SPN FIC - Just Wrong
The second half of today's double-header.
Characters: Sam and Dean
Pairings: none
Rating: R, for language
Spoilers: up through AHBL II
Length: 2658 words
Kleenex rating: about half a box
Disclaimer: Kripke's. No money changing hands here.
The motel’s out in the middle of freaking nowhere and the road it sprung up alongside leads deeper into nowhere in the direction Dean is walking. There’s just woods around him now; he left the few buildings that are near the motel in his wake a while ago and as far as he knows there aren’t any more coming up for another fifteen or twenty miles. Which is good, because he doesn’t want to look at buildings or people or road signs, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to move over for passing cars. He wants to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, wants to just walk until his legs give out.
Just Wrong
By Carol Davis
He’s watching some TV, is all. Surfing through channels the way Sammy is surfing through websites on the laptop at the beat-up round table over by the window. Sammy’s been researching for the best part of three hours now and the way he’s got the bitchface stoked up to full living color says he’s not finding anything useful.
And Dean will be dipped in shit if he’ll even let himself wonder useful for what?
Or who.
So he’s punching the Channel Up button on the remote like it’s the control for some video game, watching the images on the TV change and not letting himself wonder too much what any of the shows are. He’s not really in the mood to get involved in a story, whether it’s those Law & Order people tracking down some pervert or Will Smith getting the one-up on Carlton. If MTV was all music videos like it used to be, he’d watch that for a while, but it’s all reality shows about weird-ass people now and he has to deal with enough weird-ass people in his own reality to want to bother watching more of them on TV.
Except maybe those three babes who live in the Playboy Mansion. That he could spend some time on. But they’re not on now, so he goes on punching the button and blinking at the way the image changes. It’s starting to give him a headache, and he’s been hearing more and more of the throat-clearing that means Sam wants him to knock it the fuck off. Not that he really pays much attention to the throat-clearing, ever.
He wouldn’t give in to the headache, either, but it’s the kind of ache that just sits there and squeezes and makes him want to lie down someplace that’s not here.
Because Jesus, this room smells funky.
And it’s making his sinuses plug up.
And Sam makes that noise again and looks at him over the top lip of the laptop screen.
So, okay.
There’s a kid on this one channel who’s got kind of a sweet face, the kind Sammy used to have before he discovered the value of squinting and scowling. He’s wearing Batman pj’s that are almost exactly like the ones Dad found at Goodwill and gave Dean for his sixth birthday, all ironed up and folded so they looked like brand-new. Looks like a sweet kid, real good-natured. And now he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt and he’s outside watching a couple other kids chase a dog around.
He’s not running, himself, and that’s not good.
“Uh,” Dean mutters, and Sam looks at him.
It’s too far into the show for them to say exactly what’s wrong with the kid - they would have explained that back in the beginning, half an hour ago - but after a couple minutes of blather from doctors and the kid’s mom and dad, it’s pretty obvious he’s sick in some nasty-ass way. They show him lying on a gurney being wheeled down the corridor in the hospital and man, that’s just all wrong, that just sucks in about eighteen different ways. Cute kid like that, with the blond hair and the big eyes and the sweet smile.
The operation seems to go okay, though, because after a few minutes there’s the kid sitting up in bed and smiling at his mom and dad. He’s got a bunch of tubes coming out of him but everything seems basically okay.
Dean crawls up toward the head of his bed, pulls the pillows into his lap and leans on them, chin propped on his hands. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sam’s face relax a little, down into a not-too-bothersome level of bitchiness.
Damn, that’s a cute kid.
Cuter than Sam used to be, before he got so freaking tall. And bitchy.
He touches the volume button once, cranking up the sound a little bit so he can listen to what the doctors are saying. He was right: the operations - turns out there were four of them, not one, and that really sucks any variety of balls you want to name - were successful and the kid is on the road to being okay, being able to go to school and go out and play with those other kids, who apparently are his sisters and brother.
That’s good.
Yeah, that’s real good.
The kid’s dad picks him up and holds him, even though he’s kind of too big to be picked up like that. The dad hugs him in real close and kisses him on the head and the kid grins at him and hugs him back.
Dean grins at the TV.
And there’s the kid, walking along behind that big old dog.
“See, now, that’s good,” he says to Sam.
Sam glances up from the computer, mutters “uh-huh,” then goes back to what he was doing.
It’s coming up on six o’clock. Show’s almost over. Time to start thinking about something to eat. Maybe a run to that diner a couple miles down the road - looked like the kind that’d have decent food, judging by the number of cars parked in the lot when they passed it this morning. Maybe they’ve got good meat loaf - right now, meat loaf sticks in Dean’s mind for no particular reason except that it’s hot and hamburgery and with decent gravy it’s good stuff.
Yeah, meat loaf with mashed potatoes. That’d be good.
Dean’s thumb is on the power button on the remote and he starts to turn toward Sam to bring up the subject of chow, but his eyes are drawn back to the TV before he can do that.
There’s lettering on the screen, over the top of the image of the kid walking around the yard with the dog.
“Wha…” he murmurs.
It says the kid died four months ago.
Died.
Dead.
The fucking operations didn’t work.
He sits there with his mouth open while the closing credits roll and he’s still sitting there when a commercial for toilet paper comes on.
“Fuck,” he says, and he’s never said that word more bitterly in his life.
Sam looks up from the computer and frowns.
Dean sits there for another few seconds with his hand curled around the remote. There’s a commercial for some kind of stick thing you use to scrub toilets except that it’s so goddamn flimsy the head of it would snap right off and why the fuck whoever lines up these commercials is so obsessed with fucking goddamn toilets he has no idea.
For a second he wants to hurl the remote at the TV, and for a few seconds after that he wants to jerk the TV off the dresser it’s bolted to and throw it right the fuck out the window and it makes no fucking difference whether Sam’s head is smack in the middle of that trajectory or not.
Sam raises an eyebrow, asks him silently What’s the matter?
And Dean stares at the remote like he’s never seen one before, has no idea what it’s used for or how it got into his hand.
He stares at it, then he lays it down on the bed.
Pushes himself up off the bed, gropes for his boots, yanks them on and aims himself toward the door.
“Goin’ out,” he mutters.
He’s been walking for maybe twenty minutes when he realizes he’s been crying for maybe half of that. The fact that he’s been rubbing moisture off his face with the side of his fist and it’s not raining should have given him a clue, but he’s not paying attention to what he’s doing or where he’s going or what he’ll do when he gets to where he’s not headed. His sinuses are really plugged now and there’s snot on his upper lip but he’s got nothing to blow his nose with so he swipes at that with his fist then grinds his hand against the hip of his jeans.
The only words his mind has been offering him since he banged the door of the motel room shut behind him are What’s it…what’s it… Like one of those old LPs with a skip in it.
The motel’s out in the middle of freaking nowhere and the road it sprung up alongside leads deeper into nowhere in the direction Dean is walking. There’s just woods around him now; he left the few buildings that are near the motel in his wake a while ago and as far as he knows there aren’t any more coming up for another fifteen or twenty miles. Which is good, because he doesn’t want to look at buildings or people or road signs, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to move over for passing cars. He wants to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, wants to just walk until his legs give out.
He’s been walking for almost an hour when he sees the fawn.
It’s lying in the eastbound lane, one leg bent funny, like it’s sleeping.
Of course it’s not sleeping.
Somebody hit it.
It’s little, and he doesn’t know all that much about deer, but he figures it’s maybe a few months old.
And it’s there in the road, deader than a stone.
He walks up to it and looks down at it, wondering if it’ll open its eyes and peer up at him, then scramble to its feet and run off into the woods.
But no.
He stands there looking at it and it doesn’t move. Its eyes are closed and that’s a mercy because he doesn’t think he could stand seeing the depth of emptiness he knows is there.
It’s always a mercy when he doesn’t have to see that.
Didn’t have to see it back in Cold Oak when Bobby gently took Sam out of his arms and laid him down on the ground.
Sam’s eyes were closed then and it was a mercy.
He stands there for a long time looking down at the fawn and the way it doesn’t move. When he finally crouches down beside it the sun has started to dip toward the horizon and the air has turned cooler. The breeze is picking up a little as he carefully slides his hands underneath the baby deer and lifts it up off the pavement.
Slowly, without thinking much of anything at all, he carries the fawn into the woods, among the trees, and finds a quiet spot with a thick layer of fallen leaves covering the cooling ground. As carefully as he would lower a sleeping child, the way he helped Dad tuck Sammy into bed forever ago, he bends his knees and crouches down again and almost without stirring the leaves lays the fawn down out here where there’s nothing but woods and the wind and the settling night to keep watch over it. Where there’s nothing and nobody to watch him collapse back onto his butt on the ground, bring his knees up to his chest and lower his head and sob.
He looks up, finally, when the crunch of footsteps in the dry leaves comes close. How Sam managed to find him, out here in the woods in the dark, he doesn’t know and really doesn’t care. The moon isn’t much help; it’s only half full and it’s pretty much covered by skittering clouds. But somehow, Sam found him, and he stands there looking down at Dean and the fawn, and the bitchface has gone on vacation.
Sam’s got a lit flashlight in his hand and it’s the light from that that lets Dean see his expression.
“Somebody hit fucking Bambi,” Dean mutters, and his voice catches on the name. He’s staring at the ground, at the leaves. He might as well not even have sinuses at this point, and his eyes feel like somebody burned them into his face with a cigarette lighter. Both sleeves of his shirt are damp and crusted with drying snot.
Sam’s faces creases into a smile that has no amusement behind it, none at all. It only lasts a second. “You want to bury it?” he asks.
Dean looks at the little deer, asleep on the leaves. He doesn’t know all that much about deer. “The mother -“
“Might be. You know.”
Dead too, is what Sam means. It’s hunting season. Or maybe somebody hit her with a goddamn car.
He’s never killed anything with the car. Never.
Sam bends his knees and sits down on the leaves, lets the flashlight hang alongside his leg. He looks wiped, like he hasn’t slept in two weeks. What he’s not saying is on his face: If you want to bury it, I’ll go back to the car and get a shovel.
“Why the hell -“ Dean begins and can’t finish.
“What?”
Dean swipes at his face with his sleeve. “They sounded like everything was okay. Wasn’t fucking okay.” It surprises him, sort of vaguely, how wrecked he sounds. “What was the point of that?”
“I don’t know.”
His hands are shaking. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t eaten all day.
Sam reaches out and touches the fawn, runs his hand along the curve of its flank. Looks like he’s saying goodbye or I’m sorry or some damn thing.
They had a turtle once. When it died Sam wrote a funeral service for it.
Words crawl through Dean’s head: Maybe it’s time we bury…
It was a mercy, one of the mighty fucking few the world has ever shown him, that when Bobby gently lay Sam down in the dirt in Cold Oak, Sam’s eyes were closed.
They’re open now, catching a little of the light from the flashlight.
Sam was dead back there, back in Cold Oak. And the thing is, even when Dean sat beside him, watching Sam grow cold and gray, what went through his mind was more like If Sam’s gone. There was an if clinging to Sammy back in Cold Oak and Dean pinned it there as surely as if he’d used a hot glue gun and fastened it to the front of Sam’s shirt. When he screamed out What am I supposed to do? it was more like If you’re gone.
If it’s over. If there’s no do-over. If you’re gone.
“Come on, man,” Sam says softly. “We’ll go back to the car.”
He tips his head and when Dean follows the tilt he can see her, his girl, sitting on the shoulder of the road, visible from where they’re sitting because so many of the leaves have dropped. Dean’s eyes drift from the car to the fawn and he manages to say, “Somebody…”
“I know,” Sam says.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean mumbles. It’s only because he’s said the words so many times that he can work his mouth to produce them.
Sam moves to his knees and up into a crouch. “Let’s go. Okay?”
Dean stares up at him. He stretches out a hand, then pulls it back, like he’s afraid Sam isn’t really there.
Back at the cemetery, Sam made him an offer. A promise.
He’s taken care of Sam his whole life. Even when Sam was gone, the weight of him was there, like it had been the night of the fire, when holding onto him, holding him up away from the cold ground, had made Dean’s arms ache and burn.
He remembers that now, the weight in his arms, the way the cold, damp grass licked at his bare feet.
Sam pushes himself up, all the way up.
Looking up at him makes Dean’s neck protest.
Smiling a little, Sam reaches down, offers his hand. When Dean doesn’t move he bends as much as he needs to, wraps his fingers around Dean’s wrist, and pulls as he straightens up.
Dean doesn’t have much choice but to go with him.
Characters: Sam and Dean
Pairings: none
Rating: R, for language
Spoilers: up through AHBL II
Length: 2658 words
Kleenex rating: about half a box
Disclaimer: Kripke's. No money changing hands here.
The motel’s out in the middle of freaking nowhere and the road it sprung up alongside leads deeper into nowhere in the direction Dean is walking. There’s just woods around him now; he left the few buildings that are near the motel in his wake a while ago and as far as he knows there aren’t any more coming up for another fifteen or twenty miles. Which is good, because he doesn’t want to look at buildings or people or road signs, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to move over for passing cars. He wants to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, wants to just walk until his legs give out.
Just Wrong
By Carol Davis
He’s watching some TV, is all. Surfing through channels the way Sammy is surfing through websites on the laptop at the beat-up round table over by the window. Sammy’s been researching for the best part of three hours now and the way he’s got the bitchface stoked up to full living color says he’s not finding anything useful.
And Dean will be dipped in shit if he’ll even let himself wonder useful for what?
Or who.
So he’s punching the Channel Up button on the remote like it’s the control for some video game, watching the images on the TV change and not letting himself wonder too much what any of the shows are. He’s not really in the mood to get involved in a story, whether it’s those Law & Order people tracking down some pervert or Will Smith getting the one-up on Carlton. If MTV was all music videos like it used to be, he’d watch that for a while, but it’s all reality shows about weird-ass people now and he has to deal with enough weird-ass people in his own reality to want to bother watching more of them on TV.
Except maybe those three babes who live in the Playboy Mansion. That he could spend some time on. But they’re not on now, so he goes on punching the button and blinking at the way the image changes. It’s starting to give him a headache, and he’s been hearing more and more of the throat-clearing that means Sam wants him to knock it the fuck off. Not that he really pays much attention to the throat-clearing, ever.
He wouldn’t give in to the headache, either, but it’s the kind of ache that just sits there and squeezes and makes him want to lie down someplace that’s not here.
Because Jesus, this room smells funky.
And it’s making his sinuses plug up.
And Sam makes that noise again and looks at him over the top lip of the laptop screen.
So, okay.
There’s a kid on this one channel who’s got kind of a sweet face, the kind Sammy used to have before he discovered the value of squinting and scowling. He’s wearing Batman pj’s that are almost exactly like the ones Dad found at Goodwill and gave Dean for his sixth birthday, all ironed up and folded so they looked like brand-new. Looks like a sweet kid, real good-natured. And now he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt and he’s outside watching a couple other kids chase a dog around.
He’s not running, himself, and that’s not good.
“Uh,” Dean mutters, and Sam looks at him.
It’s too far into the show for them to say exactly what’s wrong with the kid - they would have explained that back in the beginning, half an hour ago - but after a couple minutes of blather from doctors and the kid’s mom and dad, it’s pretty obvious he’s sick in some nasty-ass way. They show him lying on a gurney being wheeled down the corridor in the hospital and man, that’s just all wrong, that just sucks in about eighteen different ways. Cute kid like that, with the blond hair and the big eyes and the sweet smile.
The operation seems to go okay, though, because after a few minutes there’s the kid sitting up in bed and smiling at his mom and dad. He’s got a bunch of tubes coming out of him but everything seems basically okay.
Dean crawls up toward the head of his bed, pulls the pillows into his lap and leans on them, chin propped on his hands. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sam’s face relax a little, down into a not-too-bothersome level of bitchiness.
Damn, that’s a cute kid.
Cuter than Sam used to be, before he got so freaking tall. And bitchy.
He touches the volume button once, cranking up the sound a little bit so he can listen to what the doctors are saying. He was right: the operations - turns out there were four of them, not one, and that really sucks any variety of balls you want to name - were successful and the kid is on the road to being okay, being able to go to school and go out and play with those other kids, who apparently are his sisters and brother.
That’s good.
Yeah, that’s real good.
The kid’s dad picks him up and holds him, even though he’s kind of too big to be picked up like that. The dad hugs him in real close and kisses him on the head and the kid grins at him and hugs him back.
Dean grins at the TV.
And there’s the kid, walking along behind that big old dog.
“See, now, that’s good,” he says to Sam.
Sam glances up from the computer, mutters “uh-huh,” then goes back to what he was doing.
It’s coming up on six o’clock. Show’s almost over. Time to start thinking about something to eat. Maybe a run to that diner a couple miles down the road - looked like the kind that’d have decent food, judging by the number of cars parked in the lot when they passed it this morning. Maybe they’ve got good meat loaf - right now, meat loaf sticks in Dean’s mind for no particular reason except that it’s hot and hamburgery and with decent gravy it’s good stuff.
Yeah, meat loaf with mashed potatoes. That’d be good.
Dean’s thumb is on the power button on the remote and he starts to turn toward Sam to bring up the subject of chow, but his eyes are drawn back to the TV before he can do that.
There’s lettering on the screen, over the top of the image of the kid walking around the yard with the dog.
“Wha…” he murmurs.
It says the kid died four months ago.
Died.
Dead.
The fucking operations didn’t work.
He sits there with his mouth open while the closing credits roll and he’s still sitting there when a commercial for toilet paper comes on.
“Fuck,” he says, and he’s never said that word more bitterly in his life.
Sam looks up from the computer and frowns.
Dean sits there for another few seconds with his hand curled around the remote. There’s a commercial for some kind of stick thing you use to scrub toilets except that it’s so goddamn flimsy the head of it would snap right off and why the fuck whoever lines up these commercials is so obsessed with fucking goddamn toilets he has no idea.
For a second he wants to hurl the remote at the TV, and for a few seconds after that he wants to jerk the TV off the dresser it’s bolted to and throw it right the fuck out the window and it makes no fucking difference whether Sam’s head is smack in the middle of that trajectory or not.
Sam raises an eyebrow, asks him silently What’s the matter?
And Dean stares at the remote like he’s never seen one before, has no idea what it’s used for or how it got into his hand.
He stares at it, then he lays it down on the bed.
Pushes himself up off the bed, gropes for his boots, yanks them on and aims himself toward the door.
“Goin’ out,” he mutters.
He’s been walking for maybe twenty minutes when he realizes he’s been crying for maybe half of that. The fact that he’s been rubbing moisture off his face with the side of his fist and it’s not raining should have given him a clue, but he’s not paying attention to what he’s doing or where he’s going or what he’ll do when he gets to where he’s not headed. His sinuses are really plugged now and there’s snot on his upper lip but he’s got nothing to blow his nose with so he swipes at that with his fist then grinds his hand against the hip of his jeans.
The only words his mind has been offering him since he banged the door of the motel room shut behind him are What’s it…what’s it… Like one of those old LPs with a skip in it.
The motel’s out in the middle of freaking nowhere and the road it sprung up alongside leads deeper into nowhere in the direction Dean is walking. There’s just woods around him now; he left the few buildings that are near the motel in his wake a while ago and as far as he knows there aren’t any more coming up for another fifteen or twenty miles. Which is good, because he doesn’t want to look at buildings or people or road signs, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to move over for passing cars. He wants to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, wants to just walk until his legs give out.
He’s been walking for almost an hour when he sees the fawn.
It’s lying in the eastbound lane, one leg bent funny, like it’s sleeping.
Of course it’s not sleeping.
Somebody hit it.
It’s little, and he doesn’t know all that much about deer, but he figures it’s maybe a few months old.
And it’s there in the road, deader than a stone.
He walks up to it and looks down at it, wondering if it’ll open its eyes and peer up at him, then scramble to its feet and run off into the woods.
But no.
He stands there looking at it and it doesn’t move. Its eyes are closed and that’s a mercy because he doesn’t think he could stand seeing the depth of emptiness he knows is there.
It’s always a mercy when he doesn’t have to see that.
Didn’t have to see it back in Cold Oak when Bobby gently took Sam out of his arms and laid him down on the ground.
Sam’s eyes were closed then and it was a mercy.
He stands there for a long time looking down at the fawn and the way it doesn’t move. When he finally crouches down beside it the sun has started to dip toward the horizon and the air has turned cooler. The breeze is picking up a little as he carefully slides his hands underneath the baby deer and lifts it up off the pavement.
Slowly, without thinking much of anything at all, he carries the fawn into the woods, among the trees, and finds a quiet spot with a thick layer of fallen leaves covering the cooling ground. As carefully as he would lower a sleeping child, the way he helped Dad tuck Sammy into bed forever ago, he bends his knees and crouches down again and almost without stirring the leaves lays the fawn down out here where there’s nothing but woods and the wind and the settling night to keep watch over it. Where there’s nothing and nobody to watch him collapse back onto his butt on the ground, bring his knees up to his chest and lower his head and sob.
He looks up, finally, when the crunch of footsteps in the dry leaves comes close. How Sam managed to find him, out here in the woods in the dark, he doesn’t know and really doesn’t care. The moon isn’t much help; it’s only half full and it’s pretty much covered by skittering clouds. But somehow, Sam found him, and he stands there looking down at Dean and the fawn, and the bitchface has gone on vacation.
Sam’s got a lit flashlight in his hand and it’s the light from that that lets Dean see his expression.
“Somebody hit fucking Bambi,” Dean mutters, and his voice catches on the name. He’s staring at the ground, at the leaves. He might as well not even have sinuses at this point, and his eyes feel like somebody burned them into his face with a cigarette lighter. Both sleeves of his shirt are damp and crusted with drying snot.
Sam’s faces creases into a smile that has no amusement behind it, none at all. It only lasts a second. “You want to bury it?” he asks.
Dean looks at the little deer, asleep on the leaves. He doesn’t know all that much about deer. “The mother -“
“Might be. You know.”
Dead too, is what Sam means. It’s hunting season. Or maybe somebody hit her with a goddamn car.
He’s never killed anything with the car. Never.
Sam bends his knees and sits down on the leaves, lets the flashlight hang alongside his leg. He looks wiped, like he hasn’t slept in two weeks. What he’s not saying is on his face: If you want to bury it, I’ll go back to the car and get a shovel.
“Why the hell -“ Dean begins and can’t finish.
“What?”
Dean swipes at his face with his sleeve. “They sounded like everything was okay. Wasn’t fucking okay.” It surprises him, sort of vaguely, how wrecked he sounds. “What was the point of that?”
“I don’t know.”
His hands are shaking. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t eaten all day.
Sam reaches out and touches the fawn, runs his hand along the curve of its flank. Looks like he’s saying goodbye or I’m sorry or some damn thing.
They had a turtle once. When it died Sam wrote a funeral service for it.
Words crawl through Dean’s head: Maybe it’s time we bury…
It was a mercy, one of the mighty fucking few the world has ever shown him, that when Bobby gently lay Sam down in the dirt in Cold Oak, Sam’s eyes were closed.
They’re open now, catching a little of the light from the flashlight.
Sam was dead back there, back in Cold Oak. And the thing is, even when Dean sat beside him, watching Sam grow cold and gray, what went through his mind was more like If Sam’s gone. There was an if clinging to Sammy back in Cold Oak and Dean pinned it there as surely as if he’d used a hot glue gun and fastened it to the front of Sam’s shirt. When he screamed out What am I supposed to do? it was more like If you’re gone.
If it’s over. If there’s no do-over. If you’re gone.
“Come on, man,” Sam says softly. “We’ll go back to the car.”
He tips his head and when Dean follows the tilt he can see her, his girl, sitting on the shoulder of the road, visible from where they’re sitting because so many of the leaves have dropped. Dean’s eyes drift from the car to the fawn and he manages to say, “Somebody…”
“I know,” Sam says.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean mumbles. It’s only because he’s said the words so many times that he can work his mouth to produce them.
Sam moves to his knees and up into a crouch. “Let’s go. Okay?”
Dean stares up at him. He stretches out a hand, then pulls it back, like he’s afraid Sam isn’t really there.
Back at the cemetery, Sam made him an offer. A promise.
He’s taken care of Sam his whole life. Even when Sam was gone, the weight of him was there, like it had been the night of the fire, when holding onto him, holding him up away from the cold ground, had made Dean’s arms ache and burn.
He remembers that now, the weight in his arms, the way the cold, damp grass licked at his bare feet.
Sam pushes himself up, all the way up.
Looking up at him makes Dean’s neck protest.
Smiling a little, Sam reaches down, offers his hand. When Dean doesn’t move he bends as much as he needs to, wraps his fingers around Dean’s wrist, and pulls as he straightens up.
Dean doesn’t have much choice but to go with him.