Twenty-Four Days in a Cabin
K Hanna Korossy
As it turned out, fear was a pretty potent counteragent to morphine. Not fear of the Leviathan-infested hospital they'd left in their rear view. Not fear for himself for fleeing with a casted leg and unknown other injuries. Not even the more immediate fear of the way Bobby "Formula One" Singer was driving the ambulance they'd stolen over rutted backwoods roads and deep puddles.
No, this fear was for the silent figure laid out in the back of the ambulance, motionless except for the tossing of the vehicle.
Dean muttered a curse and pushed up from the seat. Or tried to, anyway; it took a second attempt before he could actually lever his body up and make his one good leg hold his weight. He twisted drunkenly toward the back of the bus, grabbing onto Bobby's shoulder for balance. "I'm gonna go check on Sam."
Bobby just grunted an answer, intent on driving.
Dean paused, halfway between front and back. "Where are we goin', anyway?"
"I'm working on that," was the terse reply.
Good enough. Dean nodded and stumbled on, catching himself on cabinets and equipment as he hauled his bad leg into the rear compartment. His groan as he sank down on the narrow seat was half relief and half pain.
"Sam," he murmured, finally getting a real look at his unconscious brother.
Dean had seen the blow Sam had taken and knew it could've easily been a lethal one. The way he looked now, lying just as limp and unresponsive as he had in the junkyard, feet hanging off the end of the stupid stretcher, wasn't a lot more reassuring. He should've been in a hospital, one not taken over by people-eating monsters.
Dean laid a hand on his chest, feeling the bare rise and fall of it, and reached with the other for the clipboard that was threatening to slide off Sam's legs.
The words swam on the page. Dean shook his head, blinked, rubbed his eyes. Useless. Friggin' morphine.
"How's he doing?" Bobby called back.
"I can't read the freakin' file," Dean spat.
"Well, check his vitals!"
Oh, yeah. Dean would've rolled his eyes if he didn't think that would make him even dizzier than he was, and he fell into the comforting routine of training. Breathing: check. Pulse: regular and strong. Eyes... He flinched at Sam's huge pupils and their sluggish reaction to the light, but at least they were equal and responsive. His head was stitched, and from the location of the wound, it was possible he'd gotten more of a glancing blow than Dean had thought.
"Sam, hey," he said, rubbing Sam's chest. "You in there?" He wasn't quite desperate enough to do a sternum rub; it was probably better that Sam was unconscious for this ride. But Dean sure would've felt better at seeing his brother looking back at him through those dopey eyes. He sighed, brushed the back of his other hand over his own eyes. "Yeah, okay, maybe later."
"Dean?"
He lifted his head at Bobby's call, startled and maybe having lost a minute there. His head still felt like it was full of chunky soup. "Yeah?"
"You think we can take Sam in your car?"
Dean blinked. "Maybe," he allowed. They could probably fold Sam into the back seat. If Bobby drove, at least at first. And if the Leviathans hadn't done something to his baby or weren't lying in wait at Bobby's. And if... He ground the heel of his hand into his forehead. If he could just think for one freakin' minute without it feeling like his head was gonna combust.
"I got an idea for a place we can hole up for a while," Bobby was continuing, "but it's in Montana. Not like we can drive a hot ambulance for two thousand miles. You wanna take a chance going to ground someplace closer for a few days and wait for Sam to wake up, or...?"
Even processing that string of words was a challenge. But Bobby was expecting an answer, and Sam was his responsibility. Dean swallowed. "S'okay. I, uh... The second one. Uh, 'less you think..."
Bobby swiveled to look back at him, and something shifted in his expression that Dean couldn't quite decipher. "It's gonna be okay, boy. We're almost there, then you two can rest."
"Thanks, Bobby," Dean mumbled, relieved and fading.
At least Sam wasn't seizing anymore—that had to count for something, right? And Bobby had a plan, and...and they were safe and...
The next thing he knew, Bobby was crouching beside him, coaxing him to help move Sam out to the car. They laid him out in the back, knees bent to fit, and Dean climbed in automatically after him to settle in the corner, Sam's head in his lap. Bobby raised an eyebrow.
Dean snapped, "What? You got some better way to monitor him?" He sounded churlish even to his own ears, but, screw it, he needed rest and he wouldn't get it if he had to keep reaching back to make sure Sam was still breathing.
Bobby was reading the chart that Dean hadn't even noticed him snag—friggin' morphine—and his smile when he looked up unclenched Dean's chest without him even being sure why. "Sam had his scan before we sprung him—says his brain looks okay, no dangerous swelling. Looks like we dodged a bullet this time."
Dean dropped his head back on the Impala's seat and took a deep breath. He was just gonna pretend it was the morphine that was making his eyes prickle. "'S all that hair. Acts like padding."
"Maybe you should grow yours out then, too."
Dean's head lurched back up, eyes springing wide to see Bobby's teasing grin. Dean just growled something hopefully derogatory back and let his head sink again. His eyelids were fighting a losing battle with gravity.
He felt Bobby pat his chest and murmur something that sounded soothing but that Dean didn't bother trying to decipher. He could feel Sam's heart thump under his hand, his chest's soft rise and fall, and Dean let everything else around him fade out. The fight would wait for another day.
He barely felt his baby roar to life beneath him, and then that was gone, too.
00000
Tired.
Heavy.
Pain.
Dean.
Noises.
Ouch. Hurt.
Bobby?
Dean.
He was floating.
Then weighed down.
Light.
Dark.
"Sammy?"
Dean.
Humming. His?
No...
Bite of needle.
Too bright.
Ice in his mouth.
Head "...hurts..."
"I know." Soft touch.
Dean.
He tried to pull his eyes open. Felt a damp cloth swipe over them, then it was easier.
"Hey..." Just a whisper.
Still made Dean smile. That blurry white had to be his teeth, right?
"Hey, kiddo." Too soft. Affection. Fear? "How you feeling?"
He tried to pin down the pain that just was. "Um, head? 'urts."
"Yeah, kinda got your head bashed in. It's getting better, man. No, don't touch."
"Go ahead and touch," Lucifer's mocking voice echoed.
He gritted his teeth, slid his hand through Dean's grip so that his brother's fingers were pressed against the healing gash in his palm.
He felt Dean tense. "We got company?" his brother asked. But he didn't dig his nails in, just stared intently at Sam. "You've got enough pain to deal with, bro—use that."
Huh? Oh. He let his eyes shut, focused on the throb of his head. Heard the fizz-pop as Lucifer flickered out.
Moaned as his guts lurched in response to the pain in his head.
"Easy." Dean's hand was warm on his stomach, his forehead. "Have some more ice." The cold dampened the swell of nausea.
He didn't try to open his eyes anymore. "Head 'urts."
"I know, Sam."
Okay then. "Where?" he whispered.
"Montana. Rufus's cabin. Bobby got us out."
"Oh." He squinted up. "Fire?" Or had that been a hallucination, too? His head felt full of pieces of memory, some real, some not, none of it in order.
"Yeah, the Leviathans burned him out but he's okay. We're okay, Sam."
There was a memory of Dean burning to death, screaming. And being thrown into a car. And being eaten by a huge-mouthed thing. But Dean was clearly sitting there, alive and whole. Right?
He curled his fingers up, squeezing his brother's against his scarred palm. Warm and alive and pressing back. He couldn't remember where they were or why he hurt, but he knew this. He knew it.
"Go back to sleep, Sammy. We're good."
This time the light was soft and the floating was peaceful and Sam dreamed of Jess's smile.
00000
"I don't know which one of us is holding the other up," Dean grumbled as he shifted fruitlessly to try to ease Sam's weight on him.
He had a busted leg but a clear head, while Sam's body was fine but his vision and balance were still wonky. Between the two of them, they pretty much made one functional person, Sam his crutch and he his brother's eyes and navigator.
"I could've waited for...Bobby t'get back." Sam was panting, both from exhaustion and lingering nausea. Well, whatever it took for him not to heave all over Dean—again—he was all for.
"Bathroom's not that far," Dean countered. It beat telling Sam the truth: that he needed to help somehow after five days of just sitting there watching the kid slowly become more lucid and less agonized.
Sam grunted in response, then let out a low groan of relief as Dean eased him down on the edge of the bed. Like an old man, he sank back to vertical by degrees, huffing out air as he did. The sound he made when head contacted pillow had Dean's eyebrows rising and a snarky line on the tip of his tongue.
He opened his mouth.
"Don't," Sam muttered, eyes shut.
Dean gave him a petulant look, which Sam smiled at, still without looking. Sometimes they knew each other too well. Which was why Dean itched to walk away—well, okay, gimp away—while he had the chance when he saw Sam's expression turn serious.
"Dean..."
He sighed as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. "This isn't about Cas, is it?"
Sam frowned and cracked an eye open. "What? No." A beat. Then, cautiously, "Why, do you want to talk about—?"
He had known exactly what his brother would say, had it predicted down to the second—see above, re: knowing each other too well—and quickly headed Sam off. "No."
Sam sank back, eyes once more shut against the dizziness but his focus no less for it. "I mean, the car wrecked, losing Cas, and Bobby's place, thinking Bobby was dead and then the crap with me—the hits just kept coming for you, man." Because the dude was like a dog with a bone.
"Is this what we're talking about?" Dean asked with exasperation. "'Cause I got some TV to watch if it is." Of course, the only channel Rufus's old TV got up there was a Spanish one, but even that beat Sam empathizing all over the place.
Sam's hand shot out, finding Dean's arm unerringly. "No, I..." He cleared his throat, lifted a hand to rub over his face and then left it there, arm across his eyes as if he needed the added layer between them. "It's, uh. About the Cage. You said if I wanted to talk..."
There were few things Dean was less keen on talking about than Hell—women's "sanitation products" maybe—and hearing about it wasn't easier, especially coming from Sam. But he'd offered to listen once, to soulless-Sam, actually. And even if he hadn't, he would always listen to Sam if Sam needed it. Dean was pretty sure no chicks in any flicks ever angsted about decades spent being tortured.
Sam swallowed hard. "I mean, you don't have to, just...I remember now and..."
Dean shook himself out of his hesitation, realizing Sam had misinterpreted it as dismay and, okay, maybe that wasn't a misinterpretation but it didn't mean no. Not even close. "Yeah, hold on a minute," he said, gripping Sam's shoulder once, then rising enough to hop back to the low footboard. It was enough to brace his butt against as he lifted his cast and laid it on the bed with a long sigh. His leg was flush against Sam's side—Rufus had obviously never had company up here, the one bed a ridiculously narrow one—the heel of the cast pressed into the inside of Sam's forearm. Touch always seemed to ground Sam, and with hallucinations still an issue, he needed anchors more than ever.
Sam did seem to relax at Dean's capitulation and proximity, his fingers curling in against the rough plaster. He swallowed again, clearly trying to figure out where to start.
Dean breathed out slow, waiting. And maybe drawing a little comfort, too, from the warm, animated body against his. Because Sam had been right, the losses had piled up there for a while, and nearly buried him. Sam was okay, though, and Bobby, and Dean could handle anything else.
Sam cleared his throat.
Even this. Dean settled a hand on the nearest restless ankle and braced himself to absorb the horrors Sam would share.
"It was always bright and cold there. Like, searing bright, you know? Michael and Lucifer's true forms..."
00000
Sam woke to a murmur of sound. He froze for a moment, steeling himself for more of Lucifer's taunts, before he realized it was the TV he was hearing. Breathing out, his right hand let go of the left and he sat up and swung his legs to the floor. After days of nausea and disorientation whenever he moved, the simple pleasure of being able to stand on his own had not faded. He moved slowly out into the main room, stretching kinks from bruised muscles and yawning widely.
The scene in the room beyond was a familiar one, but it still made him smile. Bobby was at the stove, muttering over a pot of something he was stirring. Beef stew, from the smell of it, and Sam also appreciated the rumble of interest his stomach gave. Gatorade, chicken soup, and vomiting half of it back up again had gotten old very quickly.
A turn to the right revealed Dean stretched out on the couch, his usual station. Just the top of his head was visible, but Sam knew he was staring raptly at the TV. It was playing some kind of melodrama that Sam with his rudimentary Spanish still couldn't follow, but that didn't seem to matter to Dean, who knew little beyond senorita, cerveza, and sexo. Sam shook his head and turned toward the kitchen.
"Sleep well?" Bobby asked, eyeing him critically.
"Really well, Bobby, thanks. You take the bed tonight, okay?"
"I'm not that old yet, I can handle the recliner."
"Yeah, but..." Sam relented at the glare he got. He could still enlist Dean in this fight when evening came. Instead, he grabbed an apple off the pile of fruit by the sink and bit into it. "You need some help with that?"
"Boy, I was making stew before you were even a twinkle in your daddy's eye. Go keep your brother company. Maybe you can get him to eat something that grows on a tree, too."
Sam grinned at him and snagged another apple, turning back to the living room area. His attention caught on the newspaper tossed down on the kitchen table, and he winced at the headline: Hunt for Trench-coat Terror Yields No Leads. The three of them knew Castiel wouldn't be smiting any more people, but the rest of the country was still waiting for his murder spree to start up again. Sighing, Sam threw the paper into the trash under Bobby's knowing gaze, weakly hoping Dean hadn't seen it yet.
Dean's casted leg was resting on the sofa while he sat propped against the end, a handful of popcorn hovering at his mouth as he watched, spellbound, the couple arguing on the screen. The sofa was long enough for him to stretch out on it—Sam knew his brother had been sleeping there at night—but Sam didn't hesitate to lift Dean's bad foot, slide under it, then plop it into his lap. He remembered from his own experience that elevation helped with the swelling and pain. Dean had spent more than a few days like this while Sam had nursed various broken bones growing up, including, he smiled to himself fondly, a single smashed toe.
Dean spared him a glance, more a distracted smile of welcome than of wondering what he was doing, then his attention was back on the TV.
Sam gave the show a minute. Arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Are they married?"
Dean snorted, gaze not wavering from the screen. "She's his sister-in-law, but they're sleeping together. And she's pregnant but doesn't know if it's her husband's or his brother's kid."
"Ah," he said, mocking, but Dean obliviously watched on.
Another aroma joined the stew's: Bobby was making his awesome cornbread. Sam tried to ignore his stomach's increasing enthusiasm as he absently watched the program, hand looped over Dean's cold toes. His brother was always cold; Sam would have to go grab him some socks before dinner. For now, though, he was just content to sit and watch a totally incomprehensible show.
He wasn't the only one, he'd noticed. Bobby fussed and insulted as much as usual, but he was at the cabin more than he wasn't, even with his whole life to rebuild. And Dean bitched about the leg but was surprisingly docile about pushing his limits and letting himself heal. A few years back, he would've been limping circles around the room and plotting how to drive the Impala without his right leg. Now, he watched TV or read at the foot of Sam's bed, or sometimes they just talked. When Lucifer got loud, Dean would drown him out with deliberate touches and brotherly antics, and when Dean's expression grew distant, Sam knew to start razzing him about being a gimp or challenge him to a game of poker he knew Dean would win.
Screw independence, Sam had decided once his head was clear enough to consider their situation. They'd lost their home, the fourth member of their battered Team Free Will, and nearly the others. If they were finding comfort in familiar roles and the others' company, or if they were more in each other's space than usual, so what? For all Dean's complaining about growing boobs and long hair—or in Sam's case, just boobs—Sam figured they'd earned their Stoic Man Card many times over and deserved some indulging. And if Dean or Bobby started squirming about it, Sam got a convenient headache and quickly put an end to the muttering.
Oh, he'd forgotten: Sam reached over and turned Dean's empty hand over, plunking the apple into it. He watched with amusement as Dean automatically brought it to his mouth, bypassing the popcorn, and crunched a bite. That surprised him, and he gave the apple a quick puzzled glance before becoming distracted by the TV again. He automatically continued to eat without seeming to realize it.
Sam smiled and leaned back to eat his own apple. Yeah, he knew they couldn't stay there forever. The Leviathans would find them sooner or later, and they needed to figure out how to kill the big mouths. Bobby would need a new home base, they really should salvage what they could from his house, and they had to start networking with other hunters again. And Sam's method for dealing with the hallucinations and breakdown of his mind was temporary at best. But right now, he felt content. If Winchesters had learned anything, it was to enjoy the simple pleasures where they could find them.
Or even, Sam thought as he glanced at the two men who'd been through so much with him, the not-so-simple ones.
Dean suddenly nudged him in the ribs with the cast. "Dude. An apple?"
And Sam laughed.
The End