come hell or high water [spn][one-shot]
Title: Come Hell or High Water
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam, Dean
Total Word Count: 11,536
Rating: R
Summary: They've spent three straight days on the road and Sam's had about enough. Dean is another story.
Note: Written because I needed to know how the reckless Dean of Family Remains became the relatively normal Dean of Criss Angel is a Douche Bag. Slightly AU because one of Dean's injuries couldn't have healed in the time between those two shows, buuuut... I didn't feel like changing it. Thanks to paxlux for the marvelous beta job. Based on an old episode of ER.
Three days.
It’s raining outside, loud and pounding, the sky trying to hurl itself to the ground. Drops slide down the windshield, managing only half the distance before they’re swept away by the squeaking wipers. Every time the window clears, Sam glances up at the sky, as if its load of dark clouds will have lightened since the last time he checked.
Three days, nine hours.
They’re parked under a streetlight, glimmering and orange. Outside, water is pooling in the zigzagging scars of the asphalt. The street and sidewalks glisten. Sam can make out his own rippling reflection in the slick layer of water on the cement.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes.
Next to him, Dean is fidgeting, one knee bobbing up and down, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. The streetlamp above them, their only light, flickers for a moment. Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out in a whoosh, sits back, puts his hands on his lap and stares out his window as the car rumbles quietly around them. The heater is on, but it really isn’t making any difference.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes and… fifteen seconds.
Not that Sam’s counting. Because, why would he be counting how long it’s been since he and Dean have stayed in a motel and gotten a good night’s sleep, warm in beds, under sheets, after showers? Who counts stupid things like that?
Not that Dean bothers sleeping any more at all.
Dean clears his throat, and Sam immediately turns his face away, looks outside his window. There’s a brief flash of lightning, and in the sudden illumination, Sam catches the sight of a few trees in the distance, swaying ominously.
The crack of thunder that follows echoes in Sam’s head even after it recedes, grumbling indignantly, into the night. Dean chooses that moment to say, “Sam.”
Sam tries to ignore him, stares out the window like the meaning of life lies somewhere just beyond the glass. But Dean knows how to be annoying and irritating.
He repeats Sam’s name, waits a moment and then swats Sam’s leg with the back of his hand. Sam can see Dean gazing at him out of the corner of his eye. Not this time, Sam thinks. He won’t give in. God knows they need to sleep, God knows Dean needs to sleep.
Now, if God would only do something about it, all would be right in the world.
Of course, Sam knows better than most how much God does.
Dean sighs, finally, says, “Come on, Sammy,” and turns away, glances out of his own window.
Sam’s resolve shatters and he faces Dean. “You can’t be considering this.”
Dean seems slightly more chipper, suddenly, but these days Dean looking “chipper” just means that he’s looking a little less frail and bag-eyed, a little less like soaked tissue paper.
“Gotta get rid of the kelpie,” he says to Sam. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
Sam stares at him incredulously. “Now? Now, when it sounds like it’s raining demonic pit bulls?”
Dean looks disgruntled and more than a little weary, like he just wants to go out and do the job and stop arguing about it. “If we don’t do it now, someone else dies-”
“No, Dean. No one else will die, not tonight, because no one is going to be near a culvert when there are flash flood warnings blaring over the radio. Not to mention the fact that sane people cover culverts when it’s raining, to stop psychos from going in there.”
Dean gazes at Sam for a long moment and then says, with a slight grin, “You calling me psycho?”
Sam can’t take the jokes. This is suicidal, even for Dean, and damn, does it worry him. He lifts a hand, attempts to squeeze the bridge of his nose into nothingness. “Let’s go find a motel. Please.”
In some other universe, Dean might have agreed. In this one, he just shakes his head, grips the steering wheel again. Sam sees his knuckles go white.
He doesn’t know what Dean’s thinking. This saving people thing, this hero complex, isn’t new, but it’s grown to disturbing levels. Sam doesn’t know where it’ll end, or with what, and at this point, he’s not sure what Dean’s intentions actually are: save as many innocents as he can, or get himself killed in the process. After the hunt in Nebraska, with the Carters, Sam’s seriously leaning towards the latter.
“You know what?” Dean says suddenly. “Screw you.” He reaches into the backseat, drags the duffle bag forwards, unzips it and digs around in it for a gun and the silver bullets. “I’ll do this myself.”
He shoves open the door, and the sound of the rain is suddenly magnified, a harsh tumult that feels like it’s coming from inside Sam’s head.
“Dean,” says Sam bemusedly, reaching out and grabbing Dean’s leg before he can get out.
“What, Sam? What? You want me to go find a motel? Get a good night’s sleep? Because that’s been happening a lot lately, right?”
“You can’t do this alone. You need cover,” replies Sam, trying to be the voice of reason, trying to remain calm.
“Yeah, I do need cover. So are you going to move your ass?” asks Dean, looking slightly furious. He’s half out of the car already, arm and leg getting drenched.
Sam sighs, looks out the window again and shakes his head. He can feel his face tightening, knows his lips are pressed together so hard they're probably going to fuse together.
“The culvert will be closed,” he says eventually. “If there was any point of going out now, I’d go with you. But all that’s going to happen out there is that we’re going to get pneumonia.”
There’s another flash of lightning and Dean pulls his soaking leg back into the car, tugs the door closed. It creaks comfortingly.
“Okay,” he says, dragging a hand across his face. “Okay. How about this - I’ll go check. If the culvert is open, I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go in together. If it isn’t, we’ll go find a room and turn in for the night.”
It’s not all right. It’s not all right at all. But it’s better than Dean going off on his own, and Sam has no doubts that he will if forced to.
Sam’s starting to get a shooting pain in his head. How did they come to this? Dean gets crazy, sometimes, sure.
But not like this.
“Sam?”
“Okay,” mutters Sam resignedly. “Okay.”
“Good,” says Dean. He opens the door again, stuffs the gun into his waistband, and gets out of the car.
“Come back to get me,” calls Sam, but he thinks his voice sinks under the slamming of the car door.
A few feet, and Dean’s stepped out of the orange halo of the streetlamp above them and into the blindingly dark night.
**
The rain sounds louder now that he’s alone, and Sam’s headache has morphed into a full-on migraine. He leans forward and turns the heater’s dial up, puts his hand near the vent. He can’t understand why the damn thing doesn’t work.
It’s like everything that defines Dean, makes him who he is, shatters when he does.
Everything.
Sam rubs his face, one hand cold, and the other warm. He presses his fingers into his eyes, thumbs into his temples, as if, somehow, the pain has a threshold over which it can’t pass and once it gets there, Sam will stop feeling it.
He can’t think straight with headaches. It all seems too bright, too sharp. And he needs to be able to think straight now because Dean can’t, because he’s spiraling in guilt and self-loathing and he won’t.
Sam reaches down for the duffle bag that’s sitting near the pedals, where Dean left it, rummages through it for his gun, and checks the magazine like Dean did. The way his luck’s been going lately, the culvert will be open.
Only Dean could find a kelpie-haunted culvert. Only Dean would be stupid enough to go after it when it looks like a flash flood outside, when it’s raining bucket after divine bucket, when he knows kelpies are spirits that drown their victims.
He’s got to stop thinking about this, but everything else there is to think about is ten times worse.
There’s a sudden flash of lightning so intense that it fills the car with unearthly white light. It steals Sam’s breath away, transports him to a day he never wants to remember, and his arm shoots out, grabs a hold of the armrest attached to the door. It takes only a second to vanish, but it’s long enough, and Sam doesn’t recover until the thunder has long since subsided. His heart races and he takes a deep breath, berating himself for losing control.
He really needs to sleep.
He really needs Dean to come back.
He pulls out his cell, peers at the time. It’s only been three minutes. They’re parked as close to the culvert as they can get by car, but the trek took them at least five minutes this morning. And it hadn’t been raining then.
The car makes an odd sound, and in the time it takes Sam to look over at the steering wheel and dashboard, it’s shuddered to a stop. The hot air abruptly vanishes and the windshield wipers squeak themselves into their default position. The windshield suddenly looks like it’s made of frosted glass.
“Come on,” mutters Sam, scooting over into the driver’s seat. He turns the key back to off, and then tries to start the car up again. It screeches loudly, rattles and fails again. Sam doesn’t remember ever hearing it sound like that before. He tries again, and then a third time, before sitting back and pounding the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
Everything breaks with Dean; and Sam can’t ever fix any of it.
He leans forward, rests his forehead on the steering wheel. It’s freezing, but seems to soothe his aching head.
It shouldn’t, not really. He can’t remember how many times he’d slept like this, or just sat like this, in between the time that Dean had died and Ruby had…
Sam squeezes his eyes shut tightly, wonders why he can’t stop thinking about this, when it’s the last thing he wants swimming around in his head.
And with that thought, Dean’s voice starts up inside his head. Like always, it’s not the words that hurt Sam so much as the sound.
Because it’s not like Sam hadn’t known already.
He just hadn’t believed it.
He expected demons to lie, expected them to say things that would throw their captors off. At first, they’d just gone on and on about what would your brother think of you now, Sammy? and what a disappointment and send me back - Dean’s screams are soul music. But near the end of the third month, when Sam had just started getting a handle on his powers, when he’d stopped needing Ruby’s intervention every now and then, the demons has started employing new tactics.
Or so he’d thought.
They’d be tied to chairs and bound by devil’s traps and Sam would be mustering that feeling, that rawness that pulled everything together, a tingling in his heart and his arm and his mind. The demon would be spitting its essence, trying to swallow it back against all force, and just before Sam got it, just before he managed to find that niche in his powers, the demon would start shouting and screaming and jeering. Your brother’s pretty good at the Hell rumba, Sammy. ‘Course, you Winchesters, you monsters would be. The things he thinks up - I wonder if he sits in his little corner of the cesspit and plans every cut he’s going to make, every organ he’s going to pull, every scream he’s going to wrench from some poor soul.
And that was always when Sam would lose it, and Ruby would have to pull out her knife.
She reprimanded him for allowing their words to get to him. Demons lie, she said, you should know. Sam always wondered if she knew how ironic her words were, and if it should worry him.
But half a month of it, and Sam adjusted.
He hadn’t truly believed their words then. He knew where Dean was, sure. Knew that Hell meant torture. Though he couldn’t imagine what they were doing to him down there, his mind was pretty good at inserting gruesome scenarios into his nightmares. Sam hadn’t woken shouting like that since the visions.
But the possibility that Dean was torturing souls? It had never even crossed his mind.
It made Sam sick, thinking about it. Not because Dean had started doling it out, but because Sam hadn’t believed it to be true. Because he hadn’t thought, then, well, if he is, I don’t give a fuck; he had thought, not Dean, never Dean.
It felt like Dean would be able to see right through him and realize that Sam had known and that he hadn’t believed and Dean would feel like he’d let his family down even more.
But Dean hasn’t, as far as he can tell. Dean’s too broken to see anything clearly.
If he doesn’t bounce back…
Sam knows he only has himself to blame, though he’d like to blame everyone else: the angels, Lilith...
He could have saved Dean.
He should have.
A part of him feels like he should be raging after Dean’s confession, going after anything and everything, the way he was when Dean was gone. He is seething, somewhere, and it’s bound to come up for air sooner or later, but right now, there are more important things to think about.
Like Dean and where his head is and what it’ll take him to go back normal.
Or what passes for “normal” these days, which is even more abnormal for them than it usually is.
**
Sam’s dawdling in his thoughts, drifting further and further towards sleep, when someone starts hammering on the window. He jerks up, grabs blindly for a gun, head snapping towards the window so fast that he cricks his neck.
There’s a boy at the window. Not Dean, just a little boy, hair plastered to his head, eyes so wide they take up half his face.
“Help!” He’s shouting, screaming, hysterical. “You have to help!”
“Okay!” says Sam. “Okay.”
He opens the door, says, “Christo,” and it’s a mark of how out of it this kid is that he doesn’t even bothering questioning that statement. But he doesn’t flinch either, so Sam’s pretty sure he’s safe. He keeps his hand on his gun anyway.
“The - the - the man!” shouts the kid, grabbing Sam’s jacket with a wet hand and pointing behind him. “H-h-he needs - he needs-” The kid is shivering and shaking and he can’t string two words together without sucking in a heaving breath.
Sam reaches for him, says, “Hey, hey - you need to calm down.” The boy nods, tries to breathe. Sam didn’t notice it before, what with all the rain, but tears are streaming down his face.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Michael.”
“Okay, Michael. Deep breaths.”
He nods, takes in air through his nose, mimicking Sam.
“Okay. Tell me what happened,” Sam says.
“The man,” begins Michael, talking so fast he keeps eating his words. “I was - I was playing and I saw a light, and then there was a horse or - then a-a man came, and he opened - and I followed him and he’s stuck! He told me t-to c-come here, and l-look for a b-black car!”
Sam just stares at the kid. “What?”
“There was a man,” Michael repeats, swallowing hard, chest still heaving. “He s-saved me, but the - the water came and he f-fell and got stuck, and he dropped his phone! He told m-me to tell you! You have to go help him!”
He went after it himself. He went after it himself.
Sam’s forgotten how to breathe.
**
Sam gets out of the car, yanks open the door to the back, and herds the boy in before going around to the trunk and pulling out their other duffle bag, the one they use for clothes. He ducks into the backseat, where the kid is shivering and staring at him with wide eyes, wrenches the bag’s zipper open.
He throws a shirt and a pair of pants at Michael, tells him to get out of his wet things and dry his hair with something, and then gets into the front seat, abuses the car until it starts. He turns the heater all the way up and hands Michael his cell phone, tells him to call 911 if he’s not back in fifteen minutes.
The boy nods and then bursts into tears.
Sam has no choice but to leave him like that.
**
He takes it back. It’s not raining pit bulls; it’s raining hellhounds.
There aren’t enough streetlights in this part of town, and the ones that they do have are set too far apart. The deluge is making it even harder to see in the dark, and when Sam gets to the other end of the mostly-flooded street, the curb almost trips him.
He can’t believe Dean went and tried to take the thing by his fucking self.
The culvert is in a large, fenced-in park, near the back where there are no swings and slides, and no sand to play in. This end of it is small, a little hard to get into, but not impossible. The other end is larger, set at the bottom of a mini-valley, and though it’s only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, it takes fifteen minutes to get there by car. It’s also harder to get down to that one, which is why probably why the kelpie stays near this one. People are more likely to walk into the end that’s easy to get to.
So far, it’s managed to drown two men who had followed it. The kelpie is a shape shifter, and one of its pet forms, a woman, is used especially for seduction. The city doesn’t know that the men had drowned though, because the kelpie doesn’t leave traces. Its victims are its prey.
All the city is sure about is that two men have gone missing in the park. They’ve launched an investigation and have taken to closing the culvert whenever possible, just in case. The kelpie, though, isn’t easily subdued. Removing a grating isn’t all that difficult for it.
Sam runs through the park, over grass and then sand and then more grass. It’s freezing and he’s already soaked through and there are large pools of water wherever the ground depresses. The slide is acting like a waterfall.
Lightning is flashing at regular intervals and if there weren’t so many trees and metal things around, Sam would be worried about getting hit. The sounds of thunder are deafening.
The path to the culvert is slightly downhill and water is literally streaming down it. Sam stumbles twice, wipes water out of his eyes, pushes his hair back and then catches sight of the culvert’s opening. Water is rushing into it. The grating is lying slightly to the left, and it wasn’t like that earlier in the day. Sam feels his heart clench.
The thought that Dean stood there and removed it himself is unfathomable.
The water probably just carried it there.
Sam splashes through the rising water and ducks into the culvert. Inside, the storm is muffled, but it sounds like he’s standing near rapids. It’s as dark inside as it was outside, and Sam kicks himself for not bringing a flashlight.
“Dean?” Sam calls. His voice echoes away, but he doubts Dean can hear him. He can hardly hear himself. He drags his legs forward. The water is like ice, and it’s already risen to a couple of inches below his knees.
“Dean?” he shouts again, as he half walks, half runs. He pulls his gun out; he can’t remember Michael telling him if Dean had killed the kelpie.
“Dean!” He’s about twenty feet into the culvert now. Dean should be able to hear him; he can’t have got farther than this. There’s a grill dividing the cement tunnel in half and Sam’s pretty sure he’s near it.
Just then, he hears Dean’s voice. “Over here, Lassie!”
Sam picks up speed, splashing like anything. It’s only luck that keeps him from falling and cracking his head, and Sam’s not questioning it. Luck owes him, anyway.
Dean comes into view a second later.
He’s sitting down, right near that dividing grate, the water slowly rising to chest level. He looks up at Sam, gives a half-cocky grin.
“Knew you’d find me,” he says. “Kid g-get back in one piece?” His teeth are chattering, and though he’s unabashedly trying to hide the fact, Sam can see the tremor of his lips.
And that dormant rage Sam was thinking about earlier? Suddenly rears its ugly head.
It’s a mark of how much he’s been internalizing over the past seven or eight months that he doesn’t deck Dean there and then for doing this to himself.
“What happened?” he says as he makes his way towards Dean, because he doesn’t know what else to say, except you asshole.
“Found the kid in here - the k-kelpie was closing in,” Dean says, and it’s unusual. Sam was expecting him to say long story or just get me out of here, I’ll tell you later. Something in his face must have changed Dean’s mind. “It hit me j-just before I shot it, and I couldn’t grab a hold of anything.”
The current isn’t really more powerful here; Sam can feel it tugging at him, but it’s not enough to drag him away. He realizes that something is blocking the flow of water to the other end of the culvert - that’s why Dean is chest-deep here. The current must have been stronger earlier, when there wasn't any obstruction.
Sam reaches out, tries to find purchase on the curving walls as he walks, until the divider is within reach.
He grabs on to its thick metal rods, looks down at his brother and says, “How are you stuck?” He prides himself on not adding you fucking moron to the end of that sentence.
“M-my leg. It w-went through the grill… the current was stronger before,” mutters Dean. For the first time, Sam hears the slight slur in his voice, and tries to do the math. How long has Dean been sitting in frigid water? His headache returns as soon as he tries to pull up some numbers, so he gives up.
“I think it’s broken,” Dean adds. He’s doing a good job of not stuttering too much.
“Okay,” says Sam, trying to hide the strain in his voice. He pushes his gun into his waistband, squats carefully and reaches into the water, groping for Dean’s leg. Dean sets his hand on Sam’s shoulder to anchor him, though Sam’s not sure what help Dean’ll be if he slips. His hand is heavy on Sam’s shoulder as it is.
“Which leg?” Sam asks.
“Right.”
Sam finds Dean’s thigh in the murky water, runs his hand very slowly down it to his knee. A couple of inches below Dean’s knee, Sam fingers graze over something that feels sharp and splintery. His toes bunch together in his shoes and he almost loses his dinner right there.
Swallowing hard, he says, “Yeah, it’s a bad break.”
He realizes Dean is mumbling expletives under his breath and squeezing Sam’s shoulder. Doesn’t say sorry, because really? This is all Dean’s fault in the first place.
He pulls a hand out of the water, drags it over his face and crouches there, trying to think. He doesn’t know what to do that won’t cause Dean more pain. Now that he looks, really looks, he can see the grill is pretty well obstructed. Tree branches and old Chinese take-out boxes, and ripped up pieces of cardboard and who knows what else, all jammed into the little squares of the lattice. No wonder the water isn’t getting through.
He turns a little and catches Dean watching him.
“Was this the fucking plan?” he snaps, louder than he’d intended.
Dean’s hand slips off of Sam’s shoulder. He doesn’t look apologetic. If anything, his face takes on a glacial appearance. “What, you wanted me to leave the-”
“Was he even in the culvert before you got there?” asks Sam suddenly.
Dean falls into stony silence.
“You took the grating off yourself, didn’t you?”
“L-look, Sam-”
But Sam just shakes his head and mutters, “Forget it. I’m assuming you want to get out of here?”
Dean doesn’t reply, and Sam doesn’t wait. He reaches into the water again and carefully grabs hold of Dean’s leg, one hand on his knee, the other just below the break and tries to pull as hard as he can without causing excess pain.
Dean lets out a groan and snarls an opprobrious remark on Sam’s parentage. His leg, on the other hand, doesn’t even budge.
The water is steadily rising and Dean’s shivering even more; Sam’s starting to feel the chills himself. He pulls his hands out of the water and grabs the metals rods again. They’re all vertical, and if he can pull them apart, Dean might be able to pull his leg out. Sam yanks with all his strength, feels his muscles straining, but the rods don’t give way.
“Okay,” he says, breathlessly. “Okay, I’m going to go and get some - Dean!”
Dean’s eyes are at half-mast, his head resting against the culvert wall. He’s still shivering, but calling that a good sign would be ironic. Sam clutches Dean’s jacket, shakes him hard.
“Wake up, Dean! Hey!”
“I am awake, stupid,” murmurs Dean. And he is awake, to some extent. Just not awake enough.
Sam cups a handful of water into his palm and splashes Dean’s face with it. Dean flinches, blinks and says, “What the fuck, Sam?”
“Stay awake!” says Sam harshly. “Do you understand me? Stay awake, goddammit!”
“O-okay, okay. I’m awake,” says Dean, a little more alert. He squints at Sam, like he’s having trouble bring him into focus. “J-just g-getting bored waiting for you t-to get a move on.”
“Yeah,” says Sam, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to think above the sounds of water lapping off the culvert walls, above the headache that’s causing his temples to throb in time with his pulse.
He has to go back to the car, get some rope or… something that’ll help him get Dean out of here. But how is he supposed to leave if Dean might fall asleep, really fall asleep, while he’s gone?
The best way to stay awake is to keep talking.
Sam opens his eyes. “You dropped your phone?”
“N-no, I-I just thought it’d be more exciting to send a k-kid to get you rather - rather than just call you up,” says Dean sarcastically. “L-like the movies.”
He falls silent, almost breathless, and Sam gazes at him, taking in his paleness and the goose bumps on his neck.
“Okay,” Sam says firmly. “Sing something.”
Dean stares at Sam. “You - you been in the water t-too long?”
“Would you just start singing?”
Dean tries to roll his eyes. “I-I’m fine, Sam. Feeling warmer already, I s-swear.”
“No, Dean, you’re not fine. And I need to leave and you need to stay the fuck awake, and this is the only thing I can think of. So start singing.”
He glares at Dean until Dean starts mumbling something that sounds like the lyrics of Whole Lotta Love under his breath.
Sam stands up, water cascading off of him, and says, “Louder. I wanna be able to hear you at the end of the culvert.”
Dean swallows, nods a little and increases his volume as much as he possibly can. He’s stuttering and quivering and he has to keep stopping for breath, but it’s good. It’s good.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t stop singing,” says Sam, and he turns around, starts hurrying back the way he came, Dean’s weak voice pushing him on.
Outside, it’s raining harder, if anything. As there’s nowhere for the water to go, what with the blockage in the tunnel, the park is slowly being submerged.
Sam gets back to the Impala in record time, sloshing through as fast as he can, not following any particular route, jumping the fence that encloses the park when he gets to it and almost rendering himself sterile in the process.
He thanks the powers that be that Dean had the sense to park under a streetlight, because Sam would have missed the car entirely otherwise. Though, perhaps it isn’t an entirely good thing, as Dean apparently used all of the sense he possessed in that decision.
He’s pretty sure that it’s been more than fifteen minutes since he left Michael in the car, but there are no police cars around. When he unlocks the cars, he realizes why. Michael’s drifted off to sleep, looking miniscule in Dean’s shirt and pants, but also dry and less pale.
Sam leans into the back and gently checks the boy’s pulse. It’s stable, which is great. One less thing for Sam to worry about. He extricates his phone out of the kid’s lax fingers and sets it in the glove compartment. Hopefully if he can’t find the phone, he won’t call the cops, which is better than Sam waking him to give him instructions.
Sam rummages around in the arsenal duffle bag, looking for something that’ll help Dean. He spots the flashlights, grabs one of them, but leaves the guns. He doesn’t seriously think shooting at the metal rods is going to do anything except kill one or both of them, or he would have tried it back in the culvert. But he has no ideas, no clue where to start, or what to do. He should have asked Dean, Dean would have known. He likes all this mechanic tool-y stuff, knows about it.
His neurons start sparking at the thought, and he gets out of the warm, warm car again, goes around to the trunk and drags Dean’s toolbox forward. Hammer, screwdrivers, monkey wrench, simple wrench, pliers, crowbar, a handful of lock picks strewn helter-skelter through the box, old plastic peanut butter jars now filled with screws, nails, washers, nuts and bolts, Dean’s new drill (he wouldn’t leave Home Depot without it) and a box of drill bits that Sam had to pay for (also Home Depot, and Dean still owes him).
But nothing to help Dean. Sam rubs at his face, feels water dripping through his soaked clothes onto his back and pulls a cardboard box towards him. It’s where Dean keeps his bigger tools, the ones that won’t fit anywhere else, or the tools that are broken but he just won’t throw away. More often than not, the latter comprise of tools that were handed down to him by John.
There’s also a lot of Sam’s junk in there, Sam realizes, as he opens up the lid, things he’s forgotten about. An old, shabby yellow toolkit, the plastic kind kids who worship their brothers get for their birthdays and a book called Hammering for Morons that Dean bought after Sam managed to pulverize his thumb working for the neighbors over summer vacation ten or eleven years ago.
Under those, are a couple of ropes, a bigger crowbar, a handful of crucifixes that Sam had been looking for last week, three issues of the only magazine Dean buys religiously and two different types of jacks.
Sam grabs the car jacks. One’s huge, a bottle jack for heavy metal work, when Dean wants to get under the car and really be able to see, but the other is smaller, a tire jack, and Sam grabs the handle and cranks it, watching a thick bar of metal extend. It looks right. It looks like it could, if forced, widen the culvert bars.
Sam slams the trunk shut, goes around to the front again, checks on Michael (still asleep) and locks the doors, before racing away.
He doesn’t notice the rain as he runs. Doesn’t notice the bursts of incandescent lightning, the raging thunder. Doesn’t notice that the park is now a fucking lake and that it takes him five more minutes getting back to the culvert than it did getting away from it. All he can think about is the mind-numbing cold, and how they need better jackets and as soon as this is over, he’s dragging Dean off to JCPenny to buy something worth their money.
His fingers are stiff, wrapped around flashlight and tire jack, his hair is plastered so firmly to his head he’s sure he looks bald. His ribs shudder inside his chest, his jaw aches from keeping it clenched so that his teeth don’t chatter.
So, yeah, he notices the cold.
He also notices that the culvert is closed.
Someone closed the culvert.
Sam stands there, knee-deep in water that is officially not going anywhere but up, and feels the earth fall away from under his feet. He walks up to the grating that is covering the entrance hole of the culvert slowly, disbelieving. Tugging at it a little, he expects it to fall obediently to his feet. His fingers skate over a thick lock that someone’s attached, realizes it hadn’t been there before and that someone must have brought it along in the last ten minutes, realizes that the grating had only been screwed on before, and someone must have seen that it had come off (been taken off) and decided to add the lock as a precaution.
He stands there and stares and doesn’t know what to do because Dean is in there and that’s where Sam has to be too, because these days it gets pretty fucking scary when they’re both not in the same place together.
He swallows and curls his fingers around the white, metal grating and leans close and tries to listen as hard as he can, tries to hear Dean’s voice. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to know that Dean’s stopped singing and-
He wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway, not from here. The storm’s too loud. The rain and the thunder and the rushing water-
He needs to get to the other end of the culvert.
**
Part 1 || Part 2
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam, Dean
Total Word Count: 11,536
Rating: R
Summary: They've spent three straight days on the road and Sam's had about enough. Dean is another story.
Note: Written because I needed to know how the reckless Dean of Family Remains became the relatively normal Dean of Criss Angel is a Douche Bag. Slightly AU because one of Dean's injuries couldn't have healed in the time between those two shows, buuuut... I didn't feel like changing it. Thanks to paxlux for the marvelous beta job. Based on an old episode of ER.
Three days.
It’s raining outside, loud and pounding, the sky trying to hurl itself to the ground. Drops slide down the windshield, managing only half the distance before they’re swept away by the squeaking wipers. Every time the window clears, Sam glances up at the sky, as if its load of dark clouds will have lightened since the last time he checked.
Three days, nine hours.
They’re parked under a streetlight, glimmering and orange. Outside, water is pooling in the zigzagging scars of the asphalt. The street and sidewalks glisten. Sam can make out his own rippling reflection in the slick layer of water on the cement.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes.
Next to him, Dean is fidgeting, one knee bobbing up and down, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. The streetlamp above them, their only light, flickers for a moment. Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out in a whoosh, sits back, puts his hands on his lap and stares out his window as the car rumbles quietly around them. The heater is on, but it really isn’t making any difference.
Three days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes and… fifteen seconds.
Not that Sam’s counting. Because, why would he be counting how long it’s been since he and Dean have stayed in a motel and gotten a good night’s sleep, warm in beds, under sheets, after showers? Who counts stupid things like that?
Not that Dean bothers sleeping any more at all.
Dean clears his throat, and Sam immediately turns his face away, looks outside his window. There’s a brief flash of lightning, and in the sudden illumination, Sam catches the sight of a few trees in the distance, swaying ominously.
The crack of thunder that follows echoes in Sam’s head even after it recedes, grumbling indignantly, into the night. Dean chooses that moment to say, “Sam.”
Sam tries to ignore him, stares out the window like the meaning of life lies somewhere just beyond the glass. But Dean knows how to be annoying and irritating.
He repeats Sam’s name, waits a moment and then swats Sam’s leg with the back of his hand. Sam can see Dean gazing at him out of the corner of his eye. Not this time, Sam thinks. He won’t give in. God knows they need to sleep, God knows Dean needs to sleep.
Now, if God would only do something about it, all would be right in the world.
Of course, Sam knows better than most how much God does.
Dean sighs, finally, says, “Come on, Sammy,” and turns away, glances out of his own window.
Sam’s resolve shatters and he faces Dean. “You can’t be considering this.”
Dean seems slightly more chipper, suddenly, but these days Dean looking “chipper” just means that he’s looking a little less frail and bag-eyed, a little less like soaked tissue paper.
“Gotta get rid of the kelpie,” he says to Sam. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
Sam stares at him incredulously. “Now? Now, when it sounds like it’s raining demonic pit bulls?”
Dean looks disgruntled and more than a little weary, like he just wants to go out and do the job and stop arguing about it. “If we don’t do it now, someone else dies-”
“No, Dean. No one else will die, not tonight, because no one is going to be near a culvert when there are flash flood warnings blaring over the radio. Not to mention the fact that sane people cover culverts when it’s raining, to stop psychos from going in there.”
Dean gazes at Sam for a long moment and then says, with a slight grin, “You calling me psycho?”
Sam can’t take the jokes. This is suicidal, even for Dean, and damn, does it worry him. He lifts a hand, attempts to squeeze the bridge of his nose into nothingness. “Let’s go find a motel. Please.”
In some other universe, Dean might have agreed. In this one, he just shakes his head, grips the steering wheel again. Sam sees his knuckles go white.
He doesn’t know what Dean’s thinking. This saving people thing, this hero complex, isn’t new, but it’s grown to disturbing levels. Sam doesn’t know where it’ll end, or with what, and at this point, he’s not sure what Dean’s intentions actually are: save as many innocents as he can, or get himself killed in the process. After the hunt in Nebraska, with the Carters, Sam’s seriously leaning towards the latter.
“You know what?” Dean says suddenly. “Screw you.” He reaches into the backseat, drags the duffle bag forwards, unzips it and digs around in it for a gun and the silver bullets. “I’ll do this myself.”
He shoves open the door, and the sound of the rain is suddenly magnified, a harsh tumult that feels like it’s coming from inside Sam’s head.
“Dean,” says Sam bemusedly, reaching out and grabbing Dean’s leg before he can get out.
“What, Sam? What? You want me to go find a motel? Get a good night’s sleep? Because that’s been happening a lot lately, right?”
“You can’t do this alone. You need cover,” replies Sam, trying to be the voice of reason, trying to remain calm.
“Yeah, I do need cover. So are you going to move your ass?” asks Dean, looking slightly furious. He’s half out of the car already, arm and leg getting drenched.
Sam sighs, looks out the window again and shakes his head. He can feel his face tightening, knows his lips are pressed together so hard they're probably going to fuse together.
“The culvert will be closed,” he says eventually. “If there was any point of going out now, I’d go with you. But all that’s going to happen out there is that we’re going to get pneumonia.”
There’s another flash of lightning and Dean pulls his soaking leg back into the car, tugs the door closed. It creaks comfortingly.
“Okay,” he says, dragging a hand across his face. “Okay. How about this - I’ll go check. If the culvert is open, I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go in together. If it isn’t, we’ll go find a room and turn in for the night.”
It’s not all right. It’s not all right at all. But it’s better than Dean going off on his own, and Sam has no doubts that he will if forced to.
Sam’s starting to get a shooting pain in his head. How did they come to this? Dean gets crazy, sometimes, sure.
But not like this.
“Sam?”
“Okay,” mutters Sam resignedly. “Okay.”
“Good,” says Dean. He opens the door again, stuffs the gun into his waistband, and gets out of the car.
“Come back to get me,” calls Sam, but he thinks his voice sinks under the slamming of the car door.
A few feet, and Dean’s stepped out of the orange halo of the streetlamp above them and into the blindingly dark night.
**
The rain sounds louder now that he’s alone, and Sam’s headache has morphed into a full-on migraine. He leans forward and turns the heater’s dial up, puts his hand near the vent. He can’t understand why the damn thing doesn’t work.
It’s like everything that defines Dean, makes him who he is, shatters when he does.
Everything.
Sam rubs his face, one hand cold, and the other warm. He presses his fingers into his eyes, thumbs into his temples, as if, somehow, the pain has a threshold over which it can’t pass and once it gets there, Sam will stop feeling it.
He can’t think straight with headaches. It all seems too bright, too sharp. And he needs to be able to think straight now because Dean can’t, because he’s spiraling in guilt and self-loathing and he won’t.
Sam reaches down for the duffle bag that’s sitting near the pedals, where Dean left it, rummages through it for his gun, and checks the magazine like Dean did. The way his luck’s been going lately, the culvert will be open.
Only Dean could find a kelpie-haunted culvert. Only Dean would be stupid enough to go after it when it looks like a flash flood outside, when it’s raining bucket after divine bucket, when he knows kelpies are spirits that drown their victims.
He’s got to stop thinking about this, but everything else there is to think about is ten times worse.
There’s a sudden flash of lightning so intense that it fills the car with unearthly white light. It steals Sam’s breath away, transports him to a day he never wants to remember, and his arm shoots out, grabs a hold of the armrest attached to the door. It takes only a second to vanish, but it’s long enough, and Sam doesn’t recover until the thunder has long since subsided. His heart races and he takes a deep breath, berating himself for losing control.
He really needs to sleep.
He really needs Dean to come back.
He pulls out his cell, peers at the time. It’s only been three minutes. They’re parked as close to the culvert as they can get by car, but the trek took them at least five minutes this morning. And it hadn’t been raining then.
The car makes an odd sound, and in the time it takes Sam to look over at the steering wheel and dashboard, it’s shuddered to a stop. The hot air abruptly vanishes and the windshield wipers squeak themselves into their default position. The windshield suddenly looks like it’s made of frosted glass.
“Come on,” mutters Sam, scooting over into the driver’s seat. He turns the key back to off, and then tries to start the car up again. It screeches loudly, rattles and fails again. Sam doesn’t remember ever hearing it sound like that before. He tries again, and then a third time, before sitting back and pounding the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
Everything breaks with Dean; and Sam can’t ever fix any of it.
He leans forward, rests his forehead on the steering wheel. It’s freezing, but seems to soothe his aching head.
It shouldn’t, not really. He can’t remember how many times he’d slept like this, or just sat like this, in between the time that Dean had died and Ruby had…
Sam squeezes his eyes shut tightly, wonders why he can’t stop thinking about this, when it’s the last thing he wants swimming around in his head.
And with that thought, Dean’s voice starts up inside his head. Like always, it’s not the words that hurt Sam so much as the sound.
Because it’s not like Sam hadn’t known already.
He just hadn’t believed it.
He expected demons to lie, expected them to say things that would throw their captors off. At first, they’d just gone on and on about what would your brother think of you now, Sammy? and what a disappointment and send me back - Dean’s screams are soul music. But near the end of the third month, when Sam had just started getting a handle on his powers, when he’d stopped needing Ruby’s intervention every now and then, the demons has started employing new tactics.
Or so he’d thought.
They’d be tied to chairs and bound by devil’s traps and Sam would be mustering that feeling, that rawness that pulled everything together, a tingling in his heart and his arm and his mind. The demon would be spitting its essence, trying to swallow it back against all force, and just before Sam got it, just before he managed to find that niche in his powers, the demon would start shouting and screaming and jeering. Your brother’s pretty good at the Hell rumba, Sammy. ‘Course, you Winchesters, you monsters would be. The things he thinks up - I wonder if he sits in his little corner of the cesspit and plans every cut he’s going to make, every organ he’s going to pull, every scream he’s going to wrench from some poor soul.
And that was always when Sam would lose it, and Ruby would have to pull out her knife.
She reprimanded him for allowing their words to get to him. Demons lie, she said, you should know. Sam always wondered if she knew how ironic her words were, and if it should worry him.
But half a month of it, and Sam adjusted.
He hadn’t truly believed their words then. He knew where Dean was, sure. Knew that Hell meant torture. Though he couldn’t imagine what they were doing to him down there, his mind was pretty good at inserting gruesome scenarios into his nightmares. Sam hadn’t woken shouting like that since the visions.
But the possibility that Dean was torturing souls? It had never even crossed his mind.
It made Sam sick, thinking about it. Not because Dean had started doling it out, but because Sam hadn’t believed it to be true. Because he hadn’t thought, then, well, if he is, I don’t give a fuck; he had thought, not Dean, never Dean.
It felt like Dean would be able to see right through him and realize that Sam had known and that he hadn’t believed and Dean would feel like he’d let his family down even more.
But Dean hasn’t, as far as he can tell. Dean’s too broken to see anything clearly.
If he doesn’t bounce back…
Sam knows he only has himself to blame, though he’d like to blame everyone else: the angels, Lilith...
He could have saved Dean.
He should have.
A part of him feels like he should be raging after Dean’s confession, going after anything and everything, the way he was when Dean was gone. He is seething, somewhere, and it’s bound to come up for air sooner or later, but right now, there are more important things to think about.
Like Dean and where his head is and what it’ll take him to go back normal.
Or what passes for “normal” these days, which is even more abnormal for them than it usually is.
**
Sam’s dawdling in his thoughts, drifting further and further towards sleep, when someone starts hammering on the window. He jerks up, grabs blindly for a gun, head snapping towards the window so fast that he cricks his neck.
There’s a boy at the window. Not Dean, just a little boy, hair plastered to his head, eyes so wide they take up half his face.
“Help!” He’s shouting, screaming, hysterical. “You have to help!”
“Okay!” says Sam. “Okay.”
He opens the door, says, “Christo,” and it’s a mark of how out of it this kid is that he doesn’t even bothering questioning that statement. But he doesn’t flinch either, so Sam’s pretty sure he’s safe. He keeps his hand on his gun anyway.
“The - the - the man!” shouts the kid, grabbing Sam’s jacket with a wet hand and pointing behind him. “H-h-he needs - he needs-” The kid is shivering and shaking and he can’t string two words together without sucking in a heaving breath.
Sam reaches for him, says, “Hey, hey - you need to calm down.” The boy nods, tries to breathe. Sam didn’t notice it before, what with all the rain, but tears are streaming down his face.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Michael.”
“Okay, Michael. Deep breaths.”
He nods, takes in air through his nose, mimicking Sam.
“Okay. Tell me what happened,” Sam says.
“The man,” begins Michael, talking so fast he keeps eating his words. “I was - I was playing and I saw a light, and then there was a horse or - then a-a man came, and he opened - and I followed him and he’s stuck! He told me t-to c-come here, and l-look for a b-black car!”
Sam just stares at the kid. “What?”
“There was a man,” Michael repeats, swallowing hard, chest still heaving. “He s-saved me, but the - the water came and he f-fell and got stuck, and he dropped his phone! He told m-me to tell you! You have to go help him!”
He went after it himself. He went after it himself.
Sam’s forgotten how to breathe.
**
Sam gets out of the car, yanks open the door to the back, and herds the boy in before going around to the trunk and pulling out their other duffle bag, the one they use for clothes. He ducks into the backseat, where the kid is shivering and staring at him with wide eyes, wrenches the bag’s zipper open.
He throws a shirt and a pair of pants at Michael, tells him to get out of his wet things and dry his hair with something, and then gets into the front seat, abuses the car until it starts. He turns the heater all the way up and hands Michael his cell phone, tells him to call 911 if he’s not back in fifteen minutes.
The boy nods and then bursts into tears.
Sam has no choice but to leave him like that.
**
He takes it back. It’s not raining pit bulls; it’s raining hellhounds.
There aren’t enough streetlights in this part of town, and the ones that they do have are set too far apart. The deluge is making it even harder to see in the dark, and when Sam gets to the other end of the mostly-flooded street, the curb almost trips him.
He can’t believe Dean went and tried to take the thing by his fucking self.
The culvert is in a large, fenced-in park, near the back where there are no swings and slides, and no sand to play in. This end of it is small, a little hard to get into, but not impossible. The other end is larger, set at the bottom of a mini-valley, and though it’s only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, it takes fifteen minutes to get there by car. It’s also harder to get down to that one, which is why probably why the kelpie stays near this one. People are more likely to walk into the end that’s easy to get to.
So far, it’s managed to drown two men who had followed it. The kelpie is a shape shifter, and one of its pet forms, a woman, is used especially for seduction. The city doesn’t know that the men had drowned though, because the kelpie doesn’t leave traces. Its victims are its prey.
All the city is sure about is that two men have gone missing in the park. They’ve launched an investigation and have taken to closing the culvert whenever possible, just in case. The kelpie, though, isn’t easily subdued. Removing a grating isn’t all that difficult for it.
Sam runs through the park, over grass and then sand and then more grass. It’s freezing and he’s already soaked through and there are large pools of water wherever the ground depresses. The slide is acting like a waterfall.
Lightning is flashing at regular intervals and if there weren’t so many trees and metal things around, Sam would be worried about getting hit. The sounds of thunder are deafening.
The path to the culvert is slightly downhill and water is literally streaming down it. Sam stumbles twice, wipes water out of his eyes, pushes his hair back and then catches sight of the culvert’s opening. Water is rushing into it. The grating is lying slightly to the left, and it wasn’t like that earlier in the day. Sam feels his heart clench.
The thought that Dean stood there and removed it himself is unfathomable.
The water probably just carried it there.
Sam splashes through the rising water and ducks into the culvert. Inside, the storm is muffled, but it sounds like he’s standing near rapids. It’s as dark inside as it was outside, and Sam kicks himself for not bringing a flashlight.
“Dean?” Sam calls. His voice echoes away, but he doubts Dean can hear him. He can hardly hear himself. He drags his legs forward. The water is like ice, and it’s already risen to a couple of inches below his knees.
“Dean?” he shouts again, as he half walks, half runs. He pulls his gun out; he can’t remember Michael telling him if Dean had killed the kelpie.
“Dean!” He’s about twenty feet into the culvert now. Dean should be able to hear him; he can’t have got farther than this. There’s a grill dividing the cement tunnel in half and Sam’s pretty sure he’s near it.
Just then, he hears Dean’s voice. “Over here, Lassie!”
Sam picks up speed, splashing like anything. It’s only luck that keeps him from falling and cracking his head, and Sam’s not questioning it. Luck owes him, anyway.
Dean comes into view a second later.
He’s sitting down, right near that dividing grate, the water slowly rising to chest level. He looks up at Sam, gives a half-cocky grin.
“Knew you’d find me,” he says. “Kid g-get back in one piece?” His teeth are chattering, and though he’s unabashedly trying to hide the fact, Sam can see the tremor of his lips.
And that dormant rage Sam was thinking about earlier? Suddenly rears its ugly head.
It’s a mark of how much he’s been internalizing over the past seven or eight months that he doesn’t deck Dean there and then for doing this to himself.
“What happened?” he says as he makes his way towards Dean, because he doesn’t know what else to say, except you asshole.
“Found the kid in here - the k-kelpie was closing in,” Dean says, and it’s unusual. Sam was expecting him to say long story or just get me out of here, I’ll tell you later. Something in his face must have changed Dean’s mind. “It hit me j-just before I shot it, and I couldn’t grab a hold of anything.”
The current isn’t really more powerful here; Sam can feel it tugging at him, but it’s not enough to drag him away. He realizes that something is blocking the flow of water to the other end of the culvert - that’s why Dean is chest-deep here. The current must have been stronger earlier, when there wasn't any obstruction.
Sam reaches out, tries to find purchase on the curving walls as he walks, until the divider is within reach.
He grabs on to its thick metal rods, looks down at his brother and says, “How are you stuck?” He prides himself on not adding you fucking moron to the end of that sentence.
“M-my leg. It w-went through the grill… the current was stronger before,” mutters Dean. For the first time, Sam hears the slight slur in his voice, and tries to do the math. How long has Dean been sitting in frigid water? His headache returns as soon as he tries to pull up some numbers, so he gives up.
“I think it’s broken,” Dean adds. He’s doing a good job of not stuttering too much.
“Okay,” says Sam, trying to hide the strain in his voice. He pushes his gun into his waistband, squats carefully and reaches into the water, groping for Dean’s leg. Dean sets his hand on Sam’s shoulder to anchor him, though Sam’s not sure what help Dean’ll be if he slips. His hand is heavy on Sam’s shoulder as it is.
“Which leg?” Sam asks.
“Right.”
Sam finds Dean’s thigh in the murky water, runs his hand very slowly down it to his knee. A couple of inches below Dean’s knee, Sam fingers graze over something that feels sharp and splintery. His toes bunch together in his shoes and he almost loses his dinner right there.
Swallowing hard, he says, “Yeah, it’s a bad break.”
He realizes Dean is mumbling expletives under his breath and squeezing Sam’s shoulder. Doesn’t say sorry, because really? This is all Dean’s fault in the first place.
He pulls a hand out of the water, drags it over his face and crouches there, trying to think. He doesn’t know what to do that won’t cause Dean more pain. Now that he looks, really looks, he can see the grill is pretty well obstructed. Tree branches and old Chinese take-out boxes, and ripped up pieces of cardboard and who knows what else, all jammed into the little squares of the lattice. No wonder the water isn’t getting through.
He turns a little and catches Dean watching him.
“Was this the fucking plan?” he snaps, louder than he’d intended.
Dean’s hand slips off of Sam’s shoulder. He doesn’t look apologetic. If anything, his face takes on a glacial appearance. “What, you wanted me to leave the-”
“Was he even in the culvert before you got there?” asks Sam suddenly.
Dean falls into stony silence.
“You took the grating off yourself, didn’t you?”
“L-look, Sam-”
But Sam just shakes his head and mutters, “Forget it. I’m assuming you want to get out of here?”
Dean doesn’t reply, and Sam doesn’t wait. He reaches into the water again and carefully grabs hold of Dean’s leg, one hand on his knee, the other just below the break and tries to pull as hard as he can without causing excess pain.
Dean lets out a groan and snarls an opprobrious remark on Sam’s parentage. His leg, on the other hand, doesn’t even budge.
The water is steadily rising and Dean’s shivering even more; Sam’s starting to feel the chills himself. He pulls his hands out of the water and grabs the metals rods again. They’re all vertical, and if he can pull them apart, Dean might be able to pull his leg out. Sam yanks with all his strength, feels his muscles straining, but the rods don’t give way.
“Okay,” he says, breathlessly. “Okay, I’m going to go and get some - Dean!”
Dean’s eyes are at half-mast, his head resting against the culvert wall. He’s still shivering, but calling that a good sign would be ironic. Sam clutches Dean’s jacket, shakes him hard.
“Wake up, Dean! Hey!”
“I am awake, stupid,” murmurs Dean. And he is awake, to some extent. Just not awake enough.
Sam cups a handful of water into his palm and splashes Dean’s face with it. Dean flinches, blinks and says, “What the fuck, Sam?”
“Stay awake!” says Sam harshly. “Do you understand me? Stay awake, goddammit!”
“O-okay, okay. I’m awake,” says Dean, a little more alert. He squints at Sam, like he’s having trouble bring him into focus. “J-just g-getting bored waiting for you t-to get a move on.”
“Yeah,” says Sam, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to think above the sounds of water lapping off the culvert walls, above the headache that’s causing his temples to throb in time with his pulse.
He has to go back to the car, get some rope or… something that’ll help him get Dean out of here. But how is he supposed to leave if Dean might fall asleep, really fall asleep, while he’s gone?
The best way to stay awake is to keep talking.
Sam opens his eyes. “You dropped your phone?”
“N-no, I-I just thought it’d be more exciting to send a k-kid to get you rather - rather than just call you up,” says Dean sarcastically. “L-like the movies.”
He falls silent, almost breathless, and Sam gazes at him, taking in his paleness and the goose bumps on his neck.
“Okay,” Sam says firmly. “Sing something.”
Dean stares at Sam. “You - you been in the water t-too long?”
“Would you just start singing?”
Dean tries to roll his eyes. “I-I’m fine, Sam. Feeling warmer already, I s-swear.”
“No, Dean, you’re not fine. And I need to leave and you need to stay the fuck awake, and this is the only thing I can think of. So start singing.”
He glares at Dean until Dean starts mumbling something that sounds like the lyrics of Whole Lotta Love under his breath.
Sam stands up, water cascading off of him, and says, “Louder. I wanna be able to hear you at the end of the culvert.”
Dean swallows, nods a little and increases his volume as much as he possibly can. He’s stuttering and quivering and he has to keep stopping for breath, but it’s good. It’s good.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t stop singing,” says Sam, and he turns around, starts hurrying back the way he came, Dean’s weak voice pushing him on.
Outside, it’s raining harder, if anything. As there’s nowhere for the water to go, what with the blockage in the tunnel, the park is slowly being submerged.
Sam gets back to the Impala in record time, sloshing through as fast as he can, not following any particular route, jumping the fence that encloses the park when he gets to it and almost rendering himself sterile in the process.
He thanks the powers that be that Dean had the sense to park under a streetlight, because Sam would have missed the car entirely otherwise. Though, perhaps it isn’t an entirely good thing, as Dean apparently used all of the sense he possessed in that decision.
He’s pretty sure that it’s been more than fifteen minutes since he left Michael in the car, but there are no police cars around. When he unlocks the cars, he realizes why. Michael’s drifted off to sleep, looking miniscule in Dean’s shirt and pants, but also dry and less pale.
Sam leans into the back and gently checks the boy’s pulse. It’s stable, which is great. One less thing for Sam to worry about. He extricates his phone out of the kid’s lax fingers and sets it in the glove compartment. Hopefully if he can’t find the phone, he won’t call the cops, which is better than Sam waking him to give him instructions.
Sam rummages around in the arsenal duffle bag, looking for something that’ll help Dean. He spots the flashlights, grabs one of them, but leaves the guns. He doesn’t seriously think shooting at the metal rods is going to do anything except kill one or both of them, or he would have tried it back in the culvert. But he has no ideas, no clue where to start, or what to do. He should have asked Dean, Dean would have known. He likes all this mechanic tool-y stuff, knows about it.
His neurons start sparking at the thought, and he gets out of the warm, warm car again, goes around to the trunk and drags Dean’s toolbox forward. Hammer, screwdrivers, monkey wrench, simple wrench, pliers, crowbar, a handful of lock picks strewn helter-skelter through the box, old plastic peanut butter jars now filled with screws, nails, washers, nuts and bolts, Dean’s new drill (he wouldn’t leave Home Depot without it) and a box of drill bits that Sam had to pay for (also Home Depot, and Dean still owes him).
But nothing to help Dean. Sam rubs at his face, feels water dripping through his soaked clothes onto his back and pulls a cardboard box towards him. It’s where Dean keeps his bigger tools, the ones that won’t fit anywhere else, or the tools that are broken but he just won’t throw away. More often than not, the latter comprise of tools that were handed down to him by John.
There’s also a lot of Sam’s junk in there, Sam realizes, as he opens up the lid, things he’s forgotten about. An old, shabby yellow toolkit, the plastic kind kids who worship their brothers get for their birthdays and a book called Hammering for Morons that Dean bought after Sam managed to pulverize his thumb working for the neighbors over summer vacation ten or eleven years ago.
Under those, are a couple of ropes, a bigger crowbar, a handful of crucifixes that Sam had been looking for last week, three issues of the only magazine Dean buys religiously and two different types of jacks.
Sam grabs the car jacks. One’s huge, a bottle jack for heavy metal work, when Dean wants to get under the car and really be able to see, but the other is smaller, a tire jack, and Sam grabs the handle and cranks it, watching a thick bar of metal extend. It looks right. It looks like it could, if forced, widen the culvert bars.
Sam slams the trunk shut, goes around to the front again, checks on Michael (still asleep) and locks the doors, before racing away.
He doesn’t notice the rain as he runs. Doesn’t notice the bursts of incandescent lightning, the raging thunder. Doesn’t notice that the park is now a fucking lake and that it takes him five more minutes getting back to the culvert than it did getting away from it. All he can think about is the mind-numbing cold, and how they need better jackets and as soon as this is over, he’s dragging Dean off to JCPenny to buy something worth their money.
His fingers are stiff, wrapped around flashlight and tire jack, his hair is plastered so firmly to his head he’s sure he looks bald. His ribs shudder inside his chest, his jaw aches from keeping it clenched so that his teeth don’t chatter.
So, yeah, he notices the cold.
He also notices that the culvert is closed.
Someone closed the culvert.
Sam stands there, knee-deep in water that is officially not going anywhere but up, and feels the earth fall away from under his feet. He walks up to the grating that is covering the entrance hole of the culvert slowly, disbelieving. Tugging at it a little, he expects it to fall obediently to his feet. His fingers skate over a thick lock that someone’s attached, realizes it hadn’t been there before and that someone must have brought it along in the last ten minutes, realizes that the grating had only been screwed on before, and someone must have seen that it had come off (been taken off) and decided to add the lock as a precaution.
He stands there and stares and doesn’t know what to do because Dean is in there and that’s where Sam has to be too, because these days it gets pretty fucking scary when they’re both not in the same place together.
He swallows and curls his fingers around the white, metal grating and leans close and tries to listen as hard as he can, tries to hear Dean’s voice. He doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to know that Dean’s stopped singing and-
He wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway, not from here. The storm’s too loud. The rain and the thunder and the rushing water-
He needs to get to the other end of the culvert.
**
Part 1 || Part 2