Dean woke up with a start, coughing and gasping as he came to in the middle of nowhere. He sat up and looked around. He was sitting beside a dirt road, it was dark, and he had a splitting headache.
Slowly, the hunter staggered to his feet, glancing back at the small neighborhood. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Something had happened, obviously. People don't just fall down in the middle of a cornfield for no apparent reason.
He headed back in the direction of the motel, figuring that he could sort things out as soon as his head stopped protesting at the thought of even thinking. Police sirens whirred in the distance and lights flashed farther up along the road as the cars sped toward him, kicking up dust.
Dean adjusted his jacket, making sure his wings were well-hidden. Something wet and sticky covered the front of his jacket. Looking down, the hunter noticed that it was blood- a lot of blood- and it wasn't just on the jacket. It was smeared over his chest and blue jeans, too.
There was no way that blood was his, there was just too much of it. Still, a lot had happened to Dean in the past day, so he supposed anything was possible. He began checking himself out, trying to find the source of the blood loss.
As far as Dean could tell, there was nothing wrong with him, besides the terrible headache. As the sirens grew closer, he put a shaking and to his forehead to try and stave off the pain until he could get something like morphine into his system. Surprisingly, the action didn't bring any comfort, just confusion and panic.
Slowly, wincing even though there wasn't any pain, Dean pushed his index finger into the hole in his forehead. "Shit," he muttered, taking off his jacket and spreading his wings, eager to get back to the motel room before the cops found him.
He eased the door to the room open as quietly as possible, gently slapping a hand over his forehead before walking into the room. The last thing Dean needed that night was for Sam, who was already freaking out about the whole angel-thing, to see a bullet hold in big brother's head.
Fortunately, Sam was sprawled out on the bed, their father's journal lying open beside him, and seemed to be dead to the world. That was a good thing.
Dean tiptoed across the room, tossing his jacket lightly onto his bed as he went, and walked into the small bathroom. He closed the old door and made sure it was firmly locked behind him before he turned to the large mirror to truly assess the damage.
He moved his hand away slowly, gasping at what he saw under the fluorescent lights. He'd realized during the flight back to the motel that the bullet had probably gone all the way through. There was just no other explanation for that odd, cool sensation that had seemed to travel from the front of his head to the back.
A small, neat little hole of light could be seen in the middle of the hunter's forehead. "Well, that can't be good," he muttered as he gingerly poked the bloody area around the wound. Slowly, he made his way closer to the hole. His finger hovered only centimeters above it as he contemplated the consequences of sticking it in.
Suddenly, a knock came at the door, startling the already-shaken hunter enough to make him jump. There was a sick squelching sound as his finger slid into the bullet hole. "What?" he shouted, shuddering as he touched his own brain.
"You all right?" Sam asked. He sounded angry.
Dean sighed, pulling his finger out of the wound and grimacing at the blood that covered it. "Sure, man. Never better."
"Good, 'cause you were out kind of late. What were you doing?"
"Just thinking," Dean replied, placing his hands on the counter and hanging his head. Fresh blood oozed from the hole and dripped into the sink.
"Really?" Sam asked, "are you sure that's all? Because I was watching the news tonight while you were gone, and there was a pretty interesting story on every channel."
"Al Gore finally confess to inventing the iPod?"
"No, Dean. There was a suicide attempt in the closest city. It's only a few miles from here. The girl jumped out of her hotel room window."
Dean's head shot up, splattering a few tiny, crimson droplets of blood onto the grimy old mirror. "What?"
"Yeah. Apparently, she was saved at the last minute by an angel. A bunch of people saw him, Dean. Any ideas on this mystery man's identity?"
The older man sighed. "Can't this wait until morning, Sammy? I'm kind of busy right now."
"What could you possibly be doing in there that's more important than me yelling at you because you're a stupid ass?"
What was he supposed to say? Well, checking out the severity of this new head-hole's pretty high on my important-stuff-to-do-tonight list, but if you're really that into bitching about life-and-death matters, be my guest. Yeah, probably not what Sam wanted to hear at that precise moment in time.
"Nothing," he muttered, "what do you want to talk to me about, exactly?"
He could hear Sam snort through the door, and knew that the younger man was angry. Well, they both had their little problems, then, didn't they? "Come out of there, Dean. We should do this face-to-face."
"Uh," Dean glanced back at the hole in his forehead, then at the rest of him. Blood had dried on almost every visible surface of his body. He looked like a mess. "Don't think that's such a good idea right now."
Sam sighed. "What are you hiding?"
"Nothing."
"Come on, there's something in there you don't want me to see."
Dean smirked. "You're right. It'd just make you jealous."
"Dean, if you don't come out, I'm coming in." Despite the smile that could be heard in Sam's voice, Dean knew he was being serious. And that just wasn't an option at the moment.
"Seriously," he shouted as he heard the lock start to jiggle as Sam began working it, "you don't wanna come in here."
The doorknob started to turn and Dean shoved his hand up over the hole again, trying to cover it up, even though he was covered in his own blood and Sam was bound to ask about that.
The door slid open, revealing a very tall, very annoyed hunter. "You can't just go out wherever you want to now, Dean. You have wings. That's not normal. You know what they do to guys with wings? They-"
He stopped suddenly, finally seeing the dried blood on his older brother's face, hands, chest, and jeans. He glanced back into the bedroom and saw the bloody jacket lying on the bed.
"What happened?" he asked weakly.
Dean grinned shakily. "Sam, I don't think I can die."
"Where did that come from?"
"Look," the angel muttered, moving his hand away from his forehead.
"What?"
"Don't you see it?"
"All I see is your blood-soaked face. Dean, what happened?"
"I got shot, dude, that's what happened! There's freaking hole in my head."
"There's nothing there," Sam said quietly, backing away from the door, "nothing."
Dean spun back around to look in the mirror. Sam was right. The hole was gone, like it had never even been there.