Due Supernatural [NC17] Sam/Dean, Part Five & Epilogue
Sam woke up slowly, and a bunch of times he just fell right back asleep. Dean told himself he was done getting excited every time Sam’s eyelids flickered open, but he’d always been good at lying to himself.
A skill he was going to put to good use the instant Sam woke up.
“Dean…?”
Which was apparently now. Dean cleared his throat and fumbled with the remote until he’d punched mute, because if he ran to the bed sighing ‘Sammy’ like a lovesick girl, he was going to have to shoot himself. “Hey, man. Seriously, is daytime TV any good in Canada? Because ours is shit. If I have to see that stupid fabric softener teddy bear one more time…” Shut up. Dean blushed and felt stupid.
Sam hummed instead of answering, frowning at their surroundings. “Where are we?”
“Northwest Memorial Hospital.” Okay, he could do this. Dean chucked the remote on the bed and stood, thumbs hooked in his pockets as he leaned against the wall closer to Sam and all those blippy beepy things that were still easier to look at than Sam’s face. Go figure. He hadn’t been able to stare at anything else when his eyes were closed. “Um,” he added quickly when Sam stayed silent, patient. “Best I can figure it, the one we chased out of Gordon came back with a new…” He waved a hand in a general people-shape. “And I didn’t get you out of the way in time.”
That hurt to say, even as many times as he’d practiced it in his head. As many times as it’d thudded through his brain while he pressed his shirt against Sam’s side to keep his blood where it belonged while he screamed at the 911 Operator and Dispatch and Sam in turn. In between counting every hoarse breath Sam took he figured out their story, and rattled it off now.
“Zeddmore called when your prints didn’t turn up in the system but as it turns out that was some sort of computer error, which Inspector Tiel down at the Consulate was willing to verify. Right about that time I got an anonymous call saying one of the suspects in the murder and missing persons investigation I was conducting on Meg Masters was sighted entering the Old Main Post Office, and you offered to come along as backup seeing as it was probably just a hoax. We busted in to find our suspect, Dr. Gordon Walker, dead on arrival, the victim of a brutal animal attack. Following the sounds of a fight deeper into the building, we came across an as yet unidentified squatter standing over the body of one Mr.-” He had to check his notes, and his tongue so he wouldn’t call the yellow-eyed bastard names. “Mr. Frederic Lehne, who had apparently antagonized the homeless man’s wolfhound into killing Meg Masters, held there for reasons unknown. The man claimed he’d had no choice but to shoot Mr. Lehn. When I identified myself as police he panicked and a fire-fight broke out. The man threw his gun through the window when he realized he was out of bullets-both the weapon and the wolfhound are still at large-and when he stabbed you, I had to use force to stop him.”
Yeah, force. Six bullets and the guy still hadn’t gone down until he’d gotten sick of Dean yelling the Lord’s Prayer in Latin on repeat-who knew, it paid to go undercover-and disappeared in a scream of black smoke. Near as Dean could figure it had seen the bullet hole in Azazel’s head and decided not to risk it.
Dean was so caught up in talking he forgot he wasn’t looking at Sam.
It was worse seeing Sam awake, with dark swollen bruises bone white on the cheekbone where he’d been pistol-whipped and his finger in a splint, IV pumping God knows what into his other arm while the blankets thankfully hid the bandaged stab wound in his side. Sam’s eyes watched him from underneath it all, calm and clear and almost sky blue in the weird neon lights. The blade had hit a rib instead of any vital organs, thank Christ, but still-it was too fucking close.
Dean was too fucking close.
“So, uh.” He cleared his throat and snapped his gaze back to his shitkickers. “Cas isn’t going to send up any red flags with the whole…Dudley Doright…thing, in return for me not rounding up his actual Mounties on drug charges-apparently not too many of you guys are willing to set up shop in Chicago, which is…” Great, he meant to say. Only. Yeah.
Dean took a breath. “You came over with a legal passport, so that’s all good. As far as Canada knows, you haven’t done anything wrong. So you’ll be able to get your old life back no problemo.”
…Problemo? Jesus.
“Dean,” Sam started, and shit, Dean couldn’t stand how soft his voice was.
“Goddamn it, Sam, I’m not stupid,” he snapped, shoving off the wall so he could pace. “You’ve known me a grand total of two and a half days if you count the time you were unconscious, which I might have to just to make it sound less pathetic. You might not have family back in Canada but you sure as hell have friends, and college credits, and I know I’m not enough to make anyone stick around. But I’m gonna ask anyway, because if I don’t I’ll regret it and I’ve always been a glutton for punishment.”
He took a deep breath full of the sounds of heart monitors and stopped at the end of the bed, a beat-up, unrefined flatfoot with experimental hair.
“Samuel Winchester,” he said, meeting Sam’s wide eyes even though it was going to wind up killing him, “please stay for me.”
And there came the silence.
“Dean-” Sam gasped, breaking it, and actually started struggling to sit up because he was a moron, “Dean-You-”
“Down!” Dean snapped, alarmed, at his side in an instant to grasp Sam’s broad shoulders and pin them to the bed. “You tear out your fucking stitches and so help me-”
But it turned out Sam didn’t want to sit up so much as get Dean closer, wrap his good hand around the back of Dean’s neck and haul him in for a kiss so scorching it about fused Dean’s spine. The angle was awkward, Sam’s mouth tasted like stale death, and there were about a million tubes and wires and, oh yeah, a knife wound Dean could fuck up by breathing wrong, and it still took everything he had not to climb on the bed and rock against Sam until everything was okay.
“I’m on a lot of painkillers right now,” Sam said when they pulled apart, and caught Dean’s heart with a squeeze and a blinding grin before it even got the chance to fall. “But even I know I can get a student visa and attend college in the states.”
“Oh.” Dean tried his best not to shiver when Sam’s hand followed the leather strip around his neck to the gold amulet, fingers closing tight around it to tug Dean down. “Got a particular state in mind?”
Sam’s dimples were fucking glorious. “Whichever one you’re in.”
“Yeah, that works for me,” Dean whispered, and pressed his smiling mouth to Sam’s.
Of course it wasn’t that easy-Sam really had been on hardcore painkillers at the time, so everything was a bit hazy except for the part where Dean asked him to stay. (“Begged,” Sam teased later, and was rewarded with a growling Dean pressing him into the couch muttering, “Show you beg,” between kisses. Which was just one of the many hardships that came with living in the land of the symbolically free.) It took several months to get the paperwork in order, and one more for Sam’s scholarships to come through, and he had to wait most of it out in Canada while Dean threatened to sell his left kidney to get him on a plane.
“I just miss you,” he grumbled once, and Sam could see the embarrassed duck of Dean’s head as if he were right there in the cabin with him.
It hit him again like a punch to the chest just what he was doing, but a strange sort of hit that knocked out the tight knot of worry and panic that bubbled up in him sometimes when he thought of everything he was leaving behind.
“You know,” he said, crossing his arms so he could feel the pull of Dean’s bracelet against his wrist, “of all the organs you could be selling, I don’t have a particular attachment to your left kidney. Your right one, on the other hand…”
“Oh, ow, the burn.” He could hear Dean grin down the line, mirrored it without conscious thought.
“Don’t joke, Dean. Stanley and I have a special bond.”
“You’re naming my kidneys now?”
“Just the right one.”
“Yeah, well, Ben and I are feeling really unloved.” He heard the clink of Dean’s fridge as he reached for a beer and the soft gasp for air after Dean took a swig.
“Not fair.”
“Not a clue what you’re talking about,” Dean lied.
“I wouldn’t get too attached to Ben, there, if you’re planning on affording the cable packages I need to watch curling.”
“You don’t even like curling!”
“I’m Canadian. I’m not allowed to hate curling.”
Dean took another gulp like he needed it, sighing around his mouthful. “Did you miss the part where I admitted to missing your dumb Canuck face?”
It was Sam’s turn to duck his head. “I thought you had a strict No Chick Flicks policy on our telephone calls.”
“Dude, that was so a precursor to phonesex. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I miss you too,” Sam said around a slow smile he felt down to his toes.
Dean was quiet just long enough to let Sam know he’d heard. Then, “Shut up and tell me what you’re wearing, bitch.”
“Jerk,” Sam responded instantly, and told him.
THE END
THE ART
THE MASTERPOST
THE SOUNDTRACK
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