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mirabellafic2008-12-23 11:32 pm
mirasfics.livejournal.com) wrote in mirabellafic2008-12-23 11:32 pm
Entry tags:
Devil He Told Me to Roll, Wincest, PG-13, AU
Title: Devil He Told Me to Roll
Fandom: Supernatural, Wincest, PG-13, AU
Summary: Dean knows he's screwed up. The trick is going to be keeping Sam from finding out just how bad.
Notes: AU brought about mostly by me watching "A Very Supernatural Christmas" and going "WTF? How did they keep that kid in the dark that long, and why?"
A gun is a distance weapon, son. You get close up, you better have something you can put your faith in when that gun gets knocked out of your hands.
The entire inside of the Impala smells like copper. Dean doesn't even want to think about what's happening to the upholstery. He's just going to sit here for a minute, think about the Rules, like if he goes over them enough in his head it'll be like some sort of time-traveling spell that will send him back to the point when it would really have been helpful for him to remember them. Plus it's grounding, and Dean could do with some of that right now.
We do what we do and we shut up about it, Dean. And you never, ever tell your brother, and you never let him near the trunk.
Dean always wants to argue with Dad when he thinks of that rule, wants to get in his face about how hard that rule had been to live by when Sam was still young enough to be curious and naïve enough to think his big brother walked on water, and he never does unless Dad's not actually there. Dad's not here now, but Dean's distracted from the argument by a bigger issue: that this rule it's not too late to live by. That he already fucked up one rule tonight and it proved to be a singularly bad idea, and maybe he shouldn't break any damn more. There are only a few rules, but they're important ones; Dean's always wound up being really fucking sorry for breaking one, and it isn't usually Dad who makes him sorry, either.
He's bleeding to death. The streetlights glow in front of him like they know the secret to salvation and if he's quiet enough they might tell him too, and Dean's dying right here on this quiet street in Palo Alto surrounded by apartment complexes and normal.
That's enough to shift him into action when nothing else could, because he shouldn't have come here and Sammy doesn't need to walk out the door on the way to his basket-weaving class or whatever and find his brother dead in front of his door. He shouldn't have come here, but Sam was so close and Dad so far away, and at the time Dean was in too much pain to think straight. He's better now. It takes him a few tries to turn the key in the ignition, numb fingers sliding on the metal. Fucking cold out here, he thinks, and tries to put the car in gear.
The next thing he hears is Oh my god, Dean, in Sam's frantic voice. Then he forgets he heard it, because he's moving, not of his own volition, and his entire body is one big bundle of nerve endings shrieking in pain. His hand hits something familiar, the steering wheel, and he holds onto it for dear life.
"Dean, god, let go." Sam's almost sobbing. "You're gonna be okay, I'll get you to a hospital and –"
"No," Dean manages to rasp out, Dad's conditioning winning out over pain.
"What the fuck do you – Jesus. I'm not arguing with you. You're fucking bleeding to death, Dean, we're going to the hospital."
"Can't go to the hospital, Sammy," Dean says, and something in his voice – sheer weariness, maybe – makes Sam stop for a minute with one arm still braced under Dean's knees.
"I'm taking you inside, okay?" Sam says finally. "I'll take a look at you. But if you've been shot or something –"
Dean laughs a little, because shot, fuck, he should be so lucky. "Not shot, Sammy," he mumbles. "Gonna be fine, just need to rest a while."
He's waiting for the bitchy sigh, but it never comes. Instead Sam pulls him out of the car, careful and gentle with him in a way Dean doesn't think anyone has been since Mom died, and half-carries him into his apartment. Dean blacks out once or twice on the way and doesn't even try to process anything going on around him until he's stretched out awkwardly on a too-small couch.
"What the hell happened to you?" Sam asks finally, tightly, as he pulls off Dean's boots.
"Bar fight," Dean lies.
"Dean," Sam says, pausing with his hands on the buttons of Dean's jeans. "Look at me."
It's harder than it should be to open his eyes and look at Sam, but he does. Sam stares closely at him, tilting his head to block the kitchen light and then moving back, watching Dean's pupils react. Dean wonders how that's working out for him.
Sam looks good. Rested, well-fed. He won't know how to get hold of Dad if – when – he needs to. Shit, I shouldn't be here, Dean thinks, and closes his eyes again.
"Stay with me," Sam orders, working Dean's jeans down around his hips. Dean winces, and not because of the pain. Maybe he can still convince Sam to just let him sleep, maybe it's not too late to –
"Dean, Jesus Christ," Sam chokes, and it's too late after all.
"Not as bad as it looks," Dean slurs.
Sam isn't listening. He's already shoving Dean's jacket back, pushing up his shirt, making an awful noise in his throat at the damage hidden by the sodden cloth.
"What the fuck," Sam says helplessly. His hands are covered in gore, and Dean winces at the sight – Dad's going to have his ass for this one for sure. "Don't tell me this was a goddamned bar fight, Dean, it looks like something tried to eat you!"
Yeah, actually, something did. But Dean's kept this secret from Sam for twenty-one years and okay, he's here now because he's an idiot who was too tired and hurt to want to do this by himself tonight but that doesn't mean he's going to go against Dad any more than he already has. He tries to smirk a little, but he's so goddamned exhausted and he just wants his little brother's hands on him, just wants that contact for a little while longer. "You're right. Was a coupla pit bulls. Bar fight sounded cooler."
There's a strangely brittle silence from Sam's direction for a minute before he says, "You're bleeding to death on my fucking couch, Dean, and you won't let me take you to the hospital, and I'd be so pissed at you for not just telling me the truth but I don't even know what truth you could tell that would explain the way you're hurt so just. Shut up and don't move. I'll be right back."
Maybe he goes somewhere. Probably, because the next thing Dean is aware of is Sam saying, "You move one goddamned inch and I'm going to reach in through one of those gashes and rip out your spleen. Five minutes, Dean, and if the bleeding hasn't stopped I'm calling an ambulance."
Dean blinks his eyes open as best he can. There's a warm, tight feeling around his midsection, and when he looks down he sees a ripped-up sheet binding towels around him. "Should stitch 'em up," he mutters, more an observation than anything else; he doesn't really feel up to sewing himself back together right now.
"I taped them. I didn't want to sew them up without cleaning them out, and I don't have anything to clean them with. Don't move and they'll stay shut." Sam runs a hand through his hair, looking about two seconds from either crying or punching Dean right in the face, and fuck Dean's sorry for putting this on him.
"Shoulda stayed away," Dean mumbles, closing his eyes again. "Dad said. Sorry, Sammy, I shoulda –"
"What, died right there, wherever this happened?" Sam snaps, then hisses out a harsh, exasperated breath. "Dean, shut up. Don't talk, don't move. We're gonna talk way more than you want to when you're not bleeding to death anymore, so just, whatever it is, save it until then."
"Missed you," Dean says without meaning to.
There's silence for a long time before Dean feels hair in his face, Sam's forehead against his temple, dampness on his face that isn't blood. "Get some rest," Sam whispers.
When he opens his eyes again, gold light is filtering in through the curtains, glinting off edges and corners – cheap furniture, stacks of books, a small TV. Sam, scrunched uncomfortably against the couch with his head in the hollow of Dean's knee, one hand on Dean's leg like he's making sure he doesn't go anywhere. For a minute Dean just blinks, trying to orient himself, swimming upstream against the fever that's turning everything surreal. He doesn't know this place. The only familiar things are Sam and pain.
He hopes he's hallucinating one or both. Because he's woken up with a piece of information in his brain that either was missing last night or got pushed to the back when he didn't think he was going to live until dawn: the moon's going to be full again tonight.
Dean blinks until his vision clears, blanks out his mind with an effort, and breathes. First order of business: Sam's got to have a bitch of a crick in his neck, sleeping like that. Have to get him up and into bed. Dean reaches down, threads his fingers through Sam's hair, tugs a little, watching himself do it from what feels like miles away. "Hey," he says, grateful his voice doesn't sound any worse than it does.
Sam jerks awake, then winces, one hand flying to the back of his neck as he straightens painfully. "How do you feel?" he asks, squinting up at Dean.
"Better'n you," Dean lies. "Go to bed, Sammy."
Sam frowns and leans back down, resting his cheek on Dean's leg. He needs to shave; the light stubble feels weird and abrasive against Dean's skin. "Bullshit. You're burning up," Sam says grimly, straightening again. "Dean, you need to go to the hospital."
"I'm not –"
"You really think you can out-stubborn me when you're feverish and missing half your blood supply, Dean? Seriously?"
Dean starts to answer him, then gets sidetracked by a sudden realization. "Hey. You've got school. Either go to bed or go get dressed."
Sam stares at him as if Dean were the stupidest person in the world and also speaking pig Latin, which Dean thinks is a little unfair. Sam does have school. Dean knows because he remembers the veiled relief in Dad's eyes, the strain of trying to keep the family business a secret from the smartest member of the family like a weight off both their shoulders. Dean's still not sure he's forgiven Dad for that, or forgiven himself.
"I'm pretty sure having a first-degree relative show up and hemorrhage all over your couch is a good excuse to miss a few days of class," Sam tells him. "I'll get a note from the ER doctor, okay?"
Dean closes his eyes. They feel hot and scratchy. "Sammy," he says. "Please. No hospital."
Fingers lace into his hair, like Sam can't decide whether to pet him like a cat or use his hair as a handle to beat his head against the wall. "Don't you do that," Sam says tightly. "Don't you ask. Dean, you could die."
And that's the bitch of it, right there: Dean's pretty sure he's going to, one way or the other, and at this point a septic wound is going to be the good way to go. "Get my phone out of my jacket. Call Dad, the number's in my contacts list. Tell him he's gotta come get me. Tell him…" Dean swallows, not wanting to say it, and says it anyway. "Tell him I've got the silver he wanted. He'll know what you mean."
God, please let him check his voice mail in the next few hours.
Sam makes a strangled noise halfway between a laugh and a snarl. His fingers tighten in Dean's hair. "Dean. No. I spent eighteen goddamned years listening to you and Dad talk in code around me. I let you keep your stupid secrets and lived with being shut out of the private little world the two of you had going. But fuck it, it's my couch you're on right now, not Dad's. I'm the one who stopped you from bleeding to death. Me, Dean, your brother, remember? Not Dad. You want me to call him, you come clean with me and tell me what the hell is going on."
Dean opens his eyes to see Sam glaring at him from way closer than he ought to be. "Sam, look," he says, fear creeping past the fever and settling into the pit of his stomach. "This isn't the time. I can't go to the hospital, and I have to be out of here by nightfall. Sammy, do not argue, okay? For once, just don't. I'll be well enough to leave and find Dad by –"
" – the end of the semester, if you're lucky. You're staying right here, Dean."
Oh, god, he's fucked up. Dean has officially fucked up to a greater extent than should be possible for one person to have fucked up in twenty-five short years. If he'd thought last night, even for a minute…
Well, it's not too late to start thinking now. Dean makes himself relax a little and give Sam an aw-shucks smile. "You're right, Sammy," he says contritely. "I just… I don't feel so hot, is all. Kinda wanted Dad here. I'm just tired."
Sam scrubs his hand over his face, looking exhausted himself. "I've known you my whole life, Dean," he says, and his voice is shaking a little. "You think I don't know what you sound like when you're working an angle?"
Shit, Dean thinks wearily. Losin' it, Winchester.
"You're scared," Sam whispers, like it's a secret between the two of them. "I don't think I've ever seen you scared before, but you're scared now. Dean, I can call Dad, but you know how he is. It could be weeks before he calls back, if he ever does. You've got me, I can help you, but you have to tell me what's going on. Christ, for once in your life, let me help."
Dean closes his eyes, mostly because he doesn't know what else to do. He has twelve hours left to live, give or take, and he doesn't know what to do.
Not good enough, Dad says in his head. Dean agrees wholeheartedly; the problem is that he hurts and nothing feels real, and he can't quite juggle the twin demands of keeping Sam safe, which means keeping Sam ignorant, and dealing with his own little problem in a way that will keep Sam both safe and ignorant. Without Dad. And, oh yeah, his injuries hurt like a bitch, he's not sure he can actually move off this couch, and neither his fever nor Sam will leave him alone and let him think.
"Dean? You okay?" Sam asks nervously.
"Need to rest for a while," Dean croaks, and thinks: Break it down. One thing at a time.
First: weapons check. His pistol was in his jacket and should be there still, unless Sam found it and moved it, and Dean's pretty sure he'd have heard about it by now if Sam had. The clip is half full and if it comes down to that he's only going to need one bullet. His jacket's on the coffee table, stiff with blood; weapons check, clear.
Second: escape routes. The Impala should still be outside, but Dean doesn't know where the keys are. That's bad. Sam theoretically has to sleep sometime but there's no telling when he will, and that's worse. He's going to have to get Sam to go to bed, and then he's going to have to be damn quiet, because Sam wakes up if someone in the room breathes in a way he wasn't expecting. Escape routes, problematic.
Third is physical condition, and it's only Dad's training that keeps Dean from filing that right under "the less said, the better." He's weak and dizzy, feverish and lost too much blood. All he's wearing is a pair of clean boxers that aren't his, which is a little weird but since his own will be stiff with dried blood by now he isn't complaining. His abdomen, as Sam pointed out, looks and feels like something tried to eat him. And as much as he might ransack his memory, he doesn't know to the last scratch just what kind of injuries he has.
Sam's hand runs over his forehead, stroking, testing for fever. It's been three years; somehow Dean managed to forget how relentlessly tactile Sam is, how the first thing he does when he's afraid or in pain is lay hands on Dean like a St. Christopher's medallion. Managed to forget how there was a time when Dean would reach back for his brother without thinking, like breathing.
In a way, Dean hasn't breathed for three years. He's feeling the lack of oxygen now, in this cozy sunlit room he's brought evil into like the smell of lightning.
The next thing he's conscious of is a woman's voice, hushed and concerned. Dean drags his eyes open and looks at the position of the sun on the floor. He's been out for about an hour, time he couldn't afford to lose.
"Yeah, um, it's okay," Sam says quietly from somewhere Dean can't see, sounding tired and distracted. "He'll be fine. Just, they beat him up pretty bad and I don't want to leave him. Thanks for bringing these by, though."
"Good luck," the girl says, and the door closes. Sam reappears in Dean's line of sight, dropping a sheaf of papers onto the coffee table.
"I have to move the car," he says, and for one heart-stopping moment Dean thinks Sam's reaching for his bloodstained jacket. He's not, though; he's reaching for the car keys next to it, where Dean couldn't see from this angle. "I guess having a blood-soaked car sitting out in front of your apartment attracts attention. I'm going to pull it around back, off the street."
Dean waits until the door closes again, then tries to sit up. It's like having his gut ripped open all over again, and he makes it about two inches up on his elbows before his vision goes dark and he has to lie back down with his eyes closed for a while, shaking and taking one careful breath after another. Swearing between his teeth, he stretches out an arm and manages to pull his jacket close enough to fumble the cell phone out of the pocket. On further consideration, he pulls out the gun too, tucking it behind a cushion in easy reach.
You've reached John Winchester, says the voice mail. Leave a message.
"Dad," Dean says. "Things went south. I'm at Sam's place – you know the address. I don't know how close you are, but just, please, Dad, please get here before nightfall. I screwed up, I know, you can yell at me all you want when you get here, just. Come get me. I've got the silver you need."
The phone slides out of his fingers, angling improbably upward.
"Dad, it's Sam."
Dean opens his eyes, blinking against the light. He didn't even hear the door.
"Dean's hurt really bad," Sam goes on, his voice cold and even. "He won't let me take him to the hospital. If he gets any worse I'm going to take him anyway. I don't know what the two of you are involved in, but I'm done pretending I don't know something bad's going on."
A short, breathy laugh escapes Dean before he can clamp down on it. Bad, Jesus. Sam has no idea.
Sam glares at him. "Whatever it is, I'm in it now too," he tells Dad and Dean both. "You don't get to shut me out of it anymore, not when it can do this to Dean. So we'll see you when you get here, I guess. If we aren't here, we'll be at the university hospital."
"Sam," Dean says as Sam presses the end button and drops the phone onto his jacket. "You gotta stay out of this."
Still glaring, Sam sits carefully down next to Dean and pulls the sheet down, checking his makeshift bandages. "Just tell me what it is, Dean. Organized crime? Arms running? I know it's not drugs, Dad never had enough cash when we were growing up."
Dean sighs. "Christ. It's the mob, Sammy, okay? You understand now why I can't tell you anything else?"
Sam braces his hands on the back of the sofa and the seat cushion and leans in, and Dean spares a wry thought for how damn big his baby brother has gotten. "It's the mob," he says, and breathes out through his nose in a way that's always a bad sign. "It's the mob like it was pit bulls, Dean."
"Well, y'know, mob's got some fuckin' crackerjack pit bull trainers –"
"I swear to god I will hit you if you lie there and try to sell me a bill of goods about mob-trained pit bulls," Sam says between his teeth. "First time in my life I get my hands on the keys to the Impala without you or Dad breathing down my neck, did you really think the first thing I'd do wouldn't be to pop the trunk open and jimmy that lock Dad put on the tire well cover?"
Dean tries to swallow, but there's no spit to lube the way. "You can't bluff for shit," he says, with a cold hollow in his gut because it's true.
Wordlessly, Sam reaches back and pulls a 9mm full of consecrated iron rounds out of the back of his jeans.
Dean closes his eyes, because right now he can't even look at how bad he's fucked up. All he can do now is pray that if he just keeps his mouth shut there's still a chance to keep Sam in the dark. "Hey," he says, quiet. "Remember how you used to yell at Dad that the way we lived wasn't normal, that you just wanted to… shit, I don't know, try out for soccer and make friends and stay in one place for a whole school year?"
"I remember," Sam says tightly.
"So look at you, huh? You got normal now. You're in school. You got a nice place you can stay in as long as you want. You got girls dropping by to give you their class notes or whatever. Don't be so quick to chuck what you wanted just because your brother shows up to bleed on your couch for a few hours."
There's silence for too long. When Dean opens his eyes, Sam looks stricken, like he wants to say something and can't bring himself to – which is so not Sam that Dean worries a little. God knows Sam's never in his life had a problem saying exactly what was on his mind, usually at the top of his lungs and the worst possible time.
"Let it go, man," Dean tells him. "Dad'll come get me and you can forget all about –"
"Forget about almost having a goddamned heart attack when I found my brother outside my place looking like he'd gone one-on-one with Jack the Ripper and lost?" Sam asks in an eerily calm voice. "Forget about the things I saw in the trunk?"
"Christ." Dean rubs the heel of his hand across his forehead. "I'm sorry, Sammy. I should never have come here. I just…"
Sam sighs a little and settles back on the couch. "For god's sake, Dean. It's okay to need your brother when you're dying. If you hadn't come here you'd have bled to death. And where the fuck was Dad, anyway?"
"Don't start."
"Why is it so important for Dad to come get you before nightfall?" Sam asks, and he's got that set to his jaw that means he's not going to quit asking until he gets an answer.
It's like fighting, like that moment when you're in the zone and have all the time in the world to dodge whatever's coming at you. Dean has the length of an indrawn breath to come up with something believable that will shut Sam up; and between the fever and his ripped-up gut, everything looks like a hallucination, gilt-edged and full of clear water. "That stuff in the trunk – only a few of the guns and a couple of blades are mine. The rest I'm transporting. There's a guy in Jericho, a collector, real freak from what I've heard. I get a cut from as much of that crap as I can sell him, but I've got a deadline – he's got a late flight out of the country tonight. If I miss him I don't get paid, the guy who scrounged the merchandise together doesn't get paid… bad things happen."
Sam looks uncertain now. Dean doesn't know what the hell he has to be uncertain about. It's a good story, plausible, a hell of a lot more likely than the bogeyman being real. "What about the silver thing? What's that about?"
Dean shifts a little on the couch, as best he can without blacking out again, restless with heat. "One of the things my contact scrounged up was a box of silver bullets. Movie memorabilia. Dad thinks they'll be worth more melted down. He knows a guy he can take them to."
Sam's eyeing him narrowly, like he can't quite reconcile what he's hearing with what he's seeing. Boy's got good instincts. He'll make a good lawyer, Dean thinks, a little uneasily. "You had me going for a minute," he says finally. "But it's not gonna work, Dean. You know why?"
Dean sighs. "God, Sam."
"Because I know you. I know you're not a two-bit thug running guns across state lines. And there might not be any love lost between Dad and me, but I know that's not what he is either."
He should have beaten Sam more often as a child. That's the only conclusion Dean can draw from this. His lifelong marshmallowness in the face of Sam's earnest gaze is coming back to bite him in the ass.
"What I don't get," Sam says, suddenly closer on the couch in a way that reminds Dean uncomfortably of a ghost's staticky flicker, far-then-in-your-face, "is what's going on that's so bad that you'd rather have me think you're a low-level courier for the mob. And how this ties in with the way you and Dad were always so superstitious, how you'd laugh about it but you'd never go to sleep without salt lines across the doors and windows. And your client might want weird weapons and movie memorabilia but I'm pretty sure no one's going to pay good money for cheap pewter flasks with a cup and a half of stale water in them. Dean, what did this to you?"
Dean thinks maybe this is the part where he wishes, just for a minute, that he could explain everything to Sam; that he could have his brother at his back in this. But he doesn't. Not after all Dad's warnings, not after the first time Dean got hurt on a hunt and realized it could have been Sammy in the way of that chupacabra's claws. That doesn't mean he doesn't know the end of something when he feels it coming, because he's always known how much this whole thing depended on Sam's willingness to stay blind for just one more day. "When you were little you had a stuffed rabbit," he says, then trails off because it doesn't seem important right now.
"Man, I'm pretty sure Mr. McGillicuddy didn't try to gut you like a slaughtered pig," Sam says.
Dean isn't really listening. He's trying to remember what he got Sam for his sixth birthday. It's important, because if he can remember this then it'll mean that he's still more in control of his brain than the fever is and he'll be able to think his way out of this somehow, but all he can remember from that year is a hazy flash of playing toy soldiers with Sammy under a tree the color of autumn. "I love you, Sammy, y'know?" he finds himself saying, and okay, maybe he's not as in control of his mouth as he is of his brain, but there's only so much control to go around right now and something's got to give.
"Dean?" Sam's voice is sharp with fear. A palm lands none too gently on Dean's face and clings, and god damn Sam's got big hands. "Dean, open your eyes. Look at me."
Dean doesn't want to obey, but he's Dean Winchester and that's pretty much what he does with Sam and Dad, so he opens his eyes. Sam's leaning close, white as a sheet, breath coming too fast over Dean's face.
"You look like shit," Sam says in that same helpless, terrified voice that he'd used last night. "Dean. You look like shit. Tell me what to do."
Dean covers Sam's hand with his, reassuring. They're both shaking. "Gonna be over soon, Sammy. Few more hours, 'kay? Dad'll be here, you'll see."
Sam leans his forehead against Dean's, eyes closed tight, taking deliberately slow, even breaths. Dean can taste him, toothpaste and coffee, nothing that would tell him Sam's eaten anything today. "Okay," Sam says, and doesn't sound like he's agreeing. "Okay."
"Bitch, you aren't cuddling me," Dean says, but it comes out more like a whisper.
"I am, Dean," Sam tells him. "I really, really am. And I'm gonna fix you. And we're gonna talk when your fever's gone down and you don't think we're talking about stuffed rabbits anymore. Just stay with me for a while."
Dean thinks of the handgun under the cushions, looks at the slant of the sun on the ceiling. He can stay with Sam a while longer.
"I didn't know how to go grocery shopping," Sam says, and Dean comes back to himself enough to realize that he's watching dust motes drift through the slanting light onto the carpet. "I didn't know how to open a bank account or set up utilities or apply for jobs."
There's a different quality to the pain in Dean's stomach now, ebbing and flowing like ripples in a pond.
"I didn't know how to stop talking about my brother like he was the love of my life," Sam says, and laughs, short and bitter. "It turns out normal people don't do that. I know, right? Who knew?"
Dean blinks glittering motes out of his vision and looks down. Sam's kneeling by the side of the couch, a laptop open on the coffee table beside him, carefully stitching up the gashes in Dean's stomach. The room smells of antiseptic now, piles of damp and bloodstained hand towels on the table with a bottle of surgical soap behind them.
"But I learned," he says. "I learned to do all of it, all the things we never did because we never stayed in one place long enough. I'm good at it now. You'd be proud of me, Dean. Or maybe you wouldn't, I don't know."
"Always proud of you, Sam," Dean says, his voice worn and cracking like a daguerreotype.
Sam looks up, and for a moment his expression is strangely wary, cornered, as if he's wondering what Dean heard. Then it's gone and he turns his attention back to the stitching. "I asked Jess to go get me some supplies. She's a friend of mine. We were in Anthro together my freshman year."
His ears redden, and Dean smiles, a little wistful. Gonna be fine, his Sammy. It's a load off Dean's mind, makes that gun under the cushions seem like not such a scary thing after all. "You ask her out yet?"
Sam reaches for a pair of scissors and snips the thread, knotting off a row of stitches, silent until he's done. "I thought about it for a while," he says finally, looking at something Dean can't see. Then he shakes himself out of it, whatever it is, and looks back up at Dean. "How do you feel?"
Like hammered shit, but at least he can think a little more clearly now. "M'fine."
"Dean. No." Sam gives him that pissy face that Dean swears he started doing as soon as he was old enough to have most of his facial muscles under control. "How do you really feel?"
Dean sighs. "Cold. Sore. My gut feels like it's been shredded. Been better, been worse."
"You're still shaking a little," Sam tells him. He sits back on the coffee table, pushing towels aside, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a wad of clean cotton balls.
Something else falls out of his pocket with them, flashing in the sun. It hits the coffee table with a metallic clatter, bounces, rolls, and falls out of sight onto the carpet.
There weren't any silver bullets in the trunk. Dean knows, because he loaded his gun with the last of them the night before.
"Oh, yeah," Sam says, bending over. He picks up the bullet and turns it around in his fingers, not looking at Dean. "That reminds me. I was gonna ask why that .44 you hid in the couch was loaded with movie memorabilia."
One more breath, in. "Aw, Sammy," Dean says, pitching his voice at brotherly disappointment. "You don't recognize that gun?"
Sam looks up at him, not saying anything. The bullet turns around in his fingers, over and over, and Dean tries not to look too hard at it.
"Gary Busey? The werewolf movie with the kid in the wheelchair? C'mon, Sam, we watched it when you were like nine. That gun was one of the props. Practically straight out of Busey's hands."
Sam gives a little snort, not entirely unamused. "Yeah, sorry I don't have your freakish memory for detail in bad horror movies."
"Yeah, well. You didn't lose the gun, did you?"
"Funny, though," Sam goes on, as though he hadn't heard. "I would have sworn that was a revolver. In the movie, I mean. The gun in my couch – and thanks for that, by the way, you're lucky I found it before one of us got his ass blown off – was a clip-loaded Desert Eagle. Kind of thing you'd use to drop a big-ass charging animal right in its tracks."
Jesus, Dad, any fucking time now. "Wasn't a revolver," Dean argues, and doesn't have to fake the weakness in his voice. "You got your laptop right there, find pictures."
"The even funnier thing," Sam says, still not looking at Dean, "is that not only do I know you're not a thug, I also know you're not an idiot. Dad drilled gun safety into us like he was getting ready for the Apocalypse, Dean. If this gun were a movie prop you were selling, it'd be broken down in the trunk. Instead it's loaded and you're packing it. You've never a day in your life carried a gun for show. So the question is, what is it you were planning on using silver bullets on, and why?"
"Christ, Sam," Dean snaps, then winces as it pulls at his injuries. "You sound like you're in a bad horror movie. Just, fuck, tell me what answer you're fishing for and I'll give it to you, and you can go off and play with your witchboard or something while I get some more sleep."
Sam sighs, finally looking back up at Dean. He sets the bullet down and reaches behind him, coming back with a bottle of Gatorade and three pills. "Here, take these," he says, holding out the pills. "They're just Tylenol, but they'll help."
Dean sticks the pills in his mouth and tries to dry-swallow, but Sam kneels down beside him and slides an arm under his shoulders, helping him lift his head a little to wash the pills down with Gatorade. He lifts Dean like two hundred pounds of older brother was nothing, so Dean's pretty sure it's not the strain that's making Sam's arm tremble against his back. Dean closes his eyes when Sam eases him back down, making a small, exasperated noise.
"Sorry, Sammy," he mumbles. "Just… hurts, y'know?"
Sam doesn't quite let go of him; just lays his head down on the arm of the couch above Dean's head, a quick press of his fingers letting Dean know he's forgiven.
"I love you," Sam whispers, like it's a secret he's been waiting years to tell.
After that, Dean tries like hell to stay awake. He doesn't think he's succeeding, but it's hard to tell for sure. Everything is weirdly still, just the sunlight and the quiet sound of Sam's voice and the fever that shimmers off him like heat from the hood of a car. He needs to move, to get out of here, to do something, but every time he tries his vision goes black with pain and he loses god knows how much time to the forced rhythm of his breath and Sam's hands on him.
He doesn't want to think about what's going to happen if Dad doesn't get here before moonrise. But time slips away from him and the color of the sunlight changes, and the longer the shadows get on the floor, the clearer it becomes that he's going to have to man up and figure out what the fuck he's going to do if Dad doesn't.
He can't shoot himself here on Sam's couch. He has to get Sam out of the apartment, or get himself out. And then it occurs to him: Sam's been offering just that, all along. All Dean needs is his gun back and a fraction of a second's inattention on the part of some ER orderly. Break it down: first he has to get the gun back, loaded.
"Hey," he says, and barely recognizes his own voice. Sam, leaning back against the couch by Dean's knees, glances up from the book he's been reading aloud in soft, elided Latin.
"How do you feel?"
Dean tries to swallow. "Fever's going down, I think," he says. "Listen, Dad's gonna be here soon. Give me that gun back before you forget about it or I do. Thing's worth a lot of money."
Sam tilts his head, giving Dean an Are you actually insane, Dean? Seriously? look. "Dean, you've been floating in and out all day. I'm not gonna hand you a gun, loaded or not."
Dean hopes like hell it's still loaded, because if it isn't, that'll pretty much be a game over right there. "Just make sure the safety's on and set it on my jacket, dude. I don't wanna hold it, I just wanna make sure I know where it is."
Sam looks at him for a minute longer, then shrugs, a little too elaborately casual. "It's on the table by the door. You won't be able to miss it when you leave."
Dean grinds his teeth a little, and doesn't have to fake the stab of pain it costs him. He'd rather not pay attention to the pain, but he does, obsessively – he needs to know the second something's off, the second he starts to turn if he's going to. It's damn hard when no part of his body wants to cooperate right now. "Humor me, Sammy, come on. There's only so many things I can hold in my head right now, y'know?"
"How much are you getting for it?" Sam asks.
"My contact thinks five grand for the gun and bullets."
Sam looks back down at the book. "I have some money saved from summer jobs and my scholarships. If you leave it here, I'll cover the price. Your contact never has to know."
There have been many times in his life when Dean has had to practically sit on himself to keep from popping his little brother one, but this is without a doubt one of the closest calls yet. "No way you got five grand to burn, Sam."
"No," Sam says, not looking up from his book. "What I have is an idiot brother who won't tell me why he's packing a gun full of silver bullets or what ripped his stomach open. Or why he's so terrified of still being here when the sun goes down."
It's not like it would have been that hard to figure out, what Dean and Dad were doing, that all the monsters were real. All it would have required was a leap of faith. Dean never for one day saw any indication that Sam wanted to take that leap, or even really understood it was there to be taken.
Until today, when it's too late.
"Don't fuck this up for yourself, Sam," Dean says, unable to look at him. "Please. This is what you always wanted. You wanted out, now you're out."
"Dean –"
"Go to school, Sammy. Be a lawyer. Ask that girl in your Anthro class out, I bet she's real nice. You kept your eyes closed for so long, just –" Dean hears his voice crack and hates it, hates being this weak. "Just keep them closed for one more day. Everything you always wanted so bad, you're gonna have it, the job and the wife and kids and the fucking minivan. Just like that, easy as asking. All you gotta do is keep your eyes closed for a few more hours and bring me the damn gun."
"Yeah?" Sam asks, and there's something in his voice that makes Dean maybe never want to look at him again. "Seems to me like those kinds of deals always have a higher price than it looks like at first. So tell me, Dean, what's the catch here?"
"No catch," Dean whispers.
"What happens to you if I bring you the gun?"
"I put it in my jacket and I let you take me to the hospital," Dean says. "Deal? You take me to the hospital and then you come home and call that girl and take her to the movies or something. No harm, no foul."
"Last night you were begging me not to take you to the hospital."
"Yeah, well, you want to. And I'm sick of arguing and I think I'm hurt worse than I thought, so…"
The silence stretches on too long. Dean opens his eyes to see Sam perched on the couch beside his knees, eyeing Dean narrowly. And the thing is, Sam's such a dork half the time that it's easy to forget that the little bastard is scary smart – until you see the wheels turning in his head, tumblers falling closer to their slots with every spin. "I'll give you the gun," he says slowly. "Not the bullets."
"Gun has to have a couple of bullets in it or the deal's off. Guy won't buy it."
Sam gives a short, harsh laugh. "You were doing good there for a minute, too. There's no guy, Dean. Tell me what happens to you if I give you that gun. And then tell me why."
"Jesus Christ, Sam! Twenty-one goddamn years you didn't ask questions and now you won't fucking stop. You give me the gun, I let you take me to the hospital, that's it. I'm out of your hair. You're the one who told me not to fucking call, did you forget that?"
Sam shakes his head and rubs his hands over his face like he's praying. "No," he whispers. "I didn't forget. I just didn't know what it was going to do to me when you stopped."
"You seem to be doing okay," Dean says, deliberately brutal. He's lying. He can feel it, though he can't put his finger on what makes him think Sam's not okay.
"I was. For a while."
"Yeah? What happened?" Stupid to ask now, when there's no time left to put anything right even if Sam would let him, but the question's out before he can stop it.
Sam snorts and gets off the couch. Dean hears the refrigerator opening and closing, and in a minute Sam's back to sit beside Dean, holding a beer. Dean looks hopefully at it.
"Forget it. You'll get peritonitis," Sam says tersely, then takes a long drink.
"I went on a date," he says finally, and gives another one of those unpleasant laughs. "It was a fucking disaster. I got drunk and got laid at a party, and that was an even worse disaster."
Dean has too much to worry about at the moment to be annoyed at the universe because somewhere in the world there is a set of Winchester equipment not functioning as it should, but that doesn't mean it's not going on the list of grievances. "Yeah? What happened? In general terms, I mean."
Sam just looks at him, something dark in his eyes that Dean can't read. "This isn't about me, Dean," he says finally.
"Yeah, it is," Dean tells him flatly. "It's about you not asking questions you know goddamn well you don't want the answer to."
"Dean, you almost died!" Sam slams the bottle down on the table and braces his hands around Dean on the couch, and wow, he's really got that looming thing down pat. "I'm not playing this game anymore. I'm not a kid. Something did this to you and all I want to do is – is hunt it down and make it pay –"
"Sam!" Dean cuts him off, because Sam sounds so much like Dad that it's terrifying. "Christ, calm down, Sammy. It's already dead, okay?"
"Then what are you so afraid of, Dean?" Sam almost snarls, right up in Dean's face. Dean's breath starts coming a little too fast for his own comfort.
"Sammy," he says quietly, putting his hand on Sam's chest like he's done all their lives. Sam's heartbeat is too fast and too hard under his palm. "C'mon, big guy, I'm right here. Dial it down a little, huh?"
"You don't get to do that." Sam's voice is strained. "You don't get to talk to me like I'm a three-year-old. Shit, you're bleeding again."
Dean looks down to see blood trailing from the gashes on his midsection where a couple of stitches are starting to give; not much, but it's not like he's got it to spare at the moment. Sam reaches down and runs shaky fingertips across Dean's stomach just above the line of his boxers, smearing red behind his hand like finger-paint. It's weird, and all Dean can think is that maybe he'd have fought harder to keep Cassie if anything they'd done had ever felt as intimate as this, his brother's fingers drawing on his skin in his own blood.
"Did you hear yourself?" Sam whispers, his eyes fixed on his fingers where they rest on Dean's stomach. "I could have everything I'd always dreamed of for the rest of my life, as long as I turned my back on you. You know what you sounded like? If I didn't know better I'd be wondering if you were really my brother or something evil trying to trick me into cutting a deal."
Dean's mouth goes so fucking dry, because Sam doesn't sound like he's joking, doesn't sound like he knows better at all.
Sam's eyes come back to his, then, and he's not sure it's an improvement. "I do know better, though. Want to know why?"
"Because you're too old to believe in the monsters under the bed," Dean says hoarsely.
"No," Sam says. "Because a demon would have known what to offer me."
There's a conversation going on here that Dean can't keep up with; but before he can force his head on straight enough to ask, Sam's sitting back, not looking at him. "I'll get some bigger towels," he says.
Dean knows better than to think that's the end of it.
Part 2
Fandom: Supernatural, Wincest, PG-13, AU
Summary: Dean knows he's screwed up. The trick is going to be keeping Sam from finding out just how bad.
Notes: AU brought about mostly by me watching "A Very Supernatural Christmas" and going "WTF? How did they keep that kid in the dark that long, and why?"
A gun is a distance weapon, son. You get close up, you better have something you can put your faith in when that gun gets knocked out of your hands.
The entire inside of the Impala smells like copper. Dean doesn't even want to think about what's happening to the upholstery. He's just going to sit here for a minute, think about the Rules, like if he goes over them enough in his head it'll be like some sort of time-traveling spell that will send him back to the point when it would really have been helpful for him to remember them. Plus it's grounding, and Dean could do with some of that right now.
We do what we do and we shut up about it, Dean. And you never, ever tell your brother, and you never let him near the trunk.
Dean always wants to argue with Dad when he thinks of that rule, wants to get in his face about how hard that rule had been to live by when Sam was still young enough to be curious and naïve enough to think his big brother walked on water, and he never does unless Dad's not actually there. Dad's not here now, but Dean's distracted from the argument by a bigger issue: that this rule it's not too late to live by. That he already fucked up one rule tonight and it proved to be a singularly bad idea, and maybe he shouldn't break any damn more. There are only a few rules, but they're important ones; Dean's always wound up being really fucking sorry for breaking one, and it isn't usually Dad who makes him sorry, either.
He's bleeding to death. The streetlights glow in front of him like they know the secret to salvation and if he's quiet enough they might tell him too, and Dean's dying right here on this quiet street in Palo Alto surrounded by apartment complexes and normal.
That's enough to shift him into action when nothing else could, because he shouldn't have come here and Sammy doesn't need to walk out the door on the way to his basket-weaving class or whatever and find his brother dead in front of his door. He shouldn't have come here, but Sam was so close and Dad so far away, and at the time Dean was in too much pain to think straight. He's better now. It takes him a few tries to turn the key in the ignition, numb fingers sliding on the metal. Fucking cold out here, he thinks, and tries to put the car in gear.
The next thing he hears is Oh my god, Dean, in Sam's frantic voice. Then he forgets he heard it, because he's moving, not of his own volition, and his entire body is one big bundle of nerve endings shrieking in pain. His hand hits something familiar, the steering wheel, and he holds onto it for dear life.
"Dean, god, let go." Sam's almost sobbing. "You're gonna be okay, I'll get you to a hospital and –"
"No," Dean manages to rasp out, Dad's conditioning winning out over pain.
"What the fuck do you – Jesus. I'm not arguing with you. You're fucking bleeding to death, Dean, we're going to the hospital."
"Can't go to the hospital, Sammy," Dean says, and something in his voice – sheer weariness, maybe – makes Sam stop for a minute with one arm still braced under Dean's knees.
"I'm taking you inside, okay?" Sam says finally. "I'll take a look at you. But if you've been shot or something –"
Dean laughs a little, because shot, fuck, he should be so lucky. "Not shot, Sammy," he mumbles. "Gonna be fine, just need to rest a while."
He's waiting for the bitchy sigh, but it never comes. Instead Sam pulls him out of the car, careful and gentle with him in a way Dean doesn't think anyone has been since Mom died, and half-carries him into his apartment. Dean blacks out once or twice on the way and doesn't even try to process anything going on around him until he's stretched out awkwardly on a too-small couch.
"What the hell happened to you?" Sam asks finally, tightly, as he pulls off Dean's boots.
"Bar fight," Dean lies.
"Dean," Sam says, pausing with his hands on the buttons of Dean's jeans. "Look at me."
It's harder than it should be to open his eyes and look at Sam, but he does. Sam stares closely at him, tilting his head to block the kitchen light and then moving back, watching Dean's pupils react. Dean wonders how that's working out for him.
Sam looks good. Rested, well-fed. He won't know how to get hold of Dad if – when – he needs to. Shit, I shouldn't be here, Dean thinks, and closes his eyes again.
"Stay with me," Sam orders, working Dean's jeans down around his hips. Dean winces, and not because of the pain. Maybe he can still convince Sam to just let him sleep, maybe it's not too late to –
"Dean, Jesus Christ," Sam chokes, and it's too late after all.
"Not as bad as it looks," Dean slurs.
Sam isn't listening. He's already shoving Dean's jacket back, pushing up his shirt, making an awful noise in his throat at the damage hidden by the sodden cloth.
"What the fuck," Sam says helplessly. His hands are covered in gore, and Dean winces at the sight – Dad's going to have his ass for this one for sure. "Don't tell me this was a goddamned bar fight, Dean, it looks like something tried to eat you!"
Yeah, actually, something did. But Dean's kept this secret from Sam for twenty-one years and okay, he's here now because he's an idiot who was too tired and hurt to want to do this by himself tonight but that doesn't mean he's going to go against Dad any more than he already has. He tries to smirk a little, but he's so goddamned exhausted and he just wants his little brother's hands on him, just wants that contact for a little while longer. "You're right. Was a coupla pit bulls. Bar fight sounded cooler."
There's a strangely brittle silence from Sam's direction for a minute before he says, "You're bleeding to death on my fucking couch, Dean, and you won't let me take you to the hospital, and I'd be so pissed at you for not just telling me the truth but I don't even know what truth you could tell that would explain the way you're hurt so just. Shut up and don't move. I'll be right back."
Maybe he goes somewhere. Probably, because the next thing Dean is aware of is Sam saying, "You move one goddamned inch and I'm going to reach in through one of those gashes and rip out your spleen. Five minutes, Dean, and if the bleeding hasn't stopped I'm calling an ambulance."
Dean blinks his eyes open as best he can. There's a warm, tight feeling around his midsection, and when he looks down he sees a ripped-up sheet binding towels around him. "Should stitch 'em up," he mutters, more an observation than anything else; he doesn't really feel up to sewing himself back together right now.
"I taped them. I didn't want to sew them up without cleaning them out, and I don't have anything to clean them with. Don't move and they'll stay shut." Sam runs a hand through his hair, looking about two seconds from either crying or punching Dean right in the face, and fuck Dean's sorry for putting this on him.
"Shoulda stayed away," Dean mumbles, closing his eyes again. "Dad said. Sorry, Sammy, I shoulda –"
"What, died right there, wherever this happened?" Sam snaps, then hisses out a harsh, exasperated breath. "Dean, shut up. Don't talk, don't move. We're gonna talk way more than you want to when you're not bleeding to death anymore, so just, whatever it is, save it until then."
"Missed you," Dean says without meaning to.
There's silence for a long time before Dean feels hair in his face, Sam's forehead against his temple, dampness on his face that isn't blood. "Get some rest," Sam whispers.
When he opens his eyes again, gold light is filtering in through the curtains, glinting off edges and corners – cheap furniture, stacks of books, a small TV. Sam, scrunched uncomfortably against the couch with his head in the hollow of Dean's knee, one hand on Dean's leg like he's making sure he doesn't go anywhere. For a minute Dean just blinks, trying to orient himself, swimming upstream against the fever that's turning everything surreal. He doesn't know this place. The only familiar things are Sam and pain.
He hopes he's hallucinating one or both. Because he's woken up with a piece of information in his brain that either was missing last night or got pushed to the back when he didn't think he was going to live until dawn: the moon's going to be full again tonight.
Dean blinks until his vision clears, blanks out his mind with an effort, and breathes. First order of business: Sam's got to have a bitch of a crick in his neck, sleeping like that. Have to get him up and into bed. Dean reaches down, threads his fingers through Sam's hair, tugs a little, watching himself do it from what feels like miles away. "Hey," he says, grateful his voice doesn't sound any worse than it does.
Sam jerks awake, then winces, one hand flying to the back of his neck as he straightens painfully. "How do you feel?" he asks, squinting up at Dean.
"Better'n you," Dean lies. "Go to bed, Sammy."
Sam frowns and leans back down, resting his cheek on Dean's leg. He needs to shave; the light stubble feels weird and abrasive against Dean's skin. "Bullshit. You're burning up," Sam says grimly, straightening again. "Dean, you need to go to the hospital."
"I'm not –"
"You really think you can out-stubborn me when you're feverish and missing half your blood supply, Dean? Seriously?"
Dean starts to answer him, then gets sidetracked by a sudden realization. "Hey. You've got school. Either go to bed or go get dressed."
Sam stares at him as if Dean were the stupidest person in the world and also speaking pig Latin, which Dean thinks is a little unfair. Sam does have school. Dean knows because he remembers the veiled relief in Dad's eyes, the strain of trying to keep the family business a secret from the smartest member of the family like a weight off both their shoulders. Dean's still not sure he's forgiven Dad for that, or forgiven himself.
"I'm pretty sure having a first-degree relative show up and hemorrhage all over your couch is a good excuse to miss a few days of class," Sam tells him. "I'll get a note from the ER doctor, okay?"
Dean closes his eyes. They feel hot and scratchy. "Sammy," he says. "Please. No hospital."
Fingers lace into his hair, like Sam can't decide whether to pet him like a cat or use his hair as a handle to beat his head against the wall. "Don't you do that," Sam says tightly. "Don't you ask. Dean, you could die."
And that's the bitch of it, right there: Dean's pretty sure he's going to, one way or the other, and at this point a septic wound is going to be the good way to go. "Get my phone out of my jacket. Call Dad, the number's in my contacts list. Tell him he's gotta come get me. Tell him…" Dean swallows, not wanting to say it, and says it anyway. "Tell him I've got the silver he wanted. He'll know what you mean."
God, please let him check his voice mail in the next few hours.
Sam makes a strangled noise halfway between a laugh and a snarl. His fingers tighten in Dean's hair. "Dean. No. I spent eighteen goddamned years listening to you and Dad talk in code around me. I let you keep your stupid secrets and lived with being shut out of the private little world the two of you had going. But fuck it, it's my couch you're on right now, not Dad's. I'm the one who stopped you from bleeding to death. Me, Dean, your brother, remember? Not Dad. You want me to call him, you come clean with me and tell me what the hell is going on."
Dean opens his eyes to see Sam glaring at him from way closer than he ought to be. "Sam, look," he says, fear creeping past the fever and settling into the pit of his stomach. "This isn't the time. I can't go to the hospital, and I have to be out of here by nightfall. Sammy, do not argue, okay? For once, just don't. I'll be well enough to leave and find Dad by –"
" – the end of the semester, if you're lucky. You're staying right here, Dean."
Oh, god, he's fucked up. Dean has officially fucked up to a greater extent than should be possible for one person to have fucked up in twenty-five short years. If he'd thought last night, even for a minute…
Well, it's not too late to start thinking now. Dean makes himself relax a little and give Sam an aw-shucks smile. "You're right, Sammy," he says contritely. "I just… I don't feel so hot, is all. Kinda wanted Dad here. I'm just tired."
Sam scrubs his hand over his face, looking exhausted himself. "I've known you my whole life, Dean," he says, and his voice is shaking a little. "You think I don't know what you sound like when you're working an angle?"
Shit, Dean thinks wearily. Losin' it, Winchester.
"You're scared," Sam whispers, like it's a secret between the two of them. "I don't think I've ever seen you scared before, but you're scared now. Dean, I can call Dad, but you know how he is. It could be weeks before he calls back, if he ever does. You've got me, I can help you, but you have to tell me what's going on. Christ, for once in your life, let me help."
Dean closes his eyes, mostly because he doesn't know what else to do. He has twelve hours left to live, give or take, and he doesn't know what to do.
Not good enough, Dad says in his head. Dean agrees wholeheartedly; the problem is that he hurts and nothing feels real, and he can't quite juggle the twin demands of keeping Sam safe, which means keeping Sam ignorant, and dealing with his own little problem in a way that will keep Sam both safe and ignorant. Without Dad. And, oh yeah, his injuries hurt like a bitch, he's not sure he can actually move off this couch, and neither his fever nor Sam will leave him alone and let him think.
"Dean? You okay?" Sam asks nervously.
"Need to rest for a while," Dean croaks, and thinks: Break it down. One thing at a time.
First: weapons check. His pistol was in his jacket and should be there still, unless Sam found it and moved it, and Dean's pretty sure he'd have heard about it by now if Sam had. The clip is half full and if it comes down to that he's only going to need one bullet. His jacket's on the coffee table, stiff with blood; weapons check, clear.
Second: escape routes. The Impala should still be outside, but Dean doesn't know where the keys are. That's bad. Sam theoretically has to sleep sometime but there's no telling when he will, and that's worse. He's going to have to get Sam to go to bed, and then he's going to have to be damn quiet, because Sam wakes up if someone in the room breathes in a way he wasn't expecting. Escape routes, problematic.
Third is physical condition, and it's only Dad's training that keeps Dean from filing that right under "the less said, the better." He's weak and dizzy, feverish and lost too much blood. All he's wearing is a pair of clean boxers that aren't his, which is a little weird but since his own will be stiff with dried blood by now he isn't complaining. His abdomen, as Sam pointed out, looks and feels like something tried to eat him. And as much as he might ransack his memory, he doesn't know to the last scratch just what kind of injuries he has.
Sam's hand runs over his forehead, stroking, testing for fever. It's been three years; somehow Dean managed to forget how relentlessly tactile Sam is, how the first thing he does when he's afraid or in pain is lay hands on Dean like a St. Christopher's medallion. Managed to forget how there was a time when Dean would reach back for his brother without thinking, like breathing.
In a way, Dean hasn't breathed for three years. He's feeling the lack of oxygen now, in this cozy sunlit room he's brought evil into like the smell of lightning.
The next thing he's conscious of is a woman's voice, hushed and concerned. Dean drags his eyes open and looks at the position of the sun on the floor. He's been out for about an hour, time he couldn't afford to lose.
"Yeah, um, it's okay," Sam says quietly from somewhere Dean can't see, sounding tired and distracted. "He'll be fine. Just, they beat him up pretty bad and I don't want to leave him. Thanks for bringing these by, though."
"Good luck," the girl says, and the door closes. Sam reappears in Dean's line of sight, dropping a sheaf of papers onto the coffee table.
"I have to move the car," he says, and for one heart-stopping moment Dean thinks Sam's reaching for his bloodstained jacket. He's not, though; he's reaching for the car keys next to it, where Dean couldn't see from this angle. "I guess having a blood-soaked car sitting out in front of your apartment attracts attention. I'm going to pull it around back, off the street."
Dean waits until the door closes again, then tries to sit up. It's like having his gut ripped open all over again, and he makes it about two inches up on his elbows before his vision goes dark and he has to lie back down with his eyes closed for a while, shaking and taking one careful breath after another. Swearing between his teeth, he stretches out an arm and manages to pull his jacket close enough to fumble the cell phone out of the pocket. On further consideration, he pulls out the gun too, tucking it behind a cushion in easy reach.
You've reached John Winchester, says the voice mail. Leave a message.
"Dad," Dean says. "Things went south. I'm at Sam's place – you know the address. I don't know how close you are, but just, please, Dad, please get here before nightfall. I screwed up, I know, you can yell at me all you want when you get here, just. Come get me. I've got the silver you need."
The phone slides out of his fingers, angling improbably upward.
"Dad, it's Sam."
Dean opens his eyes, blinking against the light. He didn't even hear the door.
"Dean's hurt really bad," Sam goes on, his voice cold and even. "He won't let me take him to the hospital. If he gets any worse I'm going to take him anyway. I don't know what the two of you are involved in, but I'm done pretending I don't know something bad's going on."
A short, breathy laugh escapes Dean before he can clamp down on it. Bad, Jesus. Sam has no idea.
Sam glares at him. "Whatever it is, I'm in it now too," he tells Dad and Dean both. "You don't get to shut me out of it anymore, not when it can do this to Dean. So we'll see you when you get here, I guess. If we aren't here, we'll be at the university hospital."
"Sam," Dean says as Sam presses the end button and drops the phone onto his jacket. "You gotta stay out of this."
Still glaring, Sam sits carefully down next to Dean and pulls the sheet down, checking his makeshift bandages. "Just tell me what it is, Dean. Organized crime? Arms running? I know it's not drugs, Dad never had enough cash when we were growing up."
Dean sighs. "Christ. It's the mob, Sammy, okay? You understand now why I can't tell you anything else?"
Sam braces his hands on the back of the sofa and the seat cushion and leans in, and Dean spares a wry thought for how damn big his baby brother has gotten. "It's the mob," he says, and breathes out through his nose in a way that's always a bad sign. "It's the mob like it was pit bulls, Dean."
"Well, y'know, mob's got some fuckin' crackerjack pit bull trainers –"
"I swear to god I will hit you if you lie there and try to sell me a bill of goods about mob-trained pit bulls," Sam says between his teeth. "First time in my life I get my hands on the keys to the Impala without you or Dad breathing down my neck, did you really think the first thing I'd do wouldn't be to pop the trunk open and jimmy that lock Dad put on the tire well cover?"
Dean tries to swallow, but there's no spit to lube the way. "You can't bluff for shit," he says, with a cold hollow in his gut because it's true.
Wordlessly, Sam reaches back and pulls a 9mm full of consecrated iron rounds out of the back of his jeans.
Dean closes his eyes, because right now he can't even look at how bad he's fucked up. All he can do now is pray that if he just keeps his mouth shut there's still a chance to keep Sam in the dark. "Hey," he says, quiet. "Remember how you used to yell at Dad that the way we lived wasn't normal, that you just wanted to… shit, I don't know, try out for soccer and make friends and stay in one place for a whole school year?"
"I remember," Sam says tightly.
"So look at you, huh? You got normal now. You're in school. You got a nice place you can stay in as long as you want. You got girls dropping by to give you their class notes or whatever. Don't be so quick to chuck what you wanted just because your brother shows up to bleed on your couch for a few hours."
There's silence for too long. When Dean opens his eyes, Sam looks stricken, like he wants to say something and can't bring himself to – which is so not Sam that Dean worries a little. God knows Sam's never in his life had a problem saying exactly what was on his mind, usually at the top of his lungs and the worst possible time.
"Let it go, man," Dean tells him. "Dad'll come get me and you can forget all about –"
"Forget about almost having a goddamned heart attack when I found my brother outside my place looking like he'd gone one-on-one with Jack the Ripper and lost?" Sam asks in an eerily calm voice. "Forget about the things I saw in the trunk?"
"Christ." Dean rubs the heel of his hand across his forehead. "I'm sorry, Sammy. I should never have come here. I just…"
Sam sighs a little and settles back on the couch. "For god's sake, Dean. It's okay to need your brother when you're dying. If you hadn't come here you'd have bled to death. And where the fuck was Dad, anyway?"
"Don't start."
"Why is it so important for Dad to come get you before nightfall?" Sam asks, and he's got that set to his jaw that means he's not going to quit asking until he gets an answer.
It's like fighting, like that moment when you're in the zone and have all the time in the world to dodge whatever's coming at you. Dean has the length of an indrawn breath to come up with something believable that will shut Sam up; and between the fever and his ripped-up gut, everything looks like a hallucination, gilt-edged and full of clear water. "That stuff in the trunk – only a few of the guns and a couple of blades are mine. The rest I'm transporting. There's a guy in Jericho, a collector, real freak from what I've heard. I get a cut from as much of that crap as I can sell him, but I've got a deadline – he's got a late flight out of the country tonight. If I miss him I don't get paid, the guy who scrounged the merchandise together doesn't get paid… bad things happen."
Sam looks uncertain now. Dean doesn't know what the hell he has to be uncertain about. It's a good story, plausible, a hell of a lot more likely than the bogeyman being real. "What about the silver thing? What's that about?"
Dean shifts a little on the couch, as best he can without blacking out again, restless with heat. "One of the things my contact scrounged up was a box of silver bullets. Movie memorabilia. Dad thinks they'll be worth more melted down. He knows a guy he can take them to."
Sam's eyeing him narrowly, like he can't quite reconcile what he's hearing with what he's seeing. Boy's got good instincts. He'll make a good lawyer, Dean thinks, a little uneasily. "You had me going for a minute," he says finally. "But it's not gonna work, Dean. You know why?"
Dean sighs. "God, Sam."
"Because I know you. I know you're not a two-bit thug running guns across state lines. And there might not be any love lost between Dad and me, but I know that's not what he is either."
He should have beaten Sam more often as a child. That's the only conclusion Dean can draw from this. His lifelong marshmallowness in the face of Sam's earnest gaze is coming back to bite him in the ass.
"What I don't get," Sam says, suddenly closer on the couch in a way that reminds Dean uncomfortably of a ghost's staticky flicker, far-then-in-your-face, "is what's going on that's so bad that you'd rather have me think you're a low-level courier for the mob. And how this ties in with the way you and Dad were always so superstitious, how you'd laugh about it but you'd never go to sleep without salt lines across the doors and windows. And your client might want weird weapons and movie memorabilia but I'm pretty sure no one's going to pay good money for cheap pewter flasks with a cup and a half of stale water in them. Dean, what did this to you?"
Dean thinks maybe this is the part where he wishes, just for a minute, that he could explain everything to Sam; that he could have his brother at his back in this. But he doesn't. Not after all Dad's warnings, not after the first time Dean got hurt on a hunt and realized it could have been Sammy in the way of that chupacabra's claws. That doesn't mean he doesn't know the end of something when he feels it coming, because he's always known how much this whole thing depended on Sam's willingness to stay blind for just one more day. "When you were little you had a stuffed rabbit," he says, then trails off because it doesn't seem important right now.
"Man, I'm pretty sure Mr. McGillicuddy didn't try to gut you like a slaughtered pig," Sam says.
Dean isn't really listening. He's trying to remember what he got Sam for his sixth birthday. It's important, because if he can remember this then it'll mean that he's still more in control of his brain than the fever is and he'll be able to think his way out of this somehow, but all he can remember from that year is a hazy flash of playing toy soldiers with Sammy under a tree the color of autumn. "I love you, Sammy, y'know?" he finds himself saying, and okay, maybe he's not as in control of his mouth as he is of his brain, but there's only so much control to go around right now and something's got to give.
"Dean?" Sam's voice is sharp with fear. A palm lands none too gently on Dean's face and clings, and god damn Sam's got big hands. "Dean, open your eyes. Look at me."
Dean doesn't want to obey, but he's Dean Winchester and that's pretty much what he does with Sam and Dad, so he opens his eyes. Sam's leaning close, white as a sheet, breath coming too fast over Dean's face.
"You look like shit," Sam says in that same helpless, terrified voice that he'd used last night. "Dean. You look like shit. Tell me what to do."
Dean covers Sam's hand with his, reassuring. They're both shaking. "Gonna be over soon, Sammy. Few more hours, 'kay? Dad'll be here, you'll see."
Sam leans his forehead against Dean's, eyes closed tight, taking deliberately slow, even breaths. Dean can taste him, toothpaste and coffee, nothing that would tell him Sam's eaten anything today. "Okay," Sam says, and doesn't sound like he's agreeing. "Okay."
"Bitch, you aren't cuddling me," Dean says, but it comes out more like a whisper.
"I am, Dean," Sam tells him. "I really, really am. And I'm gonna fix you. And we're gonna talk when your fever's gone down and you don't think we're talking about stuffed rabbits anymore. Just stay with me for a while."
Dean thinks of the handgun under the cushions, looks at the slant of the sun on the ceiling. He can stay with Sam a while longer.
"I didn't know how to go grocery shopping," Sam says, and Dean comes back to himself enough to realize that he's watching dust motes drift through the slanting light onto the carpet. "I didn't know how to open a bank account or set up utilities or apply for jobs."
There's a different quality to the pain in Dean's stomach now, ebbing and flowing like ripples in a pond.
"I didn't know how to stop talking about my brother like he was the love of my life," Sam says, and laughs, short and bitter. "It turns out normal people don't do that. I know, right? Who knew?"
Dean blinks glittering motes out of his vision and looks down. Sam's kneeling by the side of the couch, a laptop open on the coffee table beside him, carefully stitching up the gashes in Dean's stomach. The room smells of antiseptic now, piles of damp and bloodstained hand towels on the table with a bottle of surgical soap behind them.
"But I learned," he says. "I learned to do all of it, all the things we never did because we never stayed in one place long enough. I'm good at it now. You'd be proud of me, Dean. Or maybe you wouldn't, I don't know."
"Always proud of you, Sam," Dean says, his voice worn and cracking like a daguerreotype.
Sam looks up, and for a moment his expression is strangely wary, cornered, as if he's wondering what Dean heard. Then it's gone and he turns his attention back to the stitching. "I asked Jess to go get me some supplies. She's a friend of mine. We were in Anthro together my freshman year."
His ears redden, and Dean smiles, a little wistful. Gonna be fine, his Sammy. It's a load off Dean's mind, makes that gun under the cushions seem like not such a scary thing after all. "You ask her out yet?"
Sam reaches for a pair of scissors and snips the thread, knotting off a row of stitches, silent until he's done. "I thought about it for a while," he says finally, looking at something Dean can't see. Then he shakes himself out of it, whatever it is, and looks back up at Dean. "How do you feel?"
Like hammered shit, but at least he can think a little more clearly now. "M'fine."
"Dean. No." Sam gives him that pissy face that Dean swears he started doing as soon as he was old enough to have most of his facial muscles under control. "How do you really feel?"
Dean sighs. "Cold. Sore. My gut feels like it's been shredded. Been better, been worse."
"You're still shaking a little," Sam tells him. He sits back on the coffee table, pushing towels aside, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a wad of clean cotton balls.
Something else falls out of his pocket with them, flashing in the sun. It hits the coffee table with a metallic clatter, bounces, rolls, and falls out of sight onto the carpet.
There weren't any silver bullets in the trunk. Dean knows, because he loaded his gun with the last of them the night before.
"Oh, yeah," Sam says, bending over. He picks up the bullet and turns it around in his fingers, not looking at Dean. "That reminds me. I was gonna ask why that .44 you hid in the couch was loaded with movie memorabilia."
One more breath, in. "Aw, Sammy," Dean says, pitching his voice at brotherly disappointment. "You don't recognize that gun?"
Sam looks up at him, not saying anything. The bullet turns around in his fingers, over and over, and Dean tries not to look too hard at it.
"Gary Busey? The werewolf movie with the kid in the wheelchair? C'mon, Sam, we watched it when you were like nine. That gun was one of the props. Practically straight out of Busey's hands."
Sam gives a little snort, not entirely unamused. "Yeah, sorry I don't have your freakish memory for detail in bad horror movies."
"Yeah, well. You didn't lose the gun, did you?"
"Funny, though," Sam goes on, as though he hadn't heard. "I would have sworn that was a revolver. In the movie, I mean. The gun in my couch – and thanks for that, by the way, you're lucky I found it before one of us got his ass blown off – was a clip-loaded Desert Eagle. Kind of thing you'd use to drop a big-ass charging animal right in its tracks."
Jesus, Dad, any fucking time now. "Wasn't a revolver," Dean argues, and doesn't have to fake the weakness in his voice. "You got your laptop right there, find pictures."
"The even funnier thing," Sam says, still not looking at Dean, "is that not only do I know you're not a thug, I also know you're not an idiot. Dad drilled gun safety into us like he was getting ready for the Apocalypse, Dean. If this gun were a movie prop you were selling, it'd be broken down in the trunk. Instead it's loaded and you're packing it. You've never a day in your life carried a gun for show. So the question is, what is it you were planning on using silver bullets on, and why?"
"Christ, Sam," Dean snaps, then winces as it pulls at his injuries. "You sound like you're in a bad horror movie. Just, fuck, tell me what answer you're fishing for and I'll give it to you, and you can go off and play with your witchboard or something while I get some more sleep."
Sam sighs, finally looking back up at Dean. He sets the bullet down and reaches behind him, coming back with a bottle of Gatorade and three pills. "Here, take these," he says, holding out the pills. "They're just Tylenol, but they'll help."
Dean sticks the pills in his mouth and tries to dry-swallow, but Sam kneels down beside him and slides an arm under his shoulders, helping him lift his head a little to wash the pills down with Gatorade. He lifts Dean like two hundred pounds of older brother was nothing, so Dean's pretty sure it's not the strain that's making Sam's arm tremble against his back. Dean closes his eyes when Sam eases him back down, making a small, exasperated noise.
"Sorry, Sammy," he mumbles. "Just… hurts, y'know?"
Sam doesn't quite let go of him; just lays his head down on the arm of the couch above Dean's head, a quick press of his fingers letting Dean know he's forgiven.
"I love you," Sam whispers, like it's a secret he's been waiting years to tell.
After that, Dean tries like hell to stay awake. He doesn't think he's succeeding, but it's hard to tell for sure. Everything is weirdly still, just the sunlight and the quiet sound of Sam's voice and the fever that shimmers off him like heat from the hood of a car. He needs to move, to get out of here, to do something, but every time he tries his vision goes black with pain and he loses god knows how much time to the forced rhythm of his breath and Sam's hands on him.
He doesn't want to think about what's going to happen if Dad doesn't get here before moonrise. But time slips away from him and the color of the sunlight changes, and the longer the shadows get on the floor, the clearer it becomes that he's going to have to man up and figure out what the fuck he's going to do if Dad doesn't.
He can't shoot himself here on Sam's couch. He has to get Sam out of the apartment, or get himself out. And then it occurs to him: Sam's been offering just that, all along. All Dean needs is his gun back and a fraction of a second's inattention on the part of some ER orderly. Break it down: first he has to get the gun back, loaded.
"Hey," he says, and barely recognizes his own voice. Sam, leaning back against the couch by Dean's knees, glances up from the book he's been reading aloud in soft, elided Latin.
"How do you feel?"
Dean tries to swallow. "Fever's going down, I think," he says. "Listen, Dad's gonna be here soon. Give me that gun back before you forget about it or I do. Thing's worth a lot of money."
Sam tilts his head, giving Dean an Are you actually insane, Dean? Seriously? look. "Dean, you've been floating in and out all day. I'm not gonna hand you a gun, loaded or not."
Dean hopes like hell it's still loaded, because if it isn't, that'll pretty much be a game over right there. "Just make sure the safety's on and set it on my jacket, dude. I don't wanna hold it, I just wanna make sure I know where it is."
Sam looks at him for a minute longer, then shrugs, a little too elaborately casual. "It's on the table by the door. You won't be able to miss it when you leave."
Dean grinds his teeth a little, and doesn't have to fake the stab of pain it costs him. He'd rather not pay attention to the pain, but he does, obsessively – he needs to know the second something's off, the second he starts to turn if he's going to. It's damn hard when no part of his body wants to cooperate right now. "Humor me, Sammy, come on. There's only so many things I can hold in my head right now, y'know?"
"How much are you getting for it?" Sam asks.
"My contact thinks five grand for the gun and bullets."
Sam looks back down at the book. "I have some money saved from summer jobs and my scholarships. If you leave it here, I'll cover the price. Your contact never has to know."
There have been many times in his life when Dean has had to practically sit on himself to keep from popping his little brother one, but this is without a doubt one of the closest calls yet. "No way you got five grand to burn, Sam."
"No," Sam says, not looking up from his book. "What I have is an idiot brother who won't tell me why he's packing a gun full of silver bullets or what ripped his stomach open. Or why he's so terrified of still being here when the sun goes down."
It's not like it would have been that hard to figure out, what Dean and Dad were doing, that all the monsters were real. All it would have required was a leap of faith. Dean never for one day saw any indication that Sam wanted to take that leap, or even really understood it was there to be taken.
Until today, when it's too late.
"Don't fuck this up for yourself, Sam," Dean says, unable to look at him. "Please. This is what you always wanted. You wanted out, now you're out."
"Dean –"
"Go to school, Sammy. Be a lawyer. Ask that girl in your Anthro class out, I bet she's real nice. You kept your eyes closed for so long, just –" Dean hears his voice crack and hates it, hates being this weak. "Just keep them closed for one more day. Everything you always wanted so bad, you're gonna have it, the job and the wife and kids and the fucking minivan. Just like that, easy as asking. All you gotta do is keep your eyes closed for a few more hours and bring me the damn gun."
"Yeah?" Sam asks, and there's something in his voice that makes Dean maybe never want to look at him again. "Seems to me like those kinds of deals always have a higher price than it looks like at first. So tell me, Dean, what's the catch here?"
"No catch," Dean whispers.
"What happens to you if I bring you the gun?"
"I put it in my jacket and I let you take me to the hospital," Dean says. "Deal? You take me to the hospital and then you come home and call that girl and take her to the movies or something. No harm, no foul."
"Last night you were begging me not to take you to the hospital."
"Yeah, well, you want to. And I'm sick of arguing and I think I'm hurt worse than I thought, so…"
The silence stretches on too long. Dean opens his eyes to see Sam perched on the couch beside his knees, eyeing Dean narrowly. And the thing is, Sam's such a dork half the time that it's easy to forget that the little bastard is scary smart – until you see the wheels turning in his head, tumblers falling closer to their slots with every spin. "I'll give you the gun," he says slowly. "Not the bullets."
"Gun has to have a couple of bullets in it or the deal's off. Guy won't buy it."
Sam gives a short, harsh laugh. "You were doing good there for a minute, too. There's no guy, Dean. Tell me what happens to you if I give you that gun. And then tell me why."
"Jesus Christ, Sam! Twenty-one goddamn years you didn't ask questions and now you won't fucking stop. You give me the gun, I let you take me to the hospital, that's it. I'm out of your hair. You're the one who told me not to fucking call, did you forget that?"
Sam shakes his head and rubs his hands over his face like he's praying. "No," he whispers. "I didn't forget. I just didn't know what it was going to do to me when you stopped."
"You seem to be doing okay," Dean says, deliberately brutal. He's lying. He can feel it, though he can't put his finger on what makes him think Sam's not okay.
"I was. For a while."
"Yeah? What happened?" Stupid to ask now, when there's no time left to put anything right even if Sam would let him, but the question's out before he can stop it.
Sam snorts and gets off the couch. Dean hears the refrigerator opening and closing, and in a minute Sam's back to sit beside Dean, holding a beer. Dean looks hopefully at it.
"Forget it. You'll get peritonitis," Sam says tersely, then takes a long drink.
"I went on a date," he says finally, and gives another one of those unpleasant laughs. "It was a fucking disaster. I got drunk and got laid at a party, and that was an even worse disaster."
Dean has too much to worry about at the moment to be annoyed at the universe because somewhere in the world there is a set of Winchester equipment not functioning as it should, but that doesn't mean it's not going on the list of grievances. "Yeah? What happened? In general terms, I mean."
Sam just looks at him, something dark in his eyes that Dean can't read. "This isn't about me, Dean," he says finally.
"Yeah, it is," Dean tells him flatly. "It's about you not asking questions you know goddamn well you don't want the answer to."
"Dean, you almost died!" Sam slams the bottle down on the table and braces his hands around Dean on the couch, and wow, he's really got that looming thing down pat. "I'm not playing this game anymore. I'm not a kid. Something did this to you and all I want to do is – is hunt it down and make it pay –"
"Sam!" Dean cuts him off, because Sam sounds so much like Dad that it's terrifying. "Christ, calm down, Sammy. It's already dead, okay?"
"Then what are you so afraid of, Dean?" Sam almost snarls, right up in Dean's face. Dean's breath starts coming a little too fast for his own comfort.
"Sammy," he says quietly, putting his hand on Sam's chest like he's done all their lives. Sam's heartbeat is too fast and too hard under his palm. "C'mon, big guy, I'm right here. Dial it down a little, huh?"
"You don't get to do that." Sam's voice is strained. "You don't get to talk to me like I'm a three-year-old. Shit, you're bleeding again."
Dean looks down to see blood trailing from the gashes on his midsection where a couple of stitches are starting to give; not much, but it's not like he's got it to spare at the moment. Sam reaches down and runs shaky fingertips across Dean's stomach just above the line of his boxers, smearing red behind his hand like finger-paint. It's weird, and all Dean can think is that maybe he'd have fought harder to keep Cassie if anything they'd done had ever felt as intimate as this, his brother's fingers drawing on his skin in his own blood.
"Did you hear yourself?" Sam whispers, his eyes fixed on his fingers where they rest on Dean's stomach. "I could have everything I'd always dreamed of for the rest of my life, as long as I turned my back on you. You know what you sounded like? If I didn't know better I'd be wondering if you were really my brother or something evil trying to trick me into cutting a deal."
Dean's mouth goes so fucking dry, because Sam doesn't sound like he's joking, doesn't sound like he knows better at all.
Sam's eyes come back to his, then, and he's not sure it's an improvement. "I do know better, though. Want to know why?"
"Because you're too old to believe in the monsters under the bed," Dean says hoarsely.
"No," Sam says. "Because a demon would have known what to offer me."
There's a conversation going on here that Dean can't keep up with; but before he can force his head on straight enough to ask, Sam's sitting back, not looking at him. "I'll get some bigger towels," he says.
Dean knows better than to think that's the end of it.
Part 2
mirabella-san...I have a question,
I remembered recently, that once, years back, you've posted a director's commentary type of thing for a chapter in SoHW (if I'm not mistaken it's Chapter 13...?) and I kinda went - 'Oh! Right! There's that! Me wanna read!' (I have a thing with reading the inner workings of the minds of authors I like... like, a huge thing about it =)) So I came here, and noticed it's not here, so I went to
Re: mirabella-san...I have a question,
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-11-24 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)Part Two
(Anonymous) 2014-04-21 04:53 am (UTC)(link)Re: Part Two
(Anonymous) 2015-10-26 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-08-06 03:28 am (UTC)(link)Part 2!
(Anonymous) 2015-10-26 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)