FIC: Supernatural: Recrudesence 7b - ?
_____________________________________________________________________
Cause I'm living on a borrowed time
Do it your way, I'll do it mine
Living on a borrowed time
Don't need a shove, don't need a sign
Call me names, call me crazy
Don't try to stop me when I feel this way
~AC/DC - Borrowed Time
______________________________________________________________________
Dean didn’t know how long they’d sat there, him holding Sam up, and Sam just… holding on. Not that he cared. They could sit there for as long as Sam needed. However…
“Dude. You reek.”
He wanted a laugh. He didn’t expect one. Wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t get one.
Sam did pull back, a little, though. His eyes were more aware. Like he was more… there, now.
He looked at Dean for a long moment. Almost disbelievingly. Then a shadow moved and Sam’s eyes snapped up, hard and unfriendly… and Dean noted with concern that they didn’t warm much even after Bobby hunkered down to their level.
“Hey, Bobby. Look who’s up,” Dean said unnecessarily, just to fill the air. He’d always hated the chill that came with the quiet.
“Hey, Sam,” Bobby said, keeping his tone low.
Sam watched him. His hands never loosened from Dean’s shirt, cold and tight. The same cold and tight that was invading the air between them.
Dean shifted.
Sam blinked. Swallowed. And the atmosphere relaxed. “Hey, Bobby.” His voice was rough, but the words were clear, and sounded like Sam.
Bobby’s next breath hitched. “You look like shit, kid.”
A brief flicker of confusion passed over Sam’s features and was gone. He closed his eyes, his head rolling back against the wall. “Sorry.”
Bobby’s eyes looked sad as he glanced at Dean.
Dean just shook his head, patting Sam’s hands where they had apparently become permanently attached to him. “Not to be sorry for, Sam. But we got to get you cleaned up, and we’ve got to get on the road, which means we’ve got to get you ready to move. Can you do that?”
Sam made a non-committal noise. His chest was bleeding again, a little. Punching the wall had pulled the stitches. Dean glanced up, finding Degarza waiting. Bobby shifted so that the doctor could get in.
“Hey, Sam,” the doctor had taken on a formal, bedside tone. Sam didn’t open his eyes. “I’m Marshall Degarza, and I just want to take a look here.”
Degarza reached out and touched the skin next to Sam’s incision. He leaned in. “I’m just going take your hand down for a second, so I can see…” Drgarza pulled gently, and one of Sam’s hands unfisted from Dean’s shirt and came down. The doctor let go of Sam’s wrist and pressed a little against the wound, testing the stitches.
Dean winced, automatically glancing up to meet Sam’s eyes, ready to help him through the pain if he could - but Sam’s eyes were still closed, his head still back. He didn’t react to what Degraza was doing at all, like he wasn’t even feeling it… or didn’t care; and Dean’s worry amped up a notch.
Degraza clicked his tongue over the stitches, muttering something about getting the antiseptic wash, and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, using him to stand up. Dean grunted as the older man’s weight pushed on awkwardly positioned joints -
- and then Degarza was on the ground, a few feet away. Sam was starting to stand, shaking, staring at the doctor, his eyes cold… and intent. Sam had made another of those almost too fast moves, and decked the doctor.
And now he was going after him.
“Sam, no!” Dean snapped, pushing himself up, and knocking Sam back to the floor. “Sam! Stop it!”
Sam growled, low and soft, his gaze locked on his target - who was being sat up by a shocked Bobby. The doctor’s face was already swelling.
Dean would worry about the doctor later. Right now, there were more important issues at hand. “Sammy?” He took Sam’s chin in his hand, gently, and turned it. Sam’s eyes stayed locked on Degarza for as long as he could...then flicked to Dean, and Dean felt a thin shiver at the violence, the meanness, he could see shining behind them.
Then Sam blinked; and when his eyes opened, they were empty again. Numb. He looked vaguely, disinterestedly, confused. “Dean?”
Dean swallowed and forced a smile. “It’s okay. We’re taking the doctor home. Now. Bobby?”
“Yeah?” His hand was on Degraza’s arm. It was impossible to tell if he was holding him up, or holding him back, keeping him from making a run toward the door.
“Give me a couple of minutes to get him to the car, then pack it up. Help Degarza. We’ll drop him off on the way out of town. Sam’s obviously mobile now, and we should have been on the road hours ago, anyway.” He stood, bringing a wobbly, but moving, Sam with him.
Bobby only hesitated a second, then moved. Degarza looked…stunned, and wary, but not angry, and for that Dean was grateful. The older man nodded a bit, then followed after Bobby.
Dean half guided, half carried a shivering Sam toward the back door. As they crossed the dinning room, the table caught his eye. It had gone from abandoned furniture to abattoir. Blood pooled on it, thick and congealing, dripping slowly off the sides and over the legs. Sam’s blood. And there was so much of it. Gore flecked the tabletop and floor around it. And for a second, it was almost too much to deal with….
Then Sam - breathing, fighting, living Sam - shifted on his shoulder, and it …wasn’t. It wasn’t too much. It was the past, and it was over, and they’d survived it; maybe not whole, maybe with a few scars, but they’d survived it. And nobody got out of this life unscarred, anyway.
There were footprints, in the blood. DNA. But Dean wasn’t concerned enough to take the time to clean. No one would see the mess for months, if not years, and with no missing people and no bodies, it would just become another scary story surrounding the house. Just one more weird event adding shadows to the shady reputation.
Without another thought, Dean pulled his little brother out of the blood soaked remains of their childhood. He didn’t look back.
Bobby and Degarza joined them at the car a few minutes later. Neither said anything about having to ride in the back. Or the fact that he’d cranked up the heater to full and turned the vents on Sam.
Three hours later, they dropped the doctor off at his clinic. Dean helped hand bags out of the back seat. “It would be best if you forgot about us,” he said, as he handed the good doctor his cell phone again.
“About who?” Degarza asked pointedly. He pocketed the phone and dropped to one knee, digging through one of his sacks.
Dean nodded, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Good. Okay.” He hesitated, then just jumped in. “Look,” he started, having to fight not to stutter over the words. “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry we fucked up your life.”
The older man huffed, glaring up at him. The grey in his hair glimmered in the streetlight. “You did not fuck up anybody’s life. You did what you had to do to help you brother. Besides, you guys were probably less dangerous than the blind date I was supposed to meet. Here.” He pulled a wrapped package out of the bag he’d been digging through and stood, handing it to Dean. “These are for him. Antibiotics. Painkillers. Emergency crap. The stitches will need to come out…probably sooner rather then later, at the rate he’s healing. Can you handle that?”
Dean swallowed the laugh. “Yeah, I think we’ll be okay with that.”
Degarza nodded, his face serious. “Take care of yourselves. And if you boys come through here, needing any help, you know where I am, tu entiendes?”
“Yes, Sir.” Dean smiled.
“No guns next time, though.”
“No, Sir.”
“Good. Now go away. I don’t know who you are, and you’re killing the buzz from my extended date.”
Dean laid a hand on the Impala, feeling the vibration of its idling engine as a comfort. “Degarza? Thanks, man.”
“Go. Away.”
Grinning, Dean went.
Sam was asleep again, head leaning against the window. His position so familiar, so right, that it sent a warmth running through Dean. Bobby dozed off and on in the back.
They were running. Shit would soon be hitting the fan - Cas could only stay ahead of Raphael for so long. And so they were running. Again.
But they were together. That was…
Worth the running.
He pushed the peddle down a little harder.
*
Part 8 Part 7