Chapter Three: Salvation
Holy fuck. Sam hurt.
He awoke from his fervid dream coughing and spitting. His stomach, thickly wrapped in gauze and bandages, stretched awkwardly, and he collapsed back onto the bed. The young man's chest was heaving, up and down, up and down. Air, which was graciously surrounding him, struggled to get inside his lungs.
"Sammy!" And with just a word, the teenager calmed.
Dean was at Sam's side instantly, his thumb smoothing over Sam's forehead to tuck sweaty hair behind an ear. The teenager's mouth opened as he searched for the words, but instead of a sentence… more garbled coughing. "You need water," Dean murmured, grabbing a paper cup off the motel dresser. "Sit up a bit."
Sam tried to obey, pressing his back to the headboard and gently trying to guide himself into a sit. His arms shook at the pressure of his body, and the teenager let out a pained whimper. Within moments, Dean was slipping an arm around Sam's back and hoisting him up. Aches pulsed through Sam's bones, cold and heavy.
"Wha…" Sam's mouth was too dry to finish. Dehydration clawed at his throat, burying its nails deep inside his chest.
"Sh, sh, just drink," Water was placed steadily in the teenager's hands, and Sam gingerly took a sip. He expected it to burn, but it was sweet, slithering down his gullet. Slow sips morphed into the young man tipping the cup higher, forcing more and more liquid into his body. Surprisingly, Dean didn't stop him.
It only took Sam a shaky second to realize his brother had only filled the cup a fourth of the way, having anticipated the teenager's reaction. Sam wanted to curse his accuracy but was too grateful. Hands trembling, he shoved the cup into Dean's grip. "More? Please…"
And so Dean filled it less than halfway again and handed it back.
They repeated this process until Sam had downed almost two paper motel cups, and Dean cut him off. "You gotta let your stomach settle now, kiddo…" Then, to soothe Sam's pleading mind, "You can have more later."
Sam, admitting defeat, slithered back down into a horizontal position. Dean tucked the blankets around him and ruffled his hair. The teenager felt… dirty. Not mentally, no. Literally. What exactly had happened? He tried running through his memories but couldn't find a coherent thought. "D'n? What… what happened?"
His brother clammed up, "Let's not worry about that right now…"
Except now Sam was worried. He latched onto Dean's arm, demanding eye contact. "I'm fine. Just tell me," His voice was stern, but his eyes pleaded with desperation only the Winchesters knew. Just tell me how I almost died. We don't have to talk about it again after.
Dean sighed, and his eyes flickered away from Sam's, briefly, to stare at the rundown motel walls. "Um, there were these two kids-" His voice sounded scratchy, not with confusion but rage. Sam stared at his lap, worried that if Dean looked back at him, his temper would burn the motel down. "-At your school."
And then it clicked, loosely. The argument he'd had with Billie and Trevor. Billie pounding a fist into Sam's stomach as Trevor, the larger of the two, held him still. Sam remembered the exact moment he had decided it was enough and buried his elbow harshly into Trevor's side. His hold had been loosened, and Sam had taken the second to slip away.
Sam had raised his fists up, guarding his face against any incoming hits.
Trevor had come at him first, pissed off and sloppy. The Winchester dealt him one strong hit into his jaw that knocked him stumbling backward.
"Get the bitch!" Trevor had snapped at Billie, and then the two bullies had come at him at once. Adrenaline pounding inside his veins, the teenager dropped into a duck, narrowly avoiding an incoming punch from Billie. In his moment of dodging, the other bully kneed him in his stomach.
Blood bubbled at his lips, and it took everything in Sam not to pull out his knife. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of Trevor's shaggy blonde hair and used it to force the young man's face into Sam's fist. Trevor had grunted in agony, slipped on the slick school floors, and crashed into the tile.
Rounding his attention to Billie, Sam gritted his teeth in a show of force.
He didn't notice the blade in Billie's hand until it was too late. And so when the teenager made a move to punch, the Winchester had deemed it a hit he could take and opted for an offensive over defensive technique. Instead of dodging, he drew back a fist.
The knife plunged into his abdomen, just below his chest. And everything from that point on had begun to slip from Sam's brain. Billie twisted the blade deeper and Sam could feel the bully's knuckles brush against his shirt. If the pocket knife had been any bigger... Billie's strength would've shoved it straight through Sam's skin.
Dean had stopped talking when Sam was dragged into the memory, and when the younger brother came to again, Dean was staring into his eyes with caution. "Sammy?"
"How'd you find me?" Why aren't I dead?
And his brother continued his tale of woe, more careful this time. His eyes were staring into Sam's, as if both amazed and terrified. "You called me. Your school is only a couple miles from the motel, so I showed up, threw you in the Impala-" It was Dean's turn to look far away. "-And took you here. Bandaged you up, and ya slept for almost a full day."
Sam glanced around for the clock, stared at it for a long moment, and then drew a sigh. "What happened…" he cursed the fog over his memory. "...to Trev and Billie?"
Dean's eyes glazed over, once again, with that raw anger. He silently mouthed their names to himself, as if forever engraving them in his brain, before answering. "They were gone when I showed up. But you can bet yer ass I'll plow a new one into them later,"
"No, Dean, don't…"
"Don't what?" His brother's voice was harsh.
Fighting back a wince, the teenager shoved himself into a sit again and reached out to place a hand on his older brother's shoulder. "You can't fight them, Dean. I'm serious," Sam's eyes were dark with concern. He needed to talk his brother down from this death mission before any more anger could brew inside him. "You're twenty, an' you'll go to jail if anyone finds out."
Sam had started hiding his school bully encounters when Dean was eighteen -an adult in the law's eyes- and this wasn't going to be any different. Besides... it had been around that time -Sam being fifteen- that he grew a foot and lost his softer appearance. He stopped being viewed as the weakling new kid and had sometimes even taken Dean's place as the attractive mystery.
Before Trevor and Billie had turned on him, the three had actually been friends. They talked in the halls casually and made jokes about other boys in the school. Sam didn't know when the rumor that Sam had screwed around with Trevor's girlfriend had started, but no matter how hard he tried to stomp them down, he was met with no success. Trevor had turned on him first, followed not so shortly behind by Billie.
That was three weeks ago. Their bullying had only gotten worse as time grew, but Sam never would've pegged either kid to be capable of stabbing him.
Dean didn't seem to care, and the facts swirling around in Sam's head wouldn't do anything to soothe his anger, so Sam didn't bother explaining them. "Dean, please? I'll deal with them in class on Monday,"
"No fucking way, Sam!" This time Sam had to shift away from his brother's trembling anger. Sam was a big kid and could handle himself, but Dean was at a new level of fury. "You're not going back to that school."
Sam scoffed.
"Dude, I'm sixteen. I can handle myself." He glanced down at the wrap around his stomach. The aching was still fresh in his brain, but it was muffled. Sam would still wear the bandage if the wound didn't heal fast enough, but he'd be fine to go to school if he took some pain meds before.
But it was the way his brother stared into his eyes -looking haunted- that made Sam stop flat in his argument. There was something else, wasn't there?
Carefully, "How close was it?"
Dean looked away, biting the inside of his mouth. If Sam didn't know any better, he would've sworn his brother was trembling underneath that facade of anger. "Too close… way, way too close," he was staring at his hands now. Only then did Sam notice they were stained with faded crimson. Sam's blood.
Sympathy welled in his heart, and he reached out to grab Dean's hand. As he did so, he recognized the same color, but darker, on his own hands. His heart went cold. Scrambling away from the blankets, Sam stared at his limbs. Instead of the jeans he'd worn to school that day, he'd been changed into a pair of Dean's sweatpants. His shirt was missing, and his entire body was coated in various shades of wiped-away blood.
His brother was silent, head facing the wall with his eyes clenched shut. Sam felt the panic growing deep inside his chest. "Dean…"
How close? He needed to know.
How… fucking…. close?
"You almost died, Sammy…" And maybe it was the way Dean sounded so… small, or perhaps it was the fact that Sam realized he was crying, but Sam's questions stilled. "Like, gone gone. And, for a moment, I-I thought you were…"
Sam wanted to ask more... to understand how he'd been saved, but for his brother's sake, he allowed the conversation to fall flat. "I'm okay, though, Dean… you got to me in time…" He forced a smile when Dean looked over at him. "You can't get rid of me that easily, man." Sam laughed softly, but the feeling bubbled in his throat and sputtered into coughs.
"Lay back down Sam. You're basically overdosing on pain meds right now. You need sleep."
Too tired to argue, Sam closed his eyes and drifted away.
Dean didn't think he'd ever sleep again.
He'd marked Sam's time of death: Friday around four-thirty. That had been nearly twenty hours ago. In that time, Dean had taken five showers, made one deal with a demon, downed three beer bottles, and begged his brother to wake up eleven times. Only twice did his brother actually do so. The first, he was warped so heavily in a fever dream that he just screamed about his pain before Dean convinced him to take some meds.
The second time, which was around five hours later, every trace of the last day seemed to slip from his brain. He hadn't even known how he had gotten injured until Dean had explained.
He was asleep again now, but Dean still couldn't stand Sam being out of his sight. He debated on another shower, unable to keep his eyes off his stained hands. At this point, Dean had scrubbed his skin so much that he couldn't even be sure of why his hands were red. Was it Sam's blood still or just his skin being impossibly raw?
He picked up the cup off the dresser and went to refill it in the bathroom.
As the faucet turned on, emptying itself into the paper cup, Dean stared at himself in the mirror. His face was haunted and dark. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to get through this. His brother had died. And Dean had possibly ruined everything they'd ever worked for to get him back.
But what else could he have done? Let his reason for being just… rot in the Impala's backseat?
Shit… The Impala. He'd cleaned the blood off himself and as much as he could with just a rag off of Sam, but the car was still engorged with his kid brother's gore.
Dean's hand reached up to his face, pulling down on his eyelid and staring at his reflection. Everything was different now, in ways he didn't even know if he would be able to tell Sam about. How could he? If Sam knew what Dean had done… he'd never be forgiven. And Dean wasn't sure he could live with his baby brother not trusting him anymore.
Water was sloshing around the sink, and only then did Dean realize he'd forgotten to turn the faucet off. With trembling hands, he shut it off, poured about half of the cup out, and choked his tears down. Before walking out of the bathroom, his eyes rested on the mirror one final time.
And his heart stopped.
His green eyes had turned yellow. And the voice echoed in his brain once more. Don't forget who really saved him.
A/N: Save me I can't stop writing /j lol
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