(long time no see. hello again. i claim no ownership to the winchester boys, and no insult is intended. enjoy.)
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Dean comes back to himself slowly, like trudging through the sand of desert dunes – a wearying little slide back for every step forward.
His head is throbbing, worse than any hangover he's ever had, and his left arm is numb from being crushed under the weight of his body for too long. Recovery position, his sluggish brain informs him, and then continues taking stock. He's freezing, bone-deep cold, the sort you get when your sleep has been deep enough to be labeled unconsciousness, and the thin scratchy blanket is doing nothing at all to fend it off.
He shivers, curls in on himself even more. Wishes immediately that he hadn't as waves of nausea crash over him and he hates being sick, hates the green-tinged helplessness of it, hates the supporting hands that feel like branding irons on his clammy back.
When he's finally done, he collapses back onto the flat pillows, panting and shaking. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he's amazed and grateful that he managed to keep it off the bed, even if laying in his own filth seems like a minor issue compared to everything else. Slowly, trying to keep his breaths as even as he can, he carefully untangles his thoughts from the reddish-black mess of pain and nausea and confusion.
After a while the hands are back, pressing the mouth of a plastic bottle insistently against his lips. Dean turns his head, not even willing to think about swallowing anything at the moment. The bottle follows him, spilling shockingly cold water over his chin and soaking his t-shirt, and if his body didn't feel like just so much dead weight he'd move away but the most he can accomplish is to shiver and blink his blurry eyes open to identify his tormentor. Sammy...Dude, what the fuck?
"Dean," Sammy breathes, and his face unscrunches a bit from its perpetual frown. Dean is relieved. Lately, Sam's frown has made him consider the idea that maybe the if-the-wind-turns-your-face-will-stay-like-that myth isn't really a myth, and he doesn't like to think of eternity with the bitchface because it's really not helping anything. Then the bottle returns, and he splutters and coughs and chokes and god why won't they just leave him alone?
"Sam, what the hell? Are you trying to drown him?" Dad demands, and that's kind of what Dean's wondering too but he doesn't see any reason to shout about it, especially not since the shouting sends renewed bursts of pain through his aching head. "Leave him be. He needs to sleep it off."
"He's going to get dehydrated, Dad!" Sam says in his obnoxious are-you-really-that-STUPID-voice, and Dean doesn't have to look to know the bitchface is back in full force. "Dehydration is the-"
"You watch your tone, Samuel." Dad sounds tired and worried behind the warning growl, but Sammy never hears that, and Dad never hears when Sammy's petulance is just a thin cover for fear. Dean does, though, he hears every nuance, every inflection, he knows exactly where this is headed and he's in no shape to deal with it, and it hurts that they can't even wait until he's feeling okay before they start tearing into eachother.
It hurts, god, everything hurts, and he would laugh if he could at the fact that he'd almost believed a faery promise. I can make them stop fighting, she said. Yeah right.
-
The next time Dean wakes up he's got music in his head. Not Zeppelin or Mötley Crüe, but something weirdly dissonant and piercingly sweet, at the same time familiar and alien. He catches stray words and bits of phrases, oddly accented and compelling, giving him bright glimpses of laughing and hunting through the blue of night-time forests, a pack of white dogs running with him, their red eyes following him with absolute devotion. In secreit place, this hindir nicht...I hard ane beirne say till ane bricht...my huny, my hart, my heill...
Later, when he's driving in Dad's tracks down a rain-slick country road, he turns up the volume on the stereo as loud as he can stand it, trying to drown out noise with noise. Sam glares and moves to lower it again, but Dean stops him with a glare of his own.
"D'ya wanna ride with Dad then, Sammy?" he asks, eyebrow raised.
Sam's mouth twists like he's bitten into a lemon and then realized he's out of tequila. "You're a fucking asshole, Dean."
"I'll just take that as a no. Then shotgun shuts his cakehole."
...ye brek my hart, my bony ane...
-
Sam and Dad are not talking. they're using guerilla tactics, going at each other by going at him. Again. Dean's got a vicious headache that just won't quit, again, and when he sleeps he dreams of white dogs and cool spring water, and her singing as she bandages the stab wounds in his back.
-
It gets worse. Anybody surprised? Not Dean, that's for sure, Winchester luck being what it is. And he should probably say something, tell Dad, because it sure as hell isn't natural, the music and this strange liquid pain that has no apparent physical cause, that is impervious to painkillers and only ever truly stops when he's alone or his family is asleep. He should say something, but he doesn't. Doesn't want Dad to curse his disappointment of a son and then tell him to suck it up like a good little soldier, doesn't want Sam to find any new reasons to cut him to pieces with that oh-so-clever tongue. Falling for faery tricks...oh, come on, Dean, not even you can be that moronic.
No, he really doesn't want to hear that.
Pain, he can deal with. It's not like he hasn't done it before.
-
To the white dogs in his dreams, he is the center of the universe. They would follow him anywhere, he knows that with startling certainty; they are hunters and he is their master, they move to obey even the slightest of his whims. Their eyes are red like his blood on the bandages the faery queen keeps changing, but they are not evil. They are just wild, like thunder is wild, and when they look at him with those blood-red eyes he feels calm and sure like a well-oiled gun.
-
The house of cards starts falling faster than Dean can fix it after a hunt in Wyoming.
It's not even a hunt gone bad – no blood, no broken bones, no concussion, simple haunting, salt and burn and bye, bye Mary Lou – just a hunt that gets in the way of Sam's normal. A missed history test, and an essay due for English, and Sam completely loses it when they're back at the motel. Drags out all the old favourites (Dad-you're-an-obsessive-bastard, Mom-is-dead, This-is-not-a-life) and expands on them, yelling things so full of venom that by rights Dad should be dropping dead instead of shouting right back.
The only one who drops is Dean.
Vision greying out at the edges, just like when Nicnivin sealed her trickery, every accusation is a red-hot knife to his back. Falling gracelessly to his knees he chokes on copper flavour, coughs and catches splatters of red in disbelieving hands. And still they don't stop, too busy fighting to notice. Not until he's flat on the floor, panicking, covered in blood with every breath a struggle. Not until then do they finally shut up, and as they move as one to check him for injuries that his mind knows cannot be real, he wishes he didn't have to bleed to make himself visible.
I can make them stop fighting. If they love you enough.
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To be continued.