Febuwhump Day Five: "Let Me See It". Sammy goes on his first hunt and gets hurt, but he won't show it in front of John and risk not being allowed on another hunt. Dean patches him up.
Title: Brand New and Bruise
John had only just started allowing him on hunts. For years, he was forced to research for John and Dean without seeing a speck of action, but now he was fourteen and his dad had run out of excuses to not let him go, considering Dean started hunting long before his age.
Dean taught him how to dig a grave. It was tedious, draining work, but Sam toiled on tirelessly, refusing to reveal his exhaustion and appear weak. Dean salted the bones and doused them in lighter fluid, then he passed Sam the lighter. "Go ahead," he said.
Sam smiled and flicked on the lighter, taking a second to soak in the pride before tossing it into the coffin below.
"Good job," Dean praised and Sam glowed with contentment, "We head back to the house now and make sure it worked."
Sam nodded seriously. Dean could see how hard he was trying to prove himself and he wanted their dad to keep letting some come on hunts almost as bad as Sam. He mentored Sam through the process, offering explanations and tips as they went.
They returned to the front of the cemetery and slid into John's idling car. "You got it?" John asked.
"Yeah," Dean replied, "Sammy burned 'em."
John raised the volume on his old rock tape and said nothing.
They pulled up to the house, a decrepit, Victorian building that truly fit the mood of a ghost hunt, and got out. John rounded the trunk and shuffled through the contents. Dean and Sam stood at attention beside him and he passed them each a sawed off shotgun filled with salt pellets. Sam wrapped his fingers around it and felt the cool metal and weight of it in his hands.
"Ready?" John asked gruffly.
"Yes, sir," Sam replied in his deepest voice.
They trooped through the front door and into the dusty foyer. A chandelier hung above and creepy paintings were framed on the wall. Sam's whole body was tense and he could feel his heart beating against his ribcage. He glanced at John and Dean as they crept through the room with impassive faces.
Calm down, Sam, he told himself. If his dad saw the anxiety boiling inside him, he might not trust him on a hunt again.
He spotted a candelabra on a massive console table with a deep red runner across it. He moved to take his next step, but froze when his eyes fell on her.
Her face was scabbed and peeling and she was sheet white. Her eyes were black and hair was missing in patches on her scalp. "Dad," Sam spoke slowly, like he would spook her and instigate her to attack, but as soon as the words left his mouth, she flew.
She was on him in a second and pushed his chest, throwing him across the room and into a wall. His body thudded and something sharp pierced into his side. He gasped out and clasped a hand over it.
"Sam!" Dean shouted and looked back. The ghost took the opportunity and shoved him backwards. He skittered across the floorboards, but gained his balance before he could tumble to the ground. The boom of John's shotgun sounded and it ached Sam's ears. The ghost evaporated with the salt.
Sam thought his side might have torn open, but he wouldn't weigh down the group. He forced himself to climb back to his feet.
"I'm going to look for the thing keeping her here. You watch Sam," John commanded and marched out the nearest door.
"Sam, are you okay?" Dean rushed to him. Sam was careful not to grimace at the stabbing pain in his side.
"I'm fine. We should look too."
"Okay. Let's go. I think the parents' room is that way. Maybe we can find a memento."
They walked down the hall and took the door on the left. It gave way to a master bedroom with a king size bed beneath a broken window. Cold air drifted causing the curtains to sway with the breeze. "Where do you think it'd be?" Sam asked.
"Dunno. Look in there," he pointed to a dresser, "I'll check over here."
"Ew, what if I find something weird?"
"Then we keep it," Dean crouched in front of the nightstand and pulled open drawers, sifting through the miscellaneous garbage he found there, pill bottles, pens, rings, and so on. When he reached the third drawer, he saw something sparkle. It was the crystal encrusted hair comb that the ghost girl wore in all the photographs. "Jackpot."
"You found it?" Sam walked towards Dean and jerked to a halt, breathing in sharply and reaching for his side.
Dean's eyes widened. "Sam?"
The sound of a shotgun resonated upstairs. "Burn it," Sam urged.
Dean took out the bottle he had filled with gasoline from his jacket pocket, poured it over the comb, and held a lighter to it. Each second it resisted the flame, Sam's stomach dropped lower, but it finally caught fire and ate up the material until Dean dropped it on the floor and they watched as the flames disintegrated it into ash.
"Is it over?" Sam asked.
"Dad! Is she dead?" Dean bellowed through the house.
"Yeah!" John shouted back.
Sam let out a deep breath he had been holding in. He'd finished another hunt without irreversibly screwing things up.
Dean was already on him with a reprimanding frown. "What happened?"
"Nothing."
Dean opened his mouth to say something, but they both heard the sound of John hiking down the stairs.
"Can we talk about it later? Please?"
Dean didn't want to let Sam sit with an injury all the way back to the motel, but his pleading voice and puppy dog eyes twinged Dean's heart and he acquiesced. "Fine."
They met John back in the entry room. He had a thin cut across his cheek that had already stopped bleeding, but generally seemed unaffected. He wore the same expression that he had walked into the house with. "It was her hair comb thingy," Dean explained, motioning to his own head like the visual was necessary.
"Alright," John studied Sam, then directed back to Dean, "Good work," Sam could tell it wasn't meant for him. John wanted him to know that Dean had earned the compliment and not him, but he was too focused on hiding his pain to fully appreciate the offense.
On the drive back to the motel, Sam angled himself in his seat so that the wound wasn't pressed against the leather. When they arrived, John put the car in park in front of the motel, but didn't try to get out. "I'm going to get a drink. I'll be back later."
"Can I take the first aid kit? I think I got a little cut, I just wanna swab it," Dean said.
"Sure," John said, but he already sounded checked out and ready for them to be out of his sight. Dean pulled the tin box from beneath his seat and they both got out to watch John speed out of the lot on his way to sloppy inebriation.
Sam silently traipsed behind Dean into the room and waited for his next order. "Alright," Dean turned to him, "Let me see it."
Delicately, Sam lifted his shirt. There was a hole in his left side, above his hip bone. A small stream of blood was leaking steadily out of it dampened in his shirt, in turn painting the nearby skin with red liquid. "Is it bad?" Sam asked.
"Nah, it's okay. We'll just clean you up a bit. Sit down," he directed Sam to a chair. Sam sat backwards and waited for Dean to gather his tools. "This is going to sting," he warned, and dabbed the hole with alcohol. Sam hissed and gripped the back of the chair.
"Are you going to tell Dad?"
Dean tenderly began to wipe the dried blood off his back with a rag. "No."
"I can't believe I already got hurt on a hunt," Sam lowered his head.
"Getting hurt is hunting. Do you know how much I've gotten my ass kicked on hunts?"
"A lot?" Sam asked tentatively.
"A lot. But you did good, Sammy."
"Dad wouldn't think so," if he found out, he probably wouldn't let Sam come on another hunt again. Maybe it would be an excuse since he didn't want Sam there anyways. Three was a crowd, after all.
"Sure he would. That was your first ghost hunt," Dean put the rag down and pressed a bandage over the puncture, "You killed it. You're a real hunter now."
Sam fiddled with his hands. As much as he wanted to impress his father, Dean's opinion always meant more to him. His big brother thought he had accomplished something. Nail in his side be damned, he was finally hunting with Dean.