Part Two
Something's different. Even with his brain swelling in his skull and something like a foam mattress set shoved down his throat, Sam has enough wherewithal to know he had way too much to drink if Dean looks different than he remembers. When did Dean's hair get so long, and when was the last time he shaved for Christ's sake? He's totally got some kind of Mad Max thing going on, and Sam's pretty sure that didn't happen in the blink of an eye.
Dean doesn't seem to notice Sam's awake, and that's just fine with Sam, because he's in no mood for Dean's jibes about whatever Celine Dion song Sam was singing karaoke to, or the greasy sausage probably left on the side of the bed just to make him puke. He stifles a groan and rolls back into the pillows where he fully intends to stay until he can at least remember last week. Last night will be longer in coming. He knows from past experience.
All five of them.
He reminds himself for the fifth time in his life to never, ever get that drunk again. Ever. Never.
Dean's a bad influence. Anyway, that's Sam's story, and it works for him.
God, he hasn't felt this shitty since...well, he can't remember the last time. And it's probably best to pretend he's still asleep, because Dean, no doubt, remembers. Dean never lets him forget.
Sam's pretty sure his baby book burned along with his first booties, and the little knit cap he wore home from the hospital after he was born. But he's equally sure Dean's got another book somewhere filled with things that are no less momentous but should in no way, shape, or form ever see the light of day. Probably has a quirky, twisted little title on it, like, "Sam Winchester: The Bed-Wetting Years, A Big Brother's Anthology of Snot Noses and Creamed Jeans."
"Fuck! That's gonna leave a bruise..."
A thunk followed by a tinny vibration pounds him over the head, hurts enough to make his eyes water down the back of his throat. He swallows and imagines he's drinking brain juice squeezed from his skull like a sponge. Yeah, now that's appetizing. If he hadn't already been on the verge of puking, that would've started the bile geysers pumping.
Newsflash. Bile mixed with stomach acid and a steady stream of swallowed spit? Hurts. Groaning at this point would be stupid and painful, but so is thinking. His brain doesn't get the memo until after he lets out a moan, and he has to throw an arm over his head to dampen the pounding. So much for pretending to be asleep.
Through squinted eyes, he catches Dean jerking a glance in his direction from in front of the window. He's got one finger sucked between lips like he's pinched it or cut it, two others wrapped in Band-Aids. Sam half wonders what the hell he's up to over there, but aborts the mission and clamps his eyes shut again.
"You might wanna shower before you pass out again. Those shorts have got to be gross." It's the kind of statement that should probably have more bite to it than it does.
Sam grunts. "Whatever." Dean's the one who always forgets to wash the underwear he's wearing on laundry day and ends up one pair short. Sam's underwear are... He takes mental inventory, and just as he thought, his underwear are... Eeugh. Friggin' nasty. "Son. Of. A. Bitch."
"Told ya," Dean says with a shrug before turning back to the window.
Sam slides his feet around to the side of the bed and onto the floor without opening his eyes. "Dude, I do not want to know." He ventures to glare out from under the ridge of his furrowed brow.
"Oh, sure. You don't remember. That's classic." Dean's open-mouthed frown is so not cute. "I'm hurt, man. Truly. Deeply. Down in my..." He thumps on his chest with the hand he's just been nursing, one finger reddened against his white t-shirt. "...down in my SOUL."
Sam blinks, which ain't easy with his forehead pinned over his eyelashes. He can't tell if that's all sarcasm or if there's something truly bitter in Dean's tone. Best sarcasm is always twisted truth. Dean goes back to doing whatever it is he's doing with the A/C unit, talking mostly to himself, which suits Sam just fine.
"Used, that's what I am. Just a toy. Just Wham, Bam, thank you Sam. See if the next town I drive you to has a water tower so you can have your friggin' morning after shower. God only knows why I fueled up the generator so you could even have hot water. I'm just a saint, I suppose. Now, if I could just get this A/C to run..."
Most of it comes back, then, the last months on the road, the end of the world, and the eerie way things haven't really changed that much, not for them. Dean's hair. Dean's hot new hair... Oh shit. Dean dragging his sloppy drunk and horny ass out of the car. Pinning Dean and his hot new hair and even hotter new brain against the wall while Dean fumbled with the lock, and...making a mess in his boxers. Dean making some kind of remark about being rode hard and put up wet when he tosses Sam onto the bed.
Yeah. Shit.
Dean keeps putzing with the thermostat, glances over his shoulder at Sam now and again like Sam's supposed to be listening to him, but the pounding between his ears...ohshitohshitohshit... still overrides most of what's trying to go through them.
A flash of red lightning through the curtains nearly blinds him, takes a circuit around his brain before high-tailing it down his spinal cord and into his gut. Fuck. High-tails it right back out. He lurches to a stand, eyes clamped shut and staggers in the direction he assumes to be the bathroom.
He's not at all thankful Dean fired up the generator when the bathroom light flickers on and he gets a good look at the brown hard-water stains in the toilet right before he paints them yellow. 'Cause, yeah, he was so needing that extra little push.
He's not sure if the clunk and rattle accompanying his retch and sploosh is evidence that he maybe swallowed a bucket of bolts while he was out of it or the sound of hail on the roof. Turns out to be neither when a cold rush of air shimmies down his back, and he cracks open his eyes to see a fine white powder blowing out of the register. Some of the dust, or what the fuck ever it is, lands in his eyelashes and refracts the light over the sink into shiny little colored haloes. Rainbows chased by a musty rust-flavored stench he wrinkles his nose against.
The cold air starts to chill the sweat on his brow and between his shoulder blades, mirrors the icicle of panic he's gagging around already. Pin pricks of dread skate down his stomach on beads of dirty sweat, pool in the waistband of his filthy boxers, and he crab walks back against the side of the tub, braces against it in his eagerness to peel the evidence away. His feet keep slipping out from beneath him when he tries to lift his hips, and he collapses in defeat, waits for a second wind that doesn't come attached to a wave of nausea.
One hand pressed into his forehead, he gropes blindly behind him for the faucet, grateful for the engineering genius of city water towers when he turns on the water, grimacing as he realizes the knobs are fashioned like a daisy wheel of women's legs. Dean's apparently holed them up in a brothel.
That should be funny.
It isn't.
His breath rakes in and out of his chest, too fast from the shock of cold tile against his back, punch of remembering at the forefront of his mind. The water's a little rusty but clears up in a minute, and true to his word, Dean's got the hot water heater running, too. Ain't hot enough.
Groaning, Sam draws his knees up to his chest, his bare feet leaving slick trails along the floor as he presses himself into the corner between the tub and the wall.
"Shit." He turns the water off again without getting in, hears the pipes groan at the sudden change in pressure, and starts to lever himself up, braces against the sink for a long moment, head tilted up just enough to glare at himself in the mirror between his sweat-soaked bangs. He's not getting in the shower without at least grabbing a clean pair of underwear out of his bag. He's not shy, not with Dean, but he's not putting these shorts on again, ever, once he gets them off, and he's not about to face Dean in just a towel. Not today. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
Cold air from the vent swirls around behind him, cold from every angle like whatever's meant to keep it warm has been jerked away suddenly. Sam's a little surprised Dean's not standing behind him, gloating about getting the A/C running and demanding retribution for his trouble in some form of blatant ass kissery on Sam's part. Not that Sam can blame him for keeping his distance.
He crawls up the doorjamb and slides out into the main room, a shit-eating grin forced onto his face, best attempt at sheepish apology. It falls back into its scowl position when he finds Dean sitting on his bed, back to Sam, his shoulders slouched, and facing the window. It's the shoulder slouch that catches Sam's attention, turns his grin around, because that is not the posture of a man who's just single-handedly restored the convenience of refrigerated air to the best little whore-house in...well, wherever the hell they are. He thinks it's still Texas, not that it matters.
And Dean's shoulders don't do shuddering, shaking, jerking the way they are now, at least not that Sam's ever seen. If he has seen it, then it's most likely one of those memories he's blocked out, because he... Hell, it's wrong, that's all he knows. His stomach lurches again, this time on nothing but whatever emotion it is he's trying to swallow back.
"Dean..."
When Dean doesn't answer, Sam does his best dash to the other side of the room, crooked shuffle-step to spare his throbbing head, until he's between Dean and the window, looking down.
Dean's face is white like he took a hit from an angry canister of baby powder, completely dusted over except for a little half-moon shape under his eyes where he must've closed his lashes against the blast. Lightning flashes again, and there's a glint on the side of Dean's face Sam knows cannot be a tear track. Except it totally is, a fact Sam barely registers before Dean keels forward into his stomach.
Sam catches him against the front of his t-shirt, just dumb struck enough that his hands pat awkwardly over Dean's back in a half-hug before he even realizes he's doing it or has a chance to question what he's supposed to be consoling. The rain pelts against the window, blowing sideways against the side of the building, hard enough to smack the glass like a whip crack. Sam's head jerks from the sound, and maybe that's what clears the fog. Or maybe it's the way Dean's fucking clawing into his hip bones with tightening fingers, his entire body wracked with the twisting of his shoulders against some invisible bind. At any rate, Sam gets it like a sledgehammer between the eyes.
Mold. Mold out of the ducts, all over the room, all over Dean, and...
"Fuck!" He drops to his knees and nearly topples backward when Dean's leaning weight shifts with him. Sam pushes him back against the bed frame, watches in horror as Dean's head lolls on his neck, mouth gaping open while his chest convulses. Holding him up by fisting in his t-shirt, Sam leans forward, catches just a bleary glimpse of reflected lightning under the white-powdered eyelashes and presses his ear to Dean's mouth. Not even a fucking whistle.
"Dean!" He's pretty sure the t-shirt tears when he starts shaking his brother, feels a give beneath his fingers that makes him claw deep enough to leave tracks in Dean's skin. He shakes again as the iris disappears from Dean's eye. "Where's your inhaler? Dean!"
It should not be possible for a dude to be mostly unconscious and still look the collage of guilty, sheepish, embarrassed, and apologetic that Dean pulls off just then, but for once Sam's so friggin' grateful for all the months they've spent in comfortable silence, speaking whatever language it is brothers learn in the backseats of old cars on long highways. He doesn't need actual words to know Dean's left his inhaler, and the whole rest of the friggin' case, in the car, probably too busy lugging Sam's drunk ass in to give it a thought.
Sam presses Dean's, now lax, body down into the carpet (which is probably moldy, too, now that he feels it under his knees) and squints out the window as water sheets over it despite the edge of the eave he can make out a good six feet from the front of the building. He feels a smidge of guilt behind his belly button at wanting to call Dean a stupid fuck for leaving the inhaler outside, but figures he gets a by this time, since he's pretty sure what he's about to do makes him one as well. Standing, headache mostly forgotten, he presses his face to the glass, cups one hand over his eyes in an effort to see through the steady stream of water.
The car's not in front of the room, but he thinks he can see the front office sign battering against the wind just a few doors down. He falls back from the window into the bathroom and tears the shower curtain down from the rod, best he can do in a pinch. It's not big enough to cover all of him, but it'll have to do. Lofting it up over his head and pinching it together in front of his face, just enough of a peephole to see where he's going, he opens the room door. It blows in hard enough to knock him back with an oof against the wall, but he ducks his head and shoulders into it and goes out.
He's wet before he even clears the door jamb, the pickled egg stench of diluted acid thick in the recycled air pocket he keeps around his nose beneath the shower curtain. He squints against it best he can, and despite the pounding in his chest that tells him to dash out as fast as he can to minimize his exposure, he turns, taking the time to note the number on the door, (13. He's not amused) before closing it tightly behind himself. It won't do him any good to race out in search of Dean's inhaler if he can't find his way back.
Another gust of wind and accompanying wall of rain staggers him against the siding as he turns toward the office. Grasping the curtain tighter, even though he's already soaked through, Sam heads down the front walk toward the office.
The sign is suspended on chains from the eaves, and it disappears from his blurred vision for several long, heart-stopping seconds only to drop down suddenly when he's nearly beneath it. Were he not hunched against the storm, it would most likely have hit him in the forehead, and wouldn't that have been a twist of fate? To survive Hell and the end of the world only to have his head bashed in, corpse melting into a puddle of goo on the sidewalk while his brother suffocates in a shady motel?
He rounds the corner next to the office and breathes a sigh of relief. Dean's baby currently occupies the manager's reserved car port. Sam will grant, this once, that it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He rushes around to the driver's side and strangles a sob in his throat when he realizes he forgot the keys, but in desperation, he looks through the window and finds them still in the ignition. Dean's been doing that a lot lately. It's not like anyone's going to steal it.
It doesn't take him long to find the inhalers. He grabs two spares because he can't remember when was the last time Dean used it or how to tell how much is left. He's about to turn back into the storm and run back to the room when he thinks better and climbs into the driver's seat. The car can stand a little rust. Sam can't.
Fishtailing through the parking lot, he drives right up to number 13, doesn't even bother with the shower curtain as he dives inside.
Dean hasn't moved from the carpet where Sam left him. In fact, Dean isn't moving at all. "No...nonononono...no." Sam doesn't even register the carpet burns, dampened flesh stripping away as he falls to his knees. Yet, he feels the stab of protectiveness as water drips off his sopping hair and into Dean's face, because that's fucking acid rain he's dripping for Christ's sake. He's already fumbling with the inhaler, trying to fit it in his hand so he can trigger it with one and hold Dean's head up with the other, when he realizes it won't do any good.
Dean's lips are already blue-tinged, his forehead waxy-looking, and the little lines of exertion crinkling his brow and the corners of his eyes are just...gone, not smoothed away or pressed out by some inner calm, just erased. Like it's easy to just make it all go away. There's a whole lot of empty in the world leftover from what went away. But the biggest, darkest void is right here on this carpet.
His hands shake so hard he almost drops the friggin' inhaler, and then, when he doesn't, he almost throws it across the room anyway, because he doesn't fucking know what to do. Dean probably needs a breathing tube, but even if Sam had one he'd have no idea how to use it.
"Shit!" It's either instinct or desperation or one inspired by the other, but Sam's got all that muscle and physical strength from powering on, and if he can't finesse his way through something, then brute strength has always been a good last resort. He feels a little awkward, but Dean's mouth is already open. Sam forces his thumb into the side of his brother's jaw just to move his teeth out of the way, tilts his chin back, and pinches his nose. He probably takes a bigger breath than he needs, but goddammit something is getting through there. Clamping his mouth over Dean's, he blows, feels Dean's nostrils expand beneath his fingers. His own cheeks puff with the resistance. Dots swim behind his eyes the way they used to when they were kids trying to blow up punching balloons. He remembers being the only one who could ever do it by mouth even before they knew about Dean's asthma, how friggin' proud he'd been to blow up his own and then one for Dean. But this air doesn't move.
He's held off pulling away for another breath as long as he can when he makes a last ditch effort, steels his cheeks. Dean's chest rises, then, not a lot, but something gets through. That's all Sam needs. A way in.
He draws in another deep breath, then closes his throat off and puffs the inhaler into his mouth. Then he seals Dean's mouth again and forces the medicine into his lungs. He holds it there for a second, Dean's chest just a fraction of an inch higher off the floor than before, then backs away. Forgetting to breathe again for himself, he waits while Dean's lungs deflate. It's a slow leak, just a little whisper of a whistle behind it, but it gets out. He takes another breath, this time just for himself, and waits some more.
After a second, Dean's belly starts to twitch and roll. Sam's not sure if it's Dean trying to breathe or throwing up. It seems too weak to do either, but it's progress, he tells himself as he expels another puff of mist into his mouth. A second forced transfer leaves him trembling as much as Dean, but he's convinced the second breath came easier than the first. Just a little.
Sam pants. An annoyed grunt escapes clenched teeth as he flips his dripping hair back away from Dean's face. Suddenly, the little tremble in Dean's belly becomes a full clench, and his entire body arches against it. A long, thready hiss of air trickles past Sam's fingers, and when it stops, Dean bucks forward, barely missing Sam's chin with his head.
He doesn't miss anything with the yellow, foaming vomit that bubbles out of him, but Sam keeps his gorge down, the thumb at Dean's jaw keeping it propped open and turned to the side until it all spills out. This time Dean coughs before the next splash of vomit boils out, and Sam doesn't even care that it covers his arm, splashes onto his leg.
When Deans stops gagging, his coughs mostly dry and tight, Sam places the inhaler between his lips and counts, "One, two, three...puff," sighs with relief when Dean responds by taking a breath on command.
Behind them, the air conditioning unit makes a clunk, and Sam lurches to unplug it before it can spit out any more of the mold spores from the ductwork. Should've thought of that right away. Thought they were being so careful...
Sam's skin crawls now, this eerie feeling like everything is poison, polluted and clinging. He hoists Dean up, over his shoulder and carries him into the bathroom. He shuts the door almost as an afterthought, already turning on the hot water in the sink, and then the shower. He wants as much steam as he can get, doesn't know how long the heater's even been running. One hand under the shower to test the temperature, he decides it's safe, adds a little more cold as a precaution, and lowers Dean into the tub, propping him far enough back to keep the water on his chest and legs and out of his mouth and nose. Sam pauses just long enough to strip off his soaking t-shirt and shorts, then climbs in, pulling Dean up against his chest. He's more concerned with getting the steam in Dean's lungs and the mold off his skin than about the itch he can already feel in his legs from the acid burns that will surface in a couple days.
Peeling off Dean's t-shirt, he plops it onto the floor beside the tub, and the heavy, sodden way it just splooshes to the floor registers in his ear and settles in his bones. It reminds him of the deer, of poking through her entrails looking for explanations; why she lived; why she had to die; alone. These are just clothes, something they shed like lizard skin and leave behind. There's nothing in the pockets, because they carry nothing with them. Nothing for anyone to find and know they were here. No one to find them. Dean propped against his chest, barely breathing, is the only thing keeping Sam from being completely alone. For all the fighting and begging for his independence, he's never really been alone. Alone is scary. Scarier than Hell.
But Winchesters don't do afraid, keep being forced to practice at it like piano scales, but they skip out on the recital. His head falls back against the wall, eyes shutting against the dark. One hand stays on Dean's chest, feels the breaths start to come deeper and more steady. When Dean sleeps, stubbled cheek against Sam's pec, Sam sleeps, too.
They're too tired, been running on something less than fumes and more than gumption for longer than either can remember. Five steps away from the end of the earth is as far as they make it before they fall, not afraid of whether there be dragons behind them. They've been there and done that, don't have plans to do anything else without sleeping first.
The fever overtakes them while they sleep, and it's almost too much to wake from. Somehow, between the searing heat and Dean's body shaking beside him, Sam cracks his eyes open. One of them. Barely. They feel cemented shut, crusted over with matter that works its way between the lashes when he tries to pry them apart and starts his eye to watering enough to free it up the rest of the way.
Disoriented, his limbs like lead, he falls on old habits, presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Feels like dirt caked over his forehead. Feels like, but scraping it away stirs an itch under his skin that claws its way out and trickles into his eyes. His fingers come away sticky, and it's too dark to see, especially with just the one eye open. The tang of iron's strong enough to taste.
"Dean..." Sam doesn't recognize his own voice, can't honestly remember when he's last needed it. The only thing that answers is his pounding heart.
"Dean!"
XXX
He heads west as fast as he can go without red-lining the tachometer, both hands tight on the steering wheel. Dean's still wearing his wet jeans. Sam didn't want to chance cutting them off, so it's plenty warm inside the car, musty as an old gym locker, but Sam doesn't open the window or turn on the blower. What used to be just the grey bleak of the landscape looks like something more sinister, black decay underneath a dusting of lighter spores like powder makeup on the face of a clown. The open highway's never been this claustrophobic, and he wonders if they climbed out of Hell, death by blood and fire, just to have the world smother them under a pillow. Inside the car's the only place safe and familiar, the only place Sam has control, and he doesn't want the world coming in. Besides, too much noise drowns out the wheezing. He's not going to let himself forget again.
When Dean wakes up, Sam feels his eyes against the side of his head, braces his jaw a little tighter against it. He doesn't look. It's not Dean's fault, except the part where the dumbass left his inhaler in the car, but there's no one else to blame for the way Sam's heart's been pounding in his chest for the last two hundred miles or the throb in his joints from bracing against whatever's trying to tear him apart. Dean's got asthma, but Sam's choking, and it's pissing him the fuck off.
"You look like shit," he says without looking. Sam doesn't have to look to know. Dean sounds like shit, so it doesn't really matter if he looks it, all smells the same. "I'll stop when we get to Waco. Go back to sleep." He's more scared than surprised when Dean does.
He doesn't actually stop in Waco, but just the other side of it, outside the Woodway subdivision. Not bothering to wake Dean, he finds a pharmacy from which he takes way more than he hopes to ever need but somehow doesn't feel safe leaving without, and then spends half an hour in the Super Kmart getting new clothes and raiding the electronics department for a cigarette lighter adapter. It wouldn't normally take him that long, but he's got something in his eye, a bit of grit or dust or something. Makes it hard to focus.
He blinks and swallows, a constant drip in the back of his throat from his tear ducts trying to flush out his eye.
Dean's awake when he gets back the car and gives him a look somewhere between shell-shocked and 'you got some 'splainin' to do, Sammy.' Sam doesn't stare back long enough to decide how much of it's the asthma and how much is residual from being molested by his baby brother. Instead, he fishes through his cart and tosses a couple boxes across the seat along with the fresh clothes even though Dean's jeans have already air-dried.
"Since you're awake, I got a project for you. I need you to rig that to run off the cigarette lighter. I got an adapter that should work."
Dean clears his throat and sits up slowly, trying to figure out what Sam's thinking with a silent sigh of relief Sam only "hears" in the softening of his jaw. Dean doesn't want to talk, and for once, Sam's inclined to agree.
"What is it?" His voice is rough, tired, but still rings with brotherly sarcasm, as he turns the plastic container over in his hands. Sam's a little surprised Dean doesn't recognize it, but then, Sam somehow managed to block out Dean's Achilles heel entirely until it kicked him in the ass. "Popcorn popper?" Dean ventures. He pulls out a piece of tubing, makes a face that says 'guess not' before trying again, this time with a little twist at the corners of his lips. "Breast pump?" He tries to waggle his eyebrows, but it's unconvincing, especially with the one held on by scar tissue. "Home colonoscopy kit?"
Sam tosses the rest of the stuff in the back of the car and slams the door. "Something like that. Can you do it?"
"The colonoscopy?" Sam doesn't laugh, so Dean pulls a pliers and a wire snip out of the glove compartment, wincing when the movement seems to tax strained muscles in his chest and gut. "Yeah, it's a pretty easy rig."
"Good." It's all Sam can bring himself to say. There's more wagging on his tongue and trying to poke its way past his teeth, but it hasn't consulted with his brain at all, completely irrational and sure to start a fight. Dean doesn't need that right now, and Sam doesn't want it either, so whatever willpower hasn't been crushed by panic, shock, and adrenaline, he uses to button his lip. He's more out of practice at that than he thought, though, misses the comfortable silence broken with comfortable banter. Still, when Dean finishes his rewiring, Sam just says, "Good," again, and keeps driving like he can outrun what's already seeped in and burning through his veins.
XXX
All those days thirsting, scraping their tongues raw for just a drop of water, and now it pelts the ground in an endless deluge, painting the landscape shades of yellow and brown, edges a slimy black. Acid rain. Fire water. The world ended in fire from the sky, after all. Just not quite how they'd expected.
Dean's been ranting on the edge of consciousness since Sam awakened, and Sam's burning up himself. They're both scabby, sickly like stray cats, any exposed skin crusty and red.
Seems like, after Hell, a little fever should be just that. Small. But frailty's the one thing that makes this all real. Hell's about suffering without relief, and Heaven's... well, this can't be Heaven. Only the real world could be this paradox of bittersweet that comes from breaking and mending, falling and standing again. Only reality rewards endurance. In Heaven there are no tunnels. In Hell, no light at the end. And Sam has to believe there's a light here, somewhere beyond the clouds. They can't die helpless in a crypt after climbing for days. That's not how it works. It just isn't. They suffer, but they make it through. Always have. Have to now, too.
When Sam was fourteen, he and Dean both got the chicken pox. All their moving around had managed to keep them from coming in contact with it before then. Thing was, chicken pox are worse the older you are when you get them. Sam remembers too well long baking soda baths that did nothing to stop his skin crawling, and by the time the fever broke, he'd been ready tie himself behind the car and let Dean drag him down a gravel road.
Of course, he'd had it easy. Dean almost died. Always was prone to spiking high fevers.
Kinda like now. Both of them covered in acid burns and hot with infection, and Sam's watching Dean twitch in the corner. He'd prefer the gravel road.
Back then, there'd been bags of ice to fetch, calamine lotion to apply, bedsheets to change. There were things to be done to stay one step ahead of the crisis and the panic whirring in his belly like the gears of a windup toy teetering on the edge of a table.
Now there's nothing to do but wait. Call it a learning experience. If the view from the front of the crypt is any indicator, they have a whole new world to learn the ins and outs of. The first lesson's an out. If they make it through this, they'll know enough to stay out of the fucking rain.
He watches Dean writhe and curl in on himself, wonders who he has to bargain with to make it stop. Despite the Latin scripture engraved in the walls, wrought iron crosses atop stone pillars to symbolize a gate to the other side, Sam's having a hard time finding religion.
He's pretty sure they won't die here, though. A crypt is too convenient a place for dying. Winchesters never do anything that rational. Call it blind faith. Sam calls it experience.
TBC
A/N: For some reason the site wouldn't let me upload the whole chapter, so it continues in the next one.
