"I mean it," says Roman. "Stay put, we're coming back right now."
He hangs up, sighing heavily as he leans back into his seat. Dean looks at him from the corner of his eye. "He's trying to move again?"
"Yeah. Something about 'cabin fever'. Kid just can't stay put," Roman grumbles, running a hand over his face. Both of the remaining Hounds are sore and tired, having been put through the wringer at the hands of Evolution. Dean shifts in the driver's seat. "Damn," he grunts, popping out a knot in his back, "Randy needs to fuckin' cool it with the RKO's."
"Ice it when we get back to the hotel; I'll grab Seth when we get there and head down to the station, I guess," Roman says. Paranoia had begun to set in a little in Seth's psyche it seemed. He locked both locks on the hotel doors at all times and even though he loved being out on the balconies, he had opted to just stay inside. He was constantly checking social media sites and dirt sheets, almost obsessively searching to see if any of the photos had surfaced. Even though he had been the one to bring it to attention that no one was liable to actually believe the things they saw in the pictures, it was obviously still bothering him- as it should, because being followed across the country by a potential nutjob was not an easy thing to simply brush off. They needed to get rid of all that, because damn it all, Seth was supposed to be taking it easy while his wings healed, and stressing about some fruit loop lurking over his shoulder was not what he needed.
"Okay," Dean replies. "Shoot me up if something happens."
Roman grins, turning his head to look out the window. For all his tough-guy, rough-and-tumble, punch first, ask questions later façade, Dean really was a nice guy, who would punch your teeth out if you messed with him or his brothers. He cared.
"He'll be okay," Roman assures him. Dean's gaze never leaves the road, but Roman can hear him breathe the quietest of sighs.
-8-
Dean drops on the bed, sprawling flat against it. "Fuck," he sighs. "I'll just stay here until you guys get back."
"Yeah," Roman says. "Don't forget to put something on your back. C'mon, Seth."
Seth looked up from his phone. "Where?" Roman nodded towards the door. "We're going to the police station downtown to report that creep."
"Be safe," Dean calls after them as Seth slips on his shoes and Roman guides him out of the room. In the rental car, Seth is still scrolling through his phone. "Dean's a good friend," he says, absentmindedly. Roman looks over at him. "Yeah, he is." Leaning over to look closer at Seth's phone, he sighs and grabs it from him. "Hey!"
"No, man. You're gonna drive yourself crazy over these pictures. I don't want to see you on one of these sites again; you're stressing yourself out," Roman warns him, his voice leaving no room for argument, all the while keeping his eyes on the road. "I know you're worried, but we are too. That's why we're going to the cops before this gets way out of hand."
Seth rolls his eyes and leans his head back against the headrest. "This is insane. I never wanted this to happen." He drags his hands over his face. Roman regards him for a moment. He hands him back the phone, ruffling his blonde and black hair fondly. "It's okay. We stick together, right? It'll get better, even if we have to step on some throats to make it happen," Roman tells him gently. Seth gives him a small grin. "Dean would be all too happy to," he says. Now Roman smiles, laughing softly to himself.
"Me too. That fucker's gonna rue the day he decided to mess with our little brother." Seth switches tabs to open his message inbox. "I'm not that little. You're not that much older."
"You're the youngest one in the group. You're the baby brother."
"Then what does that make you? The overprotective mama bear-"
The sound of metal colliding with metal and glass suddenly pierces through the air, whiplash making both passengers sickeningly dizzy, rubber skidding hard and hot over the asphalt. It's as though the entire world as exploded with sound, lights flashing before their eyes and the sense of being upside down. And then nothing.
-8-
-8-
Roman blinks, once, twice, and inhales. One side of his head is pressed against the cold glass of the driver's side window, slightly warm from a wet patch that's smeared through his hair. For a while, he can't hear anything. He can hear his breathing, hard and ragged, the blood rushing in his ears, but nothing from the outside world. Not the cars on the street. Not the other driver. Not Seth.
Seth.
Fuck.
He cranes his neck, having to actually look straight up to see Seth above him. Seth is hanging overhead, halfway out of his seat, the seatbelt the only thing keeping him strapped and not on top of Roman. His side of the car looks as though it's imploded, the glass blown out and the door actually poking inside, crushing Seth's legs. His hair, the blonde part, is dark with blood, droplets slipping down in rhythmic pattering. A droplet falls and splashes against Roman's face, against his cheek right under his eye, pulling everything back to Roman.
The sound comes rushing back, the feeling in his hands and gut returned like millions of piercing needles, and he remembers.
He has to get Seth out. He has to make sure he's alive.
"Seth," he calls. His voice is weak and hoarse. He coughs, trying to clear his throat, and tries again. "Seth," he says again, stronger this time. When Seth doesn't respond, Roman does his best to convince himself that it's because his voice is still too quiet for him to hear. He'll just have to get them both out himself. He raises his hand, trying to catch Seth's limp one dangling overhead. He gives it a squeeze.
"S'okay, kiddo," he slurs, feeling as though his head is stuffed with cotton, "I'll get us outta here." Roman pulls on his seatbelt, trying to unclip it so that he can move. He yanks on the belt and punches in the locking button a few times, finally manages to get free. Now, the hard part is getting Seth out without injuring him any further. Briefly, the idea that maybe waiting for the ambulance to arrive would be a safer bet than trying to get out by themselves, but Roman is terrified that waiting for help would mean losing Seth.
And that couldn't happen.
Roman manages to get into a kneeling position, balancing on what used to be the driver's side window. He reaches up and fiddles with the locking button on Seth's seat, keeping a shaky hand on his arm just in case the lock suddenly opens and Seth falls out. "C'mon," Roman grunts, tugging hard at the belt. "C'mon."
The plastic outer coating of the lock is chipped and broken. Roman sets to work opening that instead, since the seatbelt appears to be doing its best to keep Seth bound to the chair. His fingers scrabble across the plastic, digging into the seam with his fingernails. He cuts his hand on the splintered material, yanking it this way and that until it finally breaks open. From there, the belt clip pops out with much less effort than trying to unlock the damn thing. Roman stretches up and slips one arm behind Seth's back and the other under his legs and lets gravity do the rest. Seth's foot catches in between the seat and the door turned inward and stops him from falling back against Roman's chest, but comes away free with a gentle tug.
That's it.
It's dark as fuck, too dark to see the extent of Seth's injuries, but the way his bones feel beneath the back of his shirt, shifting and too much like a bag of needles when Roman presses his hand against it, he knows it's much worse than he can see. Careful to mind his back, Roman leans against the steering wheel and holds onto Seth. At least in this close proximity, he can feel him breathing against his chest, hear the shallow rhythm close to his ear. He rests his chin on top of Seth's head and tries to stay awake, gather his bearings, stay calm.
The car is flipped on its side. They can't get out until someone comes to get them. And Roman has a feeling that help is a long way off.
Dean comes tearing through the front doors like hell on wheels, nearly running over a young couple on their way out. His blue eyes scan the waiting room wildly before they finally fall on Roman, sitting alone on one of the chairs against the wall. Dean makes a beeline for him.
"What happened?" he asks breathlessly. The Samoan looks up, raising his head from his hands, and wow. Roman definitely looks worse for wear. There's a bandage pressed over his eyebrow and various bruises littering his arms. His hair is matted with blood and one of his eyes is ringed with a sickening shade of purple. A bandage has been tied around his left hand and his fingers look as though they've been through a wood chipper, red and scratched up. His clothes are filthy.
There's still no sign of Seth.
"What. Happened?" Dean says firmly, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. Roman is looking at him with tired eyes. So much. So much has happened.
-8-
-8-
"I wasn't beat up too badly, but then again, I didn't get the worst of the crash," says Roman slowly. He won't look at Dean, just stares out at the wall, beyond the sterile waiting room's confines. "The light was green, man. We were in the clear. But this maniac came barreling at us so fast…I couldn't even slam on the breaks. He…he ran the red light; didn't even see us coming, I think. He T-boned us, hit the passenger's side where Seth was." Roman shakes his head, rubbing his forehead. A migraine pounded behind his skull. "The paramedics told me we slid into the other road, the guy hit us so hard. Pushed all the way across the intersection."
Dean is silent for a long time. His eyes fixed on the floor, and then the wall, same as Roman. "Is the other guy okay?" he finally asks, his voice tight and dangerous. Roman shakes his head. "Dead. On impact, they said." Next to him, he hears Dean pull in a breath. He knows what he's thinking: if the guy in the other car was dead, what did that say about Seth, the only one on the receiving end of all that force?
"Surgery," Roman says suddenly, startling Dean out of whatever mental stew he had been in; from the looks of it, the verge of a panic attack followed by murder. "They're trying to stabilize him. Seth, I mean. I don't know. The medics told me that when they finally got us out of the car, I wouldn't let go of him. They said I was fighting them so hard when they started prying him from me; nearly broke a guy's nose when they put him in the ambulance. I don't remember any of it."
Dean stands suddenly, a frustrated screech through clenched teeth and chair knocked over the extent of Dean's emotional display. He mutters things under his breath, clenching and unclenching his fists. He wanted to hurt something, someone. He wanted to punch them so hard, so many times that their face would be unrecognizable when he was done with them. He really wished the other driver had survived, only because Dean wanted to decimate him for putting his friends in this position. The edges of his vision were beginning to bleed red, anger consuming any rational thinking. If Seth died, he was liable to do one of two things: commit murder in rage, or drink himself into such a stupor that he never woke up again.
If Seth did pull through-god, he hoped he pulled through-then it would likely be hell on earth. He understood Roman's readiness to beat someone to a pulp if they tried to take Seth away. Ambulances meant hospitals, and hospitals meant surgery. Surgery meant that someone would see. Someone would expose Seth's wings to the world.
This was the very thing that they had been working themselves to death to protect. When those doctors saw the wings, they would definitely have questions. Poking around where they shouldn't be. Calling him a freak of nature, and looking for every possible way to explain why a human being had honest-to-god wings sticking out of his back. Somehow, Dean knew it wasn't a stretch to fear tests and every intention of pulling Seth apart to study him and then stitching him back up again. He couldn't accept that, not the fact that at this point, it was safe to say that either way, whether Seth survived or not, he would still suffer.
-8-
-8-
Three broken ribs. One shattered. Internal bruising of the kidneys. Concussion and temporary paralysis from the waist down, due to a bad bruise against his spinal column. He had a gash along the right side of his head, nearly seven inches long, and deep. Needed stitches. His right leg is shattered from impact. So many bruises. So many cuts and scrapes that shouldn't have been there.
Seth breathes quietly on the hospital bed, so quietly and gently that to Roman and Dean it doesn't even look as though his chest is rising and falling. They have to depend on the steady tick of the heart monitor next to his bed to tell them whether or not they've lost him.
It's the most maddening sound in the world.
Dean keeps bracing for it to just stop altogether, just flatline and scream in one continuous, monotone screech, filling the room with anguish and sorrow. Dean stares down at his friend, his brother. He's out on pain meds. They've been keeping him under for almost a day now, counting the hours that have passed since he was first brought in for surgery. It almost totaled to an entire day that Seth hadn't yet opened his eyes.
In drug-induced sleep, Seth looks peaceful, like he's just sleeping off a day in the ring, bone-tired and dreamless. But Dean knows better. If it weren't for the bandage pressed against the gash along Seth's head, hiding the gore and stitches, the bruises and cuts littering his arms and legs and face like he'd fallen into a bed of glass, the casts and wrapping bandages constricting his body like snakes, it would've just been Seth. A healthy, vibrant Seth, albeit nursing some broken wings, but a Seth that was assuredly alive nonetheless.
Dean grimaces noticeably, a shiver running through him from his shoulders to his feet. Oh god. The wings.
He remembered how Roman had explained the feel of Seth's back through the fabric of his t-shirt.
'It felt like I was holding a bag of bones, man. It was terrifying; I thought his back- the spine, y'know- had been shattered and he was either gonna die or be paraplegic for the rest of his life. But then I remembered what else was there.'
The wings had almost completely shattered. It was a literal wonder, in Dean's mind, that the bones hadn't already turned to dust they were in such bad shape. He was eternally grateful that he hadn't been there to see the damage, but hearing about it hurt about as much as it would actually bearing witness to it. The right wing was shattered in two different places –Dean couldn't remember what the bones affected were called, and of course, the ER personnel had no fucking clue either- and had bent inward apparently, now resembling the shape of an 'L'. The left wing was in supposedly in much better shape, relatively speaking. It hadn't shattered like its opposite, which had softened most of the impact, but it had bent inward, almost to the point that one of the bones poking out had been stabbing into Seth's back.
Vaguely, Dean recalls something the veterinarian back in Chicago had told them. Something concerning bones protruding from wings.
"If the bone had been protruding from any of the breaks he wouldn't have been able to fly again. Usually we have to resort to euthanasia, the bones are unable to be set and won't heal correctly. That means the bird won't be able to fly or survive. It's usually better to just put the poor thing out of its misery."
Since Seth wasn't actually a bird, the need for euthanasia wasn't necessary, so at least this wouldn't kill him. However, losing the ability to fly wouldn't sit well with him. If anything, that was what would kill Seth. He loved flying. In the short time the wings had been conjoined to him, he'd grown to love them. They'd become a part of him. Losing them would be the death of him, and neither Dean nor Roman could bear to lose that smile.
Dean looked up at the doorway, finding Roman standing there with two coffees in his hands. "You look pretty ghoulish, man," Roman says, noting the tired eyes and pale skin of his friend. Dean shrugs. "I haven't slept much."
"I can tell," Roman says, crossing the floor towards Dean. He hands him one of the cups and nurses the other like a lifeline. "You should try to sleep though. I'm serious; when Seth wakes up, you know he'll give you hell if he knows you-"
"When?" Dean says as though he's surprised. His blue eyes look borderline manic and oddly wet. His voice curls and tightens at the end of his sentence. It's almost as though he can't believe it. "Yes, Dean. When. He'll wake up. Seth's a tough kid, you and I both know that. Don't worry about it," Roman replies firmly without missing a beat. "He'll pull through this." He knows that he's only saying this because he needs to hear it out loud for himself. He's been trying to put on a strong front for Dean, but he can't deny that he's just as terrified as Dean is. Dean continues his silence, looking unsure and, for the life of him, about to cry. Slowly, he nods.
A knock at the door startles them both to near death. A nurse is smiling softly at them, a clipboard in her hand. "Gentleman, I'm going to have to ask you to leave; visiting hours are over," she told them quietly, not wanting to wake Seth. "You can come back to see him tomorrow. I can't guarantee he'll be awake by then, but I know you must be worried."
Roman nodded at her, showing he understood. He nudges Dean's arm. "C'mon, man. We'll come back the minute the hours are allowed again, got it?"
Dean stares at Seth asleep and dreaming on morphine for a while longer, then turns towards the door without a word. Roman follows him out, passing the nurse a small smile as they go. She returns it, but then pauses, grabs his arm.
"Sorry, but…that man," she whispers in a low voice, glancing into Seth's room, "you were with him at the time of the crash, right?"
Roman, raising an eyebrow at her, nods.
"I'm sorry about that," the nurse says, looking genuinely sincere. "But, if it's not too much to ask, did you know about...his, um…wings?" Her eyes are wide when she says 'wings', like it's taboo, some curse word uttered in the pews of a church. Roman stares at her, feeling as though the floor had begun falling out from under him. So.
It was time.
Roman had been dreading this moment. The moment he would have to watch his best friend become nothing more than a scientific marvel for doctors to poke and prod at, for people to inquire about and judge. The nurse, seeming to sense his discomfort, slowly released her grip on his arm. It hadn't been that tight to begin with. "I don't think it matters now," she says, looking down at her feet and shaking her head, "the doctors already know. But if anyone else asks, I won't tell them. I promise. I see how scared you both are, you and your pale friend."
Roman stares at her for a long moment. Then he nods as best he can without looking too disappointed. "Thanks," he mumbles out. The nurse nods and offers him a sympathetic smile. Then she dips into Seth's room and closes the door behind her.
Roman stands outside the door, staring beyond the barrier. Guilt had begun to tear at his heart, creep into his head the past few hours that he'd been there. He'd gone to get coffees for himself and Dean only as an excuse to get away. He couldn't take looking at his battered and broken friend, his little brother, any longer. Staring down at Seth half-dead had allowed guilt and worst case scenarios to go running through his mind. He'd begun to blame himself for what had happened to Seth. It was his fault for not paying enough attention to whatever fucker had been running traffic lights. It was his fault for not making sure that there was absolutely no one coming. It was his fault for paying more attention to Seth than what was going on around them. It was his fault that Seth was here in the hospital, with two broken wings and a ravaged body.
He sighs, hanging his head, so many awful emotions weighing down heavy on his heart.
'I'm sorry.'
-8-
The next day, the doctors come looking.
-8-
-8-
Sorry, so sorry. Who's ready to have fun?
-AC