Room to Breathe
By: Cheryl W.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, Dean or Sam, nor am I making any profit from this story.
Author's Notes: Maybe I should have wrapped this tale up last chapter. But, having been given the doorway into some nice angst and having already been handed an injured Dean, I could not resist exploring the scenario a while longer. Hope you continue to enjoy the story.
Chapter 3
Gunning the Chevy's engine, Sam whipped the Impala around and stomped on the gas, leaving tire marks on the asphalt as the car rocketed onto the highway. Silence choked the dark interior of the car as they sped down the road, a lone car traveling the path hewed out of the forest. Sam's anger manifested itself by his white knuckled grip on the steering wheel and his clenched, throbbing jaw but he said nothing. Out loud. Internally, he was shouting, he was screaming, he was cursing, he was pleading for the truth.
Turning his head, Sam intended to lance a blistering look to his brother and scream out 'why!' But the word never left his suddenly dry mouth. Even in the dark he could tell Dean hadn't moved, at all. His silhouette showed him leaning heavily back against the seat, head against the leather, hand still covering his eyes. Sam knew without a doubt that his brother's show of pain was not a distraction devised to derail his anger. Dean never milked an injury, and if he ever even acknowledged being injured at all it was time to call 911, immediately.
Dean hurt with an intensity he could not tuck away under a cocky smile, not even to prevent Sam from worrying, though at the moment he knew worry wasn't his brother's first emotion toward him, fury was. And Sam had his right to it, Dean admitted, but even as he acknowledged that he prayed his brother would hold off on his first strike of retaliation. Raised voices would only make him wish more desperately to get run over by the Impala, thereby ending his misery.
To say getting branded with a hot poker had not topped Dean's 'most painful injury' list, would be a lie. When the molten metal had seared into his skin, it was like he had never known anything but the all consuming agony and he wondered, even now, if he would have screamed if his jaw hadn't been clamped shut by meaty, brutal hands. Truth was, he had barely choked back a scream in the bar when the Neanderthal had gripped his shoulder, both times. Some part of him knew that, had Pa Bender followed through on his threat, he would have found a way to scream when the poker burned through his eye. 'Instead you sold Sam out like some coward,' came the accusation not for the first time and still, he had no plausible defense. 'And you're cringing like a little girl from Sam's anger over some burn cream, some little con you played on him. If he knew the truth…..'
Seeing a shiver jolt through Dean's body, panic tore through Sam's heart. Dividing his attention rapidly between the road and his brother, he urgently asked, "Should I take you to the hospital?"
Those were not the words that Dean had been bracing for. Hearing the fear in his brother's voice, the overwhelming concern…for him was just another nail in his coffin of guilt. 'Don't be nice to me, Sam! Please don't be nice to me!' he wanted to cry out, his soul breaking under the kindness, the love that he no longer deserved.
When Dean didn't reply, Sam's heart thudded loudly in his chest. A quick denial of weakness was Dean's trademark response to any concern Sam revealed, a denial that had yet to come, to Sam's horror, may never come. Wide eyes on Dean more than the road, Sam hurriedly assured, "The nearest hospital is only half an hour away…"
Without adjusting his prone position, Dean answered darkly, "No," hoping Sam would believe annoyance prompted his gruff tone rather than pain. After all, this was the third time Sam had made the hospital suggestion since leaving the Bender's homestead.
Sam's reply was silence but Dean could almost feel the wind from his brother's nearly constant head turning from his focus on the road to him and back again. If he didn't dispel some of the worry rolling off his brother, Dean knew Sam would drag him into a hospital, would even dare to throw him over his shoulder to see it done if push came to shove…which it would. So, in an effort to lessen his brother's worry, Dean dropped his hand from his eyes and forced his eyes open. To his shame, he found he had not the strength to discard his slumped posture. Every limb felt like it weighed a ton. And his head, it felt like he was on one of those teacup rides at the amusement parks where he and Sam got the car spinning so fast he couldn't bring his head forward. He didn't even have it in him to flinch away when Sam's hand came to rest on his forehead.
It was not the heat coming off his brother's brow that sent Sam's stomach churning with worry but the shock of Dean letting him check him for fever, without compliant, without a reaction whatsoever. Leaving the implications of his brother's submission remain unspoken, Sam focused on the matter at hand. Reluctantly he let his hand fall away from Dean's brow. "You're burning up," not an accusation but a sigh as if his worst fears were being realized.
"Please don't mention burning…or fire…or hot," Dean mumbled back, a smirk in his tone as he managed to roll his head toward Sam, trying to read his brother's shadowed features.
Dean's attempt at sick, dark humor, Dean's favorite kind of humor, lightened some of Sam's tension…as he knew was Dean's intent. Not allowing himself to be sidelined so easily, Sam quietly pointed out with gentle insistence, "Dean, a fever could mean infection."
"Or it could mean yesterday I took a freakin' walk in the woods while it was raining with temperatures in the thirties and I'm getting a cold," Dean snapped back, wanting to wipe away the tremor of worry from Sam's voice, needing Sam's anger to stand between them, to keep him from begging Sam for forgiveness from a betrayal his brother didn't even suspect. If God was merciful, would never suspect.
Flinching at Dean's words, Sam returned his full focus on the dark road before him, guilt tightening his throat. It was his fault, he knew that. Dean would never lay the blame on him but he knew it was his stupidity that had gotten him caught, had forced Dean to face off with the Benders in an effort to rescue him, that he had ultimately been the cause for Dean's agony, at the hands of the Benders and now. His fault. How could he make that up to Dean? Dean, the person he loved more than anyone else in the world, had been tortured because of him. How could he even think he deserved absolution for that! And even if redemption was possible, it certainly wasn't to be granted for doing a piss poor job of protecting his brother in a bar fight.
Even in the moonlight, Dean could see the set to Sam's jaw as his brother stared straight ahead. Recognizing his brother's response was not one of anger but anguish, Dean cursed, silently. It seemed that lately all he was good at was hurting his brother. 'Yeah, well, it sure isn't saving him,' a bitter voice sneered in his head.
"I'm fine, Sam," he reassured brusquely as if his brother's concern was bothersome instead of the only thing that had kept him on his feet the previous night as they trekked through the woods back to the car.
After all that they had been through, all that they had survived, all the emotions that had ripped their world apart lately, Sam railed against Dean's pretense that nothing had changed. Relegating Sam again to the status of nurtured baby brother, Dean resumed the role of invincible superhero. But everything had changed, everything kept changing. Where was the plateau? When would they reach the point where they could draw in a sigh of relief! (No matter how small their relief was for that moment in time.) Was it too much to ask for a reprieve from the onslaught of pain, of fear, of worry!
"Yeah, you're just fine," Sam sneered sarcastically, choosing the avenue of anger to drowning in guilt, frustration and worry. Anger he was good at, his father had taught him all he knew. "You know what, why don't I just pull over and let you drive?" But the Impala stayed true to course, no swerving, no stopping, no Chinese fire drills. Sam, his eyes swinging between the road and Dean, said darkly, "If you're lucky, maybe you can manage to drive off before I get back in the car. That's what you want isn't it? To get away from me? To leave me behind somewhere?"
Suddenly Dean's fatigue and physical pain took a back seat to his fury. Without conscious thought he abandoned his slouch, his back went rigid and his eyes blazed into Sam's eyes as they flicked from the road and back to him. "Were you busy sniffing glue at Stanford for four years! Didn't I just spend the last three days looking for you! Not sleeping, not eating, and teaming up with the police, Sam, the police to find you!"
Even his brother's confession of worry couldn't dampen the anger that was flaring in Sam. "I guess you're just sorry you found me so soon, right?" his look lancing into Dean's stunned features before resuming his glare on the darkened highway. "Now you realize you could have used more time on your own, more time to hang out in bars, down a few shots, smoke a few cigarettes, get in more bar fights." Censure and anger permeated every syllable of every word.
Drawing in a steadying breath, Dean mollified, "Sam, don't be a drama queen. I just needed some time alone."
"In a crowded bar!" Sam snapped back with a dark glare thrown Dean's way. "You sent me on a snipe hunt! Why? So you could be a beer ahead of me?" he repeated the clause in Dean's note with venomous disbelief.
Throwing up his right hand in frustration, Dean turned to look out the passenger window, leaving his side of the car conspicuously silent.
"Dean!" Sam demanded only to be greeted by silence. "Dean!" his voice rising. "Answer me!
Whipping his head around, Dean tersely admitted even as he fought to conceal his wince of agony as pain spiked behind his eyes at the quick motion, "Fine, yeah, I wanted some room to breathe! You've had four years of space all I wanted was an hour, a lousy hour."
Part of Sam, the part of him that was Dean's friend, related to Dean's needs, even felt guilty for having had his four years of "space". But the other part of Sam, the part of him that was Dean's brother, the part that dominated his heart and soul, could not be so indulgent. His emotions teetered between feeling betrayed by Dean's need to be apart from him and traumatized over what harm had come to his brother in his absence, what further harm could have been possible had Dean been granted his "lousy hour" of space tonight in that bar.
"Come on, Dean, we both know being alone really isn't something you're good at. Tonight is proof enough of that. What? It took you less than an hour before you needed me to come to your rescue," the harsh words severing more than the silence in the car.
Dean felt as if a knife had cut him down to the bone, slicing through his heart in it's arc. It was the assault he didn't expect, the fatal blow he hadn't known he had left himself vulnerable to.
As his words seemed to echo in the car, Sam felt sick. This night he had set out to protect Dean, not turn his brother's darkest fears against him! Not for the first time, Sam cursed the shape shifter and his whole mind melt abilities. The freak of nature had no right to pillage that secret from his brother's soul and maybe even less right to tell Sam that information. 'And now I've used it as a weapon against Dean…just because my feelings got hurt.' Suddenly absolution seemed unattainable.
His eyes going cold and dark, Dean snorted, "You always go for the jugular. Good for you Sammy," he snidely congratulated. Laying his head back on the leather seat, closing his eyes and resting his hands on his stomach, he seemed to adopt the charade of lounging in a hammock on a sunny day.
Brutally, Sam remembered what he had forgotten. Dean was not like him, not like John Winchester. Pain wasn't something he showed, his anger was a stringently reigned beast and when it came to shutting people out, Dean's emotional walls rivaled the vaults of Fort Knox. "That's it! That's all you have to say? Good for you, Sammy!" Sam goaded, needing Dean to fight back, for things to tread into a realm where he could reach his brother, could beg for forgiveness.
Without breaking from his slouched pose, Dean ordered, "Wake me when we reach the next motel." A beat of silence fell. "And get two rooms."
Suddenly Sam's breath caught in his throat, his eyes burning as he watched Dean, expecting the older man to throw him a ballsy smirk telling him that a joke had been played, a prank had been unleashed. But Dean remained still, distant, unattainable, his emotional vault doors sealed and locked. Sam felt something break inside him as he realized that he was the threat Dean was barricading himself against.
TBC
Thanks for reading! Love to hear what you think.
Cheryl W.
