1Title: This Pound of Flesh
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean/Sam, others
Parts: 1/?
Warnings: Language, gore, Wincest including mentions of Weecest. Serious Dean-whump.
Rating: R
Summary: After a hunt goes seriously wrong Sam is left taking care of a battered Dean, who won't move or talk and has no spark or life behind his eyes. Sam's left on the run, with no clue what's wrong with his brother, and more trouble than he knows breathing down the back of his neck.
Author's Note: Mild spoilers for everything so far on the show. So one morning I woke up and thought, what if Dean was completely out of it, and Sam had to take care of them both, keep them away from the pissed off thing they were hunting, and fix Dean in the process. And this is that fic. Except darker and with more sex and about four different factions out to get the brothers. Chapter title from End of the Line by the Allman Brothers.
Part One: 'Cause It Sure Felt Like the End of the Line
SsSsS
The rumble of the Impala's engine rattles his teeth, bounces around in his skull till he can feel it vibrating in his jaw. The roar of the big engine eating up miles of road, surging towards the far horizon with a constant bellow of challenge and aggression.
He hadn't ever noticed before. Not with the radio playing. Not with Dean's constant shifting, humming, movement. It makes the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention, feeling like everyone that's looking for them must be able to hear the rumble of the engine every bit as well as he can.
The urge to reach over and crank up the stereo is almost overwhelming. The need to say something, anything, is a almost painful pressure on the back of his throat. Fear stills his hand, keeps his jaw clenched tight, tongue pressed up against the back of his teeth. It feels like any sound but the song of the engine might finish shattering them.
SsSsS
He considers driving through the night, but disregards the idea immediately.
They're both beat all to hell, and there's something wrong with Dean. More wrong than usual. Not to mention that Sam is exhausted mind, body and soul. Frayed to thin by the events of the last two days. Conscious and moving at this point only by virtue of the sheer stubborn determination that has always fueled their family through the hardest times.
He hates stopping this soon. He hates stopping at all. Every bit of survival instinct coiled in his gut is telling him to run till Kingsville, Texas is half a continent away.
The hard truth is his body can't keep going much longer. That everybody involved is expecting them to put a couple hundred miles behind them by dawn anyway.
Hiding in plain sight isn't his first choice, but it's the only feasible option. He pulls into the first shitty motel that looms up, a crumbling monstrosity on the outskirts of town. The parking lot is half-full, and he tucks the Impala between a old Ford pickup and a white Cadillac. Sits behind the wheel for a minute, listening to the car idle and trying to get his hands to stop shaking.
SsSsS
Walking into the office and buying a room is out of the question. He's covered in blood and bruises, positively reeking of smoke and sulfur, and shaking like a leaf. He doesn't really want to leave Dean alone the amount of time it would take to do things the quasi-legal way. Isn't comfortable enough to leave Dean in the car while he picks the lock to room 14.
It seems like it should be hard moving Dean around. Like in a just world it would be. It's not.
Sam opens the passenger door, grabs Dean around the upper arm and hauls him out of the car. Dean moves willingly, stands and then goes still again. He doesn't whimper or flinch, even though Sam can feel the sticky-wet of blood on his fingers from the wounds on Dean's arm. Dean doesn't do anything.
Just stands there, eyes not just unfocused, but completely blank and empty. There's a cold metallic taste in the back of Sam's throat, and bone-deep chill aching in his joints. Fear.
He keeps his hold on Dean's arm, pulls him towards room 14 and stations him by the wall. The doorknob beneath his fingers is warm and greasy-slick. It takes him three tries more than it should to pick the lock. The whole time Dean stands still and silent above him. Not sagging into the wall, not swaying, though he has to be exhausted and in a dozen kinds of agony.
He has to retake Dean's arm and push him into the room, dragging their bags behind him. Locking the door and praying that no one else decides to stop for the night and stay at this room. Letting go of Dean the moment they're both inside. Laying the salt lines, checking the room for anything suspicious or possibly dangerous.
Dean is still standing exactly where he left him when he's done.
The florescent lighting takes everything that Sam had half-seen in the midnight dark and throws it into living color. Dean's shirts are soaked in blood, burned around the collar and cuffs. Dean's hands are a mess of livid burns, wet black-yellow-red. There are trails of blood out of the corner's of his mouth, meeting beneath his chin, dry on his neck.
Those are just wounds. Sam can handle wounds. But Dean's right eyebrow and eyelashes are white. The color of new snow, sunlight glinting off a lake, lightning in the summer sky. And above his eyebrow there are four stripes of white hair, bold and loud against the rest of his blood-darkened hair.
Sam doesn't even know what this is, to begin handling it.
SsSsS
Dean's shirts are ruined anyway and he doesn't particularly want to have to wrestle Dean out of them. Cutting them off is a perfectly acceptable alternative. The fabric squishes around the blade, probably leaving red stains on the carpet where he lets it fall, no longer paying attention.
The burns are worse than he had thought. Both arms are all ruined, raw flesh all the way up to the elbows, with tendrils of the angry red stretching up to his shoulders. He doesn't even see the mess that is Dean's spine until he's walking towards the bathroom to get a washcloth. From the base of Dean's skull to the edge of his jeans is unending torn, flayed, flesh.
Sam retches in the toilet for what seems like an eternity, till there's nothing left in his stomach and his muscles are still seizing and contracting. He can feel the dull ache of his own injuries, the burns around his wrists, broken nose, the sting in his chest that won't go away.
He sets his nose, staring into the dirty mirror, barely able to see himself through the smeared ash and blood. The rest can wait.
Dean is standing in the middle of his ruined clothes, same position Sam left him in, the only sign that he's alive the rapid inhale-exhale contraction of his chest. Sam manhandles Dean towards the bathroom.
SsSsS
Showering is obviously not an issue he spent enough time considering. But he's worried that Dean's got other wounds that he's not seeing beneath the bloody mess that Dean's wearing like a second skin. Cold water would be a good thing for the burns, too.
He draws a cold bath, wrestling Dean out of his boots and blood soaked jeans before peeling himself out of his own. There's no good or easy way to do this, and he's honestly to far gone to spend the time he probably should considering his options.
Lifting Dean, because standing Dean in front of the tub and hoping that he climbs in on his own proves to be an exercise in futility, and setting him in the water is done because it has to be. Sliding his own battered body in behind Dean shouldn't be half the relief that it is. But it's something normal, something they've done a thousand times before and he clings onto it.
They shared baths when mom was alive because it was easier for her to get them both out of the way at once. After she died they kept sharing because Dean never thought that there might be another way to proceed and John was never really around to give him any direction besides: Take care of Sammy.
They moved up to showers and it never occurred to them that they didn't have to share anymore. It was faster, more efficient, and they'd always done it together anyway. They got bigger and things got crowded but they adapted without thinking. Moving and rearranging as Sam got taller and taller and they both broadened and filled out.
Twelve and in the shower with his gorgeous big brother's fingers massaging his scalp, washing his hair with some cheap fruity shampoo had been a hell of an experience. He had hardened and gasped and came before he even knew what was happening. Stared down at the warm mess on his stomach being washed away by the water, feeling warm and happy with every nerve of his body.
Three weeks of that every morning and he had finally built up the courage to turn and face Dean, rock up onto the balls of his feet and press his lips to Dean's.
That was then, this is now.
Dean's skin is unnaturally hot against his own, and for a half-second he imagines that the water steams from the heat. Sam also finds, chest pressed against Dean's back, that Dean is not in the boneless, relaxed state that he had been expecting. Every muscle in Dean's body is coiled, quivering and jumping. Like he's run for miles, been fucking or fighting for hours.
The water, already not the clearest that Sam has ever seen, immediately takes on a pink tinge. Ashes cling to the top of the water, forming a gray skim that swirls and re-patterns itself with ever movement Sam makes. It leaves a smudge like a giant bruise on the bottom of the tub when he drains it.
SsSsS
He kisses the droplets of water off Dean's skin. Each press of lips to skin a prayer, a beacon set up, begging for Dean to come back, to be okay, to blink and focus his eyes. Forehead, nose, the corner of his mouth and then full on his lips, cool and dry and not kissing him back.
Chin, neck, that spot cradled against his collar bone that has made him squirm and groan since Sam was thirteen and found it by accident does nothing now. Shoulders, chest, every freckle whispered over. Stomach, a long slow kiss over Dean's belly button that Sam knows for fact gets him hard in seconds. The warm soft skin in the junction of his hip and leg, but no answering heat or hardness when he cups his brother with one shaking hand.
Nothing.
And that's when Sam knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that something is horribly wrong.
SsSsS
Neither of them need stitches and so the first aid segment of the evening is blessedly easy. Dean's wounds are extensive and they'll have to get more supplies in the morning, but that's at least four hours away and Sam has run out of steam.
He has to put Dean in bed, too. Turn down the covers and pull them over Dean's shoulders. After a second of consideration sliding a knife under Dean's pillow just in case he wakes up in the middle of the night back to himself. He has to slide Dean's eyes closed, not even sure if his brother is able to sleep in this weird condition. Presses another kiss to Dean's brow, more for his own comfort than anything else.
His own bed seems like a cold and distant prospect, but he crawls into it anyway. The blankets are stiff and itchy with what he hopes is starch. The bed is to hard, the pillows to soft. Exhaustion covers over all those sins. His battered body sinks into the promise of sleep with abandon. He flicks off the bedside lamp, closing his eyes before his head hits the pillow.
He's not sure if he sleeps, and if he does, not sure for how long before the sounds of thrashing limbs has him rolling out of bed, heart in his throat.
There's a gun in his hand by the time he slams the light back on. Panic white hot in the back of his skull, dancing along each nerve in his body, because Dean is helpless right now. If something-hell, someone-got in the room while he was sleeping...if something happened to Dean...
His fault. His responsibility. Just the thought of it feels like a hundred pound weight strapped around his neck. He wonders, randomly in the corner of his mind, if this is what Dean feels like all the time about Sam.
Blessedly, the room is empty of any interlopers. The adrenaline in Sam's blood, left without any immediate threat, fades to a dull painful ache in his joints. He can still feel his blood pounding against his skin as he stares down at Dean, clenching his jaw against the emotions in his chest: scared and tired and lost.
Dean is jerking, sharp desperate movements that lack the smoothness that Dean's had since he was seventeen. One arm swinging up to cover his face, the other wrapping across his ribs before swinging out, a backhand that tangles in sheets and comforter. His legs, curling up to his chest and then jerking out again, heels pounding at the mattress.
Through it all Dean's face remains smooth and emotionless. Not so much as a furrow in his brow to indicate that anything is wrong.
The bandages covering his arms and back are already starting to spot crimson with blood from the violence of Dean's movements. A tendril of blood is sneaking out of the corner of Dean's parted lips.
Sam is in the bed within seconds of jumping out of his own. A flailing fist catches him in the jaw, a knee in his stomach and he figures he should be relieved that at least Dean is still strong. And he would be, if he wasn't so damn worried that Dean was going to hurt himself.
Their limbs tangle and Dean's fighting something but apparently it's not Sam. He doesn't stop Sam from slinging an arm over his waist, doesn't lash out at Sam when he pulls Dean's back snug against his chest. He can't keep Dean completely still but he can at least restrict the range of motion he's allowed to thrash in.
One leg slung over both of Dean's is an easy solution to the kicking. Catching Dean's wrists is harder, forcing them down against Dean's chest worse even than that. Wraps both his arms around his brother, holding tight because Dean is thrashing against him.
Every muscle in Dean's back is jumping and jerking, spasming against Sam's chest. His arms push and strain against Sam's, hands clenching and unclenching and with the burns that shouldn't even be possible. Dean's heart is jack-hammering in his chest, a pump-pound echo of it dancing across Sam's skin everywhere they touch. His breathing pattern is odd, two quick inhales, two quick exhales, over and over again.
Sam grits his teeth, buries his face in his brother hair, wraps his body a little tighter around Dean. He can feel hot little trails of tears on his own cheeks, frustrated and ashamed by this sign of weakness when Dean needs him to be strong. When he needs himself to be strong.
He braces himself, waiting out the storm and praying it's over soon because he's so tired. Clinging to the blind adrenaline that even now is draining out of his bloodstream, because as long as it's singing in his veins then at least he doesn't have time to think. But it's leaving him, abandoning him in his hour of need, throwing him to the wolves of his own memories.
To Dean, kneeling over him, hands cupping the back of Sam's skull, fingers tightening in spasms. White fire dancing up Dean's arms. His head thrown back, blood like a black river running out of his mouth and down his neck. Screaming. God, the scream had gone on forever.
The tears win. Sam lets them. Admits defeat and holds Dean's jerking body as tightly as he can through the sobs.