Dean's standing in the kitchen, preparing two plates with sandwiches. He also places two cups with coffee on the tray and a protein-bar on it.
Dean's sunken in thoughts, far away in his mind rummaging through it, poking at the invisible wall that's hiding memories from him.
No matter what he tries, how hard he pokes at the wall, he can't remember what happened to him before the demon had interfered.
~ The Black Beast ~
When he enters Sam's room, the man's awake, but haven't left the bed, despite not being cuffed anymore.
Dean puts the tray on the cleaned-up nightstand. Syringes and medications long gone and stored away in his room in the medical case.
Sam eyes him warily, dazed by the morphine Dean keeps him on a low doze, just enough to take away the pain's spikes.
"Let's try and get food into you.", Dean states and stands beside him, waiting for Sam to sit up.
The hunter doesn't as much as blink and keeps staring at the ceiling, his jaw working, as he keeps on ignoring him.
"Dude." Dean sighs. "Don't be a stubborn bitch."
"Don't dude me.", Sam retorts. "You drugged me.", he says in an offended way.
"You're not dead, are you?" Dean rises both eyebrows, "We could work together."
Sam huffs out a breath and shakes his head in disbelieve – despite that's what he actually kind of intended, now he isn't sure he wants it anymore.
"Don't do that." Dean's annoyed. "Don't brood. – It's what bitches do."
"How do you figure that working together will work out? Me watching you kill people? Me becoming your trusty sidekick or something?"
Dean shakes his head. "The thought occurred to be. But no. Nothing like that." He exhales audibly. "I'm not killing anyone anytime soon." He thinks for a moment and looks aside for a moment. "I don't remember anything before … DAD happened. And I think I have to remember." He looks Sam in the eyes, watches his smooth features, the hard line of his set jaw, the hazel in his irises.
The man's irises are nothing in comparison to the once he's seen so far. They've these vivid colors in them. Freckles of brown and when light catches in them – like right the fuck now – they have a touch of gold.
It's mesmerizing, Dean thinks, that these man's eyes awake something in the very depths of his soul he hasn't felt ever before. It's a feeling, that unleashes a turmoil of emotions deep in his chest, so heavy and though light.
Sam blinks at him and props up on his elbows, his roughed-up hair standing off in weird directions when he tugs a strand behind his ear. The hunter suppresses a groan, but Dean catches up on his discomfort anyway.
"Your dad? – Or the thing who taught you?", Sam asks curiously and scoots back on his butt to rest against the headboard.
Dean takes one of the sandwiches and places it in Sam's lap. He takes the other one and sits down in the recliner, his attention trained on the food in Sam's lap.
"Yellow Eyes.", Dean admits and licks his lower lip, feeling uncomfortable about admitting that he's lied before.
He looks up and catches Sam's gaze. "The demon had yellow eyes."
~ The Black Beast ~
Sam's been dozing along for quite some time, shoving the sensation of his full bladder and the need to visit the toilet into the back of his mind for quite some time now. He doesn't want to get up, to move. He feels comfortable in bed and he also feels weirdly calm despite the fact that a serial-killer is somewhere around in the bunker.
Usually, he should be high alert. Should feel the need to protect himself with some kind of weapon. He should feel the need to be attentive and watchful about his surroundings and the noises that echo through the bunker.
But he isn't. He doesn't feel threatened at all, and that makes it all the weirder.
Sam muses, that the Winchester might have put something in his food, or it's not only morphine he's giving him, since he's never seen the bottle with pills, which are placed on the tray with the food and liquids he's bringing along.
~ The Black Beast ~
When the need to release the pressure in his lower stomach takes overhand, he decides that it's time to get up.
He's been on his feet before, he's been in the bathroom a couple of times by now, but there has always been Dean with him. It's always been Dean guiding him, opening the door for him, supporting him.
Sam figures it's time to take matters into his own hands, and so he shifts and moves until he manages to slip his legs out from under the covers and from the bed's edge. His bare feet touch the ground and he wiggles his toes tentatively.
Sam feels drowsy and his side hurts a little. So, he wants to take his time, but his bladder wouldn't allow him that. He braces himself with his hands and outstretched arms on the mattress's edge. He takes a deep inhale and closes his eyes for a moment, keeping the dizziness at bay as good as he's able to and stands up awkwardly.
His outstretched palm finds the bandage and puts pressure on it, so to ease the pain when he moves. Once he's on his feet, he tests his knees and joints as they feel like they're made of Jell-O.
Sam's lips form into a thin line and he trains his look at the bathroom's door, fixing it. It's his target. The destination he needs to reach. Once he's in there, he figures it's only a couple of yards towards the toilet where he'd be able to sit down again.
He reaches for the nightstand with his free hand and moves slowly, when he's putting one foot before another, staring stubbornly at the door at the other end of the room. It looks like he is trying to will the bathroom to come closer and meet him in the middle.
He's not even half-way through the room, when he starts to fight the uproar of sickness pooling behind his sternum, the weakness in his limps.
Sam tells himself that he can make it. That it's no biggie to cross the room and take care of his business all by himself, without having a psycho supporting him to take something lapidary like a piss.
He eventually reaches the door he's been aiming for, gripping the handle tight in his giant hand, holding onto it in a vice grip.
Sam's sweating now. Cool droplets of salty fluid covering his entire body.
He tells himself that it's okay, that it's common, that's the way it is at the moment, and that he'd be damned if he'd allow himself the bareness of calling out for his newest bunker-buddy.
Sam manages to reach the toilet. His pants pooling around his ancles, when he thumps down on the seat, cool sweat dripping from his forehead onto the tiles. Sharp intakes of air filling his lungs with much needed oxygen, as he tries to sooth his racing heart back into a more adequate pace.
Sam braces his elbows into his thighs and rests his heavy hand in his palms.
For a moment he feels like toppling from the toilet-seat, but catches himself in time to not facepalm the hard tiles.
He doesn't know how long he sits there. It feels like eons until the frantically beating of his heart subsides, and he doesn't feel like passing out anymore – at least not just yet.
When he's done with his business, he decided that brushing his teeth isn't as necessary as it had felt when he had still laid in bed.
So, he gets to his feet gingerly, tests his legs again if they're going to carry him, or if they'd decide to give up on him on his way back towards the bed.
Sam figures that there's still no need to call out for the other man he barely knows, and tugs his sweatpants up.
Once he's sure, that his legs are stable enough to actually walk and move as he demands them to do, he takes on the path towards the bathroom's door.
He grips the sink hard, when he moves past it, using it to support him, to stop himself from swaying. It doesn't work anyway. Sam's in no condition to make it back to the bed on his own, he realizes pretty fast, when he feels his legs buckle beneath him.
Before he can catch another thought or even muse about calling for Dean, darkness washes over him and drowns him in the depths of unconsciousness.
~ The Black Beast ~
Dean's not far.
He's sprawled out on his bed and listens to an album of Def Leppard, when he hears a door bang against something, clattering and a suspicious sound of something hitting the floor.
He's out of the bed, on his feet and out in the corridor moments later and jogs towards Sam's room, because that's the only place where he figures the noises can come from.
He's not surprised, when he rushes into Sam's room, finds the door to the bathroom wide open and a giant guy is lying in the threshold.
Dean curses and hurries to the Sam's side. He nudges him in the shoulder and curses again when there's no response. With exquisite care, he turns Sam onto his back, brushes long bangs of hair out of the man's face and lays his hand on his sternum.
"Sam?", he asks loudly and shakes him.
Of course, there's no answer, so he balls his hand into a fist and digs with his knuckles into Sam's sternum.
That – of course – forces the hunter out of unconsciousness. He takes a deep inhale and his eyes fly open.
Dean stares down at him sternly and a bit reproachfully. "Haven't I told you to not try anything on your own?", he asks annoyed and somehow angry.
Sam pants and swallows and pants some more. For a moment he feels confused.
"Yeah.", he eventually answers. "Guess you did." He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes for a moment.
"You guess?" He shakes his head and huffs out a breath. "Stubborn much?" Dean's certain, that it's not going to be easy to deal with this one.
Dean slips his arm under Sam's shoulder and props him up into a sitting position.
Sam's still trying to catch his breath, his chest heaving. He reaches for his injured side and puts pressure on it to ease the tearing sensation.
"If you've pulled your stitches … I swear to god.", Dean grumbles when he helps Sam back on his feet.
Sam throws his arm over Dean's shoulder, when Dean wraps his arm around Sam's middle.
Dean glances up at the giant man and eyes him with something like worry written over his forehead. "You ready to go?", he asks.
"Yeah.", Sam breaths, putting some of his weight on Dean.
Dean takes most of the hunter's weight when they walk back to the bed slowly. He lets Sam sink onto the mattress and helps him to get his legs onto it too.
"Next time you better holler, princess.", he mutters and throws the covers over Sam. "I won't drag your ass around anymore. – Next time you pull some bullshit like that I won't come to your rescue."
Sam ignores him. He's so not going to develop some weird kind of Stockholm-Syndrome here. Though, he has to admit, that for the serial-killer Dean Winchester is, he seems kind of nice and caring.
~ The Black Beast ~
Days go by …
Sam feels stronger with each day that passes.
Dean takes longer walks with him through the bunker another couple of days later. He supports him on his way into the library or kitchen, where they eat together in silence.
Mostly they don't talk and it feels comfortable despite the weird circumstances they are in.
Sam makes use of the killer's efforts to make him walk and move, and assess his surroundings, attentive as he is, he notices the drawn sigils in the thresholds and the main-entrance which is visible from the map's room.
~ The Black Beast ~
They currently sit in the kitchen.
Dean's behind the stove, and Sam's sitting at the table and nipping on his morning-coffee. He's still pale and hurting, but he feels way better as he has before.
"So, you warded the bunker against Angels?", Sam speaks up, eying the cooking man closely.
Dean doesn't stop to stir in the pan with the scrambled eggs. "Yes.", he answers. "Guess since your friend didn't show up yet it's workin'.", he tells him casually.
Dean splits the eggs in two portions on plates and puts the bacon into the pan. Soon it starts to sizzle and the smell claims the kitchen and rooms nearby.
"His name's Castiel.", Sam says.
"I know. I've read about him in your Journal." Dean shrugs and turns the bacon over in the pan. "The way you're writing about him, he seems to be a nice guy."
Sam smiles softly and drinks from his coffee some more. "Yeah. – He'll try to get inside." He'll find a way is what he wants to say.
"Figure. – I've made some arrangements though.", Dean licks his lower lip when he finishes the bacon and turns off the plate. He sighs, takes the plates and walks over to the table.
"Just in case he gets in without me wanting him to." Dean smirks and places one of the plates in front of Sam.
"We'll need him." Sam's sure they will. He will. Besides, he wants Castiel to be there at his side. "Maybe he can do something about your memories too."
Dean huffs out a breath when he sits down and stuffs a stripe of bacon into his mouth. "Yeah? Who tells me you guys won't take me out?" Dean swallows the bacon and waves with another stripe at Sam.
"Who says, I won't try to take you out when I'm healed enough again?", he counters and rises both eyebrows. Big hazel-eyes looking at Dean slightly amused.
"You won't. Because of the same reasons I didn't kill you, Samantha." Dean grins broadly and takes a bite from the bacon in his hand. "We're somehow connected. We both want to know why. We're on the same side."
"We're not", Sam tells him bluntly and pokes around in the heap of scrambled eggs on his plate. "On the same side."
"Maybe you don't see it yet, but we actually are." He smirks at the hunter. "And who knows? Maybe we become friends. – Braid each other's hair. Make tea-parties … Become besties …", he trails off for a moment before he focuses back at Sam.
Sam chuckles, his face plastered with deep dimples of amusement, and his eyes lightening up in a way that brightens the entire room.
Dean's features change, his smirk vanishes and is replaces with something like astonishment.
Their looks meet over the distance and they hold it for a long moment, before Sam stares back at his plate and impales scrambled eggs on his fork.
"There's not a lot of hair to braid on your head, Deanna." Sam's still amused, as he shoves the eggs into his mouth.
"You've plenty for the both of us, smartass.", Dean grumbles and he too draws his attention back at the plate before him. "So, how do we do this? – How are we going to … I don't know … get to the bottom of what's going on with us?"
Sam shrugs. "Cas is gonna get your memories back. – If it's possible." He looks up, thinking. "Then we'll go from there I think?" Yeah, it's a question, because after all Dean has to be on board with it, doesn't he? Of course, they could make him, but then again, if they'd need to work together to get to the demon, it'd do any good if they were forcing him.
"So … I'm gonna scratch the sigils, and your friend's going to pop up?", he asks, watching Sam closely, taking in his face, observing if there are hints of an upcoming betrayal.
He can't spot any.
Sam nods. "Yeah. – I think that's the plan." And maybe, if the man gets his memories back from when he's been a kid, things would change for him – at least Sam hopes so.
There's a reason why Dean Winchester can't remember what's happened before he's been with the demon. Maybe they erased his memories to get him to do what he's doing. Maybe there's something hidden, which would tell them how to fight or kill the demon.
Or at least to stop Sam's visions from happening.
Which makes Sam think about the curiosity, that he hasn't had a vision ever since his last one in the kitchen while bleeding out, and that it's an uncommon thing.
Maybe it's because Dean didn't kill anyone ever since.
Maybe it's not bound to the yellow eyed demon, but to Dean alone.
He can't remember his last vision though, even when he tries really hard, he can't recall what it's been about, except for a pair of bloody hands and blue lights in the darkness narrowing.
It's not like he isn't happy about it, but then again – it may be the silence before the storm. And that's a fact he doesn't like at all.
~ The Black Beast ~
Yellow wicked eyes gleam in the darkness of the night.
He doesn't know where exactly his son is now. Which means he is most likely with the one who will be able to tear him out of the blackness he wallows in and back into the light.
For anyone else among his kind it might look like a bad thing. But not so for Yellow-Eyes. It's exactly how he wants it, when he wants it.
Cutting through, what still binds Dean Winchester's human soul to this world, will let him topple over the last cliff into damnation.
~ The Black Beast ~