A/N: Again, many thanks for the great feedback! I'm so relieved everyone likes it. I blame my newly discovered obsession solely on Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelacki. I want to know who the hell said they had to do such an incredible job with those characters.
Anyways, as before, eternal thanks to Monica, both for beta-ing and for her wonderful ear. Or, uh, eye, I guess, as this case might be.
Let me know what everyone thinks!
He wakes with a gasp, startled from a dream in which Sam was advancing on him with the knife Dean gave him for his thirteenth birthday.
It's dark again, the room palely lit from streetlamps and the moon; Dean must've slept through the rest of the day, and into the night. Through the harshness of his own breathing, he can hear Sam snoring softly in the second bed. However light a sleeper Sam had been as a child, it's clear that living in a dorm at college cleansed him of that particular habit.
Dean takes hold of the sheets around him, focusing on the feel of the linen beneath his hands as he tries to calm his heart rate, and his breathing. 'It was only a dream,' he tells himself, as forcefully as he dares. 'Sam doesn't hate you, and he certainly doesn't want you dead.'
His body slowly begins to respond. The pain he felt with every breath earlier in the day has worsened, but it's nothing compared to the pressure in his bladder from spending two days in bed without any bathroom breaks.
Having been painfully educated in what his battered chest can handle just the day before, Dean manages to get up without screaming. He stands with the ease of a ninety-year old arthritic man, and shuffles to the bathroom with about as much speed.
Sam is sitting up in bed when he comes out, blinking owlishly at him. "Are you okay?"
Dean rolls his eyes at the redundancy, same question, different time of day. He doesn't heal miraculously; if he hurt eight hours ago, chances are he's still hurt.
"Fine, Sammy. Just taking a piss."
His brother wrinkles his nose at his vulgarity, but doesn't otherwise complain. That keys Dean into just how much he is being worried over. Sam only gives up on trying to educate him in the matter of good manners when there are more pressing things on his mind. Which, considering their lifestyle, is pretty much all the time.
"I should be asking you that," he says, sitting down slowly. He doesn't quite hide the grimace. "You're the one with the awful nightmares. You sleeping okay?"
Sam looks thoughtful, like he's actually thinking about it, rather than automatically answering in the negative. Eventually he nods. "Yeah, I am."
Dean surprises himself by being a little annoyed by that. Seeing his girlfriend murdered gives the kid nightmares, but shooting his brother with a shotgun at point blank range isn't traumatic enough? No, of course not. He probably sleeps better with that memory, since he's clearly hated Dean all his life.
But that is a path that Dean is really not going to go down. Not now, and not ever. He closes his eyes, rubs his hand roughly over his chin, and deliberately pushes the thought out of his mind. The asylum is over and done with. Sam doesn't seem to have any hang-ups about it; why should Dean?
"Good." He braces himself, and leans back slowly until he's lying on his back again, feet on the floor.
"Dean."
He really doesn't want to look over, he doesn't want Sam to see the emotions that are probably written clearly all over his face, but there's enough of something in his brother's tone that he knows he has to. Sam isn't able to detach himself from everything as well as Dean can; the older Winchester wishes he could blame it on Stanford and his time away from his family, but Sam has always been a little sensitive. Every once in a while, he needs the emotional connections that Dean avoids so carefully.
When he does look over, he can't make out any details in Sam's face, because of the back lighting from the window. But that doesn't matter, because he doesn't need to see the guilt to know it's there.
"I…I see it all over again when I close my eyes, it's like it's burned onto the back of my eyelids. The look on your face… I don't know why I'm not dreaming about it, but I haven't forgotten. I never will."
His words are a strange sort of comfort. They see a lot of weird shit in their job, and Dean supposes a part of him worries that Sam will become desensitized to it all, and in doing that will lose whatever it is about him that makes him Sam. In Dean's mind, a Sam who isn't affected by all of this isn't really his Sam at all. And he knows that's a horribly selfish viewpoint, wishing more nightmares on his younger brother so he can feel a greater connection to him. But it's not that simple. Between them, it's never that simple.
"I know, Sammy," he says softly. "I know." Sam doesn't correct the nickname, and Dean allows himself that small victory.
He pulls his feet up onto the bed, and slowly moves back until his head is on the pillow. The ache is returning slowly, the ibuprofen from earlier is beginning to wear off. Dean closes his eyes, and covers his face with a forearm. He wants to shut out the pain, both physical and emotional, that remain as a reminder of how he failed at the Rockford Asylum. He doesn't want to remember it, he doesn't want Sam to remember; he wants to go back in time to when he first received the text message on his phone, and delete it before they can begin arguing. But as many things as they've seen proven during their lives, time travel was not one of them.
"Here."
He removes his arm from his face, and opens his eyes to Sam offering a pair of ibuprofen in the palm of his hand. Dean accepts them without comment, and dry-swallows them before his brother can pour him more orange juice.
"Thanks," he says gruffly. He covers his eyes with his arm once more, and startles when something small and light lands on his stomach. "I'm not hungry, Sam." He doesn't need to open his eyes to know that Sam threw a package of pop tarts at him. They practically grew up on the sugar laden wannabe pastries when they were kids, and the crinkling of the wrapper triggers memories from his young adulthood, which pretty much started the day his mother was killed.
"Tough shit," Sam says, and that makes Dean open his eyes and look over. Sam has his 'we're-playing-by-my-rules-and-if-you-don't-like-it-too-bad-because-I'm-the-healthy-one' expression on his face, and if the damn pills didn't make Dean so groggy, he might've tried to fight. But he was in no mood for an argument, and instead rips open the metallic cellophane and pulls out a pop tart.
Sam manages to hide his surprise at having been listened to for once, and doesn't even protest when Dean hands the second pop tart back. The brothers eat in silence, each eyeing the other to make sure every last crumb is consumed. When both are satisfied, Sam collects the garbage and deposits it in the room's only trash receptacle.
"Dean," he says, with his back to his brother. "I want to have a look at your chest."
Dean thinks for a minute, wants to go for the sarcastic comeback to ease the tension, but then decides on a different route. "No, Sam. It's fine."
Sam whirls around, his hands on his hips and a scowl etched into his face. "It is not 'fine.' When was the last time you spent two days in bed? What about the last time you let me get your pills, or pour you orange juice, or hell, offered to let me drive when you didn't think I was gonna fall apart at the seams? Don't lie there and tell me you're fine! You're full of shit is what you are!"
Dean doesn't want to fight, but being lectured by his brother has always been one of his hot points. He can feel his anger level rising. "You're not looking, Sam. It's not that bad. I already took care of it."
"Oh? Well, I didn't realize you'd grown eyes in the back of your head."
Dean is in no mood to play one of his brother's psychologist-wannabe games. "What the fuck are you talking about? Weren't you there? You hit me in the chest, dummy."
And then Sam reaches around behind him, into his back pocket, and pulls out an achingly familiar piece of purplish-gray fabric. He gives it a shake, and it evolves into a t-shirt. The same t-shirt Dean was wearing when Sam shot him. The same t-shirt that he buried in the bathroom's garbage can right after ripping it away from his wounds.
"You fucking asshole," he whispers. His hands have clenched into fists around the sheets pooling in his lap. While there isn't actually a logical reason for his anger (despite what he feels, the bathroom is neutral territory, and if Sam feels like rooting around in the trash, that's his own prerogative.), he knows it's building to dangerous levels.
Sam shows Dean the front of the t-shirt, with its blood and salt stains, and holes ripped into it. Then, like he's fucking transvestite Vanna White, he flips it over and shows him the back. Though it's lacking in salt stains, it doesn't look much better than the front. Dean attributes this to the wall he flew through after getting knocked back by the shotgun.
"What, you thought I'd miss the garbage can overflowing with bloody gauze and bandage wrappers?"
"We're not doing this now," Dean says, with a frown and extra emphasis on 'not.' He turns his head away deliberately, hoping for once his brother will see how much he does not want to do this, but Sam is not so easily dissuaded.
"Fuck you! We are too doing this now! Dean, you're hurt. You're hurt because I shot you! Please, let me help." The pleading in his voice is almost enough to persuade Dean to give in, but he knows his brother too well. It would tear Sam up to see the kind of damage that had been done. And though Dean may be lacking in many areas of his older sibling support, he is not going to heap unneeded emotional pain on his brother.
He shakes his head again. "I'm not going to give up cause you gave me the fucking puppy dog eyes, and went digging through the damn trash! I'm telling you it's fine! I'm fucking 26, dude, not twelve. If I tell you it's fine, then you'd better fucking believe it's fine!"
Sam's knuckles are turning white around the fists he's making in the t-shirt. How can his brother not understand? He needs to do this. He needs to take some kind of responsibility; he deserves some kind of punishment for what he did. Sam wasn't strong enough to save himself from the spirit of Ellicott, and Dean is the one that paid the price.
"Why do you have to be such an asshole about this? You can't honestly believe you can take care of this kind of damage" -he shakes the t-shirt in his fist in emphasis- "and not need some help." Sam pauses suddenly, tilts his head to the right and frowns softly as something occurs to him. "What would dad say?"
Dean freezes. His fingers are curled so tightly his impossibly short fingernails are biting painfully into the palms of his hands. Fuck Sam. Fuck him for bringing up the one person from who Dean could never refuse an order. Their father has a very Maslow-esque view on injuries; physical wounds always take place before emotional ones.
"Dad would ream you out for putting my feelings ahead of your health, and you know it." Sam stalks closer, perches on the edge of his bed opposite Dean. "I'm always going to blame myself for what happened, Dean. That's not going to change, because it was my fault. I couldn't push away that spirit like you could, and you got punished for my weakness. You hiding your injuries from me isn't going to change that. You've got to understand."
Dean tries to turn over, to ignore his brother properly with his back to him, but his chest is too sore, and his arms are too stiff from being useless for two days. He's unsuccessful. Even more than before, now he really does not want to do this. Fuck Sam for the low blow of bringing up their father. Because Dean knows he's right. Their dad would tell him he's not going to survive long in this life if he continually puts Sam ahead of himself like he's been doing. Although Dean might be loath to admit it, Sam is a grown man. He's no longer the seven-year old boy who cried whenever his big brother got hurt.
Sam watches the aborted movement with concern and sympathy in his eyes, worrying the inside of his bottom lip with his teeth. "Please, Dean. I just…I need to do this. You know?"
Dean's quiet for a long time. His eyes have closed, and just as Sam begins to wonder if he's fallen asleep under the influence of the painkillers, he sighs. As much as he doesn't want to, he understands why Sam might feel he has to see the damage. It's a way of taking ownership for what he did, Dean thinks. He probably would feel the same way, if their positions were switched. Maybe this time, what's best for Sam is exactly what Dean's instincts are telling him not to do. Dean grabs on to the edge of the bed, and though Sam's fingers twitch with wanting to help, he stays where he is as his brother stiffly lifts himself to a sitting position.
It's a hassle to get the t-shirt off, but Dean manages it without help, and is grateful none is offered. When the t-shirt is off and piled unceremoniously on the floor, Sam's gasp goes off like a gunshot in the quiet room. Though the physical pain is none to horrible at the time, Dean winces anyway.
"Jesus, Dean." His voice is breathy and soft, like he can't quite believe what he's seeing. His brown eyes are like dinner plates, wide and shining and disbelieving at the same time. "Shit."
The mass of bruising on his chest is like a who's who of rainbow colours. The center, where he took the brunt of the attack thanks to Sam's impeccable aim, is differing shades of black, blue, and red. Although the bruising covers the majority of his torso, it wanes towards the sides, turning green, and an awful shade of yellow before vanishing completely. Small pockmarks also mar the flesh, where the rock salt must've dug in and tried to make itself home. Sam, whose mouth has yet to close, circles the bed to study Dean's back.
Thankfully, the other side isn't nearly as damaged. But Sam's practiced, almost medic standard eye can pick out wooden splinters, and cuts that have already become infected. He frowns, tries to forget that it was his hand that caused these injuries, and hurries into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit.
"Shit, Dean," he says, dropping the case on the bed and flipping it open. "Why the hell didn't you tell me it was this bad?"
Dean can only snort sarcastically. He had planned on never having this conversation, and if he had been more himself, he would've been able to hold to that plan. He knows how his brother likes to hold on to his guilt, to keep it to himself until it festers into shaking hands, or nightmares, or something even worse.
Sam tosses the bottle of ibuprofen over Dean's shoulder, and it lands in his lap. "I've gotta take these splinters out. You might want to take a couple more of those."
Dean appreciates that this is probably going to hurt considerably, but nonetheless, he forgoes the pills. This is the part of the job that makes it real for him. Without the pain, dealing with the things he does day in and day out, he might begin to question the reality of it all. So when Sam starts digging into his flesh with a pair of tweezers, methodically searching out and removing every last trace of foreign object, Dean winces, sucks in a breath and holds it, but does not flinch. The pain makes him alive, gives him something to hold on to when nothing seems real, and his brother is too far away on the other side of their self-made chasm. He needs the pain. Without it, he might be a spirit himself.
Once satisfied that the only things left in his brother's flesh belong there, Sam carefully applies a thin layer of antibacterial cream, and bandages the wounds that are deep enough to require it. Although he is fully capable of dealing with it, he's nonetheless grateful nothing needs stitches.
As bad as Dean's chest looks, Sam takes comfort in knowing that at least his brother is caring for himself. The cuts are obviously clean, and he can see the remainder of the antibacterial cream that was not absorbed into his skin.
"Okay," he says, patting Dean lightly on the shoulder. "I'm done. You're good."
He moves away to replace everything in the kit, and returns it to the bathroom.
Dean puts his shirt back on, but the movement pulls on something, and he coughs, and it's wet and painful.
"Must be coming down with something," he says, shrugging ruefully at Sam's worried glance, and quietly wiping the blood on the darkness of his boxers. The coughing is getting worse, the blood showing up more often, and Dean is worried, though he would not admit it, not even under threat of death. If he could have just a glimmer of Sam's 'shining', he might've thought a little differently.
A/N: I promise, all the foreshadowing has a purpose!
