SPN FIC - Anywhere But Where We Are
A short coda to WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE. Of the hurt/comfort mode, because y'all seem to like that in a big way. (With a side dish of angst, because you know with me, there's got to be angst.)
Characters: Dean and Sam
Pairings: none
Length: 1868 words
Rating: G
Spoilers: The above-mentioned episode
Disclaimer: They're Kripke's babies. No cash happening here.
He expected one of Dean’s usual deferrals, or maybe a collection of them. Or a joke, something really lame. Dean saying “I was with Mom” wasn’t on the list of possibilities.
Anywhere But Where We Are
By Carol Davis
The beginnings of daylight did nothing to improve the look of this room.
Or the look of his brother.
Holding on to Dean in his peripheral vision, Sam pushed the motel room door open wide and stepped out of the way so Dean could shuffle inside. Dean handled that well enough, but once he was inside he seemed to lose track of what he ought to do next.
“You should get some rest, man,” Sam suggested. “You look like crap.”
Dean peered at him, the dark smudges under his eyes obvious even in the dim light of the one lamp Sam had switched on. “Yeah,” he muttered, but that might or might not have been in response to what Sam had said. He looked around, grimacing as though moving his head was painful - and it might well have been, given that the djinn’s needle had been stuck in his neck for most of the night. The sight of the room, with its garish red satin wall and its collection of fixtures that couldn’t possibly have been stylish ever, seemed to heap a couple more layers of despair onto Dean’s mood.
Which didn’t play, didn’t make sense; the girl the djinn had held prisoner was alive. In bad shape, true, but she had a chance. And the djinn’s other victims had been dead days before the Winchesters had even arrived in Illinois.
So they’d succeeded, he and Dean. The djinn was dead, and the girl was safe.
Dean was alive; hadn’t been under the djinn’s spell long enough - or had enough of his blood drained - for there to be a possibility he’d be anything but okay.
And none of that explained the look on Dean’s face.
Sam closed the door and locked it, watching in the mirror as Dean sank down onto one of the beds and folded his hands between his knees. His head drooped slowly, but it didn’t seem to be because he was tired.
“Dean?” Sam said. “You okay?”
Dean lifted his head a little and offered Sam a smile that was about six different kinds of phony. “Sure.”
“Take a shower, maybe? Make you feel better.”
“Maybe later.”
Exhausted.
That was the only way to describe it. The djinn might have left Dean with most of his blood, but somehow he’d sucked out everything that made Dean alive.
Frowning, Sam went into the bathroom, soaked one of the thin white washcloths in hot water and rubbed some soap into it. He handed it to Dean with the explanation, “Here. Wash off that mess on your neck. I don’t figure the djinn bothered to sterilize that needle before he stuck you with it,” then grabbed their duffel of supplies and began to root through it for the Neosporin. “Probably a little late to do this, but it won’t hurt.”
When he looked back at his brother, Dean hadn’t moved. The washcloth was dripping water onto his jeans.
“Dean. You with me, man? Say something.”
“’M okay.”
“Sure you are.” Sam took the washcloth back, tipped Dean’s head to the side, and carefully washed the dried blood and grime away from the needle puncture. Once he’d wiped away the soapy residue with clean water and patted the site dry, he dabbed on some Neosporin.
And still, Dean didn’t move.
There wasn’t much left of the collection of snacks Sam had bought to munch on while he did his research: a package of Oreos, half a can of Coke that had long since gone flat and tepid. He was considering running across the road to the mini-mart to get Dean something to eat when he remembered the small container of juice left over from yesterday’s breakfast, pushed aside and half-buried under the stack of old books. It too had gone warm, but it would do. Sam pulled off the lid, tore open the package of cookies and held both out to Dean. Dean wobbled his head no and shut his eyes.
“Come on,” Sam coaxed. “You need to eat something. Just this. Then you can get some sleep. Huh?”
Dean relented and drank the juice but said no again to the cookies, so Sam set them aside.
They sat in silence for a while as the rising sun brightened the room and made its deficiencies even more obvious.
“What happened?” Sam asked after a while.
He expected one of Dean’s usual deferrals, or maybe a collection of them. Or a joke, something really lame.
Dean saying “I was with Mom” wasn’t on the list of possibilities.
“What?” Sam asked.
Dean gave him a long, steady, if somewhat bleary, look before he lowered his head and began to stare at the carpet.
“I was in Lawrence,” he said softly. “With Mom.”
“Like…a dream?”
“No. No dream. It seemed like it was real. Was as real as this room. I could taste everything, smell everything. Feel everything.”
“But it was all in your mind.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, not much above a whisper. He lifted his gaze and looked at Sam again. “You and me - we didn’t get along. I called you Sammy, tried to talk to you, and you asked me if I’d been drinking. Mom too. Kept saying I’d been drinking, and I ought to get some rest.”
“Not a bad idea. It’s been a long night.”
“You said I did some pretty cheap stuff to you.”
“Well…”
“Said I screwed your prom date.”
Sam frowned at that. “I never had a prom date.” A moment of thought made him amend that to, “Almost did. Sharon Mott.”
Dean shook his head. “Said her name was…Rachel something.”
“Your imagination works in pretty minute detail.”
Sam expected Dean to smile, or smirk, or…something. He didn’t. After another minute of staring blankly at the carpet, Dean got up and made a clumsy try at pulling down the bedspread. “Gonna go to bed,” he mumbled.
He wrestled with the bedspread for so long that Sam stepped in and folded it down to the bottom of the bed. Then, because Dean still didn’t seem to know which end was up, Sam sat him back down on the bed and pulled his boots off.
Tucked him into bed like he was a little kid.
Dean shuddered as Sam pulled the covers up close to his shoulders, and made a sound that wasn’t quite a groan.
Sam had had no sleep in more than 24 hours. Watching Dean shrink down under the covers drained away the last of his energy, left him with just enough to pull the drapes shut and strip down to his underwear.
The beds in this room were no more comfortable than they were attractive, but a horizontal surface was a horizontal surface. Sam reached over and switched off the light, flipped down the spread of the empty bed and crawled under the covers. That the pillow smelled faintly of smoke and old sweat was no surprise. Not that it mattered much; he was tired enough that if he could manage to quiet his mind down a little, he’d be able to fall asleep in spite of the sour smell.
He was close to drifting off when Dean let out another groan.
Squirmed a little, and groaned again.
“You all right?” Sam asked.
Dean didn’t answer.
A thought made Sam’s stomach twitch: that the djinn was dead, but its hold on Dean wasn’t. Most of the lore he’d read was old, and none of it detailed what had happened to those who’d had their wishes granted. Some of them had obviously survived, or there’d be no one to tell the tale, but still…
Maybe they’d told the tale, and died shortly afterward.
Sam pushed himself out of bed and crouched close to Dean, resting a hand on Dean’s blanket-covered shoulder.
“Hurts,” Dean muttered. “Muscle cramp. Hurts like a bastard.”
“You want the Tylenol?”
“Won’t help.”
This motel did offer one useful amenity: hot water, and a lot of it. “Take your shirts off,” Sam said, waited long enough to make sure Dean was pushing himself into following the instructions, then shuffled into the bathroom and soaked two of the skimpy towels in hot water. When he returned, Dean was shirtless, lying on his belly with the covers pushed down to the middle of his back. He flinched when Sam laid the hot towels across his shoulders, then lay there quietly with his face in his pillow.
“Better,” he muttered after a minute.
Sam re-soaked the towels a couple of times. He’d picked them up to refresh them again when Dean moved his head and said, “’S enough. It’s better.”
“No wonder it hurt. You had your weight hanging off your arms for -“
“Gonna sleep now, Sam.”
Of course. Time for Awesome Action Dean With the Amazing Recuperative Powers to take over. There’d be no discussing this, no trying to help Dean figure things out or work through what he might be feeling. The djinn was dead; they’d leave town tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning, and none of this would be talked about, ever. Resigned to that - because there wasn’t much else he could do without giving himself a headache - Sam dumped the wet towels into the tub and returned to bed.
He’d been lying there for a few minutes when Dean said, “Dad played softball.”
“What?”
“Where I was. He was on a softball team.”
“Our dad.”
“Yeah,” Dean said ruefully.
“That’s some serious crack the djinn was feeding you, man.”
“Fire never happened. We didn’t hunt. I had a job at a garage. Dad’s garage, I guess. And you were with Jess.”
“Oh,” Sam murmured.
“It was good, Sammy. ‘Cept you wouldn’t talk to me.”
Sam said after a moment, “You’re not going to blame me for what happened in your imagination, are you?”
“Just sayin’. I…didn’t like that part.”
Sam rolled over onto his back and scrunched the pillows up under his head. “Thought it was supposed to be ideal. Your fondest wish.”
“Got part of it right.”
“That’s messed up, man. If your fondest wish is that I don’t talk to you.”
“I don’t want that,” Dean said firmly, if a little muzzily. “But -“
“What?”
“Do you -“ Dean sighed. “Do you wish I didn’t - that I never showed up to get you? That I just left you alone?”
Sam let the thought roll around in his head. Do I wish. It likely would have happened anyway: the demon showing up to claim Jess.
And what would have come after that, without Dean?
Would I have gone looking for him, the way he came looking for me? Would Dad be dead now? Would I be dead now?
“No, man,” he said quietly. “I don’t wish that.”
“You sure?”
“You’re my brother, Dean. I hated the time we were apart. No, I’m not sorry we’re together now.”
Dean fell silent again, and for a moment Sam thought he had drifted off to sleep. Then, in a voice heavy with something - emotion, exhaustion, maybe both - he said, “It was bad, Sammy. You didn’t like me a whole lot.”
“It wasn’t real, Dean.”
“Yeah,” Dean murmured. “I guess.”