Words as Weapons
"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings; words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out." –Stephen King
They're surely a sight – if this wasn't such a deliberately deserted part of town. A lumbering duo shuffling like old school zombies out to where Dean had first pulled the Impala to a stop, what, four hours ago.
That's how long it had taken to find Dean, after he'd stopped answering his phone. That's how long he'd been bleeding. Had been bled.
Sam's relatively unburdened by the negligible weight of the girl in his grasp and still riding something of an adrenaline high, heart tripping and head buzzing as he tries to shorten his naturally long strides to match the horribly slow pace of his stumbling brother. The girl's a fighter or she wouldn't be alive, and she's gradually coming out of the Djinn's spell – the same one Dean had clawed his way out of. Her spotty awareness is leaving her frightened and twitchy in the arms of a stranger, but she's too weakened by dehydration and blood loss to cause a falter in Sam's step. And Dean is…well, Sam's not quite been able to get an accurate read on that just yet.
He's been horribly silent since Sam pulled the girl's weight from his shaking arms, and his boot catches in a patch of loose gravel and pitches him forward. His color is abysmal, ghostly, and when Sam reaches out a hand to steady him, his brother's skin is cool to the touch. Dean hadn't been captive as long and hasn't lost as much blood as their charge, but he's not going to be running any marathons anytime soon, that's for damn sure. To hell with Yellow Eyes, because Sam is predicting cheap, cramped quarters and cabin fever, an abundance of junk food and trashy magazines and B-horror movies in the foreseeable future. Bedrest, as much as Dean will stand for, until his complexion improves from a shade similar to a slab of concrete and the action of merely standing is no longer taking the wind out of his sails.
Throughout the walk to the car, Sam can't stop speculating where Dean was. What he wished for, what the Djinn saw when it dug into the darkest corners of his wounded but boarded-up brother. Dad, he thinks, is the obvious answer. Because Dean hasn't quite been the same since their father died. He's been frightening and reckless, burdened and weary, before finally locking all of that away and donning the mask of the Dean that existed before Sam walked away.
Briefly, selfishly, he wonders if that was it, if Dean had wished for him to stay, but Sam knows better. Dean had continued to live without his brother in the picture; without Dad, he's merely surviving.
So what did he wish?
Dad didn't make a deal for me.
Dad didn't tell me "save Sam, or kill him."
We killed the demon before it had a chance to get outta Dad.
But that last one is Sam's wish; not Dean's.
When they reach the Impala Dean breaks away and digs into his pocket, dragging the keys free. He's got a concerning look about him, squinty and listless and lost, but he moves automatically, however haltingly, to the driver's side of the car.
"Dean." Sam uses that one word to speak the volumes of worry screaming inside his head. He doesn't need to demand the keys, or even ask for them. Because, gun to his head, his brother clearly couldn't identify where they are or where they've been or where they need to go next.
Hospital, obviously. For the girl, though Sam wouldn't turn away a professional opinion on his gray, anemic brother and the hot, angry hole in his neck. But that won't happen, not while Dean still has any say in the matter.
Maybe he'll get lucky, and Dean will pass out on the way to the nearest emergency room. But Sam's not prone to luck, and Dean's sure as hell not known for doing things the easy way.
He stands swaying by the rear wheel as Sam gets the girl situated under a worn wool blanket in the backseat, and when he pulls back out of the car and lays a gentle hand on his brother's arm, Dean jumps. He turns large, wet eyes on Sam that crack everything inside him straight down the middle, and he can't help but ask, "what was it?"
And in the moment, Dean can't help but answer. "It was…Mom."
His voice is hoarse and choked and full of an intense pain that cuts deep beyond physical wounds and weakness, and Dean seems to hear it for himself immediately as it spills out, and locks it down. He sniffs and pulls away from Sam, sets a steady-enough course for the passenger side of the Impala, and never once looks back at his brother as he settles inside on the bench.
He's got at least one victim of the Djinn in need of immediate medical attention, but for a moment Sam is paralyzed, rooted in place as the implications of what Dean's just let slip sink in.
Mom is an idea to Sam, a dream and fantasy never fully realized or understood, but for his brother she's a vital piece that had been ripped away without warning, the first of two yawning holes inside that he's not been able to fill with booze or hunting or Sam or himself.
How old were you when Mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?
But he's just seen it in his brother's wounded gaze; Dean knew, and knows. He feels it. The look in his eyes speaks of fresh loss, and it's quite possible the Djinn offered him something he didn't actually want to come back from.
He had Mom back and lost her again, and Sam doesn't know exactly how jacked the passage of time may have been for Dean. Four stressful hours for Sam could have meant days or weeks or months for his brother.
There has to be more, because Sam knows enough to know that you don't get one thing you desperately want without losing something else in the process. Dad, maybe. Or, hell, maybe Sam himself.
He can muse and theorize all he wants but it's a pointless exercise, because there's a better than even chance he'll never know, because Dean will never say.
By the time Sam brings himself to settle behind the wheel, the girl is making a soft, stuttered keen from the backseat and Dean is noticeably shivering and very deliberately not looking at him, focused instead on some spot in the night outside the passenger window and granting Sam an eyeful of the small but concerningly-bruised wound in his neck for the duration of the drive.
Sam tucks a hand into his jacket pocket and finds the thin line of tubing and bag of Dean's blood there. He'd been spooked by the police cruiser outside the motel room earlier in the night, and can't get the always-present threat of the FBI manhunt for his brother off of his mind. Milwaukee is hundreds of miles away, but the danger follows them, heedless of state lines and jurisdiction, and he can't leave this evidence of Dean in the middle of an eventual crime scene. He has to hang onto what had been taken from his brother until he can discretely dispose of it.
Sam's disgusted for so many reasons – by the necessity of the action, by the feel of the blood cooling inside the plastic bag, and by knowing that the blood is meant to be inside his brother, that it's just as vital as those less tangible pieces Dean is missing.
Dean's trembling increases, the ring on his right hand knocking a stuttered rhythm against the car door, and Sam cranks the heater of the Impala in hopes of helping his brother stave off the expected, unpleasant chill of blood loss. There's a fair bit in the bag in his pocket, the one that had been connected to the filthy fucking needle sticking out of Dean, but Sam's been in too much for a hurry to really try to put a number on what exactly his brother's lost. Too much of a hurry to think to put the bag in the trunk and get it off of his person.
Dean's special brand of self-sacrificial bullheadedness shouldn't be considered an appropriate gauge for his wellbeing, so even though Sam is fully aware of the severity of the condition of the young girl in the backseat as he shuts off the Impala outside the emergency room entrance, he can't actually bring himself to step out of the car before ordering, or maybe pleading, "come in."
Dean jerks his head in the negative and does his best to straighten on the bench. "M'good."
No, you're not, Sam argues silently, but can't spare much time on actual argument, because the girl's condition has deteriorated on the trip, well beyond the sort of debate Dean is capable of.
He's furious with his stubborn jackass of a brother but tamps it down in order to handle the poor girl with the care she so desperately needs, gathering her once more into his arms and transferring her into the custody of hospital staff. He answers the questions he can and expertly sidesteps what he can't, makes up a story about finding her on the side of the road in hopes of buying as much time as he can before cops find the warehouse they'd been held. The entire time, Sam's mind is occupied with the thought of Dean sitting cold and hurting out in the car.
With the adrenaline fading, Sam's starting to feel that knock he took to the head, a dull, relentless pounding in his skull, and he wants nothing more than to mix up an ibuprofen/beer cocktail and sleep away the next ten to twelve hours. But his work is only half-done, and he snakes a roll of gauze from a cart parked outside a supply closet on his way out of the building, because he can't remember what's left in the kit and he'd only caught a glimpse of Dean's bruised and rope-burned wrists, but they'd looked bad enough to warrant some attention.
When he makes his way back out to the car, Dean appears to have drifted off, his forehead resting against the cool glass of the window. Sam ducks quietly into the backseat for the blanket; he doesn't go so far as to tuck it around his brother, but drops it gently onto Dean's lap, covering his shaking hands and offering some extra warmth for what remains of their drive across town.
Sam grips the steering wheel tightly and silently works to script how the next few hours will go. He tends to leave his marks with words, with the things he has to make known so he doesn't burst from the strain of withholding his thoughts and feelings. He's hot-tempered with a hair trigger, something passed down from his father.
It's what Dean doesn't say – what he won't say – that cuts deep. When he shuts everyone out, including his brother.
The not-knowing hurts Sam. Is hurting him now, as Dean sits mere inches away, no longer asleep, but just as silent. There's a very narrow window for Sam to take advantage of here, because once his brother's had enough time to get everything worked through and figured out, this will never be spoken of again. Dean pries at Sam with the force of a crowbar, but never allows his brother to glimpse his vulnerability.
No. Not never.
I'm tired, Sam. I'm tired of this job, this life…this weight on my shoulders, man. I'm tired of it.
So Sam broke out his own conversational crowbar, pried and begged and fumed to the best of his abilities, until Dean finally cracked and let his brother know what that weight on his shoulders had been.
Before Dad died, he told me something – something about you.
Sam grew angrier and angrier as Dean went on, from the lies and withholding of something so big, something that concerned him. At the deception, an art he himself had perfected long ago.
He just said that I had to save you, that nothing else mattered, and that if I couldn't I'd…that I'd have to kill you. He said I might have to kill you, Sammy.
And for all of Dean's honesty and vulnerability, Sam rewarded him with anger. By walking away, again.
It won't be so easy to open Dean up again. Except, Sam needs to know. Needs to know that he's still someone his brother can trust, and turn to. That Dean still has feelings to share.
Sam's no stranger to keeping secrets, but he'd like to think he'd learned his lesson long before that conversation turned confrontation after the events in Rivergrove. Bottling things up inside leads the way of ghostly interference and triggers pulled on rock salt-loaded shotguns, and scars too easily visible.
He throws the Impala into 'park' outside the motel room. "Dean…"
Dean jerks upright, hand snaking out from beneath the blanket to fumble at the door handle. "I'm not really in the mood, Sam. Just wanna get some sleep."
An odd thing for Dean to say, given the trail of Sam's thoughts, but not entirely unexpected. He swallows, nods as he takes the keys from the ignition. "That's totally fair. But I'm gonna check you out first." His brother is susceptible to infection from multiple wounds; given the state of the building they'd been kept in, even the abrasions around his wrists are nothing to glaze over.
The defeated bob of his head is a testament to just how drained and awful Dean feels. "Whatever, Sammy," he says, barely above a whisper as he hauls himself out of the car.
Once inside the room, he allows Sam to clean and wrap his abused wrists, grimaces and tilts his head to submit to a brief inspection of the bruise on his neck, but he doesn't once meet his brother's eyes, and he doesn't speak a single word until the last bit of medical tape is affixed.
"We done?"
Sam nods, not that Dean would know, so he adds, "Yeah," and pulls his hands away into his lap.
Dean lays back a bit gingerly, a wince cutting his pale face, and immediately puts his back to Sam, still in his jeans and boots, and still shivering from the lingering chill of a body that's lost some of its natural warmth.
Sam chews his lip a moment, fiddles with what's left of the roll of looted gauze. "You want me to – "
"Shut up, Sammy."
His voice is soft and wounded. Pleading. So Sam follows his brother's lead and does what Dean has already perfected. He shuts up.
He could talk it out of Dean, or beat it out of him, but that's not what's best for either of them. Dean will share, or he won't. And Sam can be pissed about that; he can rage and rail and spit and throw chairs across the room, but it's not his choice to make.
That doesn't mean he'll ever stop trying, just that he'll accept the silence in the meantime, and be there if it breaks.
He sleeps, he thinks. Not much, and certainly not well, but when he next opens his eyes it feels like it's been a while, and there's a hint of sunlight streaming in through the gap in the curtains. His head is pounding, and his body feels heavy to a point that he's unsure he could do so much as wiggle his toes at the moment. So it's probably not much of an exaggeration to say Dean exhausts about an hour's worth of energy just rotating his head in an effort to get eyes on his little brother.
But the bed next to his is empty and impeccably made, still or again. With his neat freak of a brother, it's difficult to tell whether or not the bed has been slept in.
"Hey, you're up," Sam notes, from somewhere near his feet and a bit too brightly for Dean's liking or current mental capacity.
"Yeah – " he tries, but his voice catches painfully and what he manages is only a rough rasp he doesn't recognize. Dean rolls his head back square against his pillow, clears his throat and tries again. "Yeah, I guess."
Sam crosses the room and settles onto the edge of his bed facing Dean, the mattress sinking with a creak under his weight. "You need anything?" He was thoughtful enough not to pull open the curtains and welcome in the abusive rays of the sun, but he does flip on the light between the beds, and the dim, dirty bulb does just as much damage to Dean's tired eyes.
"No, m'okay." Dean starts to push himself up in bed, pausing as bandages bunch and wrinkle against his wrists. He frowns, settles against the headboard and lifts a heavy hand into his eye line, finds a thin layer of gauze taped there, spotted where some sort of ointment has bled through the wrapping. "You do this?"
Sam's eyebrows come together in recognizable worry, and his fingers jump against his thigh. "Yeah," he says, stretching out the word. "And you were awake when I did."
That's news to Dean, who's got nothin' on the night before, except…except that's not quite right.
No more pain. Or fear. Just love and comfort. And safety. Dean, stay with us. Get some rest.
It hurts something fierce, and all over, when Dean rolls away from his brother and heaves himself out of bed.
"Dean – "
He cuts Sam off with a wave of his hand, but doesn't look back. "Just – just shut up, Sam."
He ducks into the bathroom without a change of clothes, and much quicker than his sore, weary body should be capable of.
Sam's been busy, and it's not just the clothes and antibiotic ointment he'd subtly dropped into the closet-sized bathroom, somehow without Dean noticing. Seems like little brother made a serious supply run while he was busy trying not to pass out in the shower, one that'll keep them occupied and here for at least a few days.
"What's all this?" Feeling slow and tender all over, Dean gingerly rolls up the cuffs of his button-down shirt and surveys the spread of snacks, beer and magazines. He raises his eyebrows at his brother, who looks like a caught child, standing too still against the counter and nursing a paper cup of coffee.
Sam shrugs in that nonchalant way he's got of being not nonchalant at all. "I just thought we'd hang out here for a couple of days." He nods at Dean's bare wrists. "Want me to rewrap those?"
"No thanks, Doctor Winchester." There's no arguing the ache in the joints or the circles under his eyes or the persistent pound in his head or the chill Dean can't seem to shake. He'd just rather not talk about any of that. "Any particular reason you wanna stick around?"
To his credit, Sam doesn't push, or pry, or say any of the things Dean knows he wants to. Not yet. "No. Just, uh, seemed like as good a time as any to take a break."
It's not that Dean necessarily minds the idea of taking a break, but he'd rather keep hunting, keep moving; a much better alternative to dealing or, worse, talking.
"Is that…okay?"
"Hmm?" Dean raises his head, and the motion steals a bit of his balance, brings with a fresh flare of pain in his aching head. He presses his palm flat against the surface of the table, trying not to blink too heavily, trying to turn his grimace into a smirk, and failing on all accounts. "Yeah, sure. Sounds good to me."
Sam nods and his eye twitches, and he drags his cell phone free of his jeans pocket. "I'm gonna call and check on the girl, okay?"
It's not the sort of thing they usually do, and Dean thinks it might just be something Sam is doing to make himself feel better about what's happened. Like he wants so desperately to say she's gonna be fine, and so will you.
But Sam won't say that, and Dean's not so sure he will be fine. But he's gonna have to give the kid something. "Yeah, okay," he chokes out, snapping up one of the magazines from the table and moving to sit on the edge of his bed.
He flips through the slick pages while Sam makes the call, his voice sounding warbled and faraway, and when Dean sees her eyes peering up at him the beer ad, it's what breaks him.
Author Note: I had a random thought the other day, and then it occurred to me that I hadn't ever really written a tag for "What Is and What Should Never Be," even though it's one of my fave eps. So, you know, this.