without even getting out of his own bed. He is obliged to recite an incantation, then count in fives from three-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventy-five.
“What the fuck ... Dean?”
“Go on.”
“Jesus. Three thousand four hundred and eighty, three thousand four hundred and eighty-five, three thousand four hundred and ninety, three thousand f-”
“”s’good, Sammy. Now shut the hell up, dude, ‘m tryin to sleep.”
Darkness laps around his cheekbones.
*
The room is full of daylight when he wakes up properly. It’s pouring in through the window and Sam can see clouds scooting across the sky.
He sits up very slowly, by degrees. His knee has swollen up in the night and he leaves it stretched out as he angles his back against the headboard. There are sharp screws loose in his head that he knows better than to rattle. Caution seems to be the order of the day here. Caution, a shower, then coffee. He can see that the floor is littered in discarded items of clothing, a trail of them all the way to the bathroom. Very gradually, he swivels his head sideways. First he sees a tall glass of water and a bottle of tylenol with two pills already out, balancing on the lid. Then his sluggish vision takes in the other bed.
Dean is sprawled on top of it, his lower body tangled in damp towels. He’s bruised black and blue, lies fallen on the mussed sheets as if trampled by a stampeding herd of demonic longhorns. Blocks of dark color splash across his hipbone, streaks line the muscles of his neck, lumps swell the skin of his knuckles, foot-long scrapes criss-cross his ribcage, jagged cuts gleam on both forearms. It all looks angry and untreated and there’s blood on the sheets. Most of all Dean is harshly pale. A familiar heavy dread creeps up from Sam’s gut and settles round his heart.
Four months on the road and Sam sometimes wants nothing more than to slip out and make a run for it. He really doesn’t know how long he can go on surviving what his brother does.
Dying a little in the night and not saying a word.
“Dean ... hey, Dean.” He limps across to the bed, cups a hand round his cheek and taps him awake.
“Seriously,” Dean slurs. “What is your problem?” His eyes snap open. “Sam? You OK?”
“So, what?” Sam says. “You took a shower in the middle of the night but you didn’t do anything about these wounds?” One of Dean’s hands is caught in his and he grips the fingers tightly to stop him pulling away. He is squinting at the clawed skin, trying to make sense of it, not liking his feelings of guilt and fury. “You get up five times to check me out but you don’t do anything about what’s going on with you?”
Dean levers up on the other arm and lets Sam pull him slowly to sitting. Sam lets go the hand and watches his brother poke disinterestedly at the weals. Dean looks a little wary, like he doesn’t want to be niggled at anymore. He gives a cursory glance at the bloodied sheets. Suddenly there is a jut of the chin and he holds both arms out rigid.
“Go on then,” he says in a breathless voice that makes the back of Sam’s neck prickle, “you want to play doctors, give it your best shot.”
Sam tips the bottle, dabs the split flesh, binds the arms from wrist to elbow, but Dean doesn’t watch, seems distracted, not feeling the sting. Sam knows his brother’s pain threshold is really not that high, that he’s zoning it out because something else hurts worse.
“Lie down,” Sam says. Like Dean would obey him. “You look like crap. I’ll go get you some coffee and breakfast.”
“Don’t think so, Mr Peg Leg.”
It would be easier, Sam reflects, to have this never-ending fight if he wasn’t feeling so near the edge of normal himself. Dean is on his feet now and Sam wants to yell at him.
Just a couple of lousy hours, Dean! Give it up for just a couple fucking, lousy hours!
From the look on his face Dean knows that his brother is on the verge. He cranks out his own facial expression from somewhere, something lightly scolding, something that says I know you’re pissed at me but would you quit cussing. Sam is in despair. He’s supposed to be the goddamn psychic in the family and yet Dean has this habit of reading his fucking mind.
“Take a shower,” says Dean, and begins to stoop down to retrieve a shirt off the floor. “Holy cra...” he begins in surprise and then the breath seems to catch under his diaphragm somewhere and Sam knows that if he doesn’t get across the room double quick Dean’ll do a face plant. He ignores his leg and takes two massive strides, and then a third because Dean has staggered. There is no way to break the fall that doesn’t involve an impact. Sam manages to prevent the face plant, but he’s forced to grab hold of his brother round the middle and it elicits a strangled yelp from Dean, a yelp that dies out in a long, pained exhalation as Sam lowers him to the carpet and then sits down in a heap.
Sam’s leg is throbbing. His head, which he hasn’t touched yet today, is thrumming in time. He has his stupid brother clamped to his chest, he can feel the guy fighting, fighting the incapacity and helplessness with every fiber of his being.
“Damnit, Dean, damnit, Dean, damnit, Dean!”
Dean just puffs quietly, trying to hold his head up. The fight is nearly out of him for the time being. There’s a broken rib in there somewhere. Maybe more than one. Respiration is compromised and Sam can’t drive so he has to break the golden rule. Actually, Sam wants to laugh. He wants to howl with laughter at the two of them, collapsed on the floor. And then he wants to cry.
“Lay down here, quiet,” he says in Dean’s ear, guiding his head to the carpet slowly. His face creases as he bends to listen to the labored breathing, to get a look in the eyes. Dean is unfocused, folding in on himself.
Between the 911 call and the ambulance rolling up, Dean stays on the floor semi-conscious. Sam wonders what makes his head, with its neat, clean wound, more important than Dean being able to breathe. Just before the paramedics arrive he remembers to haul on clean jeans and takes the tylenol with a slug of rancid milk.
“Sorry,” he says, kneeling down by his brother. The apology is because Dean will be pissed at going to hospital and because Sam knows they will hurt him. Dean manages to look at Sam reproachfully when the guys pick him off the floor. He’s wearing nothing but towels.
It’s a sunny morning. The light outside hurts Sam’s eyes and he needs a hand to help him up into the ambulance. The paramedics are not best pleased to have him there but something forceful about the lanky young man persuades them not to challenge his demand to ride with them.
At the first bump in the road Dean’s eyes fly wide open.
“All you had to do,” Sam says to him in a dangerously shouty voice, “all you had to do, Dean, was tell me! I’m only your freaking brother, man! Only the guy who can help.”
One of the paramedics elbows in with an oxygen mask.
There’s another bump in the road and Dean clenches a fist to his side in white-knuckle silence. Sam knows he's taking advantage, knows his brother would bat him away if he could, but he goes ahead and pries the grip open finger by finger, slots his hand in and seals his palm to Dean’s.
“There,” Sam says. “This is what you do now. You hold on to this.”
Dean’s eyes are sludgy above the mask but there’s still something painfully defiant going on in there. He knows everything and he knows nothing. They’ve given him pain meds but they’re not kicking in. He only has Sam’s hand for the next mile, and although he's finding it hard to hold on, Sammy isn't.
The hospital is noisy. The ER is unfamiliar but it’s still the same old routine. Sam won’t be dislodged from the side of Dean’s bed. A nurse in another cubicle wonders out loud how come, if they were both involved in the same, violent incident, the dark-haired guy got his wounds treated and the other guy didn’t. This makes Sam so mad that he turns right round to Dean and pops the mask off his face.
“Why do you do this, Dean? Why am I always taken care of and you’re always freaking well dying?”
At first it looks as if it’s not a question his brother will dignify by answering. But then he relents, looking at the mask in Sam’s hand, which is shaking badly.
“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean says, managing a weird, bleary smile, “take it easy, it’s just how it works.”
- ends -