In the beginning, there was...confusion.
Not the beginning, beginning. Not the Genesis 1:1 beginning from the Bible. The way he felt though, it might as well have been. He felt like he'd aged fifty years. Maybe more. He wasn't the same over-achieving, cowardly kid that he'd been less than two years ago.
In the beginning, there was confusion. A lot of it. Who was he? How on earth had he fallen face first into Paranormal Activity 1 and become the priest character? Less old and more scared, obviously, but somehow the symbolism stuck with him.
He sometimes wished that he could have mastered French with the same built-in mechanism that he was frantically translating the tablet with. No textbook necessary. And then the headaches came, and he changed his mind, almost praying instead that he could have a simple, solid paper textbook that didn't have terrifying words describing ways to demolish the planet and its inhabitants.
His thought train was sounding like the narration to a poorly written, sappy novel. Or a chick flick. Or maybe Lord of the Rings...but without the happy, elvish parts and hobbits. Here, there was only evil.
Kevin shook his head as he reached across the sink for the soap. For the third time. How was there so much blood? It felt very wrong on his hands. He couldn't seem to scrub it all off.
He still hadn't gotten used to this life; maybe he never would. Despite the horrors that were becoming regular occurrences in his life, however, he found Sam and Dean to be the most confusing and frightening. He struggled to trust them; to understand them. They weren't human. At first he had compared them in his mind to two soldiers, hardened by all that they'd seen and fighting to stay sane in the grip of PTSD, but there was more to it. They weren't human. Something about them terrified him. He saw no vulnerability in them; the closest thing he saw to it was whenever one was in danger and the other went to the rescue, but even then, it didn't strike him as true vulnerability.
Until tonight. He dried his hands and hurried back to Sam's room in the bunker, almost tripping over the discarded backpack that they'd left in the hall. That was covered in blood, too.
He would throw up, but he'd already done that. Right after he'd put down the suture needle. Someday, he would get a tough stomach, but apparently not today.
SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN
There was so much blood. This was going to make a huge stain in his seat. Dean was going to absolutely kill him. It was an ironic thought that the vampire might have beaten Dean to the job; at the rate he was losing blood, it wouldn't be surprising.
Sam tiptoed the fingers of his right hand across to meet his left hand, applying more pressure to the deep wound. It was a disturbing sensation, knowing that he was literally holding his guts in. He didn't want to know what would happen if he moved his hands.
"Dean?" his voice sounded far away, and there were no vowels between the "d" and the "n" in the way he said his brother's name...he was in trouble. He repeated his brother's name a little more urgently.
"Good. You're still alive." Dean barely whispered back. He let out a weak cry.
"Let me see." Sam started to lean across towards the driver's seat of the car.
"Don't you dare. You need to keep your kidneys on your insides." Dean panted.
Sam knew.
"Dean, don't die on me, okay?" he pleaded.
"I won't if you won't."
"Deal."
They were both silent; talking was too exhausting.
Sam jolted out of unconsciousness a little later to Dean swearing.
"Dean?"
"I'm okay. Just wish that kid would hurry up, we're bleeding to death here." Dean gasped and swore again.
Sam's hand was heavier than it should be; impossibly heavy. He made it move, though, away from the wound and across the center console to his brother's hand. Dean was trembling so violently that Sam could barely grasp his fingers, but he finally made the connection. Dean sobbed out a scream, clasping his little brother's hand as a distraction from the pain.
Sam wouldn't be able to tell until they got back to the bunker where there was light, but he was pretty sure that there was a major nerve had been hit in Dean's left shoulder. Dean had passed out from the agony of it when Sam had carried him to the car earlier, before that vampire had come and taken a swipe at him. He hoped that Dean wouldn't lose the use of his arm. That was the least of their worries at the moment, though; the arm wouldn't matter if Dean died from blood loss from the wound in his neck.
The headlights of another car slashed across Sam's face, bright and harsh against his unadjusted eyes.
Kevin wrenched his door open first. Sam had never been so happy to see the advanced placement prophet in his life.
"Sam!" Kevin's vocal range reached the soprano notes of a five year old as he reacted to the sight of his friend. He froze, his hands jerking as he obviously tried to force himself into action.
Sam realized that the kid was going to panic. He let go of Dean's hand and caught Kevin's arm, giving a reassuring squeeze.
"It's going to be okay Kevin. Get Dean into the backseat..." he paused as consciousness threatened to just walk off and leave him there.
"Sam?"
"M'alright...Get Dean in the back and drive us to the bunker. Leave your car here."
He squeezed Kevin's arm again, but the kid didn't seem to be able to respond.
"Kevin." Sam changed his tone, trying to speak more forcefully. "Do this...or Dean's gonna die. I'm gonna die."
Still nothing.
"Kevin...come on..."
Kevin seemed unable to hear Sam anymore, he was just staring at the blood.
When the Impala's horn blared sharply, Kevin jumped and sprang into action.
Sam rolled his head over to look at his brother; Dean's head was back again his headrest, his face drawn with intense pain, but a glimmer of amusement was tugging at the corner of his lips as his hand fell away from the center of the steering wheel.
"Works every time."
Kevin got Dean's door open and reached for the older hunter.
"Sam, what do I do?"
"Get the bleeding on his neck stopped first." Sam directed.
"How?"
Sam winced as warm flesh and blood pulsed against his palm. "Ahhh...take off your sweater and press it against his neck. See if he can hold it there by himself."
It took a painfully long time, but Dean was eventually situated in the backseat with Kevin's sweater slowing the life flow from his neck, and Kevin was inching himself into the blood soaked seat and gripping the steering wheel.
"Sam? Are you good?"
Sam heard the words, but their meaning didn't connect. He could feel himself slipping away.
"Sam!"
"Uh...here."
"We need to slow down your bleeding, too." Kevin seemed to have finally gotten a grip. He hurried out of the driver's seat and threw open the trunk, grabbed a blanket, and came back around to the passenger side.
"Here..." he hesitated. "Let me look."
Sam's hands refused to move. Kevin grabbed them and gently pulled them away.
"Oh, crap!" he gasped. He pressed the blanket hard against Sam's wound, throwing Sam out of his daze and into the full realization of the distressing hurt. His body stiffened, and he seized Kevin's hands in a panicked attempt to stop the hellish sensation.
"It's okay. Sam, I've got you." Kevin crooned, keeping his hands pressed over the blanket. "Think you can hold this there for me?" He moved Sam's hands back over the blanket, and Sam finally figured out how to push a little against the cloth.
Kevin shut the door and hurried back to the driver's side, starting the car and shifting it into drive.
"Sam! You have to keep your hands over it!" he said. He reached across and put his own hand over the blanket, keeping it there as he directed the Impala with the other hand.
"Don't die. Don't die."
Sam acknowledged the request with a grunt, relieved that his body was shutting down enough that the pain was less intense.
SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN
Four hours after the nerve wracking rescue, Kevin was relieved that he hadn't frozen as he'd patched up the brothers. They'd needed him.
Dean was already coming around, weak and disoriented from blood loss and pain, but coping. Sam was still completely unconscious, his breath coming in shallow, labored gasps.
"Kevin." Dean's voice broke through the young man's reverie.
Dean and Sam were both situated in Sam's room, one on each side of the queen-sized bed. Sam had somehow been conscious when Kevin had brought them in one at a time, and had insisted that Kevin not separate them. Kevin didn't argue; now that he thought about it, it would have been even more difficult and stressful to run up and down the hall between the hunters' two rooms.
He was thankful that they had found the elevator a week earlier; it had had a big locked door that Dean had finally gotten curious enough to break down, and he'd been thrilled by not only discovering that it existed, but also that it worked. Kevin tried not to imagine what would have happened if he'd had to get them both down the stairs in their conditions.
"Yeah, Dean?"
Dean was very white, but his eyes were clear and his words were not slurred like Sam's had been.
"Is he alive?"
Kevin swallowed hard. "Yeah. How are you feeling?"
"I'll live." Dean winced. His voice was gravelly and weak, but he was talking. That had to be a good thing.
"Look, I need you to get my contact books and call a woman named Charlie. Tell her that we're at the bunker and we need help. She'll know what to do."
Kevin nodded and turned around.
"Kevin?"
"Yeah."
Dean smiled. "You did a good thing, man. Thank you."
Kevin smiled. "I kind of owed you guys."
Dean shook his head. "No. You will never owe us, Kevin. Not after everything you've done, everything you've sacrificed. Got that?"
Kevin forced himself not to get choked up.
"Really?"
"Really. Don't make me give another cheesy speech." Dean closed his eyes. "Don't let it go to your head, though. Go get the stupid phone."