God help him he was crying. Dean Winchester, the world's longest-running champ of the Ridiculous Macho Backbend Stretch to Avoid Emotion. He was sitting in the corner armchair near the fire crying as he listened to the satellite phone ring into oblivion, rebound, echo.
Sam lay as he had for two hours. Passed out. A pulse or Dean would have panicked. Yet, blood trailed from his nostrils. Whatever he had seen in the Baptism as they were calling it, it was something too terrible for him to talk about without passing out like that.
Dean was crying because of the sheer pain that had been in Sam's eyes as he had stammered and told what little he could remember. He kept saying.
"There's this bell...with a tree on it...They want demon soldiers...or...or I don't know, I don't know, we can't let that happen. God, my head!"
Dean was crying because he'd never seen Sammy in that much pain. Never in all their lives.
Come to think of it, he'd never seen anyone in that much pain in his entire life. To put it in context, he had seen his mother burn alive on the ceiling.
His baby brother.
Dean pulled himself together and rose to his feet, running a bandana under Sam's nose to still the flow of blood. The boy groaned. Dean adjusted his sore head on the pillow. He had an instinctual sense that the boy would not wake up for several hours. He also didn't know for sure what they were up against. His father, once again, was ticked at him for some tiny error on a hunt. Nothing major, he'd just mixed up a phone number for one hunter he needed to call for research.
John was not answering the phone.
Dean cursed under his breath. He called Bobby instead.
"Dean! I haven't heard from you in a while."
Dean almost flinched.
He'd been calling his own father off and on for three straight days without a reply because of his little blunder.
Bobby answered the phone on the third ring when he called, busy as he often was.
"I'm in pretty deep, Bobby..."Dean choked out.
Bobby let a gasp.
"Are you crying? What the hell happened, boy?"
Noted genuine concern. Dean smiled.
"Sam! Something has happened to Sam. He's not making sense. I have him with me at Pastor Jim's cabin outside Seattle..."
"What, but Sam's at school?"
"Not anymore...can you come?"
Only a slight pause for things knocking over as Bobby hasted to gather gear.
"On my way. Stay put."
Dean cried then for a completely different reason.