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You watch Dean carefully cradle the girl in his arms. You’ve seen your brother with scores of women countless times, usually in bars and angling to get laid or consoling shaken-up victims after hunts, but you’ve never seen Dean this tender.
Dean reaches out, strokes matted, stringy hair from her dirt-smeared face. His touch is light, almost paternal.
“C’mon, dude,” you say softly. “Let’s get you some help.”
You pull the Impala into a parking space near the entrance of the local hospital. The girl is unmoving, quiet in the backseat. She’s still breathing but it’s incredibly weak, all rattles and hitches that makes you hold your breath, waiting to see if she’ll inhale or exhale. Dean’s curled up in the rear passenger seat, the girl’s head resting on his thigh. He looks like crap, you think, cutting the engine.
You twist, reaching over the back of his seat and shake Dean’s knee. Your normally hyper vigilant brother rouses slowly, blinking in the neon lights that spell out EMER CY R OM.
“We’re at the ER. You good? You need to go in?” You don’t think Dean’s had as much blood drained from him as the girl. He’s weak and exhausted, but it doesn’t seem like anything a good night’s sleep and a truckload of electrolytes won’t fix. Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Dean shakes his head. “’M good.” The words slur together. “Jus’ tired…” His eyes slip shut.
“You okay? You sure you don’t need to be checked out?”
Dean cracks open one green-hazel eye, shakes his head. “’M good. ’M okay. Gimme a second.” His voice is stronger, the words more articulate. He closes his eyes and exhales sharply, clearly gathering himself.
There’s a moment’s pause, and then he hauls himself upright and lifts the girl’s head off his leg. Easing out of the car, he reaches back in and slides her out carefully, picking her up in his arms and cradling her over-the-threshold style.
Dean staggers, shifting his hold on the girl, and you don’t comment as you shut the rear passenger door behind him. “You want me to take her?” You ask softly, slowing your stride and walking abreast.
Dean shakes his head, jaw clenched in determination. He adjusts his shoulder and her head lolls against it, coming to rest against his clavicle. She lets out a low whimper that could be anything and winds her fist loosely in Dean’s shirt.
You enter the double doors of the ER and make your slow way to the front desk. The nurse on duty looks at you, her eyes widening, mouth opening in shock, and, almost before you can process what’s happening, there’s a swarm of activity around you and the girl is pulled from Dean’s grip and strapped to a gurney.
Then it is all bright lights and too many rapid-fire questions to which neither of you have the answers. You find yourselves barricaded into the waiting room by a pair of swinging steel doors and Dean’s explaining to the nurse — this one in Minnie Mouse scrubs — for what feels like the tenth time that you don’t know who the girl is but you’d found her like that in a warehouse and you notice his words are beginning to slur badly.
“Thank you,” she says and informs you the police are on their way for further questions before turning on her heel and disappearing through the doors, abandoning you without a backward glance, already forgotten.
You look over at your brother and Dean looks terrible, pale and shaky. “C’mon. There’s nothing else for us to do here. We gotta split. Let’s go home.”
Dean blinks, licks his lips, brow furrowing in confusion.
“C’mon.” You place your palm on Dean’s shoulder blade and gently steer him across the room.
You’ve barely gone ten feet when Dean loses all fuel. He halts in his tracks, shoulders slumping, his face chalk-white and glistening with sweat. You grip Dean’s upper arm when he opens and shuts his mouth a few times, looking like that oxygen-deprived, overheated carnival goldfish you’d won that one time in Iowa and owned for all of five minutes before it went belly-up.
“Dude… Shit.” You glance in either direction and see no one in your immediate vicinity. The room is mostly deserted save for the half-dozen or so potential patients grouped near the Nurses’ Station. “Sit down,” you say, hauling your wavering brother to the nearest chair and lower him into it, pushing Dean’s head between his knees.
You squat on the floor, your palm on the back of Dean’s neck, listening as your brother tries to pull in air. You need to vamoose before the nurses decide to call the cops on you but you aren’t going to push Dean either. After a long moment, Dean straightens and you withdraw your hand as he leans his head back against the wall behind him, eyes closed, his breath a bit shallow, too fast. He still looks like a bag of talc exploded in his face, but he doesn’t seem like he’s about keel over anymore.
“You good?” You ask and you don’t miss the tight grimace that pulls at Dean’s features.
“Head hurts,” Dean admits softly, shivering.
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” you keep your voice low, shrugging out of your tan jacket and draping it across your brother’s back. Dean tugs it around his shoulders but doesn’t thread his arms through the sleeves. “You had a lot sucked out of you. You okay?”
The question earns you a tentative nod.
“Okay. Good. I’m going to the soda machine right there—” you point to the opposite corner of the large waiting room “—to see if it has any Gatorade. Sit tight.”
You push yourself up and make use of your long legs, getting there in record time. When you peruse the selection, you see you’re in luck for once. There’s red and purple Gatorade and you buy one of each.
You’re back at Dean’s side and twisting open one of the bottles. “Bottoms up.”
“W-why are you being so nice to me?” Dean mumbles, his words running together all low and soft, his eyes huge and wet and bewildered in his face.
“What…?”
Dean blinks, shakes his head, as though to dislodge a fly and his walls are slammed back into place, all visible vulnerability gone. “Nothing. Just dehydration. Gimme that.”
You press the bottle into his hand, making sure Dean doesn’t drop it.
Holding the plastic bottle with both hands like a toddler, Dean grimaces with distaste as he lifts it to his lips, tilts it slowly, and gulps down the lurid red beverage. You try not to think about the bags of blood dangling in the warehouse. Dean pauses often and, five minutes later, the small bottle is empty and he looks steadier.
You take the empty bottle from him and set it on the scratched, scuffed linoleum beneath his chair. You’re surprised no one’s come after you yet, but you aren’t going to push your luck.
“You good to go?” You rise to your feet.
Dean nods, taking your proffered hand, and heaves himself upright. “Yeah. Yeah I’m good. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“C’mon, Dean, we’re at the motel,” you shake your brother’s form for the second time in three-quarters of an hour. In the brief moments since you’ve dashed out of the car to extend your stay for another couple of nights, Dean’s somehow wedged himself in the front seat, folding himself up awkwardly, head pillowed on the inside of his bent elbow, shoulder jammed under the wheel.
“Gerroff.” He peers up at you, his attempt at a glare completely missing the mark.
“You can sleep in the room. In a real bed.” You gently, persistently nudge him upright, sliding back in behind the wheel.
It takes a minute to find an empty space in front of your room and another couple to bully Dean out of the car and into the motel room. Dean’s sluggish, feet dragging, but he moves under his own steam, batting away your hands.
You herd your brother past the beds and into the bathroom, ignoring the steady stream of murmured complaint coming from Dean’s mouth, and get him set up to at least brush his teeth and strip out of the jeans and dirty layers.
You go back out, unmake Dean’s bed, pulling back the covers, and set out the bottle of purple Gatorade for later.
“How you doing in there?” you call out, digging through your brother’s duffle for a fresh shirt.
There’s no answer. Forcing your way into the bathroom, you see that Dean’s braced heavily against the bathroom sink, half-asleep and frowning confusedly at the facecloth and toothbrush you'd set out for him.
You sigh and go to your brother. “Hey,” you say softly.
Dean turns to you and blinks blearily. He’s barely holding on. “Sammy?”
“Yeah. C’mon, man, let’s get you cleaned up and then you can sleep, okay?” you keep your voice slow and soothing, aligning your pacing with Dean’s processing levels. The guy’s been tied up with blood leaching from him for hours. How he managed to pull himself loose and stick the djinn is beyond you.
It’s because little brother was in danger, a voice reminds you.
You pick up your brother’s toothbrush and squeeze a stripe of sparkly, deep blue Crest onto the chewed-up bristles. New toothbrushes, you add to your mental shopping list as you press it into Dean’s hand. “You remember how to do this?”
Dean gives you a sullen glare, inserts the instrument into his mouth, and moves it back and forth sluggishly.
You shake your head, smiling a little as you pick up the threadbare facecloth while simultaneously turning on the taps. You hold the thin, virtually see-through fabric square under the running faucet, making sure the water is warm, neither too hot nor too cool, and rub a bar of soap across it. You remember thousands of similar nights growing up, when you were either exhausted or too young and Dean doing this — wetting the facecloth, preparing the toothbrush. You glance over at Dean and swallow forcefully, realizing that your big brother had been little more than a kid himself.
Dean spits sudsy foam into the rust-stained sink and blinks at you, pale-blue paste smeared off to the side of his mouth. It makes him look all of five.
You hand him the soapy facecloth. “Wipe your face. You’re filthy. And gross.”
You’re just about to drift off when you hear Dean snuffle in his sleep. There’s a moment of silence, then a mumble that sounds an awful lot like Mom. Dean goes quiet again and then, in a smaller voice, cracking with pain, Mom. His voice breaks on the second m, dragging it out a bit and it sounds almost like a chopped-off Mommy. It’s the endearment that rattles you more than anything else. Dean has never called out for your mom. Not as a child; not any of the times he’s landed in the hospital, even as a teenager; not when he’s endured field surgeries; not even when he’s had infected wounds that resulted in raging fevers over a hundred-and-four; not when he nearly died. Neither time.
You raise yourself on one elbow, turning towards Dean. Your sibling is asleep, lying on his belly, one hand under his pillow, probably curled around the hilt of his hunting knife — the Winchester equivalent of a teddy bear. “Dean?” you call out tentatively, unsure how to approach him.
There’s silence.
Then, softly: “’Ammy?”
“Yeah?”
A sigh of air. A hitch. And you know what Dean wants, what he won’t — can’t — put voice to even in the throes of exhausted sleep.
“I’m not going anywhere.” You roll onto your back, crossing your arms under your head, and look up at the cracks in the ceiling. You’re rattled by Dean’s unspoken admission and know you won’t sleep the rest of the night — not as long as Dean needs you to lie guard. “We’re okay. I gotcha. Just sleep.”