SPN FIC: This Time and the Last Time
Title: This Time and the Last Time
Genre: h/c, s6
Summary: A hellhound attack triggers a flashback for Sam.
Warnings: Mild gore. Angst. Dean's potty mouth.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, just visiting.
Author’s Note: Based on a prompt by emmram for the ohsam H/C commentfic meme.
“It’s not so bad, Sammy. It’s okay. It’s not bad at all.”
It wasn't a lie. It wasn't a lie. Dean gently eased Sam down on the bed, one palm clamped over the thick gashes marring his thigh. Sam’s jeans were shredded and soaked through. He’d need stitches and crutches, but he was breathing and moving and a clawed up leg was a helluva lot better than losing a chunk of your torso, so everything was awesome, as far as Dean was concerned.
“Hellhounds…” Sam’s voice shook as badly as his hands. Dean batted them away, tugged gently at the remnants of Sam’s jeans, denim stiff with congealed blood.
“Yeah. I was there, Sam. Fucking hate hellhounds.”
“There…there were…” Sam broke off with a choked whimper that made Dean look up anxiously.
“Sam?”
A shudder much stronger than the gentle blood-loss shakes tore through Sam’s body and Dean swore because after Bristol, and Dallas, Lincoln, Nebraska, and that time at Bobby’s; Dean could spot the signs a mile away.
“Sammy?” Dean palmed Sam’s cheeks with sticky hands. His pupils were uneven. He wasn’t making eye-contact, stared through Dean as though he wasn’t even there, “Shit, Sam. Shit.”
Just because Dean could recognize the signs, didn’t mean he could stop the storm.
Just because Dean couldn’t stop the storm, didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
“No no no no. Sammy, look at me. Look. At. Me. Sam!” Dean pressed both hands against each side of Sam’s head, momentarily ignoring the gashes on his leg leaking blood onto the nubby brown bedspread. He pressed his own forehead against Sam’s clammy one, tangled his fingers in Sam’s sweaty hair, “You’re right here, Sammy. You’re in a crappy hotel in the middle of Iowa and you’re fine. I’m gonna patch you up. You’re fine.”
“Fine…” Sam’s voice was strangled. His stare was still looking at something a million miles away.
“Yeah, man. You’re here. You’re with me. You’re with Dean…Sammy?”
“Dean…”
Another violent shudder wracked Sam’s frame and he jerked out of Dean’s careful hold, fell back onto the comforter clawing at a dozen invisible hurts and one very real one. Dean knelt beside him on the bed, gently tried to keep Sam’s hands away from the damage to his leg, which only served to make Sam fight harder. Sam’s mouth was open, gaping, gasping frantically for air.
He stilled, tense, but motionless in Dean’s grip, eyes fixed on some point well past the tobacco-stained ceiling.
“Sammy? You okay?”
It reminded Dean of The Matrix, the way everything seemed to go silent and slow before Sam lurched, the seizure hitting fast and hard enough to send Sam falling over the side of the bed. Dean wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled him back, held him as though brute strength alone was enough to keep Sam whole.
Dean checked Sam’s pulse as soon as he stopped jerking. It was too fast, like a hummingbird trapped beneath his skin. That was normal. He glanced at the clock to start gauging how long it would take Sam to wake up. It was longer every time. Three minutes in Bristol.
Twenty in Dallas.
They were up to an hour and some change by the time Sam fell at Bobby’s.
“Sammy?” Dean tapped Sam’s cheek, painted with his bloody fingerprints like some kind of morbid tribal paint.
Nothing. But then, Dean hadn’t really been expecting a response anyway.
He wiped at a trail of drool running down Sam’s cheek, took in the wet patch on Sam’s jeans and the suddenly strong scent of ammonia-that was a new facet to the episodes, started in Nebraska. Dean didn’t tell Sam, always cleaned him up and washed the jeans before he could figure it out.
Dean didn’t like to think about what the drool and the piss and the longer rebound times meant. It was one of those thoughts that he could only handle alongside a fifth of something that burned going down.
Dean palmed Sam’s cheek with a blood-smeared hand, forced a smile and thought his skin might rip from the effort, “You’re okay. I’m gonna fix you up like I said I would. You’re fine.”
Sam didn't stir as Dean rinsed the four long claw marks out with holy water, meticulously stitched them shut, and smeared thick A & D ointment over his handiwork before binding it all in white gauze.
Dean balled the bloody comforter up and tossed it in the corner with Sam’s ruined jeans. He slid a pillow beneath Sam’s wounded leg, carefully maneuvered the sleeping giant up to rest against the headboard, plus every other pillow in the room, plus two spares retrieved from the Impala’s trunk.
He checked Sam’s pulse again-still fast. His skin was still clammy, colorless with blood loss.
So the next hour was spent forcing orange juice down Sam’s throat, one small sip at a time. He was relieved to see Sam swallowing on his own, a relief that was short-lived when he looked at the clock again. It was three hours after Sam seized.
“Hey, Sammy, I think you had enough beauty sleep for now, don’t you?”
Apparently not.
Dean checked Sam’s bandages, satisfied that there was no blood seeping through the gauze, the skin wasn’t puckered or inflamed. He felt Sam’s forehead, and tossed the blanket from the other bed over his motionless body even though he wasn’t feverish at all.
“C’mon, Sam. Wake up.”
Dean liked to think that Sam heard him, that that his voice was like breadcrumbs leading Gretel (because Sam was totally the chick in this fairy tale) back home. He liked to think that Sam knew he was there, knew that wherever he was, he wasn’t alone. Dean liked to think that he played some small part in waking Sam up every time, that he and Sam worked through these episodes together.
He liked to think that they had something resembling control over it all.
Dean refilled the orange juice, held the plastic cup to Sam’s lips again. He said, “Man, your leg has gotta be hurting by now. How ‘bout you wake up so I can pump you full of the good stuff and kick back for the latest installment of the Sammy on Drugs Comedy Hour.”
Sam swallowed quietly and automatically, without regard for Dean’s wishes.
Another hour. Another glass of juice. Another round of prodding at Sam’s leg, poking at expertly wrapped sutures. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, painting the wrecked hotel room in streaks of orange and pink that were something far too lovely for this sad place that reeked of piss and blood, rubbing alcohol, and beneath it all…stone-cold terror.
Seven hours.
They were out of orange juice. Sam pissed the bed, which was actually a good thing, judging by the faint pink glow of his lips. Dean grunted, gingerly moved Sam to the dry bed, and refused to celebrate anything because pink lips and pee were great and all, but Sam needed to wake the fuck up.
Dean traded his bloody jeans for boxers and a gray t-shirt. He scrubbed his hands and wiped the dried mess of fingerprints from Sam’s face. He tried not to throw the clock against the wall when it told him that another half-hour had passed with Sam down for the count.
He spent twenty minutes calling for Castiel who either didn’t hear him or ignored him before flipping off the dirty ceiling.
Then, with nothing left to distract himself, Dean crawled up the bed and slid beneath the blanket. He picked the TV remote up from the nightstand, index finger poised over the red power button, but didn’t press it.
This episode hadn’t been any worse than the previous ones-but then, they’d all been getting progressively worse the whole time, so maybe there wouldn’t be some final devastating crack at all. Maybe that time would be just like every other time…except Sam wouldn’t wake up. And if this time was that time, with that time being the last time…then wouldn’t that just be fucking poetic.
“Fucking hellhounds.”
Dean spent his first decade in Hell strung up on meat hooks in what he took to calling the “kennel.” Fido and Sparky and Rover ripped him down, then ripped him apart, and then he would rematerialize back up on the hooks to start all over again.
And Jo, bleeding out slowly on the floor of some bumfuck hardware store. Dean hoped that her soul had made it to Heaven, hadn’t been pulled down by the hound that mauled her. He wasn’t sure how that worked. That was another one of those thoughts that Dean didn’t like to think without some liquid backup.
And now Sam.
Dean’s breath caught. He cursed and with wide eyes fixed on his still form, willed Sam to wake up wake up wake up.
When he remained stubbornly silent, Dean let his breath out in a shaky whoosh and lifted Sam’s shoulders. He slid behind his giant little brother and carefully adjusted so that Sam’s head rested against his shoulder. Sam’s hair was matted and stuck together in greasy, bloody clumps. It smelled like blood and dirt, but beneath that, like Head n’ Shoulders and Old Spice and Sam. Dean buried his face in it and began a quiet, desperate litany of “Wake up. Please wake up.”
The sun was gone completely when Sam stirred in Dean’s arms, cried out and groped at his bandaged thigh.
“Easy, easy, shit.” Dean fumbled for the light switch, winced at the sudden brightness that flooded the room, “Sammy?”
“Leg. My fucking leg. Fucking Christ.”
Sam was curled forward, both hands clamped over the white gauze wrapped from hip to knee.
“It’s okay, Sam. I got the happy pills right here. Hang on.” Dean tossed two orange prescription bottles across the room before settling on the one he needed, dumped three white capsules into his palm, then tucked them into Sam’s, “You need water?”
Sam shook his head and swallowed them dry, ran a shaking hand through his hair, then before Dean had the chance to shimmy away, rolled back against the sold warmth of his chest. One hand slid down, rested lightly on the spot above Dean’s knee where he didn’t have any scars…but should have: thick, bone-deep claw marks.
A hard shudder ran through Sam, shaking him from head to toe, and Dean tensed, terrified that there was another round coming. Sam had never seized twice in succession, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t. It didn’t mean that he wouldn’t. Eventually. For now, Dean could go back to timing seizures and mini-comas and cataloguing triggers, back to counting down to when this time would be the last time.
The fact that it wouldn’t be hellhounds dragging Sam away didn’t make Dean hate them any less.
“You’re okay, Sam.” Dean said. He squeezed Sam’s arm and rested his chin on top of his gunky hair, content to let Sam anchor himself using Dean’s weight.
Sam’s grip on his thigh tightened and with a voice like broken glass, said, “There were hooks.”
Dean winced and felt his heart crack in time to Sam’s wall. He could conceptualize this one experience more clearly than anything he gleaned from eavesdropping on nightmares and pestering Sam with bribes and threats and pleas.
This, he knew.
And he had never wanted for Sam to know it.
“Yeah.” Dean said softly, “Yeah, me too.”
Sam shuddered again, ran his palm along the unmarred surface of Dean’s thigh as though to remind himself that the skin was perfect and solid and real.
“You got out.” Sam said.
Dean tightened his hold on Sam’s arm just a little more, thought about his perfect leg and Sam’s fresh scar, wondered if Sam would be around long enough to see it turn white and raised and thick. He moved his hand to Sam’s head and whispered softly, as though the wrong tone might shatter the delicate foundation of this moment, “We both got out, Sammy. We both got out.”
Genre: h/c, s6
Summary: A hellhound attack triggers a flashback for Sam.
Warnings: Mild gore. Angst. Dean's potty mouth.
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, just visiting.
Author’s Note: Based on a prompt by emmram for the ohsam H/C commentfic meme.
“It’s not so bad, Sammy. It’s okay. It’s not bad at all.”
It wasn't a lie. It wasn't a lie. Dean gently eased Sam down on the bed, one palm clamped over the thick gashes marring his thigh. Sam’s jeans were shredded and soaked through. He’d need stitches and crutches, but he was breathing and moving and a clawed up leg was a helluva lot better than losing a chunk of your torso, so everything was awesome, as far as Dean was concerned.
“Hellhounds…” Sam’s voice shook as badly as his hands. Dean batted them away, tugged gently at the remnants of Sam’s jeans, denim stiff with congealed blood.
“Yeah. I was there, Sam. Fucking hate hellhounds.”
“There…there were…” Sam broke off with a choked whimper that made Dean look up anxiously.
“Sam?”
A shudder much stronger than the gentle blood-loss shakes tore through Sam’s body and Dean swore because after Bristol, and Dallas, Lincoln, Nebraska, and that time at Bobby’s; Dean could spot the signs a mile away.
“Sammy?” Dean palmed Sam’s cheeks with sticky hands. His pupils were uneven. He wasn’t making eye-contact, stared through Dean as though he wasn’t even there, “Shit, Sam. Shit.”
Just because Dean could recognize the signs, didn’t mean he could stop the storm.
Just because Dean couldn’t stop the storm, didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
“No no no no. Sammy, look at me. Look. At. Me. Sam!” Dean pressed both hands against each side of Sam’s head, momentarily ignoring the gashes on his leg leaking blood onto the nubby brown bedspread. He pressed his own forehead against Sam’s clammy one, tangled his fingers in Sam’s sweaty hair, “You’re right here, Sammy. You’re in a crappy hotel in the middle of Iowa and you’re fine. I’m gonna patch you up. You’re fine.”
“Fine…” Sam’s voice was strangled. His stare was still looking at something a million miles away.
“Yeah, man. You’re here. You’re with me. You’re with Dean…Sammy?”
“Dean…”
Another violent shudder wracked Sam’s frame and he jerked out of Dean’s careful hold, fell back onto the comforter clawing at a dozen invisible hurts and one very real one. Dean knelt beside him on the bed, gently tried to keep Sam’s hands away from the damage to his leg, which only served to make Sam fight harder. Sam’s mouth was open, gaping, gasping frantically for air.
He stilled, tense, but motionless in Dean’s grip, eyes fixed on some point well past the tobacco-stained ceiling.
“Sammy? You okay?”
It reminded Dean of The Matrix, the way everything seemed to go silent and slow before Sam lurched, the seizure hitting fast and hard enough to send Sam falling over the side of the bed. Dean wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled him back, held him as though brute strength alone was enough to keep Sam whole.
Dean checked Sam’s pulse as soon as he stopped jerking. It was too fast, like a hummingbird trapped beneath his skin. That was normal. He glanced at the clock to start gauging how long it would take Sam to wake up. It was longer every time. Three minutes in Bristol.
Twenty in Dallas.
They were up to an hour and some change by the time Sam fell at Bobby’s.
“Sammy?” Dean tapped Sam’s cheek, painted with his bloody fingerprints like some kind of morbid tribal paint.
Nothing. But then, Dean hadn’t really been expecting a response anyway.
He wiped at a trail of drool running down Sam’s cheek, took in the wet patch on Sam’s jeans and the suddenly strong scent of ammonia-that was a new facet to the episodes, started in Nebraska. Dean didn’t tell Sam, always cleaned him up and washed the jeans before he could figure it out.
Dean didn’t like to think about what the drool and the piss and the longer rebound times meant. It was one of those thoughts that he could only handle alongside a fifth of something that burned going down.
Dean palmed Sam’s cheek with a blood-smeared hand, forced a smile and thought his skin might rip from the effort, “You’re okay. I’m gonna fix you up like I said I would. You’re fine.”
Sam didn't stir as Dean rinsed the four long claw marks out with holy water, meticulously stitched them shut, and smeared thick A & D ointment over his handiwork before binding it all in white gauze.
Dean balled the bloody comforter up and tossed it in the corner with Sam’s ruined jeans. He slid a pillow beneath Sam’s wounded leg, carefully maneuvered the sleeping giant up to rest against the headboard, plus every other pillow in the room, plus two spares retrieved from the Impala’s trunk.
He checked Sam’s pulse again-still fast. His skin was still clammy, colorless with blood loss.
So the next hour was spent forcing orange juice down Sam’s throat, one small sip at a time. He was relieved to see Sam swallowing on his own, a relief that was short-lived when he looked at the clock again. It was three hours after Sam seized.
“Hey, Sammy, I think you had enough beauty sleep for now, don’t you?”
Apparently not.
Dean checked Sam’s bandages, satisfied that there was no blood seeping through the gauze, the skin wasn’t puckered or inflamed. He felt Sam’s forehead, and tossed the blanket from the other bed over his motionless body even though he wasn’t feverish at all.
“C’mon, Sam. Wake up.”
Dean liked to think that Sam heard him, that that his voice was like breadcrumbs leading Gretel (because Sam was totally the chick in this fairy tale) back home. He liked to think that Sam knew he was there, knew that wherever he was, he wasn’t alone. Dean liked to think that he played some small part in waking Sam up every time, that he and Sam worked through these episodes together.
He liked to think that they had something resembling control over it all.
Dean refilled the orange juice, held the plastic cup to Sam’s lips again. He said, “Man, your leg has gotta be hurting by now. How ‘bout you wake up so I can pump you full of the good stuff and kick back for the latest installment of the Sammy on Drugs Comedy Hour.”
Sam swallowed quietly and automatically, without regard for Dean’s wishes.
Another hour. Another glass of juice. Another round of prodding at Sam’s leg, poking at expertly wrapped sutures. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, painting the wrecked hotel room in streaks of orange and pink that were something far too lovely for this sad place that reeked of piss and blood, rubbing alcohol, and beneath it all…stone-cold terror.
Seven hours.
They were out of orange juice. Sam pissed the bed, which was actually a good thing, judging by the faint pink glow of his lips. Dean grunted, gingerly moved Sam to the dry bed, and refused to celebrate anything because pink lips and pee were great and all, but Sam needed to wake the fuck up.
Dean traded his bloody jeans for boxers and a gray t-shirt. He scrubbed his hands and wiped the dried mess of fingerprints from Sam’s face. He tried not to throw the clock against the wall when it told him that another half-hour had passed with Sam down for the count.
He spent twenty minutes calling for Castiel who either didn’t hear him or ignored him before flipping off the dirty ceiling.
Then, with nothing left to distract himself, Dean crawled up the bed and slid beneath the blanket. He picked the TV remote up from the nightstand, index finger poised over the red power button, but didn’t press it.
This episode hadn’t been any worse than the previous ones-but then, they’d all been getting progressively worse the whole time, so maybe there wouldn’t be some final devastating crack at all. Maybe that time would be just like every other time…except Sam wouldn’t wake up. And if this time was that time, with that time being the last time…then wouldn’t that just be fucking poetic.
“Fucking hellhounds.”
Dean spent his first decade in Hell strung up on meat hooks in what he took to calling the “kennel.” Fido and Sparky and Rover ripped him down, then ripped him apart, and then he would rematerialize back up on the hooks to start all over again.
And Jo, bleeding out slowly on the floor of some bumfuck hardware store. Dean hoped that her soul had made it to Heaven, hadn’t been pulled down by the hound that mauled her. He wasn’t sure how that worked. That was another one of those thoughts that Dean didn’t like to think without some liquid backup.
And now Sam.
Dean’s breath caught. He cursed and with wide eyes fixed on his still form, willed Sam to wake up wake up wake up.
When he remained stubbornly silent, Dean let his breath out in a shaky whoosh and lifted Sam’s shoulders. He slid behind his giant little brother and carefully adjusted so that Sam’s head rested against his shoulder. Sam’s hair was matted and stuck together in greasy, bloody clumps. It smelled like blood and dirt, but beneath that, like Head n’ Shoulders and Old Spice and Sam. Dean buried his face in it and began a quiet, desperate litany of “Wake up. Please wake up.”
The sun was gone completely when Sam stirred in Dean’s arms, cried out and groped at his bandaged thigh.
“Easy, easy, shit.” Dean fumbled for the light switch, winced at the sudden brightness that flooded the room, “Sammy?”
“Leg. My fucking leg. Fucking Christ.”
Sam was curled forward, both hands clamped over the white gauze wrapped from hip to knee.
“It’s okay, Sam. I got the happy pills right here. Hang on.” Dean tossed two orange prescription bottles across the room before settling on the one he needed, dumped three white capsules into his palm, then tucked them into Sam’s, “You need water?”
Sam shook his head and swallowed them dry, ran a shaking hand through his hair, then before Dean had the chance to shimmy away, rolled back against the sold warmth of his chest. One hand slid down, rested lightly on the spot above Dean’s knee where he didn’t have any scars…but should have: thick, bone-deep claw marks.
A hard shudder ran through Sam, shaking him from head to toe, and Dean tensed, terrified that there was another round coming. Sam had never seized twice in succession, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t. It didn’t mean that he wouldn’t. Eventually. For now, Dean could go back to timing seizures and mini-comas and cataloguing triggers, back to counting down to when this time would be the last time.
The fact that it wouldn’t be hellhounds dragging Sam away didn’t make Dean hate them any less.
“You’re okay, Sam.” Dean said. He squeezed Sam’s arm and rested his chin on top of his gunky hair, content to let Sam anchor himself using Dean’s weight.
Sam’s grip on his thigh tightened and with a voice like broken glass, said, “There were hooks.”
Dean winced and felt his heart crack in time to Sam’s wall. He could conceptualize this one experience more clearly than anything he gleaned from eavesdropping on nightmares and pestering Sam with bribes and threats and pleas.
This, he knew.
And he had never wanted for Sam to know it.
“Yeah.” Dean said softly, “Yeah, me too.”
Sam shuddered again, ran his palm along the unmarred surface of Dean’s thigh as though to remind himself that the skin was perfect and solid and real.
“You got out.” Sam said.
Dean tightened his hold on Sam’s arm just a little more, thought about his perfect leg and Sam’s fresh scar, wondered if Sam would be around long enough to see it turn white and raised and thick. He moved his hand to Sam’s head and whispered softly, as though the wrong tone might shatter the delicate foundation of this moment, “We both got out, Sammy. We both got out.”