Chapter Text
Dean had been telling him lately that his mouth was going to get him into trouble. Not in an angry way… Dad had covered that just fine. But when Dean said it, it was almost fondly… but worried.
“You can’t go with Dad like that. I know you’re right and he knows you’re right, but he’s not gonna back down.”
“You can’t just tell off teachers like that, Sammy. I know she was being a witch, but you make too good of grades to screw yourself over by running your mouth.”
“Sometimes, you’ve just gotta walk away, Dude. These kids don’t get our lives, they’re never gonna get our lives, it’s not worth it to engage.”
There was always a hint of pride behind his voice when he said it. He liked to see Sam stand up for himself. He liked to see him in his element… and Sam was there when he was arguing.
But he didn’t wanna see him get hurt.
Not emotionally, when he and Dad spent an hour screaming at each other before slamming doors and licking their wounds.
Not socially, when he ran his mouth to teachers and ended up in the dean’s office, lucky enough to be able to say his dad was out of town and give them his Dean’s number instead.
And not physically.
Not like this.
A classmate had overheard him talking to the teacher about an assigned essay… they were supposed to interview one or both parents about what they were like when they were younger and how they’d changed or stayed the same, then write a paper comparing and contrasting their past and current selves.
But Sam’s mother was dead, and his father really was out of town.
So he’d asked if he could interview his brother instead.
While the teacher had been mildly concerned until Sam lied and said they were staying with other family, but that family hadn’t known him as a child nearly as well as Dean had, he’d been cleared to make the switch.
But out in the hall after he’d finished the conversation, the eaves-dropping classmate had started to run his mouth.
Sam’s mommy died and his daddy doesn’t love him enough to stick around.
“Shut up. My dad’s a hero, and you’re lucky he doesn’t sit on his butt in an office like yours does.”
As it turned out, this kid’s dad was a federal police officer.
But how was Sam supposed to know that?
When the kid told him to meet him behind the school during lunch, he’d known he should say no, “Just walk away ,” as Dean told him. But he could beat the dude. He knew that. And when he did, wouldn’t Dean be just a little proud of him?
It wasn’t like his brother had never gotten in a fight like this.
The guy deserved to have the ego beaten out of him.
So he found himself in the alley behind the school building, a circle of other students gathered around, squaring up with a boy a good four inches taller than him.
The kid wasn’t bad… he’d obviously picked up a thing or two from his father. But he had nothing on Sam.
The other boy landed one solid bunch before he’d gotten inside his swing range and delivered a quick succession of blows to his face, throat, and torso. With his dominant arm secured in a lock behind him, all Sam had to do was get the other one…
There was a knife in that left hand before he knew what was happening. He was leaning towards it to lock it down, doing half of the other boy’s work for him as he aimed it in a quick strike at his stomach.
Sam gasped as pain shot through him, quickly followed by the feeling of hot blood running down his skin.
Panicked murmuring ran through the onlooking crowd, and then they broke as one, sprinting away. Sam’s opponent was quickly lost in the rush. He hit his knees on the pavement, suddenly alone.
He swallowed hard. This was fine. He’d surely had worse.
The boy chanced a glance down at his torso.
The entire bottom half of his t-shirt was soaked in blood.
He could feel himself pale as a sick feeling washed over him.
Maybe this was worse than he’d thought.
As if on cue, he suddenly found himself blinking back black spots from his vision.
This was definitely worse than he’d thought.
With a sick, desperate panic throbbing in his chest, one shaking hand located his cell phone from his pocket. He could barely steady it enough to find his brother’s contact and press call.
The sound of ringing taunted him. What if he didn’t pick up?
Just when he thought it was hopeless, Dean’s voice reached him from the other line.
“Sammy?” The word was hushed, probably said in the hallway of his own school, probably having stepped out of class.
“Dean.” He hadn’t realized he was crying until his voice came out choked and scared. “Dean, I messed up.”
Immediate panic entered his brother’s tone. “What do you mean, Sammy? What’s wrong? You okay?”
“No,” Sam replied, only crying harder. “I… this kid was running his mouth about dad and mom and… and I told him off, but then he said to meet him out back at lunch. So I did. And I was winning, Dean! Easy! Then he pulled a knife, and now… everyone ran away and I’m bleeding a lot and I’m blacking out and…” He trailed off in a rush of tears.
He could hear the evidence of his brother running. “Sammy, listen to me, you’re gonna be okay,” the older boy told him, though his voice trembled as he said it. “Can you stand up, can you walk?”
Sam tried to get to his feet, but his trembling legs wouldn’t hold him, and he dropped back to the concrete. “No,” he sobbed hopelessly.
“Okay.” The sound of the Impala starting. “That’s okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes. But you’ve gotta keep talking, you’ve gotta stay awake. Okay?”
“O… okay.” Sam pressed his eyes closed against a fresh wave of darkness, opening them again after a moment and wiping angrily at the pouring tears. “What do I talk about?”
“Anything. Whatever you want. And uh… ball up your shirt and press down on the stab wound. Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah.” He carefully lowered his back onto the ground and obediently balled up the loose fabric of his t-shirt and pressed down on the injured area as hard as he could.
“Good. Now talk to me, Sammy.”
“O… okay. Um. In Literature today, we were talking about ghosts and… and monsters in old books. Like Dracula and Frankenstein. And where they came from. Like who made them up. And I don’t get how they could all be so stupid. How do they not know they’re real? I mean, all the people we save and all the people who die before we can save them… doesn’t anybody ever think it’s suspicious?”
“Well, yeah, they… they do sometimes.” Barely-controlled anxiety ruled in the teenager’s voice. “Lots of people are superstitious.”
“B… but they get treated like idiots for being that way!” Sam pressed. “If I’d said I believe in ghosts and everything, everyone would have looked at me like an idiot. But it’s so obvious!”
“To us it is, because we’ve been fighting ‘em our whole lives,” Dean explained evenly. “But most people have never seen a ghost or a vampire or anything. It’s hard to believe in things you can’t see.”
Nausea rose in Sam’s stomach, but he wasn’t in a good position to puke. “Lots of people believe in God, though,” he argued weakly. “I do. And we can’t see Him, either.”
“Well, yeah, but people have pastors like Jim to teach them about God,” his brother explained. “There’s not very many people who’ll teach you about monsters.”
“I guess that makes sense.” He hesitated before saying with more tears trembling in his voice, “Dean, I’m going numb.”
He could hear his brother swallow hard. “That’s uh… that’s just because your body’s trying to conserve your blood, since you’ve lost some. So it’s taking it away from your hands and feet for a little to make sure you’ve still got plenty for your heart and organs. That make sense?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
Another hesitation.
“Dean, I’m scared.”
“I know, Sammy.” Was he crying? “But I’m almost there, okay? You’re gonna be fine. Tell me about another class.”
The nausea rose again, and he rolled onto his side to finally, miserably, empty his stomach onto the pavement.
“Sammy?” Dean asked desperately.
“‘M okay,” he managed softly. “Just puked.”
“Okay. Keep talking, stay awake.”
“I’m really tired.”
“I know, Sammy, but you can’t go to sleep right now, okay? Not yet. What did you learn about in history?”
“The French Revolution.”
“When all the peasants beheaded the nobles, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Whose side you on?”
“Well, the peasants’, but I… I think they maybe shouldn’t have just killed everyone.”
“What would you have done?”
“I would have taken a hostage. The queen or king or something. And then made them negotiate.”
“That’s some pretty good thinking there, Kiddo.”
“Thanks. My teacher told me I’d make a good lawyer.”
“You’d make a great lawyer. Put that mouth of yours to good use.”
“Yeah. That’s what she said too.”
It was getting hard to hold the phone in his almost fully numb hand.
“Are you almost here, Dean?”
“Yeah.” He heard a car door slam on the other line… or maybe somewhere around the corner of the building? He wasn’t sure. Running footsteps. “Just hang on a little longer, Sammy.”
“Okay.”
Everything was getting hazy.
The footsteps were definitely here. The line went dead, and then he heard his brother’s voice from up above, just out of his shrinking range of vision.
“Sammy? Oh my… okay. Okay, you’re okay.”
He could tell his brother was a feather away from panicking completely from the tremble in his voice, but as he knelt beside him and gently displaced Sam’s hands pressing down on the puncture to be replaced by his own, they were steady and sure.
He heard a box click open as only one of his brother’s hands applied the pressure for a moment, then his t-shirt was pushed up and out of the way, replaced by some coarse cloth that no doubt came from the first aid kit they kept in the Impala.
“How ya feeling, Sammy?” Dean asked after a long moment of pressing down on the wound hard. His voice was as coarse as the cloth he was using to slow the bleeding.
“Okay,” Sam said softly. “Really tired. But I’m too numb for it to hurt too bad.”
“I’m glad it doesn’t hurt too bad,” his brother confirmed, though it was obvious by his voice that he wasn’t pleased by the report. “And I know you’re tired, but you gotta stay awake for me, okay, Kiddo? Keep talking if you need to.”
“Is Dad gonna kill me?”
That was assuming he survived in the first place, of course.
“Nah.” But Dean was obviously nervous about the subject of their father. “He might be a little pissed, but just because it’s gonna scare him. He’s not gonna hurt you.”
The surety behind the statement was an unspoken because I won’t let him .
In a half-delirium, Sam remembered closed doors, yelling, being ushered away by his brother when their father walked in more drunk than usual. And he wondered, as he occasionally had, who was there to say that for Dean.
“Dean?” he asked softly.
“Yeah, Sammy?”
Once again keeping one hand pressing down on the injury, Dean used the other one to reach back to the first aid kid, probably finding a bandage.
“Does Dad hit you?”
He felt his brother freeze, just for a second, heard a sharp intake of breath from the older boy. Then, “No. No, Sam, of course not.”
Sam stared up at the sky, frowning groggily. “Would you tell me if he did?”
A hesitation. Dean gently pushed him onto his side so he could slide the bandage under him, then rolled him onto his back once more.
“Couldn’t tell ya. Cause he doesn’t.”
“So why do you always send me out when he’s drunk?”
“Cause he’s drunk, Sammy. Says stupid stuff. I don’t want you two to fight.”
“And why are you always bruised?”
A heavy sigh. “Ghosts, Kiddo. We hunt ghosts. And you don’t have the corner on getting in stupid fights at school, you know.”
Sam matched his sigh, but gave in. “Yeah. I guess so.”
As the seventeen-year-old finally got the bandage tied into place, he snapped the first aid kit shut and slid one arm under Sam’s back.
“I’m gonna sit you up, okay?”
The boy nodded a little, allowing his brother to lift him up off the concrete, his other hand supporting him from the arm, and carefully move him back so he could lean against the school building.
Sam’s vision swam, but he blinked it steady with an effort, forcing it to focus on his brother’s tight, scared face.
“How’s that? How ya feeling?”
“A little better.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dean nodded a little, swallowing hard, and pulled a water bottle out of the first aid kit. He uncapped it before carefully bringing it to Sam’s lips.
“Drink some of this. It’ll help.”
Sam obediently swallowed a few mouthfuls of the clear liquid. It did make his head feel a little better.
“It’s starting to hurt again,” he said quietly.
Dean winced a little. “Right. Right, of course.”
This time, it was a bottle of pain killer that he produced from his kit, pouring a few out into his hand and pressing them into Sam’s, then readying the water bottle once more.
When Sam had gotten them down as well, the older boy sat back on his heals, the strength sinking out of his shoulders as his chin dropped to his chest and one hand came up to his forehead.
Sam was pretty sure he was crying.
“Dean…” he managed softly. “Dean, I’m okay.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed without looking up. “Yeah, I know I just… I just need to…”
He choked and didn’t finish the sentence. Sam bit down on his lip hard, but didn’t say anything.
After another long moment, Dean finally looked up, forcing that strength right back into his shoulders. “Alright. Let’s get you to the hospital.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “The hospital? But Dad says…”
“Special occasion,” Dean cut him off with a tight smile, packing up the first aid kit as he did.
“But what are we gonna tell them?”
“That you got in a fight at school,” his brother replied simply. “When it’s not monsters, we don’t have to lie.”
The kit snapped closed and Dean settled it in one hand, then moved to support Sam’s back with the other arm, the one holding the kit sliding under his legs.
Sam didn’t fight him as he picked him up and carried him around the building, to where the Impala was parked, but he was still less than satisfied with the hospital plan.
“Dean, you got the bleeding stopped,” he pressed. “Why would we go now?”
“Because it might get infected, Sam,” his brother sighed, his voice utterly tired.
“Oh.” That made sense. “But how are we gonna pay for it?”
“We’ll give ‘em fake info and be gone before they figure it out.”
“Isn’t that wrong?”
Dean shrugged a little as he crouched to set the kit on the ground next to the car, then carefully opened the passenger’s side door and set Sam down on the seat inside. “No more wrong than living off of credit card scams, Sammy.”
“I guess so.”
The older brother closed the door behind him, picking up the kit from outside and tossing it back into the trunk before taking his place in the driver’s seat.
He hesitated with his hands on the wheel for just a moment, took a deep, shaky breath, and started the car.
“I should thank you, Sammy,” he said with a miserable attempt at a smile. “You got me out of a math test.”