Title: Lucky Winchester Luck
Summary: "Hysterical laughing: bad. Probability of scaring the crap out of Sam by doing that: one hundred percent. Temptation to do it anyway: oh, so very high." Dean's got a secret. Set first season Post-Asylum without John's phone call.
A/N: Well, this here is my second. Be warned, I'm a sucker for Dean angst/whump/h/c. Check out my profile if you need specific reasons why. But this specific story is dedicated to Xenascully, who's been an amazing person and done so much. You're awesome, girl!
"And you're positive it's just a pissed off poltergeist?"
Glancing over at his brother, Sam raised an eyebrow. "You enjoy doing things like that, don't you?"
The shit-eating grin that spread over the other man's face gave an indication that, yes, he enjoyed things like that very much.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Rolling his eyes in that burdened younger brother sort of way, Sam finished shoving the last of his clothes in his pack.
"Well, anyway. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. All the typical signs of one. Scratching sounds, inexplicable light failure, the usual."
Nodding slightly, lips slightly downturned in an apparent gesture of deep thought, Dean finished checking the last of the weapons he was packing and asked offhand, "And you're sure it's not just a hypochondriac old guy with dementia and a head full of war memories?"
The teasing note of 'I know something you don't know' came through loud and clear.
"All right, what is it?" Sam sighed deeply as he straightened from his stoop over the bed, his duffel finally packed.
Dean gestured towards the open laptop on the small hotel table with his pistol.
"Been to that house three times in the last five years. Never been a poltergeist there. Never a ghost, spirit, or anything like that. Just a lonely old man who never has his hearing aid fully charged and 911 on six out of nine speed dials."
Blinking his comprehension, Sam clicked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head, chuckling slightly.
"Well, seasoned hunter: one. College kid: zero. And the crowd goes wild!" Dean said as he grinned, his arms jerking up in a field goal motion.
Dean watched as Sam sat down on his bed with only a small amount of defeat on his features. That was good. The whole point of letting Sam think he'd found a poltergeist was to raise his confidence level. The whole point of telling him he was wrong was to make him understand where he'd messed up. He was trying to teach the boy, not destroy his soul.
Noting the line of thought he had and where it would inevitably lead to, Dean gave himself a mental shake. There wasn't time for that. Sam lived too much of his life in the past. As the sole protector of his little brother, Dean couldn't afford that luxury. He always had to keep his thoughts in the present, had to anticipate the immediate future. That's the only way they could survive.
And if he had to lie a bit, scam a few companies, and cover all his wounds with that deflective and trademark sarcasm, then that's what he would do in order to keep his brother safe.
"So, since that's a total bust, how about we ditch the Amityville wannabe and find something real. What was that other one you were looking at? The Sasquatch?" Dean asked, though he'd memorized every word Sam had said on the subject; that was one of the perks of having both photographic and audiographic memory.
Perking up a bit after the poltergeist letdown, Sam jumped up and typed rapidly at the keyboard, paying little attention to Dean shoving his pistol into a shoulder harness. He distantly realized that his brother was walking around more armed than usual lately, but he brushed away the thought as quickly as it had come.
"Yeah, in Flathead National Forest in Montana. There have been a few reported sightings of a bigfoot in the area and several local deaths and disappearances. I didn't think anything about it at first, since, you know," Sam admitted, glancing up at his brother with a bemused expression on his face, "Almost all of these things turn out to be hoaxes. But they've got a survivor's account of an attack with some paranormal aspects, as well as wounds and hair that don't add up to a bear attack."
While Sam talked, Dean took a short moment to give him a once over. They'd been pushing hard the last few weeks, covering several thousand miles and wrapping up over half a dozen hunts. Eyes narrowing slightly, Dean noticed the dark circles under his brother's eyes and the slight tightening of skin over his cheekbones. So, Sam wasn't sleeping well or eating enough. Easily fixable. Taking his time with his examination, Dean added what he saw with what he'd seen the last few days and determined his brother wasn't hiding any injuries from him.
Good. That's my job, Dean thought with more than a touch of determination.
Realizing that there was sudden silence and quickly flipping through his memory to remember what had been said, Dean answered Sam's almost unheard question.
"It'll probably take us about ten hours to get there. More than enough time for you to do a little more digging on the thing. Dad's journal says a few things about the Yeti, but almost nothing about Sasquatch,"Dean said as he grabbed his two duffel bags and pulled them over his shoulder.
The nod that came from Sam made his brother proud. After that haunted asylum the previous month, Sam had started listening better. Not so much caving in as understanding that his brother could be right about a few things. After all, Sam had been away from the hunt for nearly four years. Dean had been doing it since he was four. The math was pretty easy for the older brother to work out, and apparently the younger was starting to figure it out too.
"All right, let's get the hell out of here, then," he said cheerfully, and they stepped out into the dawn, the hotel door closing gently behind them.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Dean pushed away the highway drowse that had started invading his mind. He was so used to the feeling of miles and miles rolling under his tires that he was surprised the drone even got to him. Then again, he was barely sleeping anymore. That could always have something to do with it. Pushing away his own exhaustion, Dean turned his attention to his brother's report.
"All right. So, early accounts of bigfoot seem to stem from wild men in the woods who had left their native tribes. They're supposedly giants, between six and ten feet tall, and they're allegedly nocturnal omnivores. But those accounts seem to be less supernatural and more black sheep of the flock type things. So I checked out the skoocooms, which is reportedly a race of cannibalistic wild men that inhabited Mount St. Helens. The last reliable reports of skoocooms come from 1847, by a guy named Paul Kane."
Dean frowned slightly, his own research leaving him with questions. "Wasn't there a pretty large eruption there in 1842? Why did they stick around after that?"
If Sam was surprised by his brother's knowledge of the volcano, he didn't show it. "Maybe they liked the area? There were reports of attacks by the 'Mountain Devils', as they became called, there in 1924. Five miners were attacked in their cabin by something that walked upright, had four toes, and could heft large boulders. There were apparently multiple attackers; some tried to get through the walls and the doors while others attacked the roof. All the men escaped with their lives. There have been other reports of the skoocooms in Manitoba, Quebec, and most recently in Montana."
Nodding slightly, Dean asked, "So, any evidence that the attacks at Flathead are the work of cannibalistic Mountain Devils?"
Sam shrugged, finally glancing in his brother's direction. "Not really, but there's so little detail about the skoocooms that I wouldn't even know where to start."
Dean frowned imperceptibly. There was something nagging him, a half-realized truth hovering at the back of his mind. Something wasn't adding up in his head. But the harder he thought about it, the further away the realization seemed. He cocked his head to the side and focused on the road in front of him. Something was missing. Maybe not from this case, but somewhere, he was missing something.
"Dean? You okay?"
The fact that Sam's soft voice almost made him jump wasn't lost on Dean. Still, he tossed his cocky smile over at his brother as he reached toward the radio.
"Just missing AC/DC, little brother."
He flicked the radio on and let the loud rock and roll settle his nerves. He was slipping too much, getting too careless. Sam would find out eventually about Dean's dirty little secret, but it would be sooner rather than later if he didn't buck up and pay attention. No, for the moment, there was no reason for Sam to know.
No reason at all.
The skoocooms had been a bust, which actually made Dean thankful for once. With the time he'd been having lately, he didn't much feel like hunting down cannibalistic ape men in the forest. While they still weren't sure exactly what was going on in that forest, they'd determined it wasn't anything supernatural.
Which meant they were back to researching, scouring, and tracking from a nameless motel room in an equally nameless town.
"Woman in White?"
"Nope."
"Zombies?"
"None."
"Vengeful spirits?"
"Nada."
"Wendigos?"
"Zip."
"Vampires?"
"Zilch."
"Aw, come on, Sam! There's got to be something, somewhere, that needs to be killed!" Dean snapped, a headache growing behind his eyes. The long-suffering sigh that came from his brother's direction made him pause and push the pain away. Sam came first. He always would.
"All right, then. What about any haunted houses, or objects, or something?"
Sam massaged the back of his neck while he scanned the computer in front of him. He started saying something, but Dean wasn't paying attention anymore. He glanced around their room slowly, his skin tingling, cold sweat breaking out above his lip. Every instinct in him hummed loudly, and he listened to the noise in his bones. Since he was eight he could count less than one time that feeling had been wrong.
This wasn't one of that time.
"Sammy, we've got to go. Now." As he spoke, he moved quickly throughout the room, his senses wailing their alert as he threw together their packs. Less than a minute after the feeling started, he dragged Sam and their belongings from the hotel room, slammed the bags in the back and heaved his sputtering brother into the passenger seat, and opened up the Impala's engine.
They weren't a mile from the hotel when an explosion filled the afternoon sky, the aftershock and noise shaking the windows in the muscle car. Slamming on the brakes and pulling to the side of the road, Dean held his breath while he and Sam turned around and stared at the small mushroom cloud that rose over the deserted wing of the hotel they'd just rapidly vacated. For his part, Dean couldn't help the reflexive swallowing his throat seemed to do on its own.
"Dean...what the hell?"
There were few things the man hated in life quite so much as his brother breathing his name in that seriously scared and slightly pissed off sort of way. So he fell back upon his tried and true tactic of pretending to not give a damn.
"Smelled a gas leak. No one else was in those rooms, and there wasn't time to warn anyone. First good luck in a long time, huh?" he asked, his voice practically dripping with sunshine as he turned back to the steering wheel. Sam kept his eyes locked on Dean's face, an incredulous look plastered over his face.
"Okay, how come you smelled the gas leak and I didn't? We were three feet apart, Dean." Smirking as he put the car in gear, Dean glanced over at him and offered, "Maybe if you showered every once in awhile you'd be able to smell something other than your own self."
The indignant sputtering the Sam had previously taken up on their mad dash from their room resumed, and Dean turned veiled eyes forward. They needed another place to say, but the hum in his bones hadn't quite died completely, so he drove farther, pushing on into the night, his teeth ground against hidden pain and his hand in a white knuckled grip on the wheel. Sam eventually settled into a light doze, his head resting against the window. This was a welcome gift for his brother; the pain that had been crawling like bugs behind his eyes had grown, and he knew what would come next. A passing car gave Dean enough light to determine his brother's level of sleep. Not quite in REM, but close enough.
Pulling off on a side road, Dean willed the chassis to be silent as the Impala bumped over a few rough spots. But the car eased quietly to a stop, much to his appreciation. He sat there for a handful of minutes, trying desperately to pull himself back together. Since Sam had fallen asleep, his defenses had slipped more than a bit, and his jaw ached from its constant set against the agony that roamed through his skull. But he knew it was going to get worse. It always did.
Leaving the engine running, Dean managed to open his door and stumble from the car, his legs shaky. He pushed the door shut with his hip carefully, desperate to keep from waking Sam. Groaning aloud as his eyes seemed to melt in their sockets, he pushed himself forward, his boots shuffling against the damp forest floor. The nondescript woods they'd followed and subsequently pulled into were typical of Wyoming's vegetation, though the humidity was a little on the high side.
Staggering a good fifty feet from the car, Dean fell against a tree lit up by the car's headlights, rolling his back against the trunk and sliding to the ground. The pain that scurried over his nerves like frantic mice began crawling down his spine, and the hunter quickly reached for the ever handy bowie knife hidden inside his jacket. Unlocking the blade without a conscious thought, Dean dropped the knife to the ground and shoved the thick leather sheath widthwise into his mouth, biting it hard. Barely a split second later, the agony reached a crescendo and broke over his system like a tidal wave. His teeth dug deep into the leather, his eyes screwing shut as hot tears began cascading over his cheeks. He may have been screaming, but he was in too much pain to tell. Experience had taught him well how to bite his proverbial tongue, but still, these attacks were getting more and more painful every time.
He distantly felt his body arch against the tree trunk, a hot fever tearing through his muscles unrepentantly, making his limbs shake and tremble. He felt his entire frame stretch, bones and muscles and tendons pulling ruthlessly against each other. His skin felt too thin over his frame, and he felt like he may actually burst through it. His hands spasmed against the ground, his fingers digging deep into the dirt, nails scrabbling over small pebbles and bark.
Even through the unbearable agony and the feeling of every nerve firing with the force of a thousand lightning strikes, Dean would never mistake his brother's presence for anything but what it was. One moment, he was alone, drowning in a sea of unending pain with no anchor, no charted path, no guiding stars. The next, he felt a hand on his arm and another on the back of his neck, pulling him forward to a sitting position. The movement made another wave of raw agony break anew on his body, and he was vaguely aware of that hand on his neck holding tight. For all the added pain, he was thankful for the comforting presence of his brother.
It seemed ages before the pain started rolling away, the agony taking one step forward and resurging for every two steps back. Becoming more aware of himself, Dean realized he was slumped forward against his brother's chest, his head resting in the crook of Sam's neck. He was acutely aware of the smell of tears and sweat in far too close proximity to his face. Breathing as deep as he dared, panting a bit as a sudden but brief revival of pain made itself known, Dean felt his brother pulling the leather sheath from his slack jaw with the utmost care.
His head was fuzzy and his limbs were slack, but he still could hear Sam's frantic words echoing above him.
"Dean? Jesus, you're burning up. Dean, answer me! Damn it, dude. Answer me!"
Dean tried to answer him – he really did – but his tongue was still too heavy to speak. A few moments later, he was aware of Sam turning him over, and then his spine was pressed against the soft earth and his head was propped up and resting in his brother's lap. He could feel Sam's hands running over his chest and arms, feeling for injuries, and the sarcastic jackass part of his mind came up with a few grope jokes. While he knew that not saying them would worry Sam more than anything else, he wasn't quite in enough control of himself to joke.
"Screw this, Dean. I'm calling an ambulance."
The sound of fingers against plastic gave Dean enough strength to reach an uncoordinated hand up and grab something that felt like a wrist, all the while rolling his head in what he hoped appeared to be a head shake.
"Son of a bitch, Dean! You need a freaking hospital!"
His strength slowly but steadily returning, Dean finally forced himself to open his eyes. They felt gritty and grimy, and for a long minute his vision was far too fuzzy for use. But then he blinked, and the highlighted features of his little brother finally sorted themselves out. He swallowed hard and gave speaking a shot.
"Dn't n'd em." Well, didn't that go swimmingly?
Sam's eyes narrowed, and Dean could tell he was digging in his heels for the fight. He had to cut him off before it went too far.
"G'll bl'der," he murmured, and he was deeply, thoroughly sick with himself when he found the lie rolled easily off his tongue. Still, the supposed confession was enough to still Sam's fingers on the phone.
"Your gallbladder? You're trying to tell me that was a gallbladder attack? I'm not seven, Dean. I'm not that stupid anymore," he retorted, though the confusion, hope, and relief bled through his voice easily. That was what broke Dean's heart every time he lied. He knew his brother would eventually find out, and when he did, he didn't know if Sam would ever forgive him.
"Pr'mise."
And didn't that taste like ash in his mouth. But it worked, and for a moment Dean was covered with such disappointment and fear that his breathing grew hitched again. And poor Sammy...he was right there, hushing him, rubbing his arms, checking his forehead for fever, doing all the things a good little brother does.
The full force of the role reversal is what finally gave Dean enough energy to burn his way through the residual effects of the pain. He was supposed to protect Sam. It was never supposed to be the other way around. He was the only one with that responsibility. And he would die before putting any kind of fear into Sam, including him seeing his rock solid brother curled in a ball and screaming like a stuck pig.
Rolling out of Sam's grasp, Dean rested on his hands and knees for a moment before pushing himself to his feet. He stood straight without swaying by sheer force of stubbornness. Blinking against the Impala's bright lights in the darkness, Dean looked down at Sam and flashed him an only slightly toned down version of his world famous grin.
"See, Sammy boy? I'm fine. Just felt like a fire poker in my gut for a few minutes. I had one once or twice. Nothing to worry about. Just some antacids and I'll be fine," he reassured, his voice slightly gravelly. A-ha; he had screamed. And he felt the pain roiling under the surface of his skin, threatening to rise up again.
Aw, shit. I can't have a double session. Not right now, he thought desperately as he frantically rearranged his thin mental walls into an impenetrable mask of control.
From his kneeling position on the ground, Sam looked up an him uncertainly. The internal battle between him wanting to believe Dean and actually believing him was visible on his face, and it sort of reminded Dean of a tennis match. Back and forth, back and forth. His brother finally settled for forth.
"Well, if you're sure. You scared the crap out of me, you know. Are you okay to drive?" he asked as he stood, brushing the dirt off his pants. Dean took an extra second to respond, his mind busy with taking stock on his own condition. But he remembered his charge in life: never scare Sam.
"You think I would let you touch my baby willingly? Uh-huh. Ain't gonna happen, little brother," Dean jested as he turned on his heel and walked towards his still idling Impala.
As he slid into the car, the second episode finally dying out in his nerves, Dean half-hardheartedly wondered if all the lying he did would outweigh all the evil he'd fought. The thought of going to hell with all the baddies he'd killed for the simple sin of a wayward tongue would've made him laugh hysterically if Sam hadn't slid into the front seat next to him at that moment.
Hysterical laughing: bad.
Probability of scaring the crap out of Sam by doing that: one hundred percent.
Temptation to do it anyway: oh, so very high.
It was almost a week later when the shit met the fan in a less than stellar way. In Dean's defense, it was an epic amount of shit on a damn big fan.
It was supposed to be a simple haunted house. There is honestly nothing simpler than a haunted house. Find out who's haunting it, why it's being haunted, and salt and burn the bones and set everything else to rights. But they were Winchesters, after all. Why would anything ever be simple for them?
The haunted house in Asheville, Tennessee turned out to be a hunt for some kind of creature in the Nantahala National Forest. What kind of creature it was was currently up for debate.
"C'mon! Why not the wampus cat? Legends have told of it since before the Europeans ever stepped foot on this continent," Sam argued, clearly impassioned.
Leveling a finger at his brother, Dean split his attention between the argument and the road as he responded, "Because I refuse to see a half cat, half woman creature before I die. It'd be too weird."
Rolling his eyes, Sam countered, "There have been eyewitness accounts, Dean. Five foot tall cat with human hands walking on two legs. We've checked out other things on less, you know."
Groaning, the older hunt shook his head as he guided their rented pickup along the dim forest road.
"I don't know, Sam. Why would the wampus cat be at that house in Asheville?" Grinning in victory, Sam pointed at his wifi laptop and responded, "Apparently, Asheville was built on top of ceremonial lands belonging to the esteemed medicine men of the Cherokee tribe. That particular house was probably built on her husband's grave or something."
Glancing sideways at Sam, Dean took advantage of the lull in conversation to take a good look at his brother. The younger man hadn't said another word about his supposed gallbladder attack, just as Dean had hoped. In fact, caught up as he was in the research he was doing, Sam didn't seem to even notice that Dean was carrying three separate guns and two knives, way more than his usual armory.
"It's also said that she's a spirit of death, strongly connected to the earth. Legend goes, when she screams, someone dies and is buried within three days. We have four victims from that neighborhood who heard a woman scream within three days of their entirely unexplained deaths. And no one else heard it. All victims had unexplained wounds on their necks which appeared immediately after they heard the screams."
Pulling the truck to the side of the practical goat path he'd forced it up, Dean parked the pickup and shut off the engine, sighing deeply but silently. They were pretty far into the forest, approximately ten thousand miles from civilization, as far as Dean was concerned. Still, he jumped out of the truck and grabbed his gear from the bed, tossing Sam's pack to him.
"And we're looking for it all the way out here in God's Nowhere instead of waiting for it in Asheville, why, again?" he asked as he strapped his pack on. Sam finished shrugging into his pack as he answered, "Because this thing's killing days apart and there have been multiple sightings of a large cat-like creature on the routes between Asheville and here. I think it comes home after a successful hunt."
Readjusting his shoulder harness, Dean nodded. Everything made sense, then. Everything except for the way the entire area fell suddenly and immediately silent. Looking up and around quickly, Dean caught Sam's eyes, the younger brother realizing the difference at the same time. One hand resting on his pistol, another reaching slowly but surely for the rifle he'd set on the hood of the truck, Dean felt his skin start to crawl in that nauseatingly familiar way. Without thinking, he dashed around the truck and knocked Sam to the ground, wincing as he felt a burst of wind above his head and a sharp scratch on the side of his neck. Standing quickly, hauling Sam to his feet as he did, he pulled his gun and looked around.
Standing atop a fallen log at the edge of the road about fifty yards out, a thick, hairy beast watched them silently. Dean swallowed as he took in the heavy bags of flesh in the thing's chest, the cat-like ears, the piercing yellow eyes that reminded him too much of – Oh, don't go there right now, Dean. Not right now. – and the human-like fingers on the hand that was stretched towards them. Fingers, that he realized, were pointed towards him, and the small red scratch on his throat.
Then it tilted its grotesque head back and screamed, an eerie, haunted howl, a cross between a woman's anguish and a cat's triumph.
As fast as it had appeared, it disappeared into the forest. Dean and Sam exchanged a long, knowing look.
"Three days, huh?" At Sam's tight nod, the tingling under Dean's skin grew stronger. Ignoring it, he said, "All right, three days to hunt this bitch down and put whatever curse she lays in the ground."
Then the pain started in earnest.
Shit, meet fan. Fan, shit.
Lovely to meet you.
Two hours later, Dean had to admit he was barely keeping it together. He'd already stumbled over one or two misplaced rocks and been hit in the face by just a few vengeful tree boughs during their hike. The pain that roiled under his flesh reminded him of soda and Pop Rocks in the intensity of the sensation. Still, he hiked on, leading the way like the good, tough-as-nails big brother he was. No need to let Sam know. Of course not.
"What's wrong, Dean? And if you say gallbladder again, I swear I'll kick your ass."
Swallowing back a biting, pain-fueled retort at the question and threat, Dean paused, leaning heavily against the tree beside him. Leaning, he told himself. Soooo not about to pass out here.
"Nothing, Sam. We've got to keep moving. Any idea where that bitch holes up when she's not hunting or laying some heavy-ass mojo on your soul?" he asked, wiping his face with the bottom hem of his sleeve. Sweat and tears; fortunately for him, they smelled just about the same, and with the heat and humidity around them, they were pretty hard to tell apart from a distance, too.
"Cut the crap, Dean. You're hurting, and I've been your brother long enough to know when you're trying to bullshit me. So, what's wrong?" Sam asked again, that 'I'm worried about you but it's coming out as misplaced anger and I'm sorry' look in full force.
Dean bit his lip physically while he bit his tongue figuratively – it was amazing how much practice he was getting at that. But if he had anything in spades, it was that stupid Winchester pride and stubbornness. Better than a shot of whiskey, most times.
"I've got a cat woman laying death curses on me, Sam. Kind of messes with my head, having a deadline on my life like this," he bit out as he pushed his way from his temporary post. He had to lock his knees as he walked to keep himself upright, but he managed.
Before his brother could respond, though, there came that haunted scream again, filtering through the forest around them, coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Simultaneously, the pain that had been dancing along his nerves and wreaking havoc with his reflexes doubled and intensified. Hoping his unrestrained gasp went unnoticed by his brother, Dean wracked his suddenly cloudy mind for all the info Sam had uncovered about the wampus cat's scream.
"What does it screaming twice mean?" he asked, voice slightly sluggish. At Sam's freaked visage, Dean redoubled his efforts into stemming the tide of the agony. "None of the other victims reported more than one scream, and their relatives didn't recall them mentioning more than one. Maybe...maybe because we're here, in its territory, the rules have changed. Maybe you don't have three days. Maybe it's, like, one and a half now."
As the pain reached a crescendo in his chest, Dean felt himself slipping into an ever-dark pit that he found himself meeting on far too many occasions. The wampus cat's scream was still echoing around him, and he swore that's what loosened his tongue. Falling to his knees, Dean brushed off Sam's hands and clenched his eyes shut.
"Sam, listen to me," he whispered, and the mere breath of sound barely reached his brother's ears. Taking a moment to rally his strength, Dean let his brother strip off his gear and set it aside, though his as-yet-undiminished hearing told him that Sam still had a weapon on hand.
"Dean, what the hell is happening to you? This is the second time in a week," Sam asked quickly, his hands still working to get Dean comfortable. Smiling slightly despite the pain, Dean reached up and grabbed his brother's hand, squeezing it as tightly as he could. He pried open his eyes and forced his faded vision to focus on his brother.
"Listen to me. Whenever there's life threatening danger, I get these attacks. They're some kind of warning. The first part's helpful, the after effects are a bitch. That's how I knew about the gas leak. That's how I'm usually one step ahead of most fatal incidents. They started about the same time your visions did. And no, I don't know how or why. We're just freaks, I guess." A sudden and unexpected stab of pain took his breath away for a moment, and he forced his eyes open after they snapped shut.
"You have to get out of here before it gets you too, Sam. Don't let it get you too." Dean would never admit that his voice cracking on that last part had nothing to do with physical pain.
"Dean, what the hell are you talking about? Why didn't you ever tell me about this?" There it was: the anger, sharp and clear, that Dean had been expecting. As a bonus, there was also the subtle but thick undertone of betrayal. If Sam could just get guilt in there, Dean would hit the trifecta.
"Did I push you into keeping this secret? Because I was so upset about my visions?" came the whispered question. Bam, hat trick! Ought to hit Vegas after this, if there is an after this.
"Shut up and listen to what I'm telling you, Sam. I couldn't survive a pillow fight right now, much less a vengeful bitch-cat spirit. I'm worthless." The 'right now' was inferred by Sam, but not even hinted at in implication by Dean. Far as he was concerned, that was a daily fact of life for him.
"I'm not leaving you for dead, Dean. So stop asking. You say you get these attacks. What can I do to help? How long do they last?" Ah, Sammy boy. Always the helper. If they weren't in a life threatening situation, Dean figured he'd make a Dr. Phil reference. As it was, he just moaned in pain.
"Dammit, Dean. Hang on."
There was a scuffle of motion and sound, which Dean could barely hear over the blood pounding in his ears. Then a familiar, tough-but-getting-softer piece of leather was wedged between his teeth and over his tongue, and he bit down hard in worn reflex. The pain abated slightly, and he cracked open an eye to see Sam going into full-on G.I. Joe mode. Well, Voodoo G.I. Joe, maybe. He held a pistol with one hand while he flipped quickly through their dad's journal with the other.
College level Voodoo G.I. Joe. Cool.
Then time grew relatively incongruous to Dean. He was vaguely aware of himself passing in and out of consciousness, his head lolling against the jacket that Sam had thoughtfully placed under him. He drank from a canteen of water at one point, though it tasted like acid and burned its way down his throat. He watched the sun track across the sky in stop motion photography, the pain getting worse the lower the sun fell. All the while, he was aware of Sam speaking to him, to himself, to the air, making marks in the dirt and murmuring incantations.
But when darkness had fully fallen but for the fire Sam had built up, and that scream came again just way too fucking close to comfort, Dean forced himself to stay awake. When the pain abated to nothing in a half second, he was abruptly completely alert. Sudden knowledge passed through his mind – Decapitation, followed by burning the head and body separately and scattering the ashes in a natural body of water – and he didn't even stop to think.
Rolling to his feet, Dean ignored Sam's frightened and shocked words and laid a solid right hook across his jaw. His brother fell backwards, landing against their piled packs, and Dean grabbed his machete without hesitating. He knew that Sam had been laying protection wards, so he knew his brother would be safe. He also knew that the pain had receded to let him do this. Whether by design or his own strong sense of duty, his own body would not let his brother be put second, no matter the cost to himself.
The scream came again, and he didn't flinch. He stepped outside the protection circle and was immediately jumped from above, sharp claws and sharper teeth ripping at his skin. He punched, kicked, bit back, and finally shoved the creature away enough to get a good angle on its neck. A quick flash of the knife, and it was dead.
Then the agony started washing over his senses again, and he staggered uncertainly back into the protection circle. He barely had enough time to write directions on an old gas receipt - "Burn separate. Ashes in lake. Bitch toast." - before the far-too-familiar darkness rolled across his consciousness again. Falling to the ground with a thump, Dean's last thought was how that sudden omnipotence was really awesome, and damned if he could do it again.
"Dammit, dude, I said I'm fine." That was definitely the fiftieth time he'd said it, but just to be sure, he figured he could start counting again. The way Sam was looking at him made him wonder if it wasn't actually the hundredth time.
"Dean, you have a Spidey-sense. It tingles when there's fatal danger. You were suddenly given concise, detailed knowledge on how to kill something that we didn't even know existed before a week ago. These things started at the same time as my visions. What's your explanation for that?"
Dean glanced over at his brother as the Impala roared down the highway, its vibrations a welcome balm to his still-sore bones. Ha...dirty. Mind outta the gutter, Dean. Sammy boy's asked a question. That didn't stop him from chuckling a bit. Well, silently, at least.
"I'm a freak like you, little brother. You get visions, I get agony-ridden warnings of death. And apparently divine guidance. Any other stupid answers you need to any other stupid questions?" he asked lightly, locking eyes with his brother. While he thought about it, the scabs on his neck and arms itched like hell. He hated that part of the healing process.
"Well, just...I mean, what do we do now?"
Aye, there's the rub. That was precisely the same question Dean had been asking himself for thirty eight miles. And he figured out a half-decent answer.
"We take this one step at a time, Sam. We follow your visions. We listen to what this damn fire-ants-under-my-skin feeling tells us. And we take what guidance we can get, where we can get it. We keep hunting all things evil and ugly. We keep looking for dad. We keep chasing the Demon. Seems like as good a plan as any."
Please say yes, Sam. Just say yes. I'm the leader. Say yes.
Instead, Sam was quiet for about six tenths of a mile before he looked back over at his brother and said, "Jerk."
Grinning widely and reaching for the radio, Dean instantly retorted, "Bitch."
Ah, yes. Life was good. Or, as close to good as it can get for those whose names are Winchester.
Well, there it is. A thrown together, half stream-of-consciousness writing experiment with the Winchester brothers as my unwilling but totally subservient guinea pigs. Written with the con in mind. :) R&R if you've got time! :D