Author Note: Second tag for 13X18, "Bring 'Em Back Alive." A version in which Cas doesn't heal Dean's shoulder right away. Requested by and written for the awesome Nova42.
The Other Shoe
"Dean…we will find Gabriel." Cas speaks calmly, like he's using his voice as a means to diffuse a live explosive. Honestly, Dean hasn't given them much reason to behave otherwise. "We will."
"We better."
"Dean – "
His brother doesn't let him finish, whirls and actually backs Cas up a step when he shouts, "so then find him!"
The angel's eyes flicker Sam's direction, and he nods a small, tight permission. An assurance that they're okay here, when they're anything but.
As soon as the iron door closes with a heavy bang that carries back to the library, Dean groans and sags, a white-knuckled hand gripping his wounded shoulder. He's always used exaggerated levels of anger and frustration to conceal profound pain, be it physical or emotional. This is one hell of a blink, though Sam isn't entirely convinced this particular show of explosive rage was exaggerated.
Without Gabriel's grace, they can't open another rift to that awful place. Which means Mom and Jack, and…Charlie, are stranded there. Sam watches warily as his brother staggers to the bar cart and pours a drink, emptying the glass of whiskey with one long swallow. Dean immediately moves to pour another, a loud, awkward clack of glass on glass as he makes do with his left hand. He's not usually clumsy, and he's still lethal when shooting southpaw, but he's fading fast. It's been a long damn day, on all fronts, and Sam knows he's only scratched the surface of what his brother's been through.
Dean sniffs, staring into the inch of amber whiskey in his glass. "They were taking fire when I came through," he says, voice low and rough and vague, like Sam's not even in the room.
"Charlie and Ketch?" Sam struggles against his throat catching on both of their names, for two very different reasons. Keep him talking, he tells himself. A silent Dean is a bad sign, a portent of impending doom. But if he's talking, if Sam can keep him talking, then he can keep believing that this is going to be okay. That it's all going to work out, and they're going to get Mom back. They've been on a hell of an emotional roller coaster the past several months, and just one more hit – just one more loss – could be the one that sends his brother spiraling back down the dark path that left him lying dead on a landing in a haunted house. The path that left Sam with a syringe clenched in his sweaty fist and the longest three minutes of his life counting down on his watch.
"Yeah."
Dean turns to face him, and Sam gestures to his brother's bloody shoulder. "Is that when…"
"What?" He blinks hard. There's an obvious, concerning lag time before Dean can focus enough to respond. "Uh, no. That was earlier."
Warning bells sound in Sam's head as he narrows his eyes, starts to run calculations. "How much earlier?" Given his brother's propensity for self-destructive behavior and the reason he stepped through that rift, there's a damn good chance Dean's been walking around with an untreated bullet wound in his shoulder for the better part of a day.
Dean reflexively shifts his arm, and probably doesn't realize the grimace of pain that twists his features, or just how white his face goes. "I told you, Sam, I'm fine."
"Yeah, I know what you told me."
Dean sighs and drains the rest of his whiskey. As he lets the glass drop back to the cart, he doesn't appear indignant, just weary. He scrubs a hand over his pale, dirty face. "We took care of it."
"We?" Sam presses.
"Ketch."
"Huh."
Dean raises his eyebrows in agreement, lowering his hand to rub absently at the shoulder in question. "Yeah."
Not for the first time, Sam feels like he's trudging through a conversational minefield. His eyes land on the thick book lying open on the floor, the scattered papers. One wrong step – one wrong word – and he'll set Dean off again. But taking in the unhealthy pallor, the unknown state of his brother's injury – that's a chance he has to take.
He aims for casual, not anxious, as he asks, "you want me to take a look at it?" Says it like they're talking about a flat tire instead of an otherworldly wound inflicted by a deadly weapon.
"No." Dean drops his arm to his side with a sigh. His face is scary white, his eyes bright and feverish. "I'm gonna take a shower."
Sam nods. "Probably a good idea." Like that's all his brother needs to get back on track, to regain some of his mojo. Not their mom, or a good stretch of rest, or a freaking doctor. He watches Dean head unsteadily out of the room, nearly tripping over his stumbling, slow-moving feet, and knows for sure that he screwed the pooch here. Bad.
Because from time to time, Dean's anger also serves as an effective distraction, and Sam realizes he allowed Cas to go after Gabriel without healing the wound in his brother's shoulder. He glances at his watch, dread sitting in his gut like a rock. It hasn't been long, but there's no telling how far Castiel's gotten by now.
He digs his phone out of his pocket, dials quickly. Gets the angel's voicemail. Dammit. "Cas, you need to get back to the bunker as soon as you get this. Dean's hurt worse than we thought." Than I thought would be more honest. It's not like he called the angel's attention to the injury when he should have.
Guilt mingles with the dread that's settled in Sam's stomach as he gathers an array of their considerable stash of first aid supplies, sets out the spread on one of the library tables like he's getting ready to triage an entire group of disaster victims. He sits stiffly in a chair and waits for his brother to reemerge. Because he will; he'll want to put on a show like everything is fine and dandy, pretend there isn't a hole cut halfway through his torso.
Dean comes back into the library with heavy, uneven steps, scrubbing at the back of his neck with his left hand. His hair is still damp but he's fully dressed, shoes and everything. Ready for action, as always. His gaze passes over the supplies on the table, then he rolls his eyes and makes a beeline for the glass he'd left on the bar cart.
Sam watches his brother carefully, taking note his stiff movements, the obvious tremble in his right hand. "How's the shoulder?"
Dean swallows and bobs his head, fingers gripping his glass. "It's super."
He sits straighter in his chair. "Dean."
His brother spins, features drawn and mouth open like he's about to launch into one of his patented stubborn, profanity-laced diatribes, but he wavers where he stands, and doesn't get a single word out before what pitiful color he had left drains out of his face and his eyes roll up.
Experience has Sam shoving up from his chair and hurrying to his brother's side, but he doesn't get there in time to take much of the weight out of Dean's collapse. He cracks hard against the concrete on his left side, the glass he had in hand landing with a crash.
"No, no, no. Hey. Dean." Sam shifts his brother to his back and claps Dean's warm, flushed cheek. His head lolls limply, and while he frowns in response to Sam's voice, he doesn't really wake.
Sam moves immediately to inspect the shoulder wound, something he should have sacked up and done as soon as Dean stumbled through the rift. He tears the seam of his brother's t-shirt in his haste, exposing a peek of peeling medical tape and stark white bandaging.
It looks as though Dean had thrown a half-assed attempt at a fresh dressing, an already bled-through square of gauze taped at an angle over the hole below his collarbone. Sam peels the gauze away, gets his first good look at the injury, and an odd, pasty residue caked around the edges of an otherwise clean entry. Sam's got plenty of reasons to have reservations about the guy, but he supposes he owes Ketch some degree of thanks, for getting his brother this far.
Then he spots the dark, veiny lines spidering out from the hole, and his breath hitches. A rapidly-setting infection, or something worse. Either way, it's not good.
"Dammit," Sam seethes, fumbling once more to pull his cell phone from his pocket. Again, Cas doesn't answer, and his fingers tighten painfully around the phone. "Cas, answer your damn phone. Dean needs your help, now." He works his hand under his brother's shoulder blade, doesn't feel out an exit wound. Shit. He jostles Dean gingerly, rousing him.
Dean groans, blinks blearily into the middle distance before frowning up at Sam. "What's wrong?" His voice is a soft rasp.
Sam tightens his fingers in his brother's sleeve. "Well, for one thing, you're on the floor."
"What?"
"Yeah. Come on." He grips Dean under his good arm and hauls him carefully into a seated position, mindful of the broken glass peppering a puddle of whiskey. He helps his brother prop up against the base of one of the columns, keeps a hand on Dean's uninjured shoulder while he turns his attention back to the wound. "This doesn't look good, man."
Dean doesn't seem surprised by the assessment, bobs his head. "Yeah. It's, uh…there was something on the bullet."
The bullet that's still in him, and no doubt still leaching that unidentified-but-very-bad something into his system. Sam dabs gently at the edge of the hole cutting through his brother, inspects the residue on his fingertips. "You said Ketch took care of it?"
Dean's throat works. "Yeah." The word comes out thick and choked, seeming to take much more energy than it should.
Sam nods encouragingly, rubbing his hand against his thigh. "Do you remember what all he used?"
His brother lays his head back against the column, closes his eyes and groans.
"I know, man."
"Just call Cas," Dean slurs, and that's an admission if ever there was one.
"I did," Sam admits, returning the favor. "He didn't answer."
Dean's eyes blow open at that, and he swallows as he struggles to sit up straighter. "It was, uh, a Men of Letters antidote."
"Okay. That's good."
"Dicks," Dean breathes.
Sam can't disagree, but at least there's a decent chance he'll find everything they need right here in the bunker. "What was in it?"
The effort of remembering draws a deep crease between his brother's eyes, a bead of sweat at his temple. "Taro root," Dean says finally. "Arsenic. Baso – basi…ba-something." He drops his head back in exhaustion, defeated.
"Basidiomycota," Sam finishes, nodding. An image of an ingredient list forms in his mind, hand-scrawled in fanciful script on a yellowed bit of paper. He pats his brother on his good shoulder and bounces on the balls of his feet. "I've seen that written somewhere. Come on."
He struggles to help his brother get to his feet, then fights to keep him standing. He gets Dean planted in a chair, hands hovering uncertainly as his brother looses a low noise of pain and presses his right arm across his middle, curling over it.
"Okay. Stay there. I'm gonna see if I can find this stuff, throw another Band-Aid on this thing until Cas gets back." He should try to dig the bullet out, knows the pain of it must be torture. But there's a chance the damn thing is lodged in bone – or worse – and while Sam might have a lifetime's experience of motel room triage, he knows what his limits are. "Hang tight, man."
He finds the recipe and the necessary ingredients, but no instructions, and nothing to give him an idea of how long he can expect the antidote to hold off the poison once it's applied. Dean's breathing in short, shallow pants, is burning up, and his coherency is spotty at best. He can hardly focus on what Sam is asking, can't give him any idea of when he was shot, or when Ketch first administered the antidote.
"Dean," he calls, a high pitch of hysteria creeping into his voice as he tries desperately to get his bother's attention. "Does this look right?"
"Smelled like ass," Dean mumbles hoarsely, eyes at half-mast and head rolling loosely on his shoulders.
"Check," Sam returns, fighting a gag as he holds the bowl aloft for his brother's inspection.
"Hurt."
Sam swallows as he takes that in, gathers up a handful of the antidote. "I'll make it quick," he promises hollowly, knowing there's no way Dean is even hearing him, let alone understanding him. He can't look at his brother's face as he presses the paste into the open wound, grits his teeth as he listens to Dean grunt and hiss through the pain it causes.
"Just hang on, man," he pleads, using his teeth to tear open a fresh gauze pad. "Almost done."
Within moments, Dean is slumped, sweaty and white-faced and gripping the arms of his chair, with his head tipped to the side in a position that looks like it should be horribly uncomfortable. Sam goes to kitchen to wash his hands and fetch a glass of water, and pauses long enough to leave Castiel another voicemail, this one a vicious spew of profanity that would make his big brother beam with pride.
When he returns, the color hasn't returned to Dean's face, but the lines of pain around his eyes have softened, and his breathing is almost back to normal. Sam sets the glass of water on the table, nudges it closer to where his brother's limp, white hand lies.
Dean complies, takes a few small sips from the glass before pushing it away.
"How're you feeling?" Sam ventures cautiously.
His brother licks his lips, bobs his chin with a wordless grunt. Dean-speak for "better, but nowhere near good."
"All right." Sam squares his shoulders, readies himself for the daunting task of hauling his brother – who might be smaller than he is, but is by no means a small guy – down the hall to his room. "Come on, then."
Whether due to the fact it's a supplemental dose or just Winchester-specific bad damn luck, the antidote doesn't last nearly as long as he'd hoped. By the time Cas finally returns to the bunker, harried and worried and pretty damn pale himself, the ominous, veiny lines cover most of his brother's upper chest. Dean is muttering nonsensically as he drifts in and out of restless sleep, won't respond to Sam's pokes or pleas or shouts, and his fever is sky-fucking-high.
Castiel pauses on the threshold for just a moment, the span of a stunned breath that he doesn't need to take. "I-I didn't know."
Sam is so stressed and frustrated and wrung-dry, he almost grabs the angel and throws him up against the wall for taking so damn long. But his mission was no small one, and this is both their faults. "Can you fix it?"
Cas nods, and it's a simple matter of his healing hand against Dean's twitching, baking-hot shoulder. Sort of anticlimactic, given the way the past couple of hours have passed.
Dean jerks when the bullet pops free, then seems to melt against the mattress when the hole is sealed. Sam's heart triphammers in his chest until his brother wakes with a start, wide eyes blinking up at them.
"What…"
Sam crosses his arm over his chest, leans in. "How do you feel?"
"Wh – I'm fine."
He releases the breath he hadn't known he's been holding, nods. "That's good."
Dean frowns, gaze darting between the two of them huddled over his bed. "This isn't awkward at all."
Sam takes a big step back, swatting at Castiel's arm to do the same, but the angel hesitates.
"I'm sorry, Dean."
"Not your fault." Dean drops his eyes as he sits up and swings his legs over the edge of his mattress, goes about the post-healing motions of rubbing a palm across his chest, of poking curiously at his suddenly pain-free shoulder. "Not yours, either, Sam."
Sam's not so sure that's true, but he softens his expression, makes eye contact with Cas and jerks his head toward the door. "Go get Gabriel."
He waits for the echo of the iron door closing, chewing his lip as he watches his brother stare determinedly at a nondescript spot on the floor. "You good?" He's not asking about the poison or the bullet wound, and Dean knows it.
He doesn't respond, and Sam, exhausted and twitchy and hanging on by his last shredded nerve, doesn't budge.
Not that it really matters. When his brother finally raises his gaze, the '"no" Sam sees resonating in those dark, faraway eyes – the reason he so eagerly sent Cas after Gabriel – is answer enough.
Who's getting twitchy waiting for the season finale? *raises hand*