DEAN'S RETURN
Chapter 1: Leave me alone.
Dean slowly and with great agony groaned his way back to consciousness. He put his hand up to his face and winced. His mind was foggy and Dean struggled for a brief moment to remember what had attacked him. Then suddenly it hit him – Sam! Sam had hit him, and the way his face felt, Sam had hit him with all he had. Man, he so totally hadn't seen that coming!
Dean sat up groggily, and bit back a grunt of pain as his face felt the sudden movement and complained in every nerve ending Dean possessed. It felt like he had been hit with a metal pipe. The world swam in and out of focus momentarily, and Dean bit back the impulse to curse his brother and his temper.
Dean frowned at that thought. He shook his head and instantly regretted the movement. He slowly pulled himself up the bed, fighting down the urge to throw up what ever remained in his stomach from the previous night. Sighing and breathing deeply, Dean rested his head against the cool of the wall, waiting for the blurring and throbbing in his head to go away. The world finally settled down and he started thinking about Sam, especially the Sam of the last 4 weeks.
There was no doubt about it- Sam had changed from the brother he had known before he had gone …away.
Dean closed his eyes and mentally replayed the events of that morning, hoping for some idea about what had set Sam off into his attack.
Dean's head slowly slipped dropped down to rest on his shoulder as his breathing slowed and deepened as he unknowingly slipped away into a deep pain avoiding sleep.
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Earlier that morning…
Sam woke suddenly, startled into wakefulness. His hand reflexively curled around the carved bone handle of the knife that he placed under his pillow every night before he slipped into his haunted dreams. It had not always been like this, there had been a time when he had not had to worry about who, or what, would invade his room in the middle of the night. That had been before, before… Sam angrily thrust that thought into the back of his mind, and instead tuned his every sense into focusing and finding the cause of what had wakened him.
Finely tuned nerves sensed someone standing behind him, alongside the bed. Sam grasped the knife tightly and swiftly spun over in his bed, lunging out at the figure dull and blurry in the dim early dawn light of the motel room.
"Argghhh" yelled the figure darting back swiftly, desperately trying to get out of reach of the long silver blade.
"Argghhh" Sam yelled, as his arm and chest were suddenly engulfed in burning wetness. Despite the suddenly onslaught of pain, Sam rose swiftly up from the bed and prepared to slash out with the knife again, when suddenly he froze as he remembered. Remembered he wasn't alone any more.
"Damn Sam" yelled Dean, shaking his hand to cool off the burning hot coffee that he had spilled in his rapid retreat away from Sam and his wicked knife.
Dean leaned over and flicked on the bedside light, throwing a dull illuminating light out into the dullness of a grey dawn morning light as it was slowly filtering in through the crack in the motel rooms curtains.
"Dammit Dean" Sam yelled back, "What the hell do you think you are doing? I could have killed you!" Angrily Sam stepped away from his brother and put his foot into the puddle of the remainder of the coffee that Dean had been out in the early morning dawn hours to bring back for Sam.
"Dammit, to hell and back Dean" Sam yelled, storming off across the room to the bathroom. "You can damn well clean that up". So saying this, Sam entered the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Dean starred after his angry brother, stunned at the intensity of Sam's outburst. Sure the coffee had been hot and Sam had ended up wearing most of it, and also too Sam had been in a deep, if not peaceful, sleep when he had been awakened. Dean still couldn't account for the anger that Sam had shown towards him.
Sam would never had reacted like that, not before… and not knowing how much like Sam his reaction was, Dean angrily shoved the line of thought he had been following to the back of his mind. Sighing, Dean turned around and started looking for a cloth to wipe up the spilled coffee he had so recently bought.
In the bathroom, after violently slamming the door, Sam rapidly turned on the taps and leaned against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall, waiting for the steam to start roiling out the shower recess. With the tiles cooling his scalded flesh his anger melted away, leaving him wondering at the degree of anger he had felt.
In the back recesses of his mind, in places no one could go, Sam admitted to himself that he was a fairly emotional young man. Or rather, he quietly corrected in his mind, he felt the emotions more deeply than most other young men. Sam had always felt a deep sense of embarrassment at the way he descended into gloomy and sometimes tearful moods. Neither Dean nor his dad had ever shown even a third of the depths of his emotion that Sam did, and Sam hated that. Mind you, came the quiet voice that Sam occasionally heard in the quietness of his mind, they both had all the emotional depths of a teaspoon.
Sam's mind was drawn back to the incident that had just occurred and admitted, at least in private, that maybe he had over-reacted just a little. Well, alright, maybe a lot. Sam had become used to having the room to himself and not having any one else making noises or sudden movements in the last five months. Now, with Dean's return Sam had to become used to having Dean around again. Sam's mind tried to shift towards Dean's sudden reappearance and Sam stiffened. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped almost angrily into the hot water.
"Damn, damn, damn" Sam roared, stepping rapidly out of the near boiling water. He quickly spun the cold water tap encouraging the deluge of much cooler water into his shower. Sam gingerly stepped under the deluge and shivered slightly at the coolness of the water temperature. He delayed turning the cold water tap down, enjoying the icy coldness spreading into the burns across his shoulder, arm and chest.
Sam jumped as the sound of angry pounding that started on the bathroom door.