Previously…
"Ruby? It's Dean. I need your help." A heavy sigh on the other end of the line sent static into her ear. "Something's wrong with Sam."
Looking back on that split-second decision, Ruby thought, it was probably a trap.
Dean wouldn't forgive her if offered all the pies in the world. But the mention of Sam in pain had made her drop everything, including the pair of underwear she was holding, and run to his aid.
It wasn't until she was parked outside the motel Dean had told her about, did she have second thoughts.
She knocked on the door with the Impala parked out front anyway.
Dean looked like shit.
She told him so.
He frowned at her, arms crossed, leaning against the doorway, not very subtly blocking her entry. "This changes nothing. I haven't forgiven you, I probably never will, but for some fucked up reason, Sam still trusts you, and he needs you, so I am temporarily ignoring how much I want to bodily rip your lungs from your chest in favor of you telling me what's wrong with my little brother."
Ruby swallowed nervously. "I expected nothing less."
He nodded and stood aside to let her through. She inhaled sharply at that sight.
And she thought Dean looked like shit.
Sam was flushed bright red, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. Long red gashes of red ran the length of his forearms where he had scratched mercilessly at them. The sheets surrounding him were caked in sweat, and his lank hair was plastered to his forehead.
"This is bad," she muttered.
"What's bad?" Dean asked. It brought back memories of all the times during their time together that Sam had nearly gotten himself killed and it had just been them, united for a brief moment in their mutual concern for him. Times like those, especially when Sam stabilized, or opened his eyes, she and Dean would share a smile and a relief so profound, she had almost thought they could be friends. "What's wrong with him?"
"He was given bad blood."
Dean squeaked. "It's not just withdrawal?"
She shook her head, using two fingers to expertly check his pulse and winced. Far to fast. "When you're coming down from demon blood, your body runs too hot and too fast, because it's used to burning through the demon blood in your system. That's what makes it such a powerful stimulant. It raises your body's functions, especially heart rate and adrenaline levels. But once all the blood has been burned through, the effects remain, but instead of burning off the blood, it starts consuming the body itself, causing a fever, dehydration, often time hallucinations, too. It's painful and messy, dangerous. If you overdose, it won't be the overdose that kills you, but the aftermath. It literally runs you into the ground. But this is not him coming down from a high, this is him suffering because the blood was probably stale. That takes the ill effects of withdrawal and heightens them."
"So what's going to happen to him?"
"Dehydration, mostly. Right now he's going through intense muscle pain and migraines, but those won't be fatal. What's entirely possible, and the more immediate danger, is for his heart to give out."
"What can you do?"
"There are a few options. The first is to try to flush it out faster, pumping him full of liquid. You don't happen to have a saline drip?"
Dean shook his head, wide-eyed.
"Then we'll never be able to get enough liquid in him quickly enough. The other option is messy, slightly counter productive and there's no way you'll like it."
"Maybe you missed the whole desperate to do anything to save my brother tone in my voice."
"Okay, I get it. But I warned you." She took a deep breath. "He'll need fresh blood. That's not all. I still need to flush it out of him as quickly as possible, so I'm going to need to bleed him as he drinks my blood. Have a few gallons of water ready for when we're finished, he'll need it."
Dean went completely white. Obviously the image of a demon bleeding out his brother was too gruesome to imagine.
And she read the reluctance there.
She sighed, looking for the most reassuring words she could under the circumstances. "I love him. I'm trying to save him as much as you are. I know you don't trust me and you think I'm just trying to kill him, but I'm not. I've told you nothing but the truth since I've walked in this room. You can either take a chance and let me save his life, or watch him die."
There was a moment while Dean's face flickered between the choices. The horror of watching Sam die a slow and painful death, or the utter terror of leaving him at the mercy of a demon.
Finally he nodded.
Ruby sighed in relief. "Help me move him to the tub. This is going to be messy."
Between them, they managed to get most of Sam's imposing frame into the bathtub.
She caught the look on Dean's face. "Look, if you don't want to see this, you can go to the store. We're going to need a lot of water, and get iron pills if you can."
Dean nodded, looking relieved and possibly a little grateful.
He left, Ruby waited until the sound of the Impala's engine died away completely before drawing a knife from her boot. She clutched tightly for a moment then turned to face Sam.
She bent over him and placed a single kiss against his burning forehead. He mewled at the cool pressure of her lips and leaned into the touch. Gently, she brushed away the hair plastered to his forehead, tracing her fingers along his jaw before removing her hand.
She placed the knife against her own arm and made a long, deep cut down her arm, lengthwise.
A hiss escaped her mouth. She was a demon and could survive this kind of blood loss, but she had never cut this deep.
She placed her arm in front of him, and his hot lips soon found it and began to suck desperately at it. She carded a hand gently thorough his sweat soaked hair, murmuring comforting nonsense syllables, slowly making her way down from where her hand sat in his hair to his shoulder. With a gentle caress she placed the knife against his skin and plunged it into his shoulder, making a deep, ragged gash.
Even as he cried out in pain, his mouth never left her arm.
She allowed the wound to flow freely, until it began to slow, then she put her mouth to it and began to suck.
Another small cry against her arm. She removed her mouth and spat the blood into the tub. She continued to suck his blood, then spit it away. The acrid taste the stale demon blood still running in his veins disgusted her, but she carried on. Because this was Sam, and really, what else could she do?
Eventually, after an eternity of this primitive healing technique, his blood began to run clean, and she even began to taste her own blood there. It was then that she pulled his face from her wound. He went, pliant. The fever was gone. His face was an unhealthy white, and his eyes were still bloodshot, but the worst was past.
His gorgeous hazel eyes slid shut and he collapsed against her.
That would be the blood loss talking.
XXX
Dean had a dangerous amount of emotion going on, and the last thing he needed were confused hormones and feeling like he was in middle school again.
Except in middle school he would have been out shooting things instead of shuffling awkwardly in front of his crush.
He wished he could have been out shooting stuff. Instead here he was, shuffling awkwardly in front of his crush.
Someone Up There hated him.
"Um. Hi Cas."
"Hello Dean." Cool as a cucumber. Dean hated him. "How is Sam?"
He knew this one. Sam's in a filthy motel bathroom tub with a demon, who betrayed us by the way, having some form of blood orgy so he can recover from the bad blood the demon bastard we just made a deal with gave him. Yeah he's doing just great.
Knowing Castiel's history with sarcasm, and his love of smiting demons, that probably wasn't the best answer.
"He's been better."
Of course, he had appeared in front of Dean as he was loading the cart full of bottled water. His sudden appearance had elicited a shameful squeak from Dean, and the heads of the other customers turned to stare as Dean recovered from heart palpitations and Cas was staring concernedly at him.
So Dean had paid, and then made him help carry enough water to fill the Great Lakes to the Impala.
The task had taken enough of Dean's attention that he hadn't had to look at Cas, and now that he was behind the wheel of the Impala, he was singularly focused on the road.
"What do you want Cas?" So maybe that sounded a little harsh, but Dean didn't deal well with sexual tension. He usually just fucked and it was all good. Something told him that was a bad idea in this instance.
"I have located Lilith. I think we need to start as soon as Sam is healed."
So it was business. That was a good thing right? Dean could deal with business. He let out an explosive breath. "So you're not here 'cause we made out?"
Oops. So maybe he couldn't deal with business.
Cas didn't answer him. After a few minutes Dean found the courage to look at him. And found that the passenger seat was empty.
Fucking coward.
XXX
Once again it had been a long time since she had last smoked. That night on the hood of the Impala with Sam.
But here she was, sitting by a window that had protested so loudly when she had opened it she had thought a cat was dying outside, leaning out the flaking whitewash windowsill in the early morning light, the smoke curling away from the ignited tip of her cigarette into the grey fog rolling in.
There were already countless circular burn marks on the sill, so she carelessly stubbed out the butt creating yet another and flicked it away, reaching for another one.
Dean still wasn't back yet and it was actually making her nervous. Just because the fever had broken didn't mean Sam was out of the woods just yet. He was still dehydrated as hell and had lost a dangerous amount of blood.
She tapped the cigarette against the sill and watched the grey ash tumble to the cracked asphalt below her. Still watching the disintegrating ash, she brought the cigarette back to her lips inhaling slowly.
There was a small grunt behind her and she whipped around, reaching automatically for one of the many concealed knives on her person. She forced herself to relax, quite a feat when her muscles were tense already from the nicotine.
It was just Sam. He was sitting up, eyes half closed, still terribly bloodshot.
"You're smoking again," he observed.
She smirked. "It was always your brain that I loved about you."
He frowned. "You only do that when you're really stressed."
She inhaled another breath of smoke in favor of responding.
"What are you doing here?"
"Dean called me to save your ungrateful ass."
"Dean wouldn't."
"He did."
"You should leave before he gets back."
"You're not better yet."
"He'll kill you."
"He can try."
Sam's tired eyes flashed with something that tried to be anger, but fell short. "No. You two will not fight. I am so sick of you fighting. Can't you just get along?"
"Dean told you I betrayed you, right?"
He stared at his hands, blinking his eyes sluggishly with the sticky feeling of recent dehydration. "I was hoping he was lying."
She snorted. "If only. Crowley would have killed me if I hadn't brought you to him."
She didn't know what to expect. Probably anger, even if he was too exhausted to yell. But she wasn't expecting him to get even quieter. "You worked for him."
"The whole time. Ever since Denver." She knew she was being cruel, but that didn't matter. Sam was supposed to hate her. He should have always hated her. She was a demon, he was a Winchester. But instead they'd had the same unwelcome, unexpected, stirrings of affection, and it was too late to change that.
"Why?"
"He needed you to reach your full potential so that this would happen. So I would eventually lead you to him. He'd hoped that you'd be under my control completely by that point, but your brother reduced that plan to rubble. So I took you to him anyway, because he told me to."
"You changed your mind."
"No," she said, frustrated. "Are you missing the bit where I shot your brother in the leg and kidnapped you? Then tricked you into working for Crowley? Did that blood loss do something to your brain?"
"You're one hell of a liar, Ruby. You might even be good enough to convince yourself."
Her snide retort died in her throat. He continued, his eyes fixed on his hands.
"I can't completely trust you, even though I want to. I never should have, but I did. So this doesn't really change anything about us." His eyes found hers and they were still slightly glazed over from the dose of her own blood she'd given him. Still, he was shockingly lucid. "But I think, even though we still feel that same way we did, this changes everything else. We can't just go back to fighting. I can't trust you to have my back after a fight or do your job. You need to leave."
Her throat went dry. She put the forgotten cigarette to her lips and found nothing but filter. The tips of her fingers had burned and she hadn't felt a thing. She flicked it into the gray morning after its many predecessors.
"Not right now, you may still be helpful and that might keep Dean from killing you, but once I'm better, we need to go our separate ways."
Really this should have been a good thing. She hadn't expected things to end on terms this good. She thought she'd never see him again and if she did it would be on the wrong side of his blade, but here he was, practically confessing his love to her while giving her the most pleasant break up possible under the circumstances. Because that's who Sam was. He wouldn't even break a demon's heart.
It was a goodbye, which is better than she had thought she was going to get.
That didn't mean it didn't hurt.
"That's probably a good idea," she said, and turned to the open window to continue her smoke.
A few minutes later she heard him lie back down with a slight exhalation of pain and his breathing evened out as sleep took him again.
Her hand shook as she lit the next in her chain of cigarettes.
The smoke stung as she pulled it through her airways. She held it in too long until she could almost feel the suffocating pain of Hell.
Author's Note: Hell yes. This thing is almost done and the pace will be going much more rapidly, I hope. Look, it was up in less than a month. In juxtaposition with last chapter, this is really fast... That is honestly pretty sad. Love all you guys.
Next Time…
"I just want you to be happy," Sam finally said quietly. "That's all I ever really wanted."