In his short life, there had only been one thing that had made him cry like this before. No, he hadn't cried when the only woman he'd ever loved enough to propose marriage to_Cassie_ had dumped him. No, he hadn't cried when his Dad would rail and cuss at him late at night when he was drunk. He only ever cried like this once before. Once, when he had woken up from a nightmare about his mother's death on the ceiling of Sammy's nursery.
Dean knelt on the floor of Bobby's house. They had taken Sam and hauled wholesale back to South Dakota for fear of the Yellow Eyed thing getting him again when he was in such a vulnerable state.
Dean's hands shook as he carried a little washtub over to where Sam lay limp as a dishrag, eyes rolling in his face at all that he had seen when the blood in the baptismal had transformed him into something else, and Yellow Eyes' disembodied spirit had momentarily held them all hostage. Yellow Eyes had set that awful trap, and then let them go again. God only knew what his real motive was, this catch and release.
Dean was trying to wash Sam's hair of the dried blood and the singed pieces of rafter that were still stuck in it. His hands quaked as he lifted the little sprayer thing_this was Bobby's foot bath thing from his secret pedicures at Mall of America that Dean was sworn from telling people about_and tried to rinse Sam's hair. Sam couldn't sit up. Dean tried to lift him to sit up where he could wash him without soaking his pillow, but he collapsed on his chest instead.
That's when the whole thing got to him. From Sam laying here, groaning like a terminal patient, to Bobby outside screaming and spitting in rage now that he finally got John on the phone, he'd had it. So, for the second time in his life, Dean Winchester laid there on his little brother's chest and sobbed like a baby.
Oddly enough, it was Sam that had been with him the last time he had messy cried just like that. It had been when Dean was 11 and Sam was 7. Dean woke up from a particularly ugly nightmare where his whole family had died just like his Mom had died. Seeing Sammy die like Mom in his dream was enough to send him over the edge.
Dean screamed as he cried, shrieked bloody murder. They were in Rufus' hunting cabin and Dad was nowhere to be found. It was just the two of them as it often was.
Little Sam was still up watching Scooby Doo reruns. Dean had fallen asleep from pure exhaustion, trying to juggle homework and all the laundry, dishes and work of a child being forced to act as both mother and father of their baby brother.
Sam muted the TV and turned to his brother who had rolled up in a ball barely awake crying so hard his chest was clicking. Sam gasped back a little breath.
"Dee?" He called, but the answer was another shriek around a sob, followed by a whimper.
Sam crept to Dean and climbed up in the bed.
"Dee...shh...Shh, it was just a dream. It's okay...I'm...I'm okay!" Sam frowned. Dean wasn't aware that he'd been shrieking his brother's name, followed by little muffled whispers of "No, no, no, please...Don't hurt him please..." This entire while.
Sam crawled up into the bed, and laid down next to Dean, wrapping his arms around his waist.
"S'okay, Dee...I'm right here..."Sam held on tight. Until Dean rolled over, sobbing so hard his teeth were gnashing together in awful *crunch crunch* noises. He wrapped his arms around Sam and cried into his chest until he had to get up and go and throw up in the toilet.
Dean was crying so hard right now as a 25-year-old grown man that he thought he was going to break something in his back. Sam, groggy and half dead, woke up to the feeling of his shirt soaked through just above his pectorals. His fingers twisted in Dean's hair gently. Dean shrieked bloody murder, muffled against Sam's chest and drowned out by Bobby's tirade argument with John on the phone.
"Dee?" Sam asked, just as he'd asked as a little boy all alone in the world with his big brother, a child himself, left to raise him.
Dean sobbed, throat aching. He wanted to roll back the flood into Pandora's box and slam the lid but he couldn't. He was crying and gasping, painful little groans crushed through his teeth as jagged, hissing noises as he tried to force himself to shut up. Oh God help him, he tried, but the image of Sam burning in the psychic fire on the roof of that church, with blood and vapor of smoke and chains dangling from his levitating body...It was all too weird and too horrible to keep the lid on it this time.
"Dee, what happened? Dude! You're gonna make yourself sick..." Sam tried to sit up.
"Nn..nnnmm..." Dean sat up and took Sam's shoulders and gently laid him down.
"Dean, what the Hell? Dude, you're gonna make yourself throw up...Calm down..."Sam was forcing himself to talk. Every word was breathless and painful to the ears for its strain.
"Shut up..."Dean half-growled, half-whimpered. He leaned down and kissed Sam's cheek, collapsing against his chest and knotting his shaking hands in his sodden shirt.
"Just...shhh..." Dean sobbed again as the argument on the phone outside got louder and louder, or seemed to.
Sam's fingers stroked through Dean's hair as he sobbed wretchedly against his chest. He was half-dead anyway and might not remember this, but Dean was too broken up to even care if he'd let the Great Wall of Machismo break in front of his little brother this time. . Hell! had happened to him back there?!
"Dean...Please...I'm okay..."Sam groaned at length. He sat up and both of them slid into the floor as Sam hit his knees.
"Sammy..."Dean bit out through his sobs, hands still wrapped in the ruined shirt, having torn it now, as it was thin as sodden notebooks.
"Dean, you are gonna hurl for sure if you don't quit...Take it easy, alright?" Sam begged him to listen to him, but Dean was getting dizzy now, distraught being a poor word choice for it now. Sam reached out and found the trash can Bobby kept near his magazine table by force of memory of this house he'd once been a frequent guest in. He pushed it up to Dean with the effort of an ant trying to move the Stone of Gibraltar. Dean bowed over it and conceded to his stomach, retching viciously.
"What the hell happened?" Sam asked. Dean looked up. His hands shook as he reached for a bandana he'd been wiping Sam's feverish forehead with. Sam reached an equally numb and tremulous hand in the direction of the bandana and wiped Dean's mouth for him.
"You,...We went back in there to try and retrace your steps...The damn thing was out of its vessel and in the baptismal...It lured you back into it and then...Then," Dean wheezed.
Sam remembered then. He caught Dean, who was crying all over again, with a hard hiccup and a gasp for air that scared Sam, thinking he could aspirate.
"Dean...Seriously, you are gonna make yourself down-in-the-bed sick. You need to calm down, brother...I know that it probably makes you want to punch me in the face, but I'm telling you for both our sakes to calm down...please..."Sam nuzzled Dean's shoulder, shivering there soaked from his tears and the hole in his shirt.
Dean tried. He drew in a shaky breath, and he tried, God love him. Sam watched him or tried to watch him, still feeling as if his eyes had been crushed out of his skull by a vice grip. Sam held Dean up, noticing that he had gone ragdoll limp. His eyes fell by chance on the little bath thing Dean had brought in there. He reached and he tried pitifully to bring a handful of water to Dean's teary, sweaty face. His big brother was bordering on catatonic for whatever horrible thing had happened in the church.
Sam knelt there pleading with Dean until finally Bobby came in, face the color of a flaming poker. He took one look at the brothers and huffed a heavy sigh.
"C'mere, boys...Come here..."Bobby lifted them both up, one under each arm. He led them to a guest room and helped them both collapse into the bed. He tossed their feet up onto the bed,and pulled a blanket over them.
"Okay, you two just stay put until I figure out what to do..."Bobby closed the door of the room behind him. Sam was thankful for how much cooler the room and the blanket were than where he'd been lying before, as he was still on fire from the psychic heat of the events he could only vaguely remember. Dean lay on his back, both hands on his stomach, eyes closed, as he continued sobbing, unable to help himself.
Sam inched closer to Dean and reached out a hand and took one of Dean's arms by the bicep. Dean gasped and tried to say his brother's name, assure him that everything was fine, that he'd be fine, like he always did even though it was pure grade A bull.
Sam wrapped himself around Dean from the side like he'd done when they were children and Dean woke from the horrible dream that had now become a reality. Dean rolled over in his arms then and lay there crying against him until he had cried himself to sleep.
Into Sam's mind flashed the realization that whatever Bobby and John were fighting about on the phone, it probably was a large part of what had driven Dean to such hysteria. That meant that their Dad had probably reacted as one would expect John Winchester to react to the news that his son was a psychic freak and the reason why a demon would want to kill his Mom.
For the first time in his life, Sam lay there genuinely fearful of his own father. He pulled his brother protectively closer and lay there with the room spinning like a roller coaster praying they'd make it out of this alive.