Disclaimer: The only thing I own are the ridiculous situations in which I've placed these boys.
Part Six in the Reality Bites series. Follows I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost.
Dean awakens instantly, arm reaching for the knife under his pillow, taking him a moment or two to remember why it's not there. He lies still, listening for what brought his body out of the blissful land of wholeness. As he waits, he pretends to clutch his knife, residual arm muscles twitching at the task. He curls the toes he no longer has, feels the barest flicker of muscle memory in what remains of his thighs.
And then he hears it again. The soft whimper that he recognizes all too well.
Sam.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows, then flips himself over and works his way into a seated position. He pauses for a few seconds, straining his ears in the stillness, hears his brother let out a strangled "Dean," and works his way to the side of his bed, reaching out and tapping an old-school touch lamp with his left arm before transferring himself into his wheelchair. He's tried to make the transfer in the dark before. It doesn't always go as planned.
He doesn't bother to add any clothing, his boxers are perfectly fine (he has nothing to hide from Sam since his injury), just wheels himself across the hall and into Sam's room.
As he gets closer, he hears Sam's whimper again, along with the "Nononono" that's been the all too familiar accompaniment to his brother's tossing and turning for the past several months. He nudges open Sam's door and wheels himself over to the side of his brother's bed, using the light from the hallway to guide his path, making soft shushing sounds as he goes.
"Hey Sam, it's okay. I'm okay. It's alright," he says, putting the brake on his chair. He edges as close to Sam as he can without falling out of his chair but the way Sam's positioned in his bed, Dean can't quite reach him. So he does something he wouldn't normally do if his brother were awake. He transfers himself onto Sam's bed and sits next to him, using his left arm stump to make small circles on his brother's chest while his right tries to swipe Sam's shaggy bangs from his eyes.
Sam heaves out a deep breath, stilling a little under Dean's reassuring touch, although Dean can still make out Sam's eyes roving rapidly beneath his eyelids and feel the too quick heartbeat jackhammering under his brother's ribs.
"It's okay, Sammy," Dean says, continuing to rub his brother's chest. "I'm right here."
Dean suspects he knows exactly where his little brother is right now. He's pretty sure Sam is stuck watching him try to fight off the Black Dog, losing valuable pieces of himself in the process. He knows Sam has way more vivid memories of the attack than he does, doesn't have the benefit of Angel Prozac or post-traumatic amnesia or whatever it is that keeps the worst of the images from Dean's own consciousness.
But Sam won't talk about it with him. Just tells him he's fine. That's it's just a stupid dream.
Dean knows better. Can see the ever-present dark circles under his brother's eyes. Can see the exhaustion etching his face on an almost daily basis. Can hear the whimpers and protestations that come on a way-too frequent nightly basis.
Sam gradually quiets, lets out a deep sigh and rolls over to face Dean. Dean can't help but picture his brother twenty years younger, a similar comforting gesture having been required after the first time Sam watched the movie It. Dean's lips quirk as he ponders his brother's continued fear of clowns in the midst of the true horror story that is their lives.
When it's evident that Sam has finally fallen into a restful sleep, Dean considers heading back to his own room. He glances at the LED readout of the clock by his brother's bed, figures there's a good chance that Sam may yet have another vivid dream tonight, and decides instead to stay put. He shimmies his way into a horizontal position, pulls the blanket over himself, too tired to try work the sheets out from under himself without disturbing Sam, and closes his eyes. It doesn't take long before the even breathing of Sam sends Dean into his own dreamless sleep.
()()()()()()()()
"Hey man, be careful with the moneymaker," Dean says, placing an arm on Sam's shaking right hand. "I ain't got much left besides the face."
Sam looks down at where Dean's residual limb is resting on his arm, a lump forming in his throat as he's reminded yet again of what he's done to his older brother.
The boys are currently in the bathroom of their apartment, Dean in his wheelchair, Sam perched on the edge of the tub while Sam works at cleaning up Dean's facial hair. Dean's tried to shave himself a couple of times, mostly in the first couple of months after his injury. It didn't go so well. He'd nearly sliced his face off with the regular razor and the electric shaver just shimmied its way out of his grasp. He'd ended up looking like a moth-eaten vagabond.
So Sam picked up the job title of "Facial hair coordinator" in addition to his numerous other nonpaying gigs, taking a razor to Dean's face every two or three days.
And today, his hand is trembling almost invisibly. But enough for Dean to notice.
"Nightmare again?" Dean asks softly, drawing Sam's gaze back to his brother's all-knowing face. He knows Dean came over last night, found him curled up next to him when he woke up this morning, knows he was having a rather vivid nightmare last night.
And despite the shaking of his hand, he actually feels much better than he usually does when he's had that bad of a dream. He usually wakes up gasping in a cold sweat, unable to get back to sleep again.
Sam hangs his head, takes a deep breath, and nods almost imperceptibly.
"Sam," Dean pleads, trying to catch his brother's eye, "you've got to talk about it."
Sam lets out a half-hearted huff, considers his brother's statement in the same vein as the pot/kettle argument. But even he has to admit that Dean seems to be holding it together rather well. Of course, he doesn't have the memories of that day's events.
Several months ago…
They'd been keeping their eyes on groupings of gruesome deaths and reported maulings over the past couple of months, finally deciding that it was most likely Their Kind of Thing when an eyewitness reported what was basically described as a wild dog on steroids. The local police thought the kid was on drugs. Unfortunately, he wasn't.
The boys went and talked to the spooked teenager, wheedled out of him the description that screamed Black Dog to any hunter worth their salt, and set out for its last known location, a wooded area on the outskirts of a mid-sized town, the likes of which they'd passed through all too often over the years.
They'd hiked into the area well-prepared for a routine take down, their duffel bags filled with silver knives, guns with bullets of varied persuasions, Holy Water, bonfire accessories, and a host of various and sundries they always kept on hand.
They'd searched the area together for a couple of hours, finally splitting up at Dean's insistence after he'd argued successfully that they'd both taken down less on their own. Plus, they'd be able to cover twice as much ground and get the hell out of there that much faster.
But instead of the boys finding the Black Dog, it found Sam.
As much as parts of that day are a blur, there are other parts that Sam will never be able to forget. The crackle of branches snapping under the feet signaling the presence of a rather large being. The soft snorts of excitement low in the throat of something off to his left. The feeling of the beast's warm moist breath on the back of his neck when it finally found him.
Turns out the Dog was tracking him better than he was tracking it.
The beast had played with him a little, batted him around, knocking him into a tree and knocking him out. In truth, the scratches he'd told Dean required only Holy Water and antibiotic cream actually required stitches of his own; the ER staff had practically had to sedate him in order to clean him up, he'd been so focused on his brother.
When he'd come to after getting thrown into the tree, the first image he recalled was seeing Dean hurtling himself at the Dog, driving the thing off the course it was headed for, which was straight for Sam.
Instead, the dog had turned its attention to Dean. Or more accurately, Dean's legs.
Sam can still see the beast dragging his brother's writhing form across the wooded floor, see Dean's scrabbling arms trying to halt his progress by grabbing at tree roots as they pass him by. Can still hear his brother's tortured screams as the beast clamps down its jaws and shakes his brother like a rag doll.
Dean's form had appeared to go limp, then rigid again as he'd renewed his efforts to fight back, trying to pry his legs out of the beast's mouth. And Sam had watched in horror as the Dog changed its attention from Dean's legs to his arms, continuing to drag him further away from Sam's frozen form.
Sam had finally tried to scramble to his feet, the effort painfully slow due to the wooziness lingering from his meeting with the tree. By the time he'd followed the drag marks, he was met by a gruesome site – blood pumping from where his brother's limbs should be, the actual arms and legs nowhere in sight.
In reality it had only taken a few seconds, but in his nightmares it still feels like years before he's shot the beast, another decade or so before he gets to work trying to save his brother's life, tying tourniquets and applying direct pressure to the major arteries hell-bent on pumping Dean's life-force back into the earth. He doesn't even remember calling to Castiel, just knows that without his intervention Dean would be dead.
The call to 911 (he thinks Castiel might have taken care of that, he doesn't remember making the call and didn't think they had cell reception out there anyway), the ride in the ambulance, the paperwork and endless questions had all flown by in a haze; it's the part of the ordeal he recalls the least.
Unfortunately, he'll never be able to scrub the vivid images of the events leading up to that time from his mind.
Now…
Sam looks at his brother, sees the hellish existence he's relegated him to. The daily struggles he has to endure just to get through his day. And he can't forget his role in the situation. If he'd only been a little quicker. If he'd only insisted they stay together. If he'd only fought the Black Dog more at the outset.
If he'd only been a better brother.
To Be Continued…
Author's Note: Please let me know if you're still reading/enjoying the stories in this 'verse!