"Dean - can we pull over? I need to get out."
"You all right?"
"Yeah - just - my back again. I have to get out."
We were driving on a boring back-state-road, so it didn't take long to find a clear spot to pull over. Sam got out of the car and rested against the front fender, leaning over to stretch the muscles in his back.
We were a month post-Famine, post-wagon-falling, post-detox, post-Sammy-hell-two-point-oh. Physically, he was gaining. He was eating more, not even all vegan anymore. He could sleep almost four hours a night, now that the nightmares were tapering off. And he could actually look at me without shame and self-doubt clouding his eyes, most of the time.
But he'd wrenched his back in the throes of an apparently gruesome hallucination during detox and if he sat too long in the car, it seized up on him so bad I practically had to walk on his back to loosen the muscle up.
I got some water and horse pills out of the trunk and brought them to him.
"Y'gotta tell me as soon as your back starts bothering you," I told him, not for the first time. "Don't wait until you can't take it anymore."
"I know."
"You know. Great. How about next time you do?"
He grumbled and took the horse pills.
"Seriously," I asked him. "How bad?"
"Eight." He said with a painful shrug. On the Winchester scale of 1-10 of course this is a sixteen .
"Over."
"Dean - ."
"Over."
He grumbled but leaned forward again and I felt along his spine until I found the hard bunch of muscle giving him all the trouble. He might as well have had a neurotic rock in there for how hard and tense that muscle was.
I dug my thumbs in and Sam let me, with no whining that he was fine and I could stop anytime. That silence alone told me how bad it was.
"Maybe we should find you a chiropractor."
"We've kind of got more important things to worry about," he said down to his boots.
"I'm not talking about moving in - just a twist here, a tug there. You shouldn't have to suffer like this."
Well, that got me the stony silence. Don't tell me we were still racking up the guilt points. Not still.
The muscle giving him all the trouble was a little more obstinate than usual and I dug my thumbs in a little harder than usual as I emphasized a little more strongly than usual:
"You. Do. Not. Dee. Zerve. To. Suffer."
"OWWW. Then why are you hurting me?"
I pulled my hands away - "sorry" - and he unrolled himself upright and pressed his hand to his back. I walked around in front of him but he wouldn't look at me. He pointedly avoided looking at me. We were kinda past me putting a hand under his chin to make him look at me - or maybe not, the way he jerked his chin away when all I did was put my hand in my pocket.
"Sam?"
"We should get back on the road."
No, we should talk, but suggesting that to Sam would only earn me the 'right, you want to talk' look. And God knew - for awhile now, the times I wanted Sam to talk were the times he sealed up fast and tight.
"Y'just gotta tell me as soon as it starts hurting," I told him again, trying not to sound like I was scolding him. "So I can take care of it before taking care of it hurts you."
"Yeah. Okay. Yeah." He was talking down to his boots again.
"Sam?"
"I said okay."
Gee, grumpy much?
"All right. Let's get back on the road, then. We'll stop in four hours so you can take more painkillers and walk around a little bit. Got it?"
"Dean - we don't have to -."
"Got it? We're not gonna wait until you're in agony. That's crap and we're not doing it.""Yeah, all right. I got it."
He said that down to his boots too, but I didn't push it. His face didn't have the 'got a knife sticking out of my back' look anymore and I knew the horse pills would be kicking in after fifteen minutes or so, so we got back into the car and headed back onto the road.
I checked my watch and our mileage so I'd know when to stop and dose Sam again, and gave another look to him. He was stiff against the back of the seat, with his face turned toward the window. Both those things told me that if the pain got too bad again before we were scheduled to stop, he wasn't going to let me know.
Stubborn bastard.
"I mean it, Sam. Waiting until you're in agony isn't helping anything. It doesn't change anything except our travel plans when we have to stop so I can work the crick out of your back."
"You don't have to do that. I never said you had to do that."
"Right, I'm going to leave you in agony when there's something I can do about it."
He shot me a look then. Barely turning his head toward me, he shot me a fast look of -
Gratitude.
That flash of a look at me told me that Sam needed to hear - needed to know - that I'd take care of him. Still take care of him, even after he fell off the mother of all wagons. As though that was ever in doubt.
Guess it must've been in doubt for Sam.
He doubted it even though I'd broken speed limits across three states to get him to Bobby's panic room before it was too late. He doubted it even though I'd spent desperate hours, days and nights with him, in and out of that panic room, willing him to survive when nothing else seemed to be helping him.
He doubted it.
Whatever. He was out of there and healing and that was all I needed.
As the horse pills kicked in, Sam started to fade, the pills and the sleep he wasn't getting otherwise finally taking over. His body relaxed and his head dropped down to rest on the back of the seat. I reached over the seat for my jacket and pushed it on his shoulder. And when Sam looked at me, again, grateful, again, I realized.
He doubted the big gestures because sometimes the biggest gestures were the easiest ones to make.
I reached over and tucked the jacket in at his shoulder to keep it from sliding down, and Sam fell asleep turned toward me.
Sometimes the smallest gestures were the biggest gestures of all.
The end.