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Stabbed in a gas station bathroom? Seriously?
Dean grunted as he removed the knife from his gut, pressing his hand against the insistent blood flow that stained his grey shirt black. The saturated hole in the shirt revealed a clean wound, smooth, barely visible in the waterfall of blood.
30 years of hunting and getting stabbed never gets any more fun.
He breathed out slowly, bracing himself against the sinks and ignoring how suspiciously sticky they were. Closing his eyes tight shut, he tried to focus.
“Okay, Dean.” He spoke aloud, distracting, grounding. “What do you do if you’ve been stabbed, have no access to a phone, are a good hundred meters from your car and in a fu-ahh.” Clench your teeth, breathe through the pain . “A fuck ton of pain because your fucking adrenaline hasn’t fucking kicked in yet!”
He tightened his grip on the rim of the sink. Getting stabbed hurt like a bitch.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Wrenching his eyes back open, he blinked at the dim fluorescents on the ceiling, focused on the black mould fuzzing around the rusted rim, the contrast between the black and the orange and the ow ow owww.
His hand was doing nothing to stem the blood flow.
“Okay, stem the flow, stop the blood.” He pulled off his jacket, wincing every now and then, and wrapped it around his torso, pulling it as tight as his breathing would allow.
“Okay, awesome, blood stemmed as much as it probably can be right now.” He muttered. “Now, Baby, here I come.”
His hands shook as he took cautious steps to the door, each step sending a shock of pain through his torso. His fingers were slippery as he fumbled with the lock, sending a few colourful curses its way before it finally popped. The door swung open with a screech of rusted metal.
“Subtle, yeah, real sneaky.” He muttered through his teeth, bracing himself against the frame of the door as another wave of pain hit him, only this time accompanied with nausea.
Dean swallowed the bile build up in his throat with a shudder and focused on the fact that Baby was a... I swear I didn’t park that far away.
Stifling a whimper, he took a few steeling breaths and pushed away from the door. He walked with a slight stumble, each shock of pain forcing him into a heavy limp but he kept going, focused on the Impala which didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
He came up next to the edge of the gas station and leant on it heavily, closing his eyes against the dizziness and ignoring the pant in his breath. Glancing back, he groaned in how little distance he had covered, and groaned more at how much more he had to.
Not to mention he could barely see through his gradually blurring vision.
His jacket had started to drip with over saturation. He grimaced at it - that staining was never going to wash out.
“Okay, come on, Dean. Just a little further.” Taking a deep, painful breath, he pushed off the wall and kept going, staring at the Impala just visible in the light of the gas station fluorescents.
The world tilted back and he stumbled, righted himself and kept going.
Just a little further, just a little further, just a little further.
The corners of his vision were dimming by the time he collapsed against the driver’s door, leaving a smeared handprint of blood on the window as he wrenched open the door. He fell into his seat, biting back a groan and panting, exhausted, tired...sleepy……
Wake up, Dean!
He inhaled sharply, pulling his eyelids open and yanking his deadweight legs into the car, slamming the door shut.
“Right, okay, okay.” He sat up as far as his aching gut would allow and pulled open the glove compartment, getting everything caked in crimson as he fumbled around for the first aid kit.
“Aha!” Forcing a smile on his face, he unzipped the kit and pulled out the needle and thread. “Okay, okay, okay.”
The thread wouldn’t go through the eye of the needle with how much he hands were trembling and slick with blood. He cursed, loudly and multiple times, before it finally went through. He lifted his sticky shirt to reveal the cavern in his gut where a knife once was, sunk right down to the hilt. In other words, it fucking sucked.
The shaking in his hand was a minor setback, as Dean kept telling himself while untied his soaked jacket and stitched close the bubbling wound in his gut. He used the classic cross stitch, simply for holding the gash closed until he could do a better long-term job later. His vision doubled, tripled, and he groaned in the effort of keeping focused through the pain.
He was definitely going to redo this later. After a nap.
“No, no, come on.” He muttered, blinking his eyes back open and pulling the last stitch closed, tying off the string.
He ran his hands down his face to try to wake himself up and turned the key into the ignition, smiling at the beloved purr of Baby’s engine. “Okay! Okay, awesome, uh…home.”
The bunker was ages away, but closer than any motel.
Wincing as his stitches pulled, he pulled out of the gas station and headed down the road, turning on the radio to keep himself awake.
Luckily, it seemed the numbing was finally kicking in, settling over him like a calming blanket and being almost irritating in making it harder to keep his heavy eyelids apart. The rumbling of the engine and the wheels on the road were soothing, like white noise.
“Co-...come on, Dean.” He mumbled, trying to keep a focused gaze on the road through his fuzzy vision. The music and the talking was doing nothing to keep his consciousness floating away on a little boat of blissful numbness.
He needed someone to help.
“Cas…” He muttered, once again wrenching his eyes open and fumbling around in the glove compartment he had left open for one of his phones. The screen was blurry as he used muscle memory to click on contacts, scrolling through to what he assumed was ‘C’ and tapped what he believed was Cas’ name.
The phone rang once...twice… “Come on, Cas.” He groaned, staring down and wincing at the single droplet of blood still oozing out through the gaps in his frankly crappy stitching.
The phone picked up. “Hello?”
“Cas?” He sighed in relief, putting the phone on speaker and throwing it onto the dashboard.
“Dean? Is that you?”
“Yeah, dumbass, who else would it be?”
A second of silence on the other end. “Why aren’t you calling from your phone? Are you okay?”
“The hell are you talking about? This…” He trailed off as he stared at his FBI phone. “Huh. Yeah, no, sorry. I picked up the wrong phone, my bad.”
“That’s alright, Dean. Are you okay?”
Dean glanced down at his gut. “Yeah, man, just peachy. Look, just keep talking to me, alright?”
“Why’s that?”
“I dunno, man, I’m a few minutes from the bunker and I’m getting bored without Sammy here to talk my ear off.”
“But you’re always talking about how much you appreciate the solidarity of you and your car, why are you suddenly so interested in-”
“I don’t know, man! I just-” Dean took a breath, blinking to refocus his eyes. “Just keep talking.”
The silence on the other end was unbearable. “Talk about what?”
“Anything, Cas!” Dean inwardly groaned - he had forgotten about how Cas was a terrible conversation carrier. He rubbed his eyes, shook the fuzzy feeling in his head away and sighed. “Tell me about the beginning of time for all I fucking care.”
“Um...okay well, as far as my father has told us, it started with Him confining His sister, The Darkness, in a temporary state of unconsciousness until He could later put it into the Mark as a punishment to Cain for killing his brother Abel. However, that doesn’t come until centuries later. Immediately after containing The Darkness, God began to...”
Dean resisted the urge to punch something. He wished he had given Cas a more interesting topic to ramble about rather than the retelling of the creation from a more personal point of view. He tried so damned hard to focus on the words Cas was saying but his voice was low and familiar, calming, and easily faded into the white noise.
“...the archangels out of the light and purity of His own self. He then created all the other angels for the archangels to command from His own word. For a while that’s how it worked; God, the archangels and the angels, working in peace and purity in Heaven. That was until He began to sculpt the Earth…”
The tires screeched as Dean pulled the car back in lane with a yelp, blinking his eyes back open.
“Dean? Is everything alright?”
“Yep, yeah, awesome. Just keep talking, man, keep…” He leaned further back in his seat. “...keep talking.”
“...Okay, well, then He created Man out of the dirt of the Earth…”
“Five more minutes, come on, just five more minutes.” Dean muttered
“...and God commanded us to bow down to Man, that they were to be our new masters, as well as our new job - to protect Mankind. We all bode to God’s will, except for, of course, Lucifer, who…”
The blood was starting to flow more steadily, dripping down his abdomen and dampening the hem of his jeans. Three more minutes.
“...so God locked him in a cage and created Hell, where He banished Lucifer permanently as punishment for disobeying his will. It was in that cage that Lucifer created his Knights of Hell: the first demons, who built Hell around them to torture and punish any human soul that God sent them. That, however, didn’t happen until much longer after the creation of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and a long line of their…”
The bunker came into sight. Honestly, Dean had never been happier to see it.
“Okay, thanks, Cas.” He muttered, grabbing the phone. “I’m at the bunker now, love you, byeee.”
“ But I-” Dean hung up the phone.
He dropped it with a sigh - time for the difficult part.
Turning the engine off, he pocketed the keys and opened the door, shifting his legs out and bracing himself against the side of the car door and pulling himself to a stand. Even without the pain it was hard to move, his body heavy and numb. It was a shocker his legs still relatively worked.
He opted to temporarily ignore how his stitches were pretty much useless at this point and how he was dripping blood all over the gravel as he used Baby for support, moving slowly towards the front door to the bunker.
Dean collapsed against the door with a grunt, fumbling with the handle for what felt like an hour before it opened.
“Dean?” Sammy’s voice called from inside as he stumbled in, leaning heavily against the railing.
He kicked the door closed behind him. “Hey, Sammy, how’s it goin’?”
The blurry flannelled figure stood up from the table. “I could ask you the same. Who’s blood is that?”
Dean frowned as he limped down the first few steps. “Who’s blood is who’s?”
Sammy laughed. “Well unless you spilled a crap ton of ketchup down yourself, I’m going to assume that’s blood on your shirt.”
Oh, yeah. “Uhh, just some vamp I ganked.”
The world tilted and he stumbled into the railing. Three more steps.
“You su...ood, man?”
Dean hummed in recognition. The last two steps faded in and out as the dimness seemed to spread. The floor rocked beneath his feet.
“...ean?”
The room spun in a nauseating shade of green. One more step.
“De…”
The darkness spread and Dean felt himself falling, slowly, lightly, like he was drifting.
Even the feeling of his brother's grip under his arms, the sound of his worried voice, faded as Dean surrendered to the darkness.
-----
“Dean!” Sam yelped, catching his brother in his arms as his eyes rolled back, going limp.
Sam stumbled under his weight and lay Dean down on the floor as gently as he could manage. The growing crimson patch on his shirt was concerningly vivid and Sam swallowed, hard. Trust Dean to come home half dead from a fucking beer run.
“Dean, hey.” He tapped Dean’s cheek, eliciting no response but a slight dip in his frown.
“Crap, uh, okay.” Muttering to himself, Sam lifted Dean’s shirt and groaned at the sight of a deep stab wound, poorly stitched, in Dean’s gut. He let out a shaky breath, wiping his hands down his pants and running them through his hair, trying to figure out what he should do.
Figuring he couldn’t waste time in moving Dean, he muttered a short promise of return and ran to the kitchen to grab the first aid kit, returning a minute later with the kit in his hands.
“Okay, Dean, stay with me.” He glued his eyes on Dean’s chest, watching the rise and fall of life in his chest before fishing out the needle and thread from the kit, as well as a small pair of scissors.
As Sam cut open the previous stitches, Sam kept muttering to his unconscious brother, repeating familiar phrases to deaf ears to keep himself calm and collected - freaking out would end up in him losing Dean.
His hands shook as he cut the stitches, wary of avoiding hurting Dean any more than he already was. The last thread was severed and Sam allowed himself a relieved smile. Halfway there.
Sticking the end of the thread between his teeth, he fiddled for a needle as he straightened the thread, then proceeded the extensive trial and error of threading the needle. How Dean had done this in his state was beyond him. Then again, Dean had always been better at this than him, having the most experience with stitching up his own and Sam’s wounds.
He cursed, loudly, at another failed attempt. Tears of frustration began to form and he blinked them away furiously, glancing at Dean’s chest. Still rising, still time.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Sam whispered. Images of Dean dying flashed before his blurred vision and he growled at them, determined. Dean would not die.
The thread went through and Sam practically whooped for joy. “Okay, okay, um-” He glanced at his brother’s face; his frownline had deepened, eyes flickering behind closed lids. “Sorry in advance.”
He adjusted his position, placed his hand next to the slowly oozing wound and began to thread the needle into Dean’s skin, wincing at the slight whimpers Dean was letting out.
Sam allowed his hands to fall into autopilot, stitching closed the wound effectively and efficiently, occasionally muttering a “sorry.” when Dean let out a particularly loud whimper.
In, out, cross, in, out, cross, in, out, cross. Simple but it worked in holding Dean together. The blood flow was fully cut off and Sam finished stitching in record time, tying the thread together and sitting back on his heels.
Wiping his brow, Sam let out a shaky laugh of relief. Dean’s chest still rose and fell rhythmically, his face still slightly grimaced in pain but he was alive.
He was alive.