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dime_liora“The difference
between being bound
and being connected
is perception.”
― Olivia Barnes, Bramble
“Dean?”
Dean looks up from the stack of books to see the shop’s owner staring at him thoughtfully. Mr. Campbell is ancient, and Dean legitimately cannot understand how this old man got by before Dean showed up. It’s kind of impressive he doesn’t blow away when the books close or the door opens.
“Yes sir?”
Mr. Campbell smiles, an ancient, wrinkled apple pulling itself up in the middle, and totters three steps before sitting on a bench beside Dean.
“You should be back at the hospital. Didn’t you say your brother was going to start the exercises today?”
“Yeah. But they’re not the serious ones yet, they’re the little test ones. And he’s gonna be the grouchiest son of a-guy you’ve ever seen.”
It was like cursing in front of America’s great-grandpa, and Dean ducked his head so he couldn’t see the sparkling of Campbell’s eyes as he slotted the books into their right spots.
“Will you tell me a little about him?”
“Why?” Dean’s hand pauses, a copy of some historical text dangling in his fingertips.
“’Memory believes before knowing remembers.’”
“What does that mean?”
Mr. Campbell is smiling mischievously when Dean looks up, a look that Dean has come to recognize in his time working with his new boss.
“You’d have to ask Faulkner, I just read them I don’t explain them.”
“Well tell my brother that.” He mutters it more than says it, trying to figure out where this next one goes. Half of the reason it seems Campbell likes to watch him work is just that the old man loves to see Dean try to classify things based entirely on the book jacket. His percentage of accuracy is really not that bad all things considered.
“Your brother like reading?”
Dean laughs, once, thinking of the digital spark notes.
“Yeah. He loves it.”
Campbell smiles. He gets up slowly and starts puttering around. A small stack begins to collect on the counter as Campbell moves from shelf to shelf in the contained, little store. Eventually there are six books there, varying thickness and age, and Campbell looks over them humming softly to himself before he turns back to Dean.
“There we go. Take these back to the hospital with you and give them to him for me? From one bibliophile to another.”
Dean blinks, once, twice, and then tries to smile through the sting of pride and hunger that suddenly rushes up in him. It’s familiar, he’s done this before more than once.
“Thanks, but I’d rather my money go to what’s important.”
Campbell takes a step forward, another, wobbling on the third. Dean moves fast, always fast, and has his elbows before the old man can even try to reach for a counter or shelf that might not hold him.
“I said gift, Dean.”
“I don’t understand.”
Campbell’s eyes go soft, sad, and Dean bites back that shame again. He’s used to tasting it, but it’s been a while.
“Tell me more about your brother Sam, who likes reading and taking care of everyone else before himself. Tell me about Sam who is guilty and full of regret like an old man on his deathbed. Tell me more about the brother you love so much, because I like to see your face light up. Because it reminds me of a different time and place, when I had more than I have now and infinitely less. Tell me about your brother and then, because the happy stories you share about him make me happy too, give him a stack of books to enjoy and let me enjoy that vicariously through you. Can you do that for me, Dean?”
And yeah. He can.
“When we were kids he was always reading. Just like. Way more than he had to and way more than I ever would have thought was necessary. And it ended up being like a lightning rod effect for everyone around him. We moved around a lot. He didn’t make the kind of friends that buffer you from that. And I used to get so mad all the time. I mean, I had to be careful because I’m older and you can’t just beat the shit out of little kids. Sorry. Stuff.”
Campbell smiles again, that wrinkled apple grin.
“I know that word.”
Dean laughs. It’s unexpected.
“So, I taught him. I taught him how to stay away from them, and how to handle them, and I would occasionally handle them myself if it was bad enough because sometimes you gotta break the rules for family. And I thought I was so fu-freaking tough and big and he was so small. But you know, when you get overconfident you get knocked down. So, this one day I was in class, and I got called on to answer something. I didn’t do the reading, I didn’t care, but this teacher just went to town on me. Spent like fifteen minutes telling the class how useless I was. And then he asked me how I ever thought I’d graduate if I was that stupid and I said I wasn’t planning on graduating and he started laughing. And everybody else laughed too. And that was when I dropped out of high school.”
His boss isn’t smiling anymore. The old man is leaning heavily on the counter, his face turned down and serious. Serious in a way Dean really hadn’t expected or wanted to see. But he can’t stop now.
“Our dad didn’t care because he planned on me taking over the family business and it didn’t require a diploma. But Sam. Sammy took it really personal. I didn’t know that at the time, but he did. Then Sam makes me take him to three stores to get all the paper and tape he says he needs for some huge project. And next thing I know I’m driving him to school and there are signs and a billboard. All this sh-stuff he assembled together on buildings, on marquees, and then on one of those drunk driving billboards. They lead to the school and they’re all around it. And every one has the guy’s personal info on it along with statements. And they’re all true. He’s cheating on his wife, he verbally abuses his students, he wears a bunny suit on the weekends that isn’t Easter related. There are pictures, big images put together from printer paper. I don’t even know how he did it. He never admitted it was him. But I knew. And this…hole in my chest I didn’t want to admit was there closed up. It’s wasn’t even my pride really that was hurt it was something deeper, and Sammy fixed it without me ever asking or even understanding what it was.”
When Dean looks up from his task Campbell’s lip is quivering. Dean averts his eyes and gives the older man a moment to get himself together before he looks back.
His boss digs around and puts a book in the center of the stack intended for Sam with a look on his face that Dean can’t read. He doesn’t care for it.
“He sounds amazing. You should head on home, Dean. Take your brother the books. He needs them.”
And there’s something, something buried in the bottom of Campbell’s tone that Dean knows he should pay more attention to but now he’s a little embarrassed that he picked that story and told it to this man. Not even really sure why, and not willing to stick around and ask himself while still under Campbell’s gaze.
Instead he thanks Campbell, slips the books into the bag he brings to and from work with sandwiches from the hospital, and makes the short hike back to his brother.
Sam has finished what feels like a thousand years of torture but is really just an hour of the beginning of physiotherapy. The last thirty minutes was a massage, which you might think would have been easier but it was not.
He hates Jorgenson. Dean is coming back any minute and the guy is telling Sam how great he did and all Sam can think of is how the guy just reeks of desperation. The reason he wants Sam to like him so fucking bad Sam can’t begin to imagine.
“-and really you should be proud. You’re doing the best you possibly can and a lot of people aren’t willing to push themselves that hard.”
Dean walks in on that, his bag hanging lower than when he left and his eyebrows raised as he takes in the scene in front of him. Jorgenson begins extolling all the progress Sam has made in one night and how strong and focused he is. Sam is just staring at Dean’s sagging bag.
He kind of hates how Dean is walking to work. He knows why, because if he doesn’t Baby will be too far from Sam for Sam to flee, but at the moment everything is too far for Sam to flee even with the wheelchair. Better Dean has the car to get out in time if it’s necessary than Sam to be able to stare at the goddamn thing while the cops take his brother away.
Maybe he’s a little grouchy.
When the doctor finally leaves Sam points at the backpack and gathers himself. “What’d you steal?”
Dean’s lips quirk, and he settles into the bed beside Sam with their sides pressed together tight. Sam thinks of how hesitant Dean was not too long ago, and wonders if maybe this is a good sign. His brother digs in the bag, and then places a stack of books very carefully onto the tray that holds Sam’s dinner.
“Didn’t steal them. My boss said he thought you were an egghead and that you’d want something to be eggheady over.”
And fucking. Sam’s fingers itch at the sight of them. He reaches out carefully, left arm leading because the right has the IV and moving it pulls on his chest. He wants to start lowering the morphine. He wants to be able to really put together for Dean everything he’s missing.
But he also wants to see what Dean brought back. The first on the stack is a hardbound copy of The Blue Fairy Book which Sam finds amusing. The next is a paperback Grisham that Sam immediately files as pointless because he is done with the law from that perspective. The Lathe of Heaven is next, and Sam vaguely remembers the author but doesn’t recognize the title. Jess was a big science fiction fan, and Sam wonders if she would have read this. There’s an autobiography of Frederick Douglass and Sam adds that to the keep pile. There’re two books left, and Sam’s hand stutters on the way to the next one.
His tongue goes thick, but Sam knows if he reacts too much Dean might take the book away. And that itch in his fingers and the terrible taste of impending failure and fear tells him that whatever is happening here something in this stack of books is the answer. And it’s maybe this one or the next one.
Sam feels a drop beyond his feet, something deep and dark in front of him and nowhere to back up.
The Martian Chronicles. Sam slides the book over just enough to look at the next one too. Burnt Offerings. He racks his brain but the second one means nothing to him at all. The first one though. He remembers Jess lounging in their bed with an old, beat up copy of this book. He remembers the soft skin of her thighs as she read aloud to him in between breathy moans. Sam is embarrassed that he’s both aroused and terrified. He covers it by looking up to Dean’s expectant face.
“Can you thank him for me?”
The morphine has mostly worn off and Sam is hurting more than he should be able to say, but it helps him sharpen his focus. Helps him put the mask into place that will allow for tricking Dean into not trying to take these away.
Because one of them, he’s pretty sure, is the reason Sam is having panic attacks.
Dean’s face brightens, big and wide smile making Sam’s odd arousal intensify. And he can indulge that a little right now because he’s got an answer at hand. He knows it in his bones.
“Yeah, sure I can. One nerd gives to another right? Hey, you want something special from the cafeteria to celebrate? It sounds like you did awesome.”
“Sure.”
Dean takes off, and Sam is left alone with the books. He studies both of them, fingers itching. He can’t start right away, he’s too tired and run down, and he needs Dean to be gone while he reads because if something sets him off Dean will take them away.
He makes a decision, spur of the moment, and puts Burnt Offerings on top and The Martian Chronicles right below. Then he arranges the rest of the stack in place before Dean can return. Sam also uses this short time to readjust himself as best he can with only one easily movable arm and a bad leg.
And then his brother comes back with two Styrofoam plates with angel food cake and a cardboard milk carton. They lay side by side, devouring cake and sharing the milk carton. Dean turns on the TV, and some reality show drones in the background while Sam soaks in the warmth and comfort of having Dean right there. The familiarity of sharing movement and heat.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy?”
“You like it here?”
Dean’s head tilts to the side and he looks like he doesn’t know what to make of that. He chews on it as the TV drones on.
“I like it here.” Dean nudges him once with his shoulder when he says it.
Sam closes his eyes and sinks into Dean to hide a sudden flood of tears.
Fucking morphine makes you emotional.
Dean watches Sam struggle, watches him fight without understanding that’s what he’s doing, and then eventually his brother slips into unconsciousness and Dean takes the chance to check him over, to look at the bandages, to make sure there’s no blood leaking through, and he sees only what he’s supposed to.
His thumb rubs on the skin of Sam’s chest, just below the tape and to the side of the bandages that cover what was a gaping hole in Sam’s skin.
Too close. It was too close. Dean feels his blood pressure spiking when he thinks about it.
With the wounds closing up Dean makes a mental note to check with the doctor and see if Sam can have pajama pants. Something to get him out of the hospital gown. Nobody likes hospital gowns.
Sam’s eyes move rapidly behind his closed lids, and Dean wonders what he’s dreaming. If the drugs are making him have nightmares. If the drug nightmares are worse than the brain damage ones.
He links fingers with Sam again, staring at his brother’s ashen face and wondering what he should do. What he’s going to do. They aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Time passes slowly, the TV droning on as he stares at Sam and thinks. There’s only so much that Dean can predict and plan for before he’s just making himself paranoid and insane. He’s well aware that he’s his own greatest enemy.
Shadows grow, the nurse slips in and then out again, and Dean starts to drift. His eyes are heavy, drooping, and he looks over at the hospital window and sees the full moon shining up high in the sky.
A sense, something moving quietly in the back of his brain, grips Dean. Half-awake, fugue like, he gets out of the bed and heads to the window. The town square is lit up, beautiful and cold in the moonlight, and Dean licks his lips as he looks at the lay of the land.
It’s all normal, all right, except something is wrong. And Dean waits, blinks, and then sees a little white smudge with blonde hair. A woman. Moving in the shadows of the trees thrown into relief by the moonlight. A memory more than anything else, a woman Dean would know from any distance and any lighting. Especially in that nightgown.
Dean swallows hard, hand coming into contact with the cold glass, and that wakes him up.
There’s nothing there, the woman is gone. There’s nothing there it’s just in his head. He’s exhausted, he’s run down, and he needs a break. He’s catching it from Sam.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Contrary to years of training, of experience, of everything, Dean simply climbs into the bed with his brother and slips under the covers. He’s not hiding. He’s not a child.
He’s simply deciding to be cuddly. Dean can be cuddly.
Everything is fine, and this is a decision Dean has made.
Sam wakes up in the dark. How did he fall asleep?
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He was going to stay up. He was going to stay up until Dean fell asleep and then he was going to read. Instead he somehow passed out and he doesn’t remember it happening.
It’s incredibly dark, and Sam wonders why the moon isn’t at least adding some light. The only illumination is a strip coming through the door and making a tiny pathway into the main hospital.
Sam’s eyes follow it and see a shapely calf, a pale foot, a smooth knee that promises so much more. And then the vision is gone. He rubs his face and waits, but it doesn’t come back.
And he knows deep down inside that if he stays in the bed with Dean it’ll stay gone. It’s all a part of his head injury. It’s all a tragic mistake.
But this is also where they’ve always been headed, and he should have known that.
So, Sam stands up. It’s surprisingly easy. He slips out of Dean’s hands and past the bed, gown billowing around him in the annoying way only a hospital gown can. He heads for the hallway looking around for what he knows will just be the briefest of glimpses. And there she is again although this time it’s her skinny wrist and the long delicate fingers that used to stroke his hair back from his forehead.
He follows her, like a foolish sailor diving into the ocean and swimming towards the sirens, and finds a dead end. Jess isn’t here. No one is. It’s just brick, dark red and glistening, and Sam steps up to it quietly. He puts one hand on the surface and feels how warm and wet it is. How it moves just slightly under his hand. As if the brick is surging up to respond to the presence of his flesh.
Tired. He’s suddenly so tired and dizzy but he’s far away from the room and the safety of Dean. Far from Baby and the escape that was promised. Stuck here in this dead end with all the inevitability of their fates lined up in front of him and crashing down.
And Sam knows in that moment exactly what’s happening. He remembers why he’s there, and how he got there; he remembers that he was warned. And he didn’t accept that warning. He doomed them both.
Consciousness hit him like a tidal wave and Sam jerks in bed and slaps into Dean. His brother grunts unhappily and hits him back and Sam lets out a harsh bark as it jostles his chest. Dean is awake instantly.
“Sammy! Sammy, holy shit I’m sorry what the fuck were you thinking?”
He was thinking that he was asleep. He was thinking that he was dreaming something about a hallway and a…body maybe? Something pulsing. Everything is muddled in his head and struggling to make some kind of sense.
Dean is checking him over and looking at every angle of him. And then Dean is pulling him in gently for a hug. And Sam takes a long moment to consider that before he hugs back as best he can. His brother doesn’t seem to mind the weak, one-armed response.
“Calm down.”
He huffs a breath against the side of Sam’s head. “Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
Dean bursts into laughter, and then takes a deep breath that Sam can feel.
Before making a loud and pantomimed gagging noise.
“Ok, Sammy. We gotta give you a better sponge bath.”
Sam feels his entire face screwing up into a look that he knows amuses Dean and that amusement only makes Sam crazier.
“You are not giving me a sponge bath.”
“I think I am.”
And then Dean is gone and Sam has just enough time to think about how ridiculous this is about to become. For half a second he thinks about putting his foot down, and then he remembers that he’s on his back in a bed and that he can’t get up.
Not without help anyway.
Dean comes back in with the little plastic container and a washcloth, and Sam weighs the possibility of hitting his brother. How much it’ll hurt him, how much it’ll cost him, and what it will be worth. Dean settles down on the bed and looks around briefly before hooking the bed tray and pulling it over.
“Dean. Come on.”
“Sammy. Come on.”
Dean helps him get propped up, and Sam lets him pull the hospital gown apart and off. His chest is a mess, bandages and bruises and ugliness everywhere. Dean stares at it for a long moment and all the levity of the situation is gone instantly.
Sam wishes it would come back.
“I really wish you hadn’t done this.”
And what should he say to that? There’s nothing. Nothing at all. So Sam stays quiet and watches Dean’s hands tremble only slightly as they dip the cloth and then come back. He moves with slow precision- this is not the first bath Dean has given Sam- and he wipes carefully along and around wounds. He makes sure to get under the arms, along the sides, and then slides behind Sam to get his back.
It feels good, despite Sam’s protests, but he hates how serious and unhappy Dean is in this moment. How downtrodden.
Eventually his upper half is clean and then Dean moves down to his feet. He starts there, one hand holding Sam’s calf and the other moving the cloth between toes, along the sensitive arch, and then up to meet Dean’s other set of fingers. And Sam watches the way Dean does it, reverent almost, with a sense of embarrassment he hasn’t had in years. It’s not like Dean’s never seen him like this, it’s that Sam has never seen Dean see him like this. He’s never watched Dean during these moments.
Usually he spends what he likes to consider Dean’s uber crazy older brother moments bitching or snarking his way out of the feeling that he is Dean’s big old stupid burden. But right now he doesn’t feel like a burden, and he can’t even say why. Right now he feels like Dean is looking at someone that Sam doesn’t even know. Everything is done as if there’s something precious in his hands that almost left him.
It’s stupid. Sam keeps reminding himself that it is stupid, because he’s been hurt before, because he’s left Dean before and there’s never been a time when their relationship didn’t include one of them broken it seems. Certainly not since Dean showed up at Stanford to collect him.
Dean starts humming, something Sam vaguely thinks is either the Beatles or the Monkees, and then his brother is up to his thighs and moving painfully slow again as he works around the chunk of bandages that swathe Sam’s second puncture wound.
Sam imagines what Dean must have looked like as he dialed 911 all panic and fury as he looks at Sam hurt again and unable to take it back. Sam breaking everything Dean gives a shit about with the same casual thoughtlessness he always has. He imagines Dean trying to tell the dispatcher, in a voice that is both calm and insane at the same time, where they are and how Sam looks.
Judging if it would be faster and safer to take Sam himself. Wondering how much blood Baby’s interior can soak up before she’s haunted by something worse than their-
But he doesn’t remember that. Granted, his memory of the night of the hunt is fractured but it’s not gone. He can remember trying to be logical with Dean as the paramedics tried to stabilize him. He can remember the look on Dean’s face. He can remember, although he can’t place the timing of it, Dean with dried blood taking the place of jizz in a recreation of that stupid comedy movie moment.
All of that comes through the haze, but he can’t remember Dean calling the ambulance.
The moment slips from him when Dean’s fingers brush the skin at the juncture of his thigh and his ass. Dean is looking to the side, not all the way but just enough to offer Sam a little modesty, and Sam doesn’t know why he stares at his brother as if Dean will turn and lock eyes with him in that moment.
As if, at this particular point in their relationship, that sort of intensity wouldn’t be absolutely weird and inappropriate.
As if they’ve ever been appropriate.
Dean hooks one arm under his hips, and then is lifting him up and pressing him close while he cleans parts of Sam that Dean hasn’t touched in way too long. They stay silent for this part, neither one making eye contact although Sam is trying so hard he’s amazed Dean isn’t lighting on fire.
It’s over before Sam can figure out how he wants Dean to react. Over and then Dean is taking his gown away.
“Hey. Hey, I need that.”
Dean hums that tune, continued from before he went oddly silent, and he digs in his bag and comes out with soft looking pajama pants and a shirt. Sam’s mouth waters.
“Do you? I can get the gown back.”
“Fuck you.”
Dean laughs, eyes getting into it as much as his mouth does, and then he helps Sam to get dressed. It feels so fucking good to have pants and a shirt again. Sam acts impulsively, catching Dean’s hand and squeezing his fingers tight in gratitude he can’t verbalize. Dean seems to get it.
“Ok, Sammy, one last bit.” Dean gets the wheelchair and comes back, parking it next to the bed and setting the brake before helping Sam to transition into it. “You better be grateful because the apothecary guy was really judgey about this.”
Sam can’t even begin to guess what that means, but Dean rolls him into the bathroom and then parks the chair again and starts the sink up.
He sees what’s in Dean’s hands then. Sees it and can’t believe it for a moment.
Dean laughs, no eyes included this time just nerves, and then his brother props him up just a little bit in the wheelchair seat and tilts him back so that he can get Sam’s hair into the stream.
It hurts fucking terribly to lean that way, even with Dean tilting the chair and getting him high up, but it feels so good to have water in his hair. When the shampoo hits, smelling minty and bright, Sam closes his eyes and moans. He’s not even vaguely ashamed.
And his brother is laughing, but in a gentle way that makes Sam happy to be a part of it. The shampooing goes semi-smoothly, the conditioner even more so. When it’s done and Dean gets him back upright Sam breathes a sigh of relief with a double meaning.
Dean towel dries his hair, hands soft and steady, and then Dean rolls him back into the room.
“You wanna go on a trip, Sammy? You’re looking good, we can go pick up a double date with the nurses.”
Sam thinks about it for a second, aching so bad he just wants to hit the morphine button until he passes out, and then nods. His brother whoops and then starts a slow trek out into the hall and along the hospital floor.
Pain makes it hard for Sam to focus, and he realizes that’s been true of every trip he’s had outside of his room. He tries, but the rooms and the people sort of blur past him as he focuses on not showing Dean how much this is costing him. He’s grateful for the bath. He’s grateful for the pajamas.
He’s grateful for Dean.
It takes what seems forever, but they make a single stop at Baby where Dean has Sam center himself again and then they are headed back for the room. People Sam doesn’t seem to know talk around them, some directly to them, and Dean interacts with all of them easily. Like an old friend. Like a part of it.
Something deep in Sam is disturbed in a way he isn’t prepared for.
When Sam has fallen asleep Dean lays beside him, awake and unsure of what to do with all the energy he’s built up in the last hour. He pays attention to the sounds of the hospital, to the wheezy little whistle that’s been added to Sam’s breath since the hunt, to the sound of the monitors and the time ticking past.
How many nights has he spent in hospitals? How many nights has he spent wondering what’s going to happen to the person in the bed and if it was his fault?
What he does know is that Sam is safe for right now. Safe and alive. And deeply asleep.
He runs his fingers through Sam’s hair, which is still a little damp from the wash but a thousand times better than it was before. There’s something just…wrong about Sam’s hair not being at peak girliness. Being limp and oily as if it hadn’t been loved in years.
Maybe he makes jokes about it, but deep-down Dean has always loved Sam’s hair and how his brother takes care of it. He’s always loved the part of Sam that keeps things precise and neat like that. There were times when Dean could barely be bothered to get all the blood off before going to bed, but not Sam.
Never Sam.
So now with his brother’s hair clean and soft, with the pajamas on and the lines of his face gentled in sleep that Dean knows is medication-based, his brother is a little more himself. Despite the holes and the muscle damage and the possible permanent brain damage. Which is a little more than Dean is willing or able to really stop and think about.
Maybe he should tell Sam about the Trazodone.
Maybe he should stick a metal fork in a socket and just see how it goes.
When Sam is rested and closer to healed then Dean will talk to his brother about the medication. Sam will be a little betrayed, that’s their approach with each other, but ultimately he knows that Sam Is capable of logic and his brother will let the whole fucking mess go in the interest of finding something Dean is wrong about to even the score.
It’ll be just fine.
Dean finds his fingers circling softly on Sammy’s thigh, moving in widening rings around where he knows the second rebar puncture is and then sliding back toward the epicenter of the damage before circling back out. He thinks of the weight of Sam’s stare on him when he was washing his brother earlier.
He thinks of nothing the fuck at all and that’s good too.
Maybe Dean should try to snag some of Sam’s night night drugs. Maybe he should take a chance at being a little braver and talk to Sam about what’s happening here.
But what is happening here?
Dean knows that he’s not the biggest on introspection. There’s never been a problem he couldn’t at least partially wing a solution to, and often making a plan has ended up worse than just taking things as they come. It’s more his way to react to the moment and then slide on to the next and the next thing.
It’s Sam’s place to dissect and care for them, it’s Sam’s thing to know the inner workings of the problem and the feelings attached to it.
But goddamn Dean isn’t sure that Sam can do that right now and probably one of them needs to.
He thinks of Campbell as Sam utters a little sigh beside him and moves just the tiniest bit, sliding Dean’s questing fingers closer to the juncture of Sam’s thighs and further away from the wound. Thinks of that apple faced smile as his boss listened to him talk, of the way he rearranged the pile.
Added and took away.
Dean’s eyes slide to the side and take in the stack. He wonders what exactly made Campbell change his decisions. If there’s something in there that he thought maybe reflected Sam a little bit better after his story.
His left hand, free of Sam’s thigh, reaches out and snags the third book down on nothing more than a random choice. Dean tells himself that later.
The Martian Chronicles. Dean remembers watching a bunch of stories by Ray Bradbury when he was younger. An anthology movie about a dude with tattoos that would come to life and tell stories. Dad was hunting…something. He can’t remember what. It didn’t matter because Dean was benched at the time and Sam was there with him still.
It had been a pizza night, rare but Dean had managed to scrape up just enough extra for them to order and he would be damned if they wasted the chance. So there they’d been, the two of them lying in bed, stuffed with pizza, and watching this old B movie with all these science fiction stories.
Sam had known them. Of course he had. And Dean had laughed at him and dug his knuckles into Sam’s soft hair and made joke after joke about Sam’s nerdiness. But, as he always was, Dean has been deeply impressed once again that his little brother just casually knew yet another thing.
There’d been a story. Dean couldn’t remember the name of it but he remembered the feeling. The sight of the married couple pretending everything was fine when the world was ending. Living in the moment of their lives and just sliding along. Their children rushing towards death with no knowledge.
He remembered hating it, and he remembered Sam loving it. Sam laying his head on Dean’s chest and batting his eyelashes and saying, in a voice that only cracked a little, “Wouldn’t you want to spend your last night with me?”
And he remembered telling Sam, “Duh.”
Dean flicks the book open in the dim light of the hospital room, eyes straining just a bit to catch the words, and starts in an Ohio winter that is more familiar than Dean cares to think of.
Sam sees that ankle again. He follows without taking the moment that should be obvious to ask himself, really ask himself, why she would be in the hospital.
Or why he’s capable of following her.
It follows, in dream logic, that it’s just happening and that everything else is happening too. It follows that Sam follows, and that Jess leads.
They reach the hallway, just flashes of her limbs and Sam chasing after her until the dead end arrives. But this time she’s still there. Her back is to the brick wall, and Sam feels a bone deep disgust at the sight of it before that’s overwhelmed by the hunger to be near her again. To capture that time when she was alive and Sam believed that he could be something else. That he could be hers.
He steps into the circle of her arms, feels the warmth and kindness of her wash over him. She burned on the ceiling, but she isn’t burned here. She’s whole, a white nightgown he doesn’t recognize hanging off the slim body that he does.
“Sam.”
The sound of her voice is forgiveness. Sweetness. It is all the things that Jess so often embodied that Sam never could. It’s the pitch of her voice in orgasm, it’s the sound of her laugh late at night when they held hands and talked, it’s the odd little jealousy that crept into her eyes when Sam got drunk on Dean’s birthday and talked about him.
Sometimes, with the soft haze that only time long passed can give, Sam forgets that she was human too. That she had flaws and quirks that weren’t necessarily the best. That didn’t fit him.
But not in this moment. In this moment she is everything he knew and wanted. She is all those little pieces, alive again and holding him. Sam goes to his knees and presses his face against her flat belly. Pulls in the scent of her.
“Jess.”
He could just stay here. He could just stay here in her arms and accept that she’s able to forgive him here. That he could be whole, even if just because she completes him.
“Sam.”
Her voice is thick, concerned, and he wonders at that as he pushes deeper into her hard flesh. As his face scrapes against the warm bricks that make her body up.
“Sam!”
She’s Dean, screaming his name, but she’s also the wall and the hospital and the town. She is all the things that waited for Sam since the moment he left the safety of his family circle. She is the end of the road. She is the last piece falling into place, a game that was set up thousands of years before Sam was ever Sam.
Zugzwang.
“SAM!”
Dean dozes briefly, the book resting against his face, and then something moves. Just a little. Something not beside him but below him. Later, when his head is clear, Dean will blame the strange haunting that stories can sometimes have. Another thing he never liked about extracurricular reading.
But right then Dean knows that it’s something else. He hears Sam say it, “Jess,” clear as a bell, and then he opens his eyes and looks over at his pale and still brother. Sam’s eyes are moving but he’s not. He’s not thrashing or screaming or any of the things that Dean has come to associate with Sammy having a nightmare.
“Sam?”
And his voice is wrong. Feminine. Husky but feminine. Or did he not even say it out loud?
Dean looks over at the monitors, the lost sound of what might have just been a dream of someone’s voice in place of the thought of his brother’s name weighing on him. Experience with hospitals is the only reason he catches it. All of Sam’s numbers are low. Not drastically, not killing low, but low. Blood pressure, temperature, respiration, pulse rate. Just a hair off, but Dean feels his whole body go cold and all the hairs stand up.
“Sam.”
This time it’s his voice, but he sounds broken up and terrified. And why wouldn’t he?
At this point it’s simply a miracle that Dean hasn’t gone insane.
“SAM!”
His brother is asleep, stubbornly asleep, not twitching or moving at all. Dean hits the nurse button and when the woman responds he practically screams at her that Sam is non-responsive.
Medical professionals come running in moments later. Dean is out of the bed and out of their way. The nurse checks leads and vitals manually, while the doctor looks Sam over. He’s not one that Dean recognizes.
Time ticks by, too slowly, too slowly, and then the nurse steps back and the doctor gives Dean the kind of look that can only earn you a punch.
“Mr. Winchester. Sam is sleeping. That could account for a number of minimal dips in vitals. On top of that he seems to be resting quite comfortably, not non-responsive.”
“He’s non-responsive. I was shouting in his face.”
The doctor lifts an eyebrow, and then he picks up Sam’s chart and holds it out to Dean.
A motherfucking chart. Somehow Dean never noticed it there, no longer accustomed to looking for them in the digital age.
“You requested Dr. Jorgenson put Sam on Trazodone to help with his night terrors. That was done. Your brother is deeply sedated, he wouldn’t wake up short of a hardcore shock. But he’s very much responsive.”
Something about the way the man says it, which is free of judgement for Dean’s decision and laden with it for his overreaction, floods Dean with guilt.
“If he was having a nightmare, like a blowout one, would we know?”
The doctor blinks, surprised, and the nurse gives the man a side eyed look before slipping out of the room.
“There are ways to know, but by observation only? Probably not.”
“We need to stop giving him the sleeping medication.”
He doesn’t even know where the words come from. He’s thinking a thousand steps behind, to all the other little bits of good he tried to do for Sam that backfired, but his mouth is focused on the present.
“I’d suggest you speak to Dr. Jorgenson about that in the morning. He’s been handling all of your partner’s long-term care.”
“So, you don’t have to do shit for him is what you’re saying.”
The doctor’s face curls up, distaste obvious.
“No sir, I am saying that long-term decisions like that are better made by someone familiar with the patient. And the dose was given to him hours ago, it’s too late for me to do anything about that.”
Dean turns his back on the doctor, linking fingers with Sam, and waits until the asshole leaves.
It’s the only way not to hit him.
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