Batteries Included

He knows his brother loves him. It's implicit. It's organic. It's bred in the bone. It's Winchester.

And while it's almost never in what Dean says, it's in everything Dean does. For him.

But now he's doing for Dean.

"Not happening," Sam says. "You hear? It's just not."

Dean is sitting propped against the Impala. Against her tire, that is. The left front, to be exact; closest to the driver's side door. Closest to Dean's all-too-human, fleshly pulpit in his cathedral made of chrome, rubber, steel, and leather.

He reeks of blood. And has said, with an infinite clarity borne of need despite slurred speech, that he'd rather bleed out on the ground than fuck up Baby's interior. Because Sam would never be able to get the last molecule of Dean's blood out of the leather, or the seams, or the beat-to-shit carpet and divoted floor mats; hell, maybe not even out of the wholly generic finger ridges molded into the steering wheel by hands not human, but mechanical, of Detroit. Because Sam just can't—couldn't possibly—get the blood out.

And Sam understands why Dean is saying this. Because when, all those years ago, he finally admitted he was going to die and go to hell because of the crossroads deal and it scared the crap out of him, he talked to Sam about the car. Because, at this moment, he thinks he's dying.

Sam wants to say: "Forget the damn car for one minute!"

But he doesn't, because Dean can't forget the car, and won't forget the car, and needs to not forget the car, just as he needs to not forget that Sam is here with him, is kneeling in grit and gravel and the red flow of blood. It's soaking the knees of Sam's jeans, where he kneels. Drenching them. Making the fabric heavy. Drawing a man's blood up into its fibers. It will never come out; it will repel all attempts with peroxide, the miracle blood-lifter. Because blood running such a hurried race out of the body eventually wins that race, if there's enough of it lost; and a man, seeing that he no longer has enough of it inside, just knows.

Dean knows. Sam knows, too.

"I called 911," Sam says. "They're on their way."

Dean slurs, "No," and the word dribbles from his mouth on a trickle of bitten-lip blood beneath a halved moon.

"Yes," Sam says firmly, pressing a wad of blanket against the slash that had opened up his brother's left thigh. That had nailed the femoral artery.

"No time," Dean clarifies.

"I've got it, Dean. I've got it."

Sam is big, and Sam is strong, and he will not allow his brother to bleed out. He could do nothing when the hellhounds dragged his brother's soul to hell, and he could do nothing when Metatron shoved an angel blade into his chest, but this he can do.

Broad, long-fingered hands pressingpressingpressing blanket against torn denim, torn flesh. Mostly Dean is slumped against the tire, the hubcap, shoulders rubbing steel, but he moves his head from time to time. Rolls it back and forth, bumps it, occasionally lets it loll forward until he catches himself on the verge of unconsciousness.

One hundred and twenty pounds of pressure. That's what it takes to stop a bleed like this. Sam knows because one thing their father required of his sons was an expert grasp of emergency field medicine. Sam can apply one hundred and twenty pounds of pressure easily because he weighs one hundred pounds more than that.

From time to time he shifts his right hand, presses rigid fingers to a spot where he knows thigh meets groin, and digs in. Each time Dean can't swallow a moan, a blurted curse; each time he tells Sam, on choppy exhalations, to stop feeling him up. And each time Sam clamps down hard for a few seconds to stem the normal bloodflow within the artery before it reaches the tear so he can let up on the actual wound and keep the tissues from beginning to die.

A man, with an artery ripped clean through, can bleed out in under five minutes. Because he falls unconscious and can't apply pressure. It has been ten or fifteen minutes, Sam believes, since he hauled his brother back to the car and called for help. But Dean is still conscious and isn't bleeding out—he isn't, Sam swears—because Sam made a tourniquet so he could move him, got him to the car where paramedics could find them more easily than deep in the woods, took the tourniquet off—pressure is superior and does less damage—and for countless minutes has dammed the unceasing arterial spurt of Winchester blood.

It is dark beneath the half-moon, and the shadows are deep. Sam has turned on the Impala's lights so they'll be easier to find on the narrow forest road. Dean had, as expected, muttered something about draining the car's battery since the engine wasn't running, then turned it into a bad joke about his battery being drained through his leg—and then shut up altogether when Sam jammed the blanket against his thigh and leaned. Hard.

"Empty," Dean says now.

"You're not empty," Sam declares. "Couple of quarts low, maybe, but hardly empty."

"The," Dean emphasizes. "The Empty. Billie's—Reaper Billie's—Empty. No heaven, no hell, she said. Just—the Empty."

Sam shifts his right hand from the groin pressure point back to the wound. "First of all, you're not going anywhere other than to the hospital; and second of all, I'm betting Chuck might have something to say about it."

Dean's face contorts into a teeth-gritted wince as Sam presses the wound again. "Chuck—lef' th' building, remember? Like Mom."

Sam opens his mouth to reply, but hears in the distance the banshee wails of an ambulance. He nods, says, "Not much longer, Dean."

"—know why I hate hospitals, Sammy?"

Sam huffs a laugh. "Let me count the ways, dude. Needles, tubes, monitors, doctors, nurses who aren't hot, bad food, bedpan or catheter when you can't make it to the bathroom—"

Dean interrupts. "No, really." He seems mildly annoyed. "It's 'cuz we gotta make up some stupid-ass story to cover what happened. 'Cuz demons?—not gonna cut it. Or vampires, or wendigos, or . . ." He frowns, trails off; his head droops slightly leftward, toward Sam.

Sam knows Dean's on the cusp of unconsciousness, and he sends a grim mental directive to the driver of the ambulance to drive faster.

But Dean's still with him, too stubborn to let go. "Wha' we say this time? In th' forest, night . . . damn dark, so why—" But he breaks off and sucks breath in between his teeth as Sam changes pressure on his thigh.

Sam casts a glance across his shoulder, trying to see down the narrow forest road to the highway. They're not that far from blacktop; where the hell is the ambulance? "We were out here earlier today, stopped so you could take a piss, you dropped something—family good luck charm—so we came back to find it. Because you were bitching about it so much that I finally insisted we come look right the hell now so you'd shut up about it. Because you were really being extremely annoying with this non-stop bitching. So we came back out, looked around, and wham! Big cat came out of the darkness and nailed you right across the thigh." He presses a little more firmly, feels Dean wince, writhe a little. "See? Not so hard to come up with an explanation."

Dean is scowling, which is a big improvement over the flesh-tearing lip-biting. "You're the bitch, bitch. You were doing all the whining so I insisted we come back out to look. And it was a bear. I want it to be a bear."

"It wasn't a bear."

"It wasn't a big cat, either."

The siren is very close. Sam catches a glimpse of headlights bouncing through the trees; salvation is off the blacktop and on its way to them. "You can tell them anything you want, Dean. You've lost enough blood they'll only think you're hallucinating anyway. I mean, especially since we don't know that there are bears in this area."

Dean's scowl doesn't abate. "We don' know there're big cats in this area, either."

"It's dark. You had a flashlight aimed at the ground while you searched for the good luck charm. You were bitching again, just non-stop bitching, and didn't really see anything, just lots of teeth and claws, and then I shot at it, missed, and it ran off. Whatever it was. We never got a good look. Because then I had to get you back to the car and couldn't be bothered figuring out what might have attacked you."

Both are blinded and squint as the ambulance bounces its way to a halt within feet of the Impala. In the light, Sam gets a good look at Dean and sees his brother's face is gray, shock-sweaty; his mouth, beneath the blood where he bit his lip, is nearly white.

But the paramedics are here. One man kneels on the far side of Dean, fitting stethoscope into his ears, pulling supplies from the big kit. Another settles down next to Sam, yanks stacks of gauze pads and rolls from the box.

His eyes flick to Sam's. "I'm going to put the pads directly over the blanket—we don't want to move it and disturb the wound—and then I'll ask you to bend his leg so I can wrap his thigh. I'm gonna pretty much mummify his leg, knee to groin, and then we'll get him on the gurney. We're about twenty minutes out from the clinic."

A third paramedic has pushed the gurney over rough ground. She is undoing buckles, moving straps aside.

Sam nods. "I'm ready."

It's a swift, efficient dance, and within a matter of minutes Dean's leg is indeed padded and tightly mummified, and he's got an IV cannula set in his right elbow.

And he's bitching.

Sam's told they'll start transfusing on the way in, that it's time his buddy took some blood into his body instead of bleeding it out.

He has moved away so they can transfer Dean from ground to gurney. Sam says, "Brother, not buddy."

Because it matters. It matters so very much.

Dean looks terrible as they strap him to the gurney. Sam thinks his big brother might just crack teeth, he's clenching his jaw so hard. But as they begin to push him toward the ambulance, Dean catches his brother's eye. "Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"Find that damn good luck charm, willya? Take good care of it. Make this worth it. "

Sam grins. Reaches out and pats the roof of the Impala, indicating he knows exactly what that charm is, and exactly where she is. "Sure thing, dude."

Dean raises his voice. "Cuz I'm tired of you bitching about it!"

And as the gurney is slotted into the back of the ambulance, Sam hears the slurred explanation about the fuckin' monster that came out of the woods and fuckin' nailed his fuckin' leg, you know? Some big-ass thing! And all he was doing was looking for his good luck charm, dudes. Do they have bears in these woods? Big cats? 'Cuz something sure got him good!

Sam smiles broadly. "You're welcome, Dean."

And he climbs in behind the steering wheel, fires up the Impala. Her battery isn't dead.

And neither is his brother's.

~ end ~

A/N: It is about a week away from the third anniversary of posting my first SPN fic, after discovering the series on TNT and promptly going full immersion by binge-watching S1-S9 in time to view S10 (and subsequent seasons) weekly. To celebrate, I decided to mangle poor Dean yet again—because that's what I like. 8-)