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Sam’s not an idiot, as much as the real idiots might think he is.
“Drive faster, dammit!” Dean’s shouting from somewhere in the back seat, and Sam bites back the urge to shout that upping the Impala another ten miles over the speed limit, one they’re already most certainly breaking, will probably get them pulled over, which happens not to be an option they can afford to pick, at the moment. Getting pulled over will waste time, time that’s valuable.
Sam and Dean know better than most the true value of time, especially when they’re so pressed for it. Sam allows himself to speed up the car another three miles per hour.
Anyway. Sam’s not an idiot; that is, in observation. It’s blatantly obvious that Sam’s intelligent, brain made for studying and learning, drawing in information and connecting dots before providing that information in a metaphorical present, complete with a bow, ready for use. Sam’s always been smart, and while the other two may assume he’s not entirely observant of the world around him, Sam’s not as oblivious as they’ve begun to believe. They’ve almost seemed to allow themselves to let their heavy guards down, recently, as if the personification of Darkness itself on the lose is enough to consume Sam’s attention so thoroughly that he has no room to realize what’s really going on between his brother and best friend.
Sam’s not ignorant to the stares, to the way blue and green irises flee from each other’s glance, pupils refocusing on items of less depth in nature. when Sam’s own look up to catch the private moment shared between gazes. He’s not unknowing of the way bodies seem to gravitate toward each other, always lingering, never touching, as if a barrier were there to protect the quiet fragility of the moment in front of the younger Winchester. He’s never missed the way they whisper, sometimes, on a case when they need to speak low about things regular people don’t need to know, or after hours, when they think Sam’s gone to sleep and can’t hear when the silences aren’t awkward, but tender, soft. Either way, in any situation, their heads tilt too close to be proper, really, too close in a way that seems to project that it’s not the closest they’ve been, a sign that they’ve crossed the lingering last inches to press into something beyond… platonic, finally, something that’s been between them so long that Sam’s almost become aggravated with watching that something fester and boil, never tended to, never acknowledged after so, so long.
There have always been the little things, but Sam sees the more obvious ones as well, and sometimes he wonders if the two of them really think he’s so dumb as to miss things that are right there in front of him, especially in the past few weeks. Every touch between them is either a forceful hand or a tender caress of fingers over a cheek, and that’s always what caring is like, passionate anger and quiet affection, fists to faces and hands cupping cheeks, malleable and unyielding all at once; there must be other touches, too, when Sam’s not around, when their secret can be kept quiet and precious, when more intimate planes can be discovered and traced, mapped. There’s the things they say, sometimes, words that come from their mouths that sounds too intimate for normal conversation, words that run too deep for the two of them to spit out in front of others, words like I need you and I’ll watch over you, so intimate, like the words are long synonyms for a specific set of words, just three, that are too terrible, yet, to say, even if they exist so potently in the air between the two of them. There are things they do, like searching days and nights through hell’s backdoor just for the other, or failing for righteousness, seeing what humans see below the pedestal of power always lingering in the clouds above, finding a reason to be so mortal for just one person.
There are few that have done such things, in their lifetimes; fewer would give up so much for just another person, for just another beating heart and body of warm flesh, their own or borrowed. It’s astounding, but Sam’s not at all surprised, though he thinks his brother and friend might be, if they knew he knew. If they knew that he’d spent so long knowing, that… recent developments , well, have just furthered his knowledge.
“You fucking missed the turn!” is the scream that knocks Sam back into reality, two seconds too late to see that he really has missed the turn into the ER parking lot. Dean’s heaving with anger and fear, and Sam’s eyes take only an instant to eye his brother in the rearview mirror before he makes a U-turn so sharp that it’ll probably burn tread marks into the gravel of the road. Dean’s face is still smeared with blood, just like his hands and clothes; some of it is his own, and some of it is the blood of a rogue hellhound, it’s invisible body left to rot in the far acres of an abandoned field some twenty miles away.
Most of the blood, however, is Cas’. Sam’s never seen an angel bleed, not really, not like this, with Cas’ middle and shoulder torn open and his blood sliding from his unhealing body and running in rivers onto the backseat’s leather covering. Sam can’t imagine the stains ever fully coming out, not really, and that’s a worse thought than the mere idea of his friend’s blood leaving the very vessel that needs it most. It seems so bizarre, this whole thing, Sam speeding down the highway while his brother straddles Cas’ thighs and holds his own coat to Cas’ stomach, staunching the wound to Cas’ shoulder with Sam’s torn jacket, screaming at the angel to fight, goddammit, stay with me! Don’t you fucking dare leave! The Darkness is in the world, Death’s gone, God is just as absent as ever, and in the midst of so many problems, so much tension and suffering, Cas is dying, again, from a hunt gone wrong, so terribly wrong. It’s so fucking anticlimactic, so fucking ridiculous that it’s almost laughable, but no one finds it funny.
Angels are supposed to be invincible, invulnerable; no one ever told the Winchesters that hell hounds are an exception to that rule. Cas never told them what danger he’d be in. Didn’t tell them that the hellhound would rip into his body like scissors through paper when Cas threw himself in front of Dean’s dazed form in fierce protection like an instinct, a reaction that seemed so raw and normal, like blinking or breathing, putting himself in the line of fire, skin and muscle shredding under the monster’s terrible claws to protect Dean from the same fate. Dean’s going to rag on Cas like never before when he’s better (and he will be, because Cas is Sam’s friend and Cas is Dean’s-Dean’s person , and Cas doesn’t die, not really, not like this, not forever).
They’ve only just gotten their chance, his brother and his brother’s angel. Sam can see it, can see how new the embrace is, but how accepted, how finally the rotating, jagged puzzle pieces fit, make a picture that is complete, even if stained and torn up in places. After so long, years on opposite sides of a non-existent barrier stronger than any stone wall, there’s hope, and it’s just too unfair, out of so many fucking unfair things in their lives, that the one person in the galaxy that could known Dean so well inside and out would be ripped from them, from Dean, from the person who needs Cas most.
It can’t happen, Sam has to believe, as he swerves up to the ER door and throws himself from the car, dashing inside, screaming for help while Dean near drags Cas from the backseat of the Impala, the angel unconscious in Dean’s shaking arms, blood trailing along the payment after Cas like bread crumbs after Hansel and Gretel. This can’t be happening. Not now.
After so long. After so many years, so much suffering, so much heartache spanning between them, between Dean and Cas, this can’t happen. It’s just unfair. It’s too unfair this time.
For once, Sam wishes he knew nothing at all.
~*~
He and Dean sit in the waiting room for a long, long time.
Well, Sam sits. Dean’s too busy pacing, stalking back and forth, shoes leaving flecks of dirt and dried blood where his feet stomp against the tiled floor. They’ve already been questioned by the police, statements matching up -- “freak accident, some kind of animal”-- and now all there’s left to do is wait in the lobby, now adorning clean, starkly white tee shirts and gray sweatpants the hospital staff had graciously donated them so they weren’t sitting in the lobby coated in several layers of grime and blood. Sam and Dean’s coats were unsalvageable, but there’s not a look of regret on either face when they dump the coats into the large dumpster around the side of the ER building; unfortunately, they can’t do the same with their memories.
Sam’s restless too, legs bouncing without rest, fingers knitting and unknitting, rubbing at his jaw a few times, his body unable to contain or control his anxious state, but Dean’s so much worse, and Sam won’t argue that as his eyes awkwardly follow his brother’s angry, desperate, terrified strides. Dean walks nine tiles, turns, walks them back, then turns and repeats, over and over, unable to find rest, to find any form of stillness, too riled up and jittery, and Sam honestly can’t blame him. How can you blame someone, after all, when the one person they need more than anyone else is lying in some cold, sterile hospital bed some yards away, separated from the people that have always tried to be at his side, that have been brothers, and more, to him? There’s no blame. Just uncomfortable sympathy. Sam refrains from calling it pity.
He doesn’t want to imagine what’ll happen if Cas goes, possibly forever, this time. Cas has always had an uncomfortable way of coming back to life, of leaving the Winchesters in loss of another friend, only to always return so abruptly, throwing the brothers’ metaphorical ships off course, into raging waters of discourse and, usually, more problems than they’re already dealing with. Sam would take that over this, though, over the reality that they could be facing, that maybe this time Cas wouldn’t come back, would burn out of existence completely, irreversible, irretrievable, while James Novak’s body rotted six feet under with his possessor’s name on the gravestone adorning his mound. Sam worries for Cas, worries like crazy; “I’d die for him.” he’d once said, and he meant it still, even after everything.
But Sam worries more for his brother.
Sam doesn’t know what death is like for angels, doesn’t know if Cas’ grace and soul will make it to Heaven, evaporate, or maybe end up in some place far worse than either of those. He’d never had the chance to really ask Cas what he remembered of dying, over and over again; Sam ignores the traitorous voice in his head that reminds him that, after today, there may be a million things he never gets to ask Cas about again.
In any case, no matter where Cas ends up, there will be loss, a hard one, and Sam can’t imagine what the pain of that permanent loss would do to Dean. There’s an obvious something in Dean and Cas’ friendship now, something too intimate and careful to be anything more than a quiet relationship, something hidden and precious, built on years of trust and foundation of emotion and care, and while they may not think Sam knows about it, Sam’s, in reality, too deep in the knowledge of his brother and best friend’s newfound union to be anything but fully aware of it, maybe even more so than the two men themselves. It’s not necessarily an enjoyable standpoint, especially now, but Sam would rather know than be totally and utterly oblivious.
Sam eyes Dean as his brother stalks tirelessly past him for the one-hundredth-and-seventy-third time. Dean’s face is empty, cold, and that says more than the sheen of moisture in Dean’s eyes does. Once again the barrier, invisible and unyielding, is up, shifted from the space between Cas and Dean, now almost useless in that place, to rest in Dean’s head, pushing emotion away as much as possible to guard Dean from what horrors and pains lay on the other side of the barrier’s wall. For as unbreakable as the wall has always seemed, however, there are cracks, holes and nooks and crannies, and those are the most painful things, the slivers of agony and scorn and anger and temptation that slip through the wall and invade thoughts and memories, tainting color into sepia, light into darkness. Dean emotionless is worse than a Dean with tears on his cheeks, or anger and pain shrieking from his lips, or fists flying in a passion of fury and desperation to break something else so that it would be even with his own shattered self. It makes Sam ever edgier, ever the worse in his worry.
Across the room a janitor is mopping up the blood that drizzled from Cas’ body in a long trail when Dean had carted the angel’s limp and unconscious body into the ER near an hour and a half ago, the trail only ending where nurses had pulled Cas onto a gurney and vanished into the back hallways of the ICU with their friend, an oxygen mask taped onto his face and wads of sheets shoved against Cas’ wounds, still salivating with blood, leaving the Winchesters to wait in such impatience, impatience that’s practically full blown agony, enough to make them both restless enough that Sam’s sure they’d both like to yank out their guns and blow holes in the wall just to relieve stress.
Being arrested, however, isn’t an option. Especially not now. They’ll just have to control themselves (at least, for the moment. Sam has no doubt that something that’s not the hellhound will be destroyed under Dean’s anger and terrified hands before the night is done).
Sam tries to focus on matters than feel less stressing, but when have the Winchester ever experienced something not stressful? Thinking of Cas makes Sam antsy and anxious, but thinking of the Darkness, the infections, the Devil, spurns Sam’s guilt, his desperation, his fear. He swallows, clenching his fists to keep his trembling fingers from quivering. Dean’s the opposite, still, hands tugging on his clothes or his hair, yanking through it, arms crossing and hanging, or going stiff while his hands ball up in frustration and fear. His legs move ever more restlessly, move only with the intent to keep moving, to move and move until there’s a solution, as if his mere pacing could make future events come faster. Dean’s always been like that: ever moving, never stopping, running from things too hard to face, to understand.
Sam wonders suddenly if Cas could make Dean stand still.
“Winchester?” chimes a voice from the ICU doors, and Sam’s not even up before Dean is bounding over to the petite nurse standing there, in a white coat, papers in hand. There’s emotion finally crossing Dean’s face in a rage of desperation and fear, and Sam latches onto it, wondering if those will be, for a long time after, the last emotions he sees out of his brother. Sam follows Dean, as he has for so long, quickly, eyes as wide as his brother’s on the nurse, seeking the answer he and Dean need. She seems to understand, opening her mouth before Dean can even demand answers.
“Your brother’s going to be fine.”
Sam almost collapses in total, boundless relief, and Dean looks the same, if multiplied in intensity, stiff shoulders slumping, eyes huge, hands shaking at his sides. His breath’s coming in hard, terrified pants. The nurse gives them both a look that’s all reassurance.
“If you’ll wait a little longer, we’ll be ready to allow you both back in a few minutes,” the nurse says, and she’s gone again, without another word, through the ICU doors.
From the corner of his eyes, Sam sees Dean slump back into a chair, shoulders trembling in relief, face in his hands in a long moment of vulnerability. Sam looks away, allowing his brother the time to let that wall fall down, emotions swarming in. For once, Sam doesn’t invade, seeking answers from signs and inferences.
He already gets it.
~*~
“You should have told me,” is the first thing Sam hears from Dean’s mouth, and he pauses behind the curtain separating Cas’ area from the rest of the ICU, cup of water Cas had asked for cold and perspiring in his big hands. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, Cas?”
“Dean, I--”
“You scared me to fucking death,” Dean’s voice hisses from the area beyond the fabric where Sam hides, listening to something that he’s probably not supposed to (he knows a lot more than he should anyway, however, he has to reason). “Do you have any fucking idea what-what that did to me? Huh?”
“Dean--”
“You could have died, Cas!” Dean snarls, his tone flinch-worthy. “You could be fucking dead right now! What the fuck do you have to say for yourself, huh?”
Cas’ voice is tiny, and Sam almost groans at the angel’s attempted response. “I mean, it wouldn’t really be the first ti--”
“If you finish that sentence, Cas, I’ll fucking kill you myself,” Dean growls. “This isn’t a joke.”
“Dean,” Cas says, sounding tired, even more tired now than he had when he’d first woken, just an hour or so after the Winchesters had been let back into the ICU. Somewhere below the gown the hospital had put him in, there are stitches holding his oh-so-fragile mortality together, bare threads keeping life from death, and while those are hidden, invisible to the eye, Cas’ face, his voice, his touch, holds all the pain, all the ache from his near-death experience. “Dean, I’m fine.”
“Oh no you’re fucking not.”
“I’m not dead,” Cas insists, altering how much of the situation his words encompass. “I had to, Dean.”
“You didn’t have to fucking do anything!” Dean snarls, almost too loudly for their angry but still muted conversation. “What you did was stupid!”
“It was going to hurt you, Dean, I--”
“You should have let it, idiot! You ass!”
Cas’ tone drops an octave or two, deep, low, a hiss of his own, utterly serious. “I would never have let it, Dean. Don’t you act like there was a choice.”
“Of course there was a fucking choice! You made a fucking choice!”
“No, I didn’t!” Cas spits back. “It’s not a choice, Dean! Not for me!” There’s a bare moment where Cas forces air to crawl back into his lungs, a slight wheeze from the ache that his wounds provide in his riled up state. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, quieter. “Not when it comes to you. It’s not a choice for me.”
“I won’t let you-- let you sacrifice yourself for me,” Dean hisses back. “I won’t let you do this again. It was too close this time.”
“You can’t stop me, Dean,” Cas says quietly, but truthfully. “I can’t just-just not protect you.”
“You can try.”
“I wouldn’t even if I could, Dean. You know you would do the same for me.”
There’s a moment where Dean doesn’t speak, and Sam almost wonders if his brother is really, truly flustered. “It-it’s not the same thing, Cas.”
“It is, and you know it, Dean Winchester,” Cas insists. “As much as you think that it’s not, it is. You can’t convince me that I’ll ever be more important than you, and vice versa with you.”
“You’re so much more important to me, Cas,” Dean says, and this time his voice is a whisper, something soft and small; Sam could count the number of times on one hand that he’d heard that voice from Dean, and still have fingers leftover. There’s a few quiet, padding steps, then the sound of Dean’s voice, again. “You’re more important to me than my life is ever gonna fucking be. You can’t convince me that I’m more important because you’re-you’re one of the only important things in my fucked up, piece-of-shit life.”
Dean’s admission is so utterly heartfelt, so sudden, that Sam feels embarrassment creep up the back of his neck. It’s less than guilt, really, but more of a direct discomfort in hearing something he really, really shouldn’t have. That’s a lot to say, considering Sam’s fierce insistence that he’s not oblivious to those idiots’ relationship, and seems to be proving that by just diving deeper into their relationship, but this is different, hearing words so intimate like that out of Dean’s own mouth, in his voice. Sam feels more like an intruder, but he can’t pull back, too locked in now in their business to yank himself out of it. Selfish, definitely, but Sam’s too busy focusing back in on the conversation.
“Don’t ask me to accept it. You can’t. I can’t accept-- can’t accept you so fucking willing to put yourself in front of me. Please, Cas.”
“It’s still the reality, Dean, even if you can’t accept it,” Cas whispers back, his voice just as awkwardly, honestly tender. “I’m always going to protect you. I have to. I want to.”
“Cas, please,” Dean hisses again, his voice sounding noticeably thicker. “I thought I lost you. I had to-to hold your stomach together so you wouldn’t fucking bleed out, and you-you were out, I-I couldn’t get you to hear me--”
“Dean--”
“And then I had to sit outside for hours,” Dean goes on in a broken tone. “I had to wait out there, and all I could think about was that you were-were gone, that you were fucking dead, and-and I couldn’t-- Cas, I can’t--”
“I can’t either, Dean,” Cas cuts Dean’s stumbling off, voice a whisper just as desperate as Dean’s. “I can’t either, Dean. I had to save you because-because living without you, it… it’s just too much, Dean. You have to understand that. You have to realize.”
“I do, but-but Cas--”
“No, Dean. Never,” Cas breathes. “No. I’m-I’m always going to save you. I drug you out of Hell, Dean, and I’ll keep dragging you out.” It’s so quiet for a moment that Sam can hear Cas swallow. “I’m not much of an angel, Dean, but I-I will never stop watching over you.”
“You’re my angel, Cas,” Dean breathes, tender, ever softer. “You’ll always be my angel. Cas, I… I--”
“I know,” Cas whispers, and this time his voice sounds thick. “Me too.” He says something else, something in his native tongue, but Sam gets the gist of it’s meaning.
Sam almost feels himself flush, but he’s locked on, now, listening as words fall into silence once more, spanning a second, ten, twenty. At sixty seconds Sam risks twitching the curtain only slightly, getting a glimpse of the area beyond.
Dean’s at Cas’ side, somewhere half standing and half sat on the edge of Cas’ hospital bed, and at the moment he’s got Cas’ hands clutched to his biceps, his own clasping gingerly at Cas’ waist while he’s practically shoving Cas back into his sterile pillows with the kiss they’re sharing, careful but desperate, heads tilted to get ever closer, ever deeper into each other. There’s a near-transparent line where a tear’s trailed down Cas’ cheek, but neither of them seem to care, lips moving together with a need for the other, desperate, wanting. Sam can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed; the moment’s too real, too beautiful for it.
Well, that is, until Cas makes a certain noise because Dean’s is practically shoving his tongue down Cas’ throat, and then Sam finally flushes and puts the curtain back in place, red-faced as he moves out of the room, sipping at the cup of water himself and trying to pretend that he re-eally didn’t see that.
For the second time that day, Sam wishes he knew nothing at all, if only to not remember that moment.
Well… mostly wishes . Sam’s not an idiot, after all. Even if he’s the only one that actually realizes it.