Fic: Deeper Down, (Sam/Dean, R) Part 1 of 2
Title: Deeper Down
Author: smalltrolven
Artist: bluefire986
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5158
Warnings: None
Author’s Note: Not my characters, only my words. Written for the 2021 wincest-reverse bang. Information about abandoned mines from Information from KUNR and Nevada Mines Bureau. Thank you so much bluefire986 for the beautiful and inspiring artwork and for all your work on this challenge.
Summary: It’s just a few weeks after the stupid Mystery Spot in Florida, and all the things that he hasn’t told Dean about are still looming, but they’re already back hunting a ghost in an abandoned mine in Nevada like nothing’s changed. Sam doesn’t want to let Dean out of his sight for a second, and Dean’s already grumbling about it because he doesn’t know why Sam’s being so weird.
Check out the awesome art masterpost here on LJ, or over on AO3
Read it over on AO3 right here.
*****
It was blazing hot out in the Nevada desert, but the mine was blessedly cool inside once they’d gotten out of the harsh sun. Dean had complained about having to haul a lot of water with them, but Sam had insisted on it, just to be safe. They accessed the abandoned and likely haunted mine through a bat gate that had been installed by the BLM years and years ago. The metal had rusted and it was fairly easy to pull it away from its moorings just enough to squeeze through.
Dean tried hard not to think too much about the possibility of there being actual bats in this particular tunnel, even though Sam was going on about how the conservation of bats was so important to the whole interconnected web of desert life. In Dean’s opinion, bats were akin to pigeons, just rats with wings, and he’d rather tangle with the ghost they were searching for instead, thanks.
While they walked down and down through the old tunnel, Sam babbled about his trip with friends during his college years to the gold-mining ghost town, Bodie, just over the state line into California from where they were now up on the side of Bodie Peak. Sam said something about how they could probably even see the roofs of the ghost town if the glare wasn’t so bad.
His brother talked about seeing the emptiness of the old buildings in the ghost town, how it had been all laid out and built and then just abandoned as soon as the gold seam was tapped out. How it was such a permanent and well kept up place, but how he could feel the ghosts of all those killed to build the place and then lived and died in the violent town that came up around the mine.
Dean tried to listen the best he could, because Sam pretty much never talked about this stuff. But really, all he could think about was Sam at college, with his friends, on a fun trip, not a serious hunting trip, just goofing around on a side day trip from their campsite in Yosemite. How he’d never gotten to do that once, not by himself or with Sam. The thought gnawed at him, that he’d never been able to give Sam that kind of experience, but the kid had gone and gotten it for himself, and wasn’t that just the usual thing now. Sam didn’t need him like he used to, that much was plain. He couldn’t listen to it anymore, and hurried out of earshot of Sam. The very next step he took onto yet another board floor was actually into a big pit of nothing as the rotten board collapsed under his weight.
Dean didn’t have much time to realize he was falling before he hit bottom and then he knew nothing but pain and almost instantly-total blackness. He hadn’t even had time to yell out a warning as he fell.
Dean’s flashlight rolled away from him, coming to rest so that it was shining on his face. Not that he noticed, because he was passed out cold.
****
Sam heard the noise of Dean’s fall, yelled out his brother’s name and ran forward, searching desperately for where he had fallen. He slowed just in time around a corner and caught the edge of the formerly covered pit in his flashlight, he just barely stopped, teetering for a moment. He could glimpse Dean’s face lit up by his flashlight down at the bottom. His eyes were closed and there was something shiny on his temple, likely blood. From this distance he couldn’t quite see if Dean was still breathing or not.
Sam stepped back and panted, trying his best to tamp down his panic at that possibility. It was too familiar, this instant flood of cold/hot panic, after going through the exact thing, all those times in Florida. Sam knew that Dean needed him at his best right now, he could lose his shit later. He took a deep breath to steady himself and shone his flashlight over the edge a second time, it was a really deep hole and he hoped that the rope he had tied on his backpack would reach that far.
Sam unslung his backpack and set it against the closest wood beam, the series of them disappearing back down the tunnel into the darkness. They were so far in the mine at this point he couldn’t see the little pinprick of daylight of the entrance any more. He lashed the rope around the bottom of one of the wood supports. As he tied the rope around his waist he mentally crossed his fingers that the old wood of the beam wasn’t as rotten as the floor Dean had fallen through and that it would hold his weight.
This thing had to be a winze, just like his research had warned about on the Nevada Mines Bureau website. A winze was a vertical shaft sunk inside a tunnel, usually these were boarded over. But, after all this time, the boards were decayed and so it was a perfect trap that his brother had just fallen through. These shafts could be up to six hundred feet deep so Sam prepared himself for what might be coming next if there was any way for Dean to fall down even further.
He re-shouldered his backpack and then leaned over the edge beginning to rappel his way down. He mentally gave a thank-you shout-out to dear old dad for teaching them this technique. When he’d tried rock climbing in Yosemite with Brady on that long-ago trip on spring break he’d just been yammering about to Dean, they’d had all sorts of fancy equipment, but if you knew the right sorts of knots, you could make do. That was the Winchester Way™ of course. He slowly lowered himself and got within five feet of the bottom. He flicked his flashlight over Dean’s unmoving body and swallowed his fear down once more, still unable to see if Dean’s chest was moving.
“If this is you again, you fucking trickster, I’m swear I’m going to enjoy staking you all over again,” Sam grumbled under his breath.
He steadied himself, untied the knot and jumped down to the floor of the pit. His feet slipped a little in the gravelly sand as he landed. He quickly crouched next to Dean and reached out a shaking hand to check for a pulse on the side of his neck. At first he couldn’t locate it and then finally his fingers felt a thready beat there under Dean’s clammy skin. “Dean, it’s going to be okay, the rope was long enough to get me down here.”
Dean didn’t respond, his breathing was kind of haphazard, not a steady rise and fall of his chest like usual. Sam crouched down closer and put his ear near Dean’s mouth, he could make out small gusts of air passing his brother’s unmoving lips in what sounded like attempts at speaking. Maybe he wasn’t completely out.
“I’m going to check you over, Dean. If it hurts, you squeeze my hand, okay?” He took one of Dean’s hands in his own and used the free one to pat and poke his way over Dean’s body. There wasn’t blood anywhere except his temple, and his arms and legs seemed to be unbroken. He pressed his way along his brother’s rib cage and on the lower left he could feel a slight give in the bone that shouldn’t be there. There might be a broken rib or something.
A small groan came out of Dean when he pressed on that spot again, but Dean didn’t squeeze his hand. So this was good in one way. Knowing the location of an injury helped, and so did Dean not being completely knocked out and incapacitated. If he was going to get them both out of here alive, he’d need Dean’s help.
“Dean, I heard you groan, so I’m assuming you’re still with me. Can you squeeze my hand if you hear me?”
There was a slight change in the pressure between their hands and Sam’s heart soared with the relief. “I’m going to figure out a way to get you out, you’re going to have to wake up enough to do it though.”
Dean groaned in answer and to Sam the groan ended in what sounded like a long drawn-out version of Sammy.
Hearing it made Sam smile. “It’s Sam, c’mon even you know that by now, Dean.”
He busied himself with making a seat harness out of Dean’s backpack, slipping his brother’s legs through the shoulder straps and then tying it all up with Dean’s rope. He grabbed Dean’s hand again and spoke quietly to him.
“I’ve made you a harness, Dean, and now I have to try to get your rope tied up to mine.” There wasn’t an answer from Dean, no moan, no hand squeeze, no try at words. He was completely out again, not a surprise with this kind of head injury.
Taking the time to rest and center himself before attempting to get Dean up and out of the pit, Sam drank from a water bottle and thought about how glad he was that they hadn’t yet encountered the ghost they’d been looking for. He remembered the advice to talk a lot when you’re trying to bring someone out of being knocked out, so he said the rest of his thoughts out loud, his own voice echoing back to him, strangely grown-up sounding to his own ears.
He went over all the reasons they were likely stuck in this place. He talked about learning the word winze, and all the research he’d done about this area, how the records were incomplete because there were more than ten thousand of these abandoned mines. As he talked he came to the realization that they’d probably gone into the mine next door to the one he’d been guiding them to, the one where the ghost was supposed to be. Sam remembered that he’d noticed there were two separate mines very close together on the maps and it had been confusing which one was which when they’d found it, way out in the desert. The other mine must be connected to this one somehow, probably near where they were now that he thought about it. But it was just as well, he didn’t want to have to battle a ghost while trying to haul an injured Dean out of this place.
Sam drank from his water bottle again and checked Dean’s pulse. His brother’s skin wasn’t so clammy now, and his pulse seemed slightly stronger, his breath coming more regular and a little deeper. He kept his hand on Dean’s chest, feeling comforted that it was still moving up and down. He wasn’t gone, this wasn’t like out in the motel parking lot in Florida, this was not the same thing.
“You know, back there, in Florida, it was a whole lot worse for me than I told you. I know you probably already guessed that because of how I’ve been acting all clingy lately. But it wasn’t just because of all of the repeating Tuesdays, that was a fucking nightmare, but it was a case, and I figured it out eventually. It was what came after, the Wednesday and what happened after that.”
Sam stopped himself and took a deep breath of the mineral rich air, so thick, it almost felt like he could chew it. He clenched his hand in Dean’s flannel, like he had to hold on for the next part.
“Because just when I thought it was over, that I had you back, you got shot, Dean. Out in the fucking parking lot of that fucking motel. You died in my arms, and I…I lost it. No one could help, I avoided Bobby after a while, and I just drove and hunted like a machine. It was like I was a hunting robot or something. It made me think of what it might be like if you end up going to-no, that’s not happening, you’re not going there. You died, Dean, for real that time, and I pretty much went feral. I turned into a monster without you.”
There was no response or answer from Dean, he was still out. Sam tightened his grip on Dean’s flannel, desperate to feel the warmth of Dean’s still alive body beneath.
“I wish I could tell you this, so you’d understand why I’m having so much trouble letting you out of my sight. I know it’s bugging you, and I…god, I just want you to be safe. You can’t die before it’s even your year being up, that wouldn’t be fucking fair, it wouldn’t be right. You can’t leave me because I know what’ll happen to me now. And I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to be without you, Dean. It was like I wasn’t even me anymore. I felt like a shell that something had scooped out, all the parts of me that mattered were gone.”
Dean still didn’t move, but he was breathing, a little shallow but maybe that was because of the rib injury. Sam touched his skin near his injured temple, not pressing, just feeling, letting himself have the connection as he retraced his steps for six lonely months.
“It was six whole months, Dean, that he left me hanging, stuck there without you, The Trickster, said it was to teach me some lesson. And I learned it, sure as fuck I did. No way I’m going to survive when you get dragged down to Hell, so that’s why you can’t go.”
“We’re even closer than usual to the damn place down here,” Dean said, surprising Sam with the strength of his voice. “It’s like I can feel it pulling at me or something.”
“Did you…did you hear all that?” Sam asked, unclenching his hand and releasing his grip on Dean’s shirt. He smoothed it over, patted once and sat back against the tunnel wall.
Dean tried to nod instead of speak, but the nausea from the head wound made him moan instead just at that little motion.
Sam shone his flashlight around the pit and noticed the wall bracing, there were several timbers that were propping up part of it. It was hard to shake it off, thinking about Florida again, and what the Trickster had put him through. He remembered how futile it had felt during one of the repeats when he was taking the Mystery Spot down to the original timbers in the cave at the back of the place. If this situation was that asshole jacking him around again-he’d kill him all over again. He mentally shook his fist at the jerk and tried to recenter. They needed to get out, hopefully sometime before the water ran out. But Dean needed to stay awake for that, there wasn’t any chance of Sam being able to hoist him back up if Dean wasn’t somewhat alert and able to help by at least holding on.
Sam dumped a small amount of water into his hand and soaked it up with his bandana. He gently dabbed near the lump on Dean’s temple. His brother moaned and his eyes fluttered open. From the flashlight, Sam wasn’t sure if he was focusing or not. He probably had a pretty bad concussion.
“Dean, you back with me?”
“Why’m all tied up, S’mmy? You kinkier than I thought or ss-mthin’?” Dean slurred, his eyes shutting after vainly trying to focus.
“You’re in a harness, so I can hoist you up out of this pit you fell into, remember?” Why had Dean’s voice been so strong before, and now he was slurring, was he getting worse?
“I ‘member, yeah, ‘member, ‘s long way down,” Dean slurred, halfway to grinning like a fool.
“You’re an idiot, but I need you to stay with me, you need to hold onto this rope while I pull you up, okay?” Sam clamped Dean’s hands one at a time around the rope. “I won’t work, unless you hold on, and don’t let go.”
“‘kay, yeah, Sammy, no problem,” Dean said without much of a slur at all, his eyes held open wide, like he was almost surprised at Sam’s closeness. Dean took one hand from the rope, and stroked Sam’s cheek gently.
Sam couldn’t help leaning into his brother’s touch, it had been ages, years and years since Dean had touched him like that. “You really with me, Dean?”
Dean’s eyes zeroed in on his, solid and unwavering, he nodded and smiled for real this time. “Always, yeah, Sammy, with you.”
Sam smiled back at him, and guided Dean’s hand back to the rope, he pressed his hand over the back of Dean’s, noticing how his completely covered Dean’s.
“Big hands, little brother, big beautiful hands, like the rest of you,” Dean said, his voice sounding strange and a little higher than usual.
Sam couldn’t come up with anything to say to that, it had to be the concussion or whatever talking. He started to get up from his crouch near Dean.
Dean let go of the rope and grabbed for Sam’s shoulders, pulling him forward with all his strength. “Don't leave me down here,” Dean said, in that strange voice again. He nuzzled his face into Sam’s shirts until his lips were smearing against the skin of Sam’s neck. “You can’t leave me again.”
It was a struggle not to moan and give in to what he’d always wanted to do, but Dean was injured, out of his mind, obviously not himself. Sam knew that he still needed to answer though, he had to keep Dean talking to make it back up out of this pit. “What makes you think I’d leave you?”
“Because you were talking about your trip, the one with your college buddies, and it made me…well I hope you can go back to that, after I’m-“
“You’re not going there, I won’t let you, Dean! I can’t let you,” Sam interrupted, desperate for Dean to believe him.
“Can’t let me go? Well, seems to me you did a pretty good job when you left for school,” Dean countered, sounding much more like himself now, like the hurt from those years had sobered him up.
To Part Two