Silverbullets fic: Little things said and done
PG of the sleep-deprived and brother-loving variety,
Sam&Dean, with spoilers through 7.17. 2,300 words.
Written for the prompt of always on my mind from oddishly for silverbullets. And I wrote the fic before I realized it was a song title and looked it up, oops! I hope it's still on-prompt enough, especially since I had to cut the fic short.
Summary: Episode tag to 7.17 (The Born-Again Identity). Sam sleeps while Dean runs, and waits, and loves.
Sam falls asleep almost at once, after Castiel does - whatever he does. Dean feels Sam’s shoulder go stiff with shock under his hand and then turn slack almost in one motion, and Dean barely grabs Sam’s arms in time to keep him from sliding bonelessly off the bed. He gets Sam’s shoulders down against the mattress just fast enough to watch Sam’s eyes flutter shut. Dean looks down at the slack peace in Sam’s face, the cracked parting of Sam's lips where he's still breathing, and feels a pang right under his breastbone.
And he’s in a nut ward with a whimpering angel pressed against the wall and his half-dead brother passed out cold, with a demon out in the hallway running interference for them, but Dean still feels the gut-clench of terror that’s he’s been running on for a week ease up all at once.
He’s half-afraid Castiel’s gonna smite them all if anyone so much as breathes on him, but he doesn’t seem inclined to reach out for any of his angel powers - they can barely pry him off the wall. Cas doesn’t even spare a funny look for Meg, which tells Dean more than anything just how bad it must be inside his skull. Right now though Dean can only feel grateful that it’s not Sam who’s giving him that bug-eyed unknowing stare. The paramedics searching the building catch them there, trying to coax Castiel down the hallway and towards escape, and sweep his obviously deranged angel ass into care. Maybe it’s for the best. There’s not a lot they’d be able to do for him on the run.
Dean finally manages to shake Sam awake around mid-morning and they split before the cops get around to them. Dean’s not even sure how Sam’s coherent enough to wring his hands over leaving Cas and trusting Meg - Jesus, leaving Meg to watch their backs, what a clusterfuck - but Dean hasn’t got two shits left to rub together. All his energy for it probably shriveled up when they found Sam twitching on a gurney and Cas said there was nothing they could do to fix any of it. Dean’s taking his gift brother and running with him for the hills while the getting’s good.
Even without futzing around with soft rock Sam goes back down to sleep like a stone in the car, cheek smushed against the smudged windshield of the anonymous old Toyota they’re riding in this week and his mouth falling open on a snore before they’ve even hit the state route out of town. Dean can see Sam shivering a little in his sleep, even bundled into his usual half-a-dozen layers, and his cheekbones are sharpened in a way that makes Dean wonder if that hospital was even feeding him. He pulls over long enough to dig a stolen blanket and a water bottle out of the backseat and drapes the blanket over his brother, wedges the water in next to his hand in case Sam wakes up, then pulls back onto the road. The police radio’s been silent so far but that doesn’t mean nothing’s out looking for them, after the mess of demon husks they left at the hospital.
Dean drives hard for most of the day to put a state or three between them and any extra demons that might come to investigate what happened at the hospital, winds south through Ohio and Kentucky to try and shake any lingering pursuit from his beeline to Sam with Meg and Castiel in tow. Sure, Meg’s back in Indiana theoretically covering for them, but then, he could stand to have a few states between her and their turned backs, too. Farther to stab.
Sam doesn’t stir much throughout the day, mostly just snuffles around in the front seat and burrows deeper into the blanket and two coats Dean eventually drapes around him. He wakes up once for about half an hour to pee and gaze around heavy-liddedly in the corner of Dean’s vision, drinking in the sights of the uninspiring tree-and-field roadside and Dean’s profile and thinking profound Sam thoughts or whatever, and falls asleep again by the time Dean starts to think about stopping for a sandwich.
By evening exhaustion is settling heavy in Dean’s bones, though, a week’s worth of nights spent pawing through Bobby’s old contacts and driving halfway across the country thick on his tongue and working with the setting sun coming through the windshield to pound a headache into the front of Dean’s skull. He grits his teeth and keeps going until night falls ‘cause like hell is he going to let some shitty thing catch up to them when he’s just got Sam fixed. They’re somewhere in mid-Alabama by the time Dean can’t take it anymore. Sam needs to sleep in a bed and Dean needs to rest before he ruins all Cas’ good work by driving them right off the road. That’d be shitty.
Dean finds them a two-lane stretch of town way out from any major roadway that boasts a semi-clean flophouse that rents by the night, at least. He tips extra for a ground floor room and to be left alone for a couple of days and goes back out into the black rural night to try and drag his half-catatonic brother into the relative safety of four walls and a salted threshold. Sam’s sluggish and barely rouses when Dean opens the car door, pushes the blankets off, shakes him.
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean begs and drags Sam halfway out of his seat. “Wake up, man, I can’t move your gigantic ass all by myself.” Sam’s head jolts limply but his eyes flutter open and focus after a second while Dean spits curses and staggers under Sam’s weight.
“Dean? Wha’s happening…?” Sam mumbles, warm breath in Dean’s ear. His arms come up to hook around Dean at least.
“Motel, room, bed, your ass moving,” Dean grumbles and gets a shoulder under Sam, and together they stagger him up the steps from the parking lot and though the door to their room. Dean hustles Sam onto the far bed and gets him down on it before his legs give out; he can tell Sam’s friggen’ lighter than he was three weeks ago, friggen’ hospital, but Sam’s still muscled like a man who’s been trying to exercise Satan out of his brain. Sam sags down on the bed with a groan and starts pawing at his shoes while Dean goes back to get their bags and shut the door. Dean has to wrestle Sam out of his jacket when he comes back, and Sam’s already almost asleep again in the three minutes he spent sweeping the car for their shit; Dean barely gets him under the covers before Sam goes completely limp. At least his shoes are off.
Dean’s trying to get Sam’s overshirt off him or at least unbuttoned so it doesn’t strangle him in the night when he notices Sam’s nails, how they’re long and bloody and loose like they’re going to come right out at the root.
“Damn,” Dean says, and sits down hard on the bed by the door, suddenly shaky-legged the way he feels after a bloody, rotten hunt or a near miss with a bullet. Sam’s yellowed and bleeding hands against the blue coverlet make his illness real in a way Dean hadn’t let, didn’t want it to be. Organ failure and dementia followed by death. Jesus. Dean puts his face in his hands for a while and just breathes.
Eventually he gets up again and lays down a line of salt behind the door and under the window, throws up a protective ward or two on the wall and tucks their demon-warding hex-bag under Sam’s pillow before passing out in an exhausted doze on the bed nearest the door, boots still on.
---
When Dean wakes up there’s light streaming in through the dusty-curtained window by the bathroom and Sam’s rolled over with his back to Dean, shoulders moving slowly with his deep breaths under the stretch of his striped overshirt. It’s gotta be at least twelve hours since they got in Sam’s still conked out, but Dean’s stomach is growling like an animal and Sam looks all right, anyway, or at least alive. The pulse in Sam’s neck is strong under his stubble in the scattered morning light, so Dean splashes cold water on his face and ventures out of their room and down the road to the nameless green-painted diner that’s one of the two other commercial establishments in probably this entire hamlet. It's eight in the morning, he finds out, and he gets a pancake stack to go for himself because damn, it’s been days since he’s had a meal that didn’t come out of a plastic bag, and an omelet for Sam, heavy on anything that sounds nutritious, and hauls it all back to their motel. The thought of leaving Sam unconscious and alone in a barely warded motel room for as long as it takes Dean to sit and eat makes him jittery right now.
Sam’s rolled on his back now, mouth in a solemn half-open line, but otherwise just how Dean left him. Dean sits on his own bed - there’s not even a chair or desk in this dingy little room - and eats breakfast, chewing thoughtfully while he watches his living, sleeping brother. They’re far enough from Indiana State Hospital to have reasonably shaken any pursuit, and it’s probably best if he lets Sam heal up in one place for a couple of days. Riding in a car all day is crappy on busted ribs, and Sam - for the brief times he’s been awake, anyway - is moving like he’s still feeling that damn car that hit him.
Dean dicks around on the computer for a couple of hours while Sam’s omelet gets cool, and then cold, and then colder. Sam stays buried under the covers like a lump. He sighs and turns over every once in a while - that’s about it. But Dean figures Sam’s earned it. Dean doesn’t even turn on the TV despite the dubious allure of a much-battered Casa Erotica Two ad lying on the dusty dresser; it might wake Sam up, and anyway, he keeps pausing in the middle of his internet browsing to check over Sam with his eyes, reaffirm that he’s still sleeping. Sam’s a long way from okay, and looks like about a hundred miles of bad road, but he’s still been lifted free of a death sentence. Dean could click his heels with joy.
Dean’s just starting to get a little worried; Sam didn’t wake up long enough to eat any real food yesterday, and his omelet’s turning inedible on the side table, when Sam wakes up. Dean looks up from the laptop and finds Sam’s eyes open.
“Sam?”
Sam blinks hazily, and then his eyes focus on Dean and crinkle with a smile. They’re green-gold in the midafternoon sunlight through the window, and they fall on the takeout box sitting by the side of Sam’s bed.
“Food?” he croaks, struggling up onto an elbow and reaching for it.
“Uh, yeah,” says Dean. Sam pops open the lid and frowns at the greasy slab within.
“Oh great, a vegetarian-meat-lover’s mashup,” Sam says with a husky voice, but there’s a chuckle in it.
Dean has to grin a little bit. “You’re a growing boy, Sam. Gotta make sure you’re fed properly. S’not like that hospital was doing it - what was their problem anyway? They feeding you at all in there?”
Sam looks a little squeamish and lowers the takeout box. “That wasn't exactly the problem.”
Dean passes him a plastic fork and some napkins. “Tell me while you eat, man. Sorry it’s cold. I figured you could use your beauty sleep.”
“Thanks,” Sam mumbles around the forkful he’s already cramming into his mouth.
After he eats and guzzles down two bottles of water Sam’s face is still bruised and scratched all to hell, but he’s less pale under the lacerations, getting some healthy color back after a square meal and the onslaught hours and hours of sleep. His eyelids are already drooping in his face, though, and he sags against the headboard like devouring that omelet sucked all the strength out of him.
“You look like you went a few rounds with the pavement and lost, dude,” Dean says, “Go get some more sleep.”
Sam chuckles and winces. “Gee, thanks, Dean,” he mutters dryly, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he settles back into his pillow. Dean just hums noncommittally.
By the second day Dean stops being shy about interrupting his brother’s precious sleep by watching TV in favor of not going stir crazy. There isn’t squat else for him to do but reinforce their protection, shovel whatever food he can into Sam whenever Sam wakes up for long enough, and watch Sam sleep, face soft and relaxed and sleeping deep like, god, neither’ve them have had the privilege of doing in years, and while that warms part of Dean right down to his belly it also makes him feel like a creeper after a while. So he turns on the TV and discovers that, even if the bent and dusty rabbit ears on this TV don’t get them more then fifteen channels - none of them porn - he can at least catch up on some Oprah.
Every once in a while, he turns his head and watches Sam breathe softly in his sleep.
Sam&Dean, with spoilers through 7.17. 2,300 words.
Written for the prompt of always on my mind from oddishly for silverbullets. And I wrote the fic before I realized it was a song title and looked it up, oops! I hope it's still on-prompt enough, especially since I had to cut the fic short.
Summary: Episode tag to 7.17 (The Born-Again Identity). Sam sleeps while Dean runs, and waits, and loves.
Sam falls asleep almost at once, after Castiel does - whatever he does. Dean feels Sam’s shoulder go stiff with shock under his hand and then turn slack almost in one motion, and Dean barely grabs Sam’s arms in time to keep him from sliding bonelessly off the bed. He gets Sam’s shoulders down against the mattress just fast enough to watch Sam’s eyes flutter shut. Dean looks down at the slack peace in Sam’s face, the cracked parting of Sam's lips where he's still breathing, and feels a pang right under his breastbone.
And he’s in a nut ward with a whimpering angel pressed against the wall and his half-dead brother passed out cold, with a demon out in the hallway running interference for them, but Dean still feels the gut-clench of terror that’s he’s been running on for a week ease up all at once.
He’s half-afraid Castiel’s gonna smite them all if anyone so much as breathes on him, but he doesn’t seem inclined to reach out for any of his angel powers - they can barely pry him off the wall. Cas doesn’t even spare a funny look for Meg, which tells Dean more than anything just how bad it must be inside his skull. Right now though Dean can only feel grateful that it’s not Sam who’s giving him that bug-eyed unknowing stare. The paramedics searching the building catch them there, trying to coax Castiel down the hallway and towards escape, and sweep his obviously deranged angel ass into care. Maybe it’s for the best. There’s not a lot they’d be able to do for him on the run.
Dean finally manages to shake Sam awake around mid-morning and they split before the cops get around to them. Dean’s not even sure how Sam’s coherent enough to wring his hands over leaving Cas and trusting Meg - Jesus, leaving Meg to watch their backs, what a clusterfuck - but Dean hasn’t got two shits left to rub together. All his energy for it probably shriveled up when they found Sam twitching on a gurney and Cas said there was nothing they could do to fix any of it. Dean’s taking his gift brother and running with him for the hills while the getting’s good.
Even without futzing around with soft rock Sam goes back down to sleep like a stone in the car, cheek smushed against the smudged windshield of the anonymous old Toyota they’re riding in this week and his mouth falling open on a snore before they’ve even hit the state route out of town. Dean can see Sam shivering a little in his sleep, even bundled into his usual half-a-dozen layers, and his cheekbones are sharpened in a way that makes Dean wonder if that hospital was even feeding him. He pulls over long enough to dig a stolen blanket and a water bottle out of the backseat and drapes the blanket over his brother, wedges the water in next to his hand in case Sam wakes up, then pulls back onto the road. The police radio’s been silent so far but that doesn’t mean nothing’s out looking for them, after the mess of demon husks they left at the hospital.
Dean drives hard for most of the day to put a state or three between them and any extra demons that might come to investigate what happened at the hospital, winds south through Ohio and Kentucky to try and shake any lingering pursuit from his beeline to Sam with Meg and Castiel in tow. Sure, Meg’s back in Indiana theoretically covering for them, but then, he could stand to have a few states between her and their turned backs, too. Farther to stab.
Sam doesn’t stir much throughout the day, mostly just snuffles around in the front seat and burrows deeper into the blanket and two coats Dean eventually drapes around him. He wakes up once for about half an hour to pee and gaze around heavy-liddedly in the corner of Dean’s vision, drinking in the sights of the uninspiring tree-and-field roadside and Dean’s profile and thinking profound Sam thoughts or whatever, and falls asleep again by the time Dean starts to think about stopping for a sandwich.
By evening exhaustion is settling heavy in Dean’s bones, though, a week’s worth of nights spent pawing through Bobby’s old contacts and driving halfway across the country thick on his tongue and working with the setting sun coming through the windshield to pound a headache into the front of Dean’s skull. He grits his teeth and keeps going until night falls ‘cause like hell is he going to let some shitty thing catch up to them when he’s just got Sam fixed. They’re somewhere in mid-Alabama by the time Dean can’t take it anymore. Sam needs to sleep in a bed and Dean needs to rest before he ruins all Cas’ good work by driving them right off the road. That’d be shitty.
Dean finds them a two-lane stretch of town way out from any major roadway that boasts a semi-clean flophouse that rents by the night, at least. He tips extra for a ground floor room and to be left alone for a couple of days and goes back out into the black rural night to try and drag his half-catatonic brother into the relative safety of four walls and a salted threshold. Sam’s sluggish and barely rouses when Dean opens the car door, pushes the blankets off, shakes him.
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean begs and drags Sam halfway out of his seat. “Wake up, man, I can’t move your gigantic ass all by myself.” Sam’s head jolts limply but his eyes flutter open and focus after a second while Dean spits curses and staggers under Sam’s weight.
“Dean? Wha’s happening…?” Sam mumbles, warm breath in Dean’s ear. His arms come up to hook around Dean at least.
“Motel, room, bed, your ass moving,” Dean grumbles and gets a shoulder under Sam, and together they stagger him up the steps from the parking lot and though the door to their room. Dean hustles Sam onto the far bed and gets him down on it before his legs give out; he can tell Sam’s friggen’ lighter than he was three weeks ago, friggen’ hospital, but Sam’s still muscled like a man who’s been trying to exercise Satan out of his brain. Sam sags down on the bed with a groan and starts pawing at his shoes while Dean goes back to get their bags and shut the door. Dean has to wrestle Sam out of his jacket when he comes back, and Sam’s already almost asleep again in the three minutes he spent sweeping the car for their shit; Dean barely gets him under the covers before Sam goes completely limp. At least his shoes are off.
Dean’s trying to get Sam’s overshirt off him or at least unbuttoned so it doesn’t strangle him in the night when he notices Sam’s nails, how they’re long and bloody and loose like they’re going to come right out at the root.
“Damn,” Dean says, and sits down hard on the bed by the door, suddenly shaky-legged the way he feels after a bloody, rotten hunt or a near miss with a bullet. Sam’s yellowed and bleeding hands against the blue coverlet make his illness real in a way Dean hadn’t let, didn’t want it to be. Organ failure and dementia followed by death. Jesus. Dean puts his face in his hands for a while and just breathes.
Eventually he gets up again and lays down a line of salt behind the door and under the window, throws up a protective ward or two on the wall and tucks their demon-warding hex-bag under Sam’s pillow before passing out in an exhausted doze on the bed nearest the door, boots still on.
---
When Dean wakes up there’s light streaming in through the dusty-curtained window by the bathroom and Sam’s rolled over with his back to Dean, shoulders moving slowly with his deep breaths under the stretch of his striped overshirt. It’s gotta be at least twelve hours since they got in Sam’s still conked out, but Dean’s stomach is growling like an animal and Sam looks all right, anyway, or at least alive. The pulse in Sam’s neck is strong under his stubble in the scattered morning light, so Dean splashes cold water on his face and ventures out of their room and down the road to the nameless green-painted diner that’s one of the two other commercial establishments in probably this entire hamlet. It's eight in the morning, he finds out, and he gets a pancake stack to go for himself because damn, it’s been days since he’s had a meal that didn’t come out of a plastic bag, and an omelet for Sam, heavy on anything that sounds nutritious, and hauls it all back to their motel. The thought of leaving Sam unconscious and alone in a barely warded motel room for as long as it takes Dean to sit and eat makes him jittery right now.
Sam’s rolled on his back now, mouth in a solemn half-open line, but otherwise just how Dean left him. Dean sits on his own bed - there’s not even a chair or desk in this dingy little room - and eats breakfast, chewing thoughtfully while he watches his living, sleeping brother. They’re far enough from Indiana State Hospital to have reasonably shaken any pursuit, and it’s probably best if he lets Sam heal up in one place for a couple of days. Riding in a car all day is crappy on busted ribs, and Sam - for the brief times he’s been awake, anyway - is moving like he’s still feeling that damn car that hit him.
Dean dicks around on the computer for a couple of hours while Sam’s omelet gets cool, and then cold, and then colder. Sam stays buried under the covers like a lump. He sighs and turns over every once in a while - that’s about it. But Dean figures Sam’s earned it. Dean doesn’t even turn on the TV despite the dubious allure of a much-battered Casa Erotica Two ad lying on the dusty dresser; it might wake Sam up, and anyway, he keeps pausing in the middle of his internet browsing to check over Sam with his eyes, reaffirm that he’s still sleeping. Sam’s a long way from okay, and looks like about a hundred miles of bad road, but he’s still been lifted free of a death sentence. Dean could click his heels with joy.
Dean’s just starting to get a little worried; Sam didn’t wake up long enough to eat any real food yesterday, and his omelet’s turning inedible on the side table, when Sam wakes up. Dean looks up from the laptop and finds Sam’s eyes open.
“Sam?”
Sam blinks hazily, and then his eyes focus on Dean and crinkle with a smile. They’re green-gold in the midafternoon sunlight through the window, and they fall on the takeout box sitting by the side of Sam’s bed.
“Food?” he croaks, struggling up onto an elbow and reaching for it.
“Uh, yeah,” says Dean. Sam pops open the lid and frowns at the greasy slab within.
“Oh great, a vegetarian-meat-lover’s mashup,” Sam says with a husky voice, but there’s a chuckle in it.
Dean has to grin a little bit. “You’re a growing boy, Sam. Gotta make sure you’re fed properly. S’not like that hospital was doing it - what was their problem anyway? They feeding you at all in there?”
Sam looks a little squeamish and lowers the takeout box. “That wasn't exactly the problem.”
Dean passes him a plastic fork and some napkins. “Tell me while you eat, man. Sorry it’s cold. I figured you could use your beauty sleep.”
“Thanks,” Sam mumbles around the forkful he’s already cramming into his mouth.
After he eats and guzzles down two bottles of water Sam’s face is still bruised and scratched all to hell, but he’s less pale under the lacerations, getting some healthy color back after a square meal and the onslaught hours and hours of sleep. His eyelids are already drooping in his face, though, and he sags against the headboard like devouring that omelet sucked all the strength out of him.
“You look like you went a few rounds with the pavement and lost, dude,” Dean says, “Go get some more sleep.”
Sam chuckles and winces. “Gee, thanks, Dean,” he mutters dryly, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he settles back into his pillow. Dean just hums noncommittally.
By the second day Dean stops being shy about interrupting his brother’s precious sleep by watching TV in favor of not going stir crazy. There isn’t squat else for him to do but reinforce their protection, shovel whatever food he can into Sam whenever Sam wakes up for long enough, and watch Sam sleep, face soft and relaxed and sleeping deep like, god, neither’ve them have had the privilege of doing in years, and while that warms part of Dean right down to his belly it also makes him feel like a creeper after a while. So he turns on the TV and discovers that, even if the bent and dusty rabbit ears on this TV don’t get them more then fifteen channels - none of them porn - he can at least catch up on some Oprah.
Every once in a while, he turns his head and watches Sam breathe softly in his sleep.