A/N: Yes, this is a tag for Born Under a Bad Sign, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read. This episode did not need a tag, because Kripke's a genius, and the whole thing was friggin' perfect, in our humble opinions. But hey, if you're gonna build, why not build on genius? This would never happen on the show, but if you're gonna slander a perfectly good episode, why not do it with pizzazz, right? Hope you guys like it.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Only for fun.
Mother's Little Helper
They rode in silence, for the most part, both too tired to continue butting heads. There were only so many times they could go back and forth on the whole, "Dean, the things I did…" and "It wasn't you, Sam," debate.
Silence, on the other hand, could go on forever. At that point, it was the best they could hope for, though they knew there was a whole lot of noise on the horizon. There was a war coming, after all, and wars were never silent. Even Dean, who was an expert, classically trained in the art of, shut up, move on, and ignore the pain, wasn't totally silent while fighting his internal battles.
Dean definitely had his tells. Sam could hear the war raging now; clenched jaw grinding, white knuckles popping, and half-started Metallica lyrics hummed in the back of Dean's throat, cut off and turned into something by AC/DC or was that Blue Oyster Cult?
No doubt about it, Dean was a mess.
Sam let his head fall against the window. It was his fault, all of it. So what if he'd been possessed when he'd…oh yeah, he didn't really remember what he'd done…well, when he'd done whatever it was he'd done, not the least of which was killing a man. It wasn't his fault he'd been possessed, but it wasn't like they hadn't known he was walking around with a big friggin' demonic X on his back. Dad knew. Dean knew. Sam knew, and that's why he'd made Dean make the same promise Dad had forced on him, and that's why the demon bitch had gotten her claws so deeply into his brother.
So, yeah, it was all Sam's fault that Dean was sitting beside him in the car, humming to some broken medley in his head instead of jamming to something blaring on the tape deck. And yet, that stubborn ass brother of his had taken only that one shot at him, a smack that said, "you scared the hell outta me, and don't you ever make me promise you anything like that again." Now they were back to, "It wasn't you, Sam."
Sam flinched, as much at the twisting knife of guilt in his gut as the sudden flare-up of pain in his arm as the burned flesh inadvertently brushed against the door. He did his best to conceal the little grunt that accompanied the flinch, his own vocalizations not nearly as stealthy as Dean's.
"That's it," Dean said, face contorting in what Sam believed to be agitation, though it could as easily have been pain or worry. "We're stopping here." The words had barely crossed his lips before the car was careening down the off-ramp far too quickly, the exit obviously not a planned one.
There was a motel on the feeder road with a vacancy sign glowing next to the highway, and, still driving too fast, Dean swerved into the parking lot and came to a far too abrupt halt in front of the office.
"You look like shit, Sam," Dean said, reaching across himself with his right hand and flinging the door open, pushing it with his left knee. "We're gonna hole up here for the rest of the night, and you're gonna sleep until that broody goddamned crease comes outta your forehead. I said I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, not have it carved out on my little brother's face."
Sam, whose fingers were still embedded in the dashboard after their rather eventful highway exit, turned to protest, mouth looking for words that didn't sound petulant and whiny when he'd been pretty much drowning in pity for the last hundred miles. That failing, he slouched back against the window as the driver's side door slammed in his face.
They settled into the room without another word, both foregoing showers, though they obviously needed them, and falling, fully-clothed onto one each of the queen sized beds. It wasn't like any amount of scrubbing could wash away their entirely effed up lives and make them zestfully clean and ready to start a new day. And what was a little more blood and grit on a motel comforter, anyway?
They should have both been exhausted enough to fall directly to sleep, but there was still just enough seething and cringing going on beneath the surface to keep them awake. Sam was pretty sure that Dean thought he was asleep when he heard his brother groan and roll off his bed an hour or so later. He heard the scrape of metal on metal as the hip flask Dean had refilled before leaving Bobby's slid out and was opened. He also heard the two or three long swallows that followed. Not exactly just a night cap.
Sam was still lying, arm over his eyes, and considering whether he should confront Dean about the drinking when he heard the flask close again, followed by the thunk of one and then both of Dean's boots on the floor and the shuffle of stocking feet into the bathroom.
What exhaustion couldn't do alone, exhaustion paired with running water, and the pounding of his heart in his ears as he waited impatiently for Dean to come out of the bathroom managed quite effectively. Before he even felt the tug of the downward spiral, Sam was completely asleep.
In the bathroom, Dean grunted back an exclamation and turned the water up a little as he tugged at the stained cloth of his t-shirt. The stitches in his wound had been ripped out by the demon's flagrant misuse of Sam's thumb. The hole, open and torn, could very well have caused Dean to go into shock from blood loss, had it not been for the cut vestiges of his shirt sleeve pushed inside. The cloth was rough enough for blood platelets to clump around and form a makeshift clot, but he knew infection would set in soon, if it hadn't already. The shirt had already been worn several days before it had taken a swim in the dirty lake water. No telling what was living in there now.
Dean's throat convulsed around a scream that he refused to let out as he picked at the shirt sleeve tentatively. He almost reached for another swig off his hip flask, but blood loss made the alcohol already in his system more potent, and he didn't want to be too light-headed. The last thing he needed was to pass out on the floor and have Sam find him that way.
A good amount of wriggling and cursing under his breath later, and Dean had the shirt halfway off. He had gotten it off his right arm and over his head, and the cut Jo had put up the sleeve to patch up the wound the first time was easily extended until the shirt only dangled from the places where it had been incorporated as part of the blood clot.
Dean knew the least painful way to extract the fabric would be to just give it one good yank, but he was afraid that the bleeding that would most likely result could get out of hand too quickly for him to control that way. Instead he spread out cotton balls, alcohol, tweezers, a ton of butterfly bandages(since no way could he stitch himself with only one hand), gauze, and tape, arranged them on the sink like an inquisitioner's toy box, and went to work slowly and methodically.
First, he took a cotton ball, soaked it in alcohol, and used it to moisten a small piece of the shirt cloth, biting against the burn. Then he traded in the cotton for tweezers and slowly peeled back the cloth until blood flowed from the wound, hastily stuffing it with gauze as he continued the process on another piece of sleeve. He kept the dirty shirt balled up under his armpit to catch the blood as it welled up and rand down his arm. He sure as hell didn't want to finish this up and have to spend an hour cleaning the bathroom.
Once all of the shirt had been extracted, Dean poured a healthy dose of peroxide over the wound, letting the gauze wick it up and take it deep inside where an infection could already be festering, and sponged the resulting white foam away with clean gauze pads. He realized that the wound was already far too puffy and torn to make the butterfly bandages effective, but the only other alternative was to stuff the hole with clean gauze, in which case, he'd be doing this whole thing again tomorrow. No thanks.
Or he could call Sam in and ask him for help. Hell no.
So instead, he removed the gauze from inside the wound, pulled the edges closed as best he could with one hand, and fastened the butterfly bandages. He covered the whole seeping patch job with a nonstick pad and wrapped it with vet wrap, a little trick they'd learned from Dad's friend, Joshua. It was red vet wrap, even though the hot pink and purple had been on sale. No way in hell he was gonna have his totally butch bullet hole sissified by a pink bandage. Thank you very much.
Only after he'd smoothed down the edges of the wrap and given the shoulder an experimental roll did he reach into his pocket for the bottle of pills Jo had given him to help with the pain. He examined them carefully, realizing that they were nothing that he recognized, despite the fact that he'd been dosed with just about everything known to man at one time or other in his life. But hell, beggars couldn't be choosers, and the way his whole body throbbed with the pulse in his shoulder, he was definitely begging for something.
He swallowed two of the pills dry, too tired to rustle up any water, and let his head fall back against the wall.
They worked fast, and a warm haze settle over him that he was more than grateful for. He could very well have fallen asleep right there, perched on the edge of the toilet, but he pried his eyes open, unsure how long he'd been resting already, and gathered himself mentally to clean up the mess.
Only then did he realize that he was soaked in sweat, and not the good, post-coital, time for a long drag on a cigarette before I sneak the hell outta here, kind of sweat. It was cold and profuse, and he could almost hear it pouring out of him, a high buzz in his ears like static on a television that had gone off the air.
He leaned his forehead against the counter, felt his stomach roil, and tried hard to swallow around the nausea that bubbled through the rapid pulse in his throat. He probably shouldn't have had that last swallow of Jack before he went in there. Live and learn, he supposed.
Dean waited for the spell to pass, trying to breathe deeply as sweat coalesced on his nose and chin and dropped to the linoleum floor with muted splashes. As the buzzing in his ears grew louder, he felt the burn of salt in his eyes, eyelashes heavy with the moisture that streamed down his forehead.
As white fog tried to blanket over his conscious thoughts and plow them under, Dean reached out his good arm, trembling and shaking, and cupped a handful of the running tap water. He brought it back to his mouth, and slurped it between his lips, trying desperately to rehydrate himself back from the brink. He couldn't hold very much of the liquid in just one hand, and managed only half a swallow or so on each attempt, but he eventually got enough inside of him that the buzzing quieted, and the sweating slowed.
He tentatively opened his eyes and tested his ability to raise his head. He straightened slowly, waiting for the vertigo to rush over him and knock him on his ass. When it didn't, he moved, as if through quicksand, and got a Dixie cup from the plastic dispenser on the far side of the sink where he hadn't been able to reach it earlier. He filled it, and took a couple more good swallows of water for good measure.
His watch alarm beeped the hour, and he glanced at it. Five a.m. Even exhausted, Sam would be unlikely to sleep past sunrise, so if Dean was going to keep up his masquerade and be safely back in his bed before his brother came knocking on the door, he needed to get up and take care of the evidence.
Disregarding any pretense of organization, he pushed all the first aid supplies into the med kit, letting them fall however they may, and slapped the cover on the box before shoving it into his duffel beside his shaving kit. He took a good handful of toilet paper, dampened it, and used it to wipe down the counter. He flushed the mess down the toilet without thinking and then spent several long seconds panicking as he listened for Sam to come to the door. Apparently, he'd lucked out, and Sam hadn't heard the flush, so he was left with just the bloody shirt to dispose of.
He was pretty sure that, once he got out of this bathroom and staggered back to his bed, he'd sleep for most of the day, and usually if Dean slept in, be it the result of an illness, a late night romp with a busty blonde, or a hangover, Sam ended up playing June Cleaver, domestic goddess, and took care of the laundry. Dean couldn't take the chance of Sam finding the evidence, thus adding more pain and worry to the river of guilt carving its way across his brother's forehead. Nope, the shirt had to go.
He glanced around, hoping for one of those stainless steel pull-open drawers that most public bathrooms installed for women to dispose of, well, girlie things. Even Sam, liberal thinker that he was, would never, ever look in there. Of course, this place was a dump, and all Dean could see was the trash can. That would never do.
Taking a desperate look around, Dean finally spotted what he needed. A window. The place was too stodgy to have vent fans installed in the bathroom, but it did have one of those tiny little windows about the shower stall to let steam escape.
Dean wadded up the bloody shirt, along with the used gauze pads and cotton balls, tucked them back under his left armpit, and reached his right arm as far up the wall as he could before testing his knees and standing. He wobbled uncertainly for a moment, but felt the gel in his muscles harden into something that at least mimicked actual muscle tone, and clenched his jaw defiantly. Take that, Gravity, you bitch!
He somehow managed to get himself into the shower stall, thankfully using the handicap rail for support, and pulled the window open just enough to drop the wad of bloody evidence outside. So long as a stray cat didn't pick it up and bring it into the parking lot as a prize, Dean figured his secret would stay safe.
Pleased with himself, he turned.
One foot was on the bathroom floor and the other was still in the bathtub when his entire stomach knotted into a fist, doubling him at the waist. Several large drops of pre-vomit saliva splashed onto the toilet seat before he could get the lid up. A fraction of a second later, his entire body convulsed, angry that there was nothing in his stomach to expel, and squeezing him all the harder to get its dues, demanding payment for its abuse.
He choked around the yellow slime that came up, but was only vaguely aware of the mucous stringers that marked its course from his mouth and nose to the water below.
He realized too late that he was sweating again, and before he could even pull the plunger to flush the toilet, he slid to the floor in a heap.
TBC