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It takes until Sam is unconscious in a pool of his own blood for Dean to realize that maybe something's gotta give. So maybe Dean's angry. Maybe he gets a little reckless, slow to respond when he hears the sounds of a scuffle. He has a good excuse, though, airtight: he'll protect his brother to the end, no questions, but this? This isn't his brother.
Case in point: Right after the Veritas thing and a bit before Cas heals Sam―and Dean doesn't like to think about what he did for too long or something too much like guilt starts to squirm in his gut―Dean catches him (not Sammy, not his brother, but this robo-version of him) pressing his fingertips to the raw wounds Dean inflicted and smiling.
It's creepy as hell, but Dean doesn't ask questions. He doesn't want to know.
Sure, the guy has the memories and the mannerisms. He has just the right words and just the right expression, but the tone is wrong, the expressions heavy-handed and unnatural, like when chicks put on just a little too much makeup and things get a bit Van Gogh.
His fists are still raw, stomach unsettled when he remembers the sick, slick rend of tearing flesh and Sam, underneath him, lax and quiet, not even resisting. He remembers Sam, semi-conscious in the chair as they waited for Castiel, blood dripping steadily onto his jeans from the ragged flap of skin Dean's fist nearly tore from his forehead.
He tries to tell himself that it doesn't matter because it wasn't Sam, and he doesn't hit Sam. Not usually. Not often. Maybe this guy has Sam's body, and Sam's smile, and Sam's mostly-everything-else, but it's not Sam.
Sometimes he can make himself believe it.
Of course it is Sam, though, just minus that pesky bit that is his actual fucking soul. Dean still doesn't feel guilty. He did what he had to. He certainly doesn't think about how the soulless guy looked at him, quiet and earnest, and begged for Dean's help right before Dean broke his knuckles on his face—doesn't spare even a second's thought to the way his hands never lifted to counter Dean, as if he'd take whatever Dean dealt.
Dean isn't stupid. His brother outweighs him and is physically much stronger, even if Dean has experience on his side. He could have fought, could probably have overpowered Dean.
He doesn't think about how blood had dripped into the hollows of Sam's closed eyes when Dean had gone to town on him even after he lost consciousness. If he thought too hard about any of that, he'd have to ask himself some questions. He's not ready for that.
He drinks a lot, but not enough to isolate himself with his thoughts.
It might be the drink that makes him slow to hear and respond when they go on that next case, that one extra beer before they went out to gank yet another enterprising ghoul who decided corpses just weren't to his taste.
Sam doesn't have the best luck with Ghouls, soul or no. The guy is huge and impossibly strong, and while he doesn't manage to tie Sam down this time, he does manage two deep slices—one winding diagonally across his chest and down his left side (the unfortunate consequence of an aborted stab that swung just a little too close) and an up-the-river cut on his left arm. Despite all that, Sam takes down the ghoul by himself, cool and efficient even while he's bleeding everywhere. Dean runs in just in time to watch Sam behead the thing.
Then Sam turns to him, wobbly and self-satisfied, offering Dean a grin he's known for years. Sam's smug look-what-I-did, Dean expression, that old try-calling-me-'bitch'-again-Dean smirk, and it's almost like old times.
The smile fades quickly, and he could swear he hears, "Dean," weak and barely audible, right before the soulless guy lets out a shuddering sigh and drops.
He hits his shoulder and the side of his head against the corner of the table.
Dean doesn't catch him.
He opens his mouth, staggering one step forward, Sammy on his tongue.
But this isn't Sammy.
This isn't even Sam. At best, it's like Sam twice removed.
He can't let the guy die, though, so he runs forward, falling to his knees and clenching his teeth against the sting of tears when he pulls up Sam's shirt and sees tanned flesh split and peeling back like grotesque lips, starting mid-sternum and ending on his left side after a graceful curve just under his ribs. The cut is too long, the bleeding sluggish but steady. The one on his left arm is even deeper, blood pooling under it already like it's in some great hurry to evacuate Sam's body.
His face is slack, eyelashes dusting pale cheeks, chin misted with a fine spray of blood. Dean doesn't know if it's Sam's or the ghoul's.
Dean jams two fingers against his pulse and finds it fast but still strong under clammy skin.
Sam is huge, but at times like this, lax and silent, he seems terribly small. Dean reaches out, cupping his hand around the side of his little brother's head (looks like he hit his ear on the corner of the table on his way down) and Sam groans and leans into the touch like it's oxygen. That might be what does it. A gravelly, "Fuck, Sammy. Fuck." rasps from his throat before he can stop it, and he gets a low whimper from Sam in response.
He bites down on his lip, telling himself this guy is a soulless killing machine and a total ass to boot, but then he thinks about how he didn't even try to throw punches when Dean hit him, and he wonders which one of them is really heartless here.
Anyway, he's spent most of his life looking out for the guy, and he's wrapped Sam's arm and chest with shreds of the ugly-as-fuck tablecloth and gotten him halfway to his feet before he knows it.
If it looks like a Sammy and quacks like a Sammy...
"Could've called me," he's muttering, low stream-of-consciousness rambling more to distract himself than anything. "Was just outside. Didn't have to take the guy on alone, you idiot, get all torn up. I swear you're just as stupid as Sam, reckless, more reckless even. Christ, why do I even—"
It lasts him to the car, and then he's quiet as the grave while he drives, listening to Sam's breaths and watching the nausea-inducing florals of the tablecloth soak through with red in the rear-view mirror. He should watch the road, but Sam's strewn across the back seat, pale and still, legs elevated for all the good it'll do him.
It's not Sam, he keeps telling himself, but it's not working. It's not all Sam, he mentally amends, trying to quell the panic, but his internal monologue bites back with but is it enough of Sam?
He doesn't know how to answer that question. The guy is a lot like Sam, right down to the memories and the mannerisms, just... less restrained, less caring. In the absence of Sam's characteristic empathy, all he has is the pragmatism and orderliness that got him into law school and kept him at the top of his class. Dean sees all the important parts of Sam there in all the wrong proportions, like the absence of his ability to empathize made his other traits grow to fill him and he just ended up wrong. Pinocchio won't ever be a real boy even if he tries, even if he looks at Dean like he's invaluable and begs for tips on how to be "normal." (Another thing he shares with Sammy—the wanting to be normal. Like Sam—heck, like Dean, too—he won't ever get there.)
Dean tells himself that maybe this guy doesn't matter. Maybe he would kill the dirty bastard in a second, bullet between the eyes with no regrets. This is Sam's body, though, and he's gotta return it to him in good condition.
It's just a few minutes to the hotel, and Dean's fingers itch to keep driving. They saw a sign on the way into town, white on blue, advertising a hospital an exit or so away.
They've got the stuff for a transfusion in the kit in back, though, and hospitals are always the last option, especially since they'll ask where Sam got the wounds and may start investigating before Dean can go back and deal with the body.
He pulls into the hotel and drags the guy out, supporting most of his weight. Sam makes a weak noise in the doorway just before tipping forward, and Dean just barely manages to catch him before he face-plants. He lifts with his back instead of his legs, but household wisdom can go fuck itself right now. He walks Sam to the bathroom with him and steals all the towels before walking Sam out again and letting both the towels and his cement block of a brother drop onto the bed-covers (thankfully a deep maroon).
The wounds open and start bleeding again at a sluggish ooze as Dean peels the tablecloth away. Sam's skin is bloodless pale, eyes only half-open when Dean runs out to grab the kit and a mostly-empty bottle of liquor from his Baby's trunk.
A few seconds away from the wide-open wounds doesn't make them any prettier to look at when he comes back, but he shakes a tablet of oxycodone into one hand (one of only three remaining in the small container prescribed to Dean Walters) and lifts Sam's head.
"This is gonna be absolute hell to stitch," he says. "Take one of these, wash it down with some whiskey."
Sam turns his head.
"This ain't the time to be a hero! Take the goddamn pill."
The fool pinches his lips together and tucks his chin into his shoulder. "M'fine," he says. "Better this way."
"You're an idiot," Dean says, but he doesn't give a shit. It's not his funeral. He pulls gauze and disinfectant and a hook and floss from the kit, setting them on a little black tray that had previously held two stale mints with a Bible tract underneath.
If Sam's not gonna take a swig of the whiskey, Dean sure as hell is. His first and only gulp rakes down his throat like acid and settles him, calming the barely-perceptible trembling in his hands. Good.
He pours disinfectant liberally over the wounds, watches as Sam hisses and arches on the bed. When the pain fades, Sam sighs, soft and almost satisfied.
This guy is just really weird.
The slice across Sam's chest is long and ugly but not as deep or immediately dangerous as the one on his arm. After cleaning it, Dean layers a clean towel over it and asks if Sam can apply pressure. Without waiting for an answer, Dean tugs Sam's arm up. The wound is straight and deep, two or three inches up his forearm.
Dean threads the hook and sets to work. It goes pretty fast and Sam stays pretty still, starting off with an eerie half-smile, which Dean doesn't comment on.
About halfway through, he's looking parchment pale and clammy, sweat beading on his face and neck as his eyes clench shut.
"Too much," he mutters.
"Should've taken the pills, huh?"
Even weak with blood loss and without a soul, Sam replicates his fuck-you scowl perfectly.
"Just sayin'," Dean mutters, and keeps going. The pain gets bad enough when he closes the last stitch and ties it off that Sam bolts up and retches over a deftly-offered trashcan.
Dean offers the pills, but Sam shakes his head again. "I'll be okay. Don't want..." and his voice trails off. "Drugs make everything hazy."
Dean peels the bloody towel off Sam's chest and pours disinfectant on a dry end, using it to scrub some of the blood away. "That's the point, Sam," he says, slow like he's talking to an infant.
"Don't want it."
"Why?"
He might stab the first stitch through with a little more force than necessary, drawing a groan from Sam.
"It helps."
"Helps what?"
"To feel... something. It's not so bad."
"There's good feelings and not-good feelings, and throwing up from pain? That's a bad one, Sam. You wanna feel something, go get yourself an orgasm. Geez. Why am I even—?"
And then it hits him: Sam kind of has. Dean's seen him with no fewer than three chicks since they started this thing, like they were going out of style.
"Shit," he says. "My brother the nympho?"
Sam doesn't dignify that with an answer.
"So soulless-you has a pain kink?" Dean says after a while.
Another scowl.
"Sure looks like it from where I'm sitting."
"It's not a 'kink,'" he breathes out, teeth clenching when the next stitch goes in. "I just... don't dislike it. And drugs make all—all of this—worse. Can't feel anything. Can't think, or focus." He shudders, eyes going hazy, but his gaze sharpens and a high-pitched noise of pain pushes through his lips when Dean pulls another stitch through and follows it deftly with the next.
Dean supposes he shouldn't be surprised. Sam (regular-Sam) was always thinking about really deep, profound shit. It makes sense that this version of him would be the same.
He gets only halfway through the slice on Sam's chest before he has to help him sit up for another round over the trash can. He bites his lip against the urge to offer the pills again and keeps going. Whether from blood loss or pain, Sam's barely conscious by the end of it. He's just awake enough that he twines his fingers in Dean's shirt and won't let go, not even when Dean explains that he needs to clean their supplies and get Sam some water and take a shower to wash Sam's blood off him. He holds the shirt in a death grip (Dean shudders at the thought, but Sam is alive, damn it), and short of taking his shirt off, there's not much he can do.
He lies down next to Sam for just a bit. For Sam. Because even the soulless dick-wad apparently needs cuddles (and Dean's never gonna let that one go, gonna start in on the teasing as soon as Sam can stand up straight, maybe before).
So maybe this guy is a creepy dick of goliathan proportions, the kind who'll let Dean or anyone else be hurt if it'll help the cause. Maybe he's a heartless bastard who wouldn't be worth the bullet it would take to end him.
Maybe.
But as the huge lunk of a man, barely-conscious, scoots just a little bit closer to Dean in his sleep and mutters something that might even be his brother's name, Dean realizes, with a certain measure of alarm, that he doesn't quite hate the guy.
He's seen worse. They've ganked worse. Hell, he isn't even as bad as a lot of hunters they've run across.
Dean can work with this until they get Sammy back. Probably.
He falls asleep like that for just a little while and wakes to find Sam's head smushed against the dip in his shoulder and his big elbow jabbing Dean in the gut, and he must be awake, but he's as quiet and still as if he were sleeping, breathing slow and even against Dean's collarbone, which—yeah—is kind of weird, but he dozes off again before he can think about it.
Sam gets a fever in the early hours, as likely from the stress of the night as from anything else, and Dean makes him drink some Coke from the vending machine—gotta restore some fluids—and as much water as he can stand. He gets Sam a cool cloth and doesn't mention pills. It's gone by morning, and the robot is on his feet and being generally flat-line boring and creepy as all hell with occasional streaks of snark and hisses of pain when he tries to do something too ambitious.
Dean catches him touching the stitches later that day, applying just a bit of pressure with his fingertips (clinical, curious). Dean watches Sam, and Sam catches Dean watching him, but neither of them says a thing.
He's not Sam, but he's not not-Sam, and Dean supposes he gets it, a bit.
He doesn't think back on what happened with Veritas, but he doesn't look over his shoulder quite as much, either.
Dean can work with this, at least for a little while.