Chapter Text
“Sam, wake up. We’re here.”
There’s no moment of confusion. No delay between the words and complete understanding.
Sam opens his eyes, pulse pounding in his ears and head aching, and asks, “They told you?” He’s already moving—no need to unbuckle the belt he never bothered with in the first place—and Jill helps get him upright and steady and moving the few steps away from the car and into the hospital.
“Yes,” she answers, and Sam doesn’t have to ask how much. Her voice is too tight and unhappy for it to have been anything less than the entire truth.
“You don’t believe any of it, do you?” he grunts. He’s moving on his own speed now—not running, which would draw too much unwanted attention, but using the fastest gait he can get away with under the circumstances. Bobby and Dad are just behind him, Dad’s crutches clacking noisily against the floor at a rate Sam didn’t think the man was capable of.
“I think you’re all under a lot of stress,” Jill hedges as Sam draws up short in front of the elevator and mashes his thumb repeatedly against the button. Pushing it over and over again isn’t actually going to make the car come any quicker, but Sam can’t seem to help himself anyway. Giving him a wary look, Jill continues, “As soon as you see Dean’s all right, I'm bringing you straight over to psych to get checked out.”
Sam’s fine with that. He’ll sit through all the poking and prodding Jill wants if everything is okay, if Dean is sitting upstairs bored in his bed and tells Sam to get the fuck out. But the black pit in his stomach leaves him sure he isn’t going to have to.
“Come on,” he mutters, hitting the button with the side of his closed fist.
“Careful,” Bobby mutters from behind him. “You’re gonna startle the natives.”
Bobby’s right, but that doesn’t make the wait any more palatable. When the doors finally—and slowly—open up for Sam almost a full minute later, he dives into the thankfully empty car and hits seven. As Jill steps into the car along with Dad and Bobby, Sam wonders whether this was actually a good idea—she’s a civilian, she’s going to be a liability—and then shrugs the concern away. They’re past the point where they could have left her behind.
As the elevator doors close again, Sam focuses on her long enough to say, “Stay behind us and keep your head down. And if I say run, you run as fast as you can and don’t look back, got it?”
“I’ll be fine,” Jill replies, hooking her thumb through a gold chain around her neck and bringing out a cross. “See?”
It’s naïve and stupid and Jill has no fucking clue of the mess she’s stepped in, but Sam doesn’t have time to give her the Cliff Notes for Demonology 101. “Just stay behind us,” he repeats, turning back to the silver doors. His wavering reflection stares back at him, nothing but harsh planes and shadowed eye sockets. In the doors, he looks like something they’d hunt.
As the elevator climbs past the third floor, Dad shifts closer and asks, “You have it?”
No need to ask what ‘it’ is.
“Yeah,” Sam answers shortly. His palms ache for the gun’s weight—for the reassuring, cool grip of the handle clasped in his hand—but he knows that he can’t risk it yet. He can’t risk causing a panic before they’re with Dean and know he’s safe.
“Have what?” Jill asks sharply. There’s fresh alarm in her voice, and Sam thinks she might be rethinking her decision to let what she considered a harmless delusion play out. But it doesn’t matter because the elevator doors are pinging open on Dean’s floor.
The smell hits Sam first—sulfur everywhere: soot clogging his throat. And underneath that, the metallic tang of fresh blood, and the baser reek of piss and shit. The smell of death. He gags on it a little, and he knows that at least some of that smell is real because Jill coughs next to him, and Bobby and Dad both mutter muffled swears.
“What is that?” Jill asks, covering her mouth and nose with one hand, but Sam has seen what’s waiting for him now and he pulls the gun out without another thought, sprinting forward.
“Dean!” he yells—stupid giving that much warning of their arrival, but he can’t keep the word in.
As he rushes forward, his mind slips into that still, calm place it finds on hunts, protecting him from the horror that would otherwise be clogging his throat. He notices in a detached kind of way how red all the blood looks against the sterile hospital walls and floor—ceiling in one spot. He sees a nurse slumped over the duty desk with a pen stuck in her eye—her own hand is still curled loosely around the protruding end. One of the orderlies used a stethoscope to strangle himself. Another is still twitching as the current from a crash cart courses through him. Mostly, though, there are just body parts.
“Oh my god!” Jill yells from behind him. She sounds on the edge of a hysterical breakdown—Sam can’t blame her: he’s never seen carnage this bad and he’s been dealing with violent death his whole life.
But any thoughts of Jill and the people who died here vanish from his mind as he skids in the blood pool outside Dean’s room—crumpled nurse’s body on the floor that probably matches the pool and the arterial spray on the wall. Sam can’t see her face, but the spill of dark hair obscuring it and the trim lines of the body make him think it might be Rachel. When he left tonight, she was sitting at the nurses’ station filling out paperwork.
Now he stumbles over her without a backward glance, gun up and already turning to cover all the corners as he enters his brother’s room. There’s no blood here, but the bed, the bed is fucking empty and there’s a hospital jonnie lying discarded in the middle of the floor. The flowers are wilted, the hex bag open and the contents scattered. The areas of the walls that Sam and Dad and Bobby spent the last three weeks coating with protective symbols are smoking and cracked.
“Sam,” Dad calls from behind him. His father’s voice is choked and desperate, begging, but Sam doesn’t have any response. His hands and chest are numb; his legs weak as they give out and drop him down to the knees.
“He’s gone,” he mumbles through clumsy lips. “It took him.”
A heavy tread in the doorway alerts him to Bobby’s arrival—man must have stayed back to handle Jill—but Sam still doesn’t turn. His hands tremble where they’re folded around the Colt. Useless now, with nothing to shoot at. With no one to save.
“The blood’s still fresh,” Bobby announces from the doorway. “They could still be here.”
But Sam remembers the way that the demon had just vanished from the burning nursery window, and he’s sure that isn’t the case, that the demon has already flown the coop and taken his brother with it. He unhooks one hand from the Colt’s handle and reaches out. Brushes his trembling fingertips against Dean’s discarded jonnie.
—flash—
A stairwell, grey walls and blue linoleum.
—flash—
Bloody hands grasping at the wall.
—flash—
Bare feet stumbling on the clean linoleum of a landing and leaving red streaks behind.
There’s a sound laid over everything, harsh and labored, and it’s Dean trying to catch his breath: trying to get his injured lungs to work the way they’re supposed to.
Spurred by a sharp spasm of hope, Sam jerks himself out of the vision this time instead of waiting to be booted. It hurts even more to do that, and he feels something give way in his head with an agonizing snap. Blood trickles out one nostril and onto his lips, hot and coppery.
But for all the pain, his mind has cleared. His fear and anger and desperation have coalesced into a hard, determined calm.
“They’re still here,” he says, scrambling to his feet. “In a stairwell somewhere. But we have to move fast.” When he turns around, Bobby and Dad are standing just inside the room, both clearly ready for action, but ... “Where’s Jill?”
“I put her in one of the rooms,” Bobby says. “It was empty.”
“Which one?” Sam’s already moving, pushing past Bobby and out into the hallway. Now that his brain is working better, the sight leaves Sam slightly breathless. Fuck, the demon had to have been seriously pissed off to do something as showy—and as blatant—as this.
“Seven fourteen,” Bobby calls, trotting after him. The clack of Dad’s crutches trail after him as well, but Sam doesn’t look back as he races down the hall and pushes through the door.
Jill is sitting on the empty hospital bed. Her face is twisted into a horrified mask, but her eyes are blank. Vacant.
Sam needs her here.
“Jill,” he calls, crossing the room with three strides and grabbing her by the shoulders. “Jill!” he repeats, louder, and gives her a shake.
She blinks at that, coming back a little, and tilts her face up toward him. “Sam?” she mumbles. “Why’re you ...” She trails off as her eyes sharpen with awareness, and then her breath hitches. “Oh my God. Everyone’s—Wendy’s eye, she—”
“Jill! Jill, look at me. Look at me, okay? I need you to calm down.”
But Jill’s wide eyes are overflowing with tears and her breath is speeding. She looks like she’s headed for a full blown freak out, and Sam doesn’t blame her—he’s used to this kind of thing and he could do with one himself—but they don’t have time for it. Not if they’re going to get Dean back in one piece.
Driven by the need to get Dean back—to save him—Sam’s mind twists. It’s similar to the sensation that came over him in the cabin when he struck out at the demon, and he instinctively clings to the feeling as he says, “Jill, I need you to be calm and here with me.”
The terror in Jill’s eyes vanishes immediately. She looks around at the walls of the room, and then at the gun crushed awkwardly between her shoulder and Sam’s right hand, and then, finally, at Sam.
“What the hell happened out there?” she says as she lifts one hand to wipe at the tears on her face.
“Stairs,” Sam demands, ignoring the question. “I need to know where the stairs are.”
“Stairs? What—”
“The thing that butchered everyone out there has Dean and it’s taking him out through the stairs. I need to know where they are.”
More awareness filters into Jill’s gaze at his words, along with a hesitant determination that would make Sam proud to be her friend if he weren’t so focused on getting to Dean.
“There are four,” she answers. “Two main stairwells and two back.”
Fuck. Four is too many to check. Hell, two would be too many.
“The stairs were blue,” Sam says, dredging up as many details from the vision as he can remember. “The walls were grey.”
And oh thank God Jill nods like that means something.
“East stair,” she says confidently. “There’s an emergency exit at the bottom, leads out next to the ambulance bay.”
“Show me.” It’s inexcusable, dragging her further into what has clearly turned into a clusterfuck, but Dean’s face is foremost in Sam’s mind and he doesn’t even hesitate. Jill doesn’t question the request either. She just nods and then hurries out into the hall, where Dad and Bobby are waiting.
She turns to the right—toward Dean’s room—and then freezes, her eyes wide.
“R-Rachel?”
Sam curses silently, thinking that Jill has caught sight of the body—her roommate, should’ve dragged it out of the way first—and then steps out into the hall and freezes himself.
The body he stepped over to get into Dean’s room was indeed Rachel’s. Her throat has been slit, deep enough and widely enough for Sam to see bone through the gaping, bloodied wound. Above the wound, Rachel’s mouth is twisted in a sneer. Her eyes are black, mocking holes.
Demon.
Something falls over behind him and Sam whips his head around to see the nurse who was slumped over the desk rising. The pencil is still sticking out of her left eye socket, but her right eye has filled with black. She’s wearing the same twisted smile.
Of course the demon left rearguards.
He senses movement at his elbow—Jill starting forward—and turns around to grab her arm. She looks up at him, confused and frightened.
“That’s not Rachel,” he says tightly.
Down the hall, the demon possessing Jill’s former roommate opens its mouth in a silent laugh.
“No,” Jill breathes. She’s crying now—in a resigned, quiet way. “No, I know. But we—the stairs are that way.”
Past Rachel.
Then again, better past Rachel than past the three demons closing in behind them.
“We’ve got this,” Dad says, balancing on one crutch while pulling a gun out of his oversized coat pocket. “Just get Dean.”
Sam still isn’t sure how he’s supposed to get past Rachel without getting tossed around like a rag doll, but then Bobby lets out a roar and charges forward. The demon in Rachel looks startled for a moment, as though it didn’t expect such a suicidal move, and then Bobby crashes into it and sends them both through the open door and into Dean’s room.
The path before them is wide open now and Sam doesn’t need any more invitation than that. Still holding onto Jill, he runs to the end of the hall and then, at Jill’s urging, spins them both left. There’s more carnage here—nothing but body parts and blood, nothing complete enough for possession, thankfully—but Jill lets out a hysterical shriek and jerks back. Sam, shooting a frustrated glance down at her, notes the upturned direction of her gaze and follows her line of sight to find a severed head hanging from one of the sprinklers. The head looks like it’s grinning.
His own stomach lurches, but he shoves the horror away and yanks Jill forward again. “Come on,” he says. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Sam,” Jill sobs as she stumbles along with him. “Sam, I can’t—Jesus, what’s happening?”
“Demons,” Sam answers succinctly. “Bobby and Dad told you in the car.”
“Sam, please. Please, just stop—I can’t. I can’t do this, I can’t—”
And fuck, Sam can’t take it anymore. He stops moving long enough to shove her against a wall, forearm across her throat to shut her up as she blinks up at him with wide, panicked eyes.
“It has Dean, do you hear me? It has Dean, and it’s going to rape him over and over again unless you get your shit together and fucking help me!”
He jerks back without waiting for a response, time not just slipping through his fingers but rushing past with supersonic speed, and then starts forward again, jogging this time with his hand still clamped around Jill’s arm.
“Which way?”
“R-right there,” Jill stutters, and when Sam makes the turn, he realizes that he doesn’t need Jill anymore because there’s more carnage here—red dripping from the ceiling and coating the walls and floor with a slick layer of blood. Jesus Christ, the demon didn’t even bother trying to be subtle as it made its way out: it just ripped through everything in its path, turning the seventh floor into a slaughterhouse.
Releasing Jill’s elbow, he moves faster, ignoring the sound of her calling his name as he follows the trail of blood and death. There are footprints on the floor now: two sets. One of the sets—clear and confident—belongs to a pair of shoes with looping soles; the other—slipping all over the place and smudged—to bare feet. And those prints—one of them on the wall about a foot up from the floor—are signs of Dean. Dean still fighting, trying to slow the demon down any way he can.
Sam’s heart beats faster and he manages to push himself to one last burst of speed, bloodied shoes squeaking on the floor as he does his best not to step in anything that used to be human. Then, suddenly, the trail vanishes. Sam skids to a halt, breath freezing in his lungs, and spins in a tight circle, trying to figure out what happened. They can’t have vanished into thin air, not now, not when Sam was so—
The door to his left is marked STAIRS.
He bursts through without any thought of subtlety or silence, banging the door wide on its hinges. There’s more blood on the walls here—Dean’s hands scrambling for purchase—and more bloody tracks and smears on the linoleum. Sam’s nose has adjusted to the demon smell on the seventh floor, but the scent is stronger in here and he gags again, reflexively lifting the back of one hand to his nose to block out the reek.
And then he hears the sounds of struggle rising up from below: labored breathing, the thud of something knocking against the stairwell walls, the squeak of bare feet sliding on the floor.
Dean.
Sam takes the stairs two or three at a time, heedless of any possibility of falling. The Colt feels warm and electrified in his hand—feels deadly. There’s only one bullet left, but Sam knows exactly who’s getting it. This time, he isn’t going to hesitate. Isn’t going to spare a single thought for whatever poor schmuck got himself possessed.
He’s on the second floor landing when he catches sight of his brother below—just a sliver of Dean’s bare shoulder, down on the ground floor. It drives all thought of caution from him and he launches himself over the railing, dropping the last two flights to land with a crash. He hits the ground wrong, misses his footing, but he’s up in the next moment, gun up and eyes sighting for a target.
He finds himself facing Dean.
His brother isn’t completely naked, Sam sees now—he’s wearing a pair of those flimsy hospital pants—but for the first time since the accident, Sam’s getting a clear view of his brother’s chest. Healing bruises cover Dean’s skin like storm clouds, shot through with jagged lightning bolts of scars from the incisions the doctors made when they were trying to stop Dean from bleeding out internally. The protection tattoo is whole and unblemished over Dean’s heart: Sam’s claim solid and dark on Dean’s hip. And layered on top of everything is a splattering of blood that makes it difficult to tell whether Dean’s been hurt tonight or not—too much cast off from the slaughter upstairs for Sam to be sure.
There’s an arm slung low around Dean’s waist. Another hooked around his throat. The rest of the demon is hidden behind the bulk of Dean’s body, leaving Sam with nothing to aim at except a thin sliver of face and one mocking, yellow eye.
Dean’s clearly struggling for breath, and likely has been for some time, but he’s still fighting even now: one hand trying to pull the demon’s arm away from his throat, the other groping behind him for the son of a bitch’s face. Sam doesn’t think his brother even knows he’s there.
Sickened by the sight of the demon’s hands on his brother—of Dean held so close—Sam sights down the gun, trying to focus on that single, mocking eye. It doesn’t take him more than a couple of seconds to realize that he can’t take the shot. Not and be sure he won’t hit Dean too.
Damn it.
“Sammy,” the demon greets him cheerfully. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Let him go.”
“What, so you can shoot me? I don’t think so.” The demon trails its hand inward from Dean’s hip to push against the center of his stomach, pressing him more tightly against its borrowed body. “Besides, Dean and I have business.”
“You said he was for me,” Sam tries.
“Oh, he is. But he’s not quite ready yet, are you, Dean-o? Need a little more training to be perfect.”
It pushes its hand down, into Dean’s pants, and Sam’s finger twitches reflexively on the trigger—not quite enough pressure to make the gun go off, thankfully, because Dean grunts and twists and Sam has lost line of sight completely now. He wants to tell Dean to stay still so he can at least try to shoot the bastard, but he knows that he can’t waste their one chance on a maybe. Besides, Dean’s past being able to obey that kind of order right now.
Sam’s vision pulses red as watches Dean give up on the arm around his throat to drive an elbow back into the demon’s body. The blow is clearly weak—pathetically so, as far as Sam can tell—and Dean doesn’t bother trying again. Instead, both of his hands grip the demon’s forearm just above where it disappeared into his pants and pull.
Sam doesn’t have to see the flex of the demon’s hand through the thin fabric to know that the son of a bitch has tightened its grip. He can tell from Dean’s strangled shout, and the way his brother finally goes still, mouth open and gasping fruitlessly for breath.
“There,” the demon purrs, forearm flexing around Dean’s throat. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
Dean blinks with studious deliberation, eyes vague and unfocused, and fuck, Sam can’t take this anymore.
“Let him go!” he yells, lowering the gun slightly and moving forward. He might not be able to shoot the demon from here, but if he can pull it off of his brother, he’ll get his shot all right.
“Careful,” the demon warns, backing Dean up toward the emergency exit behind them. “Wouldn’t want to have any accidents, would we?” Its arm pulls tighter around Dean’s throat, making Dean choke and grab at its forearm again.
“You’re not going to kill him,” Sam accuses. “You want him too much.”
But he stops anyway, pulse racing and mouth bitter with desperation, because he isn’t sure if that’s true. He isn’t sure, and he can’t handle the panic in Dean’s eyes as he struggles for breath.
Now that Sam isn’t trying to come any closer, the demon relaxes slightly—enough to let Dean get some air in—and makes a tsking sound low in its throat. “He’s pretty, Sam, but he’s still just a toy as far as I’m concerned. If it comes down to a choice between him and me, I’m pulling the plug.”
It isn’t bluffing. The demon’s sense of self-preservation is stronger than whatever fascination it has for Dean. If Sam pushes this, it’ll kill his brother. Even if it doesn’t need to in order to get away, it’ll kill him. It’ll kill Dean in a fit of pique, just to make sure no one else can have what it can’t.
Heart in his throat, Sam backs up a few steps and lowers the gun, ignoring the betrayed flash in Dean’s eyes as he does so.
“Jesus Christ!” Jill’s voice comes from behind Sam. He’s startled by the sound—thought he left her behind on the seventh floor—but he doesn’t turn around.
The demon’s one visible eye flicks over briefly and then returns to Sam. “Gonna introduce me to your lady friend, Sammy?”
“Get out of here, Jill,” Sam says, keeping his eyes on the demon.
Instead, he senses her moving closer—moving right up behind him where his own vulnerability makes his skin crawl. “His eyes,” she breathes. “They’re ... they’re yellow.”
“Oh, I like her,” the demon announces. “She’s observant.” Its eye dips as it gives a mostly-concealed nod behind Dean. “Now, toss over the gun.”
“How about you go fuck yourself,” Sam suggests.
“How about I go fuck your brother?” the demon counters. Dean’s face screws up as its hand does something in his pants. “Oh wait, I forgot. I already did.”
Sam has no way of knowing for sure, but he prays like hell it means before, that it means in Vegas. Not upstairs. Not here. Not tonight.
“...shoot it...” It’s just an exhale, barely audible with no breath behind the words, but Sam’s eyes snap to his brother’s instantly. Dean finally looks more pissed off than panicked, although Sam knows the fear has to be in there somewhere, buried down deep while Dean fights to get himself out of this.
And Sam knows what Dean means—knows that in order to be sure of getting the demon, he’d have to shoot it right through his brother’s chest. He can tell from the fatality lacing Dean’s expression that Dean knows exactly what he’s asking for.
“Shoot it,” Dean gets out again, louder this time.
It’s such a stupid command that Sam feels justified in ignoring it altogether.
“I’m not asking again, Sammy,” the demon says, jerking his attention back to that mocking, yellow eye. “Toss the gun over now or your brother’s going to learn what it’s like to have to piss sitting down.” Dean grimaces, throat cording as the demon illustrates its threat, and Sam is tempted to obey if it’ll get the demon to stop hurting him.
Then he realizes that the moment he gives up the gun Dean is gone.
Hell, he doesn’t understand why Dean isn’t already gone—why the demon hasn’t just tossed Sam against the wall and walked him out. Why it hasn’t pulled the Colt out of Sam’s hand and into its own.
As he hesitates, working that problem through in his head, he challenges, “Why don’t you just take it, if you want it so bad? What was it you said? Make the gun float to you there?”
The demon’s eye narrows, and the flare of its rage pulses against Sam’s skin like heat.
“You can’t, can you?” Sam pushes, groping after comprehension. “What, you use up all your mojo murdering innocent people upstairs?”
“That?” The demon laughs. “That was fun. Think I’ll do it again when we’re done here. Children’s ward, maybe.” It tilts its face toward Dean and nuzzles at his neck, making him scrunch his face in revulsion. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dean-o? Paint all that pretty skin of yours with baby’s blood.”
The thought is enough to turn Sam’s stomach, but he refuses to let himself be distracted. “Why didn’t you just take Dean from the room?”
“...tried...” Dean pants, and then shuts up again as the demon’s arm jerks back against his throat.
“It’s the tattoo, isn’t it?” Sam says—less of a guess by now than a realization. “Maybe you can still touch him, but you couldn’t just take him.”
And how it must have pissed the demon off when it realized that. How angry it must have been. Hell, the evidence of its fury litters the trail it took through the hospital—all those people butchered because the demon was throwing a temper tantrum. It’s a sickening thought, and later Sam thinks he’s going to come in for his own share of guilt over it, but right now he mostly feels triumphant.
It worked. The tattoo worked.
“That’s why you’re down here with him,” he says. “You can’t just disappear.”
“Don’t get too used to it,” the demon snarls. “First order of business is ripping it out of his skin.”
“You tried that too,” Sam guesses, and knows from the demon’s silence that he’s right. “That’s why you can’t just grab the gun. You used up all your strength trying to remove it.”
“Anything can be broken,” the demon says.
Sam thinks of the wards they left on Dean’s room, all of them blown wide open and smoking, and knows that the demon’s words are true. Given a month, or maybe no more than a week, the demon would probably find a way to strip Dean’s protections away like it wants. Hell, the solution might be as simple as getting a human to do its dirty work for it.
“Maybe,” he agrees, tightening his grip on the gun. “But you aren’t going to have that chance.”
The demon catches the flex of his fingers and flicks its eye down to his hand. “You going to shoot me, Sam?” it asks. “You’ll have to shoot Dean-o too, and I don’t think he’s in any condition to survive that kind of shock, do you?”
Dean isn’t. Even if Sam just clipped him—shot through his shoulder, maybe—the shock would be enough to kill him. Hell, getting shot with a normal gun right now would probably finish Dean off.
As he hesitates, the demon says, “Tell you what, Sammy. Since I’m such a sucker for a sob story, I’ll make you a deal. You toss over the Colt and I’ll let you have Dean. What do you say?”
A hunk of metal for Dean. It seems like a ludicrously unbalanced bargain.
“For good?” Sam checks, hardly daring to believe his luck. “You won’t bother him again?”
Sure enough, the demon laughs. “You aren’t in a good enough bargaining position to ask me for that, kiddo. But I’ll leave right now. Give you another shot to figure out how to keep him. What do you say?”
Dean’s breath is rasping in and out in a really alarming way, but he still manages to gasp, “No. Sammy, no.”
“Who asked you?” the demon says mildly, and Dean’s mouth snaps shut. His eyes flood with fear and Sam knows instantly that Dean didn’t decide to shut up on his own. Which means the demon’s power is already starting to come back. A few more minutes and Sam won’t need to worry about giving the gun to the demon because it’ll be able to just take it from him.
The demon’s single visible eye glitters triumphantly. “Tick tock, Sammy.”
“Okay,” Sam blurts, flicking the safety back on and holding both hands out in front of him. “Okay, the gun for Dean. Deal.”
He crouches, keeping his eyes on the demon, and sets the gun on the floor. The son of a bitch stays hidden behind Dean, watching as Sam pushes the gun across the floor. The Colt hits one of Dean’s bare feet and his brother jerks away from it with a grimace.
“Uh, uh, Dean-o,” the demon reproves.
Sam looks more carefully at his brother, confused, and realizes that Dean wasn’t jerking away from the gun. He was moving to kick it back in Sam’s direction. The self-sacrificing, stupid shit.
“Pick it up and give it to me.”
There’s power lacing those words, enough that Sam can feel it even if he isn’t tempted to do anything. But he sees the words take root in Dean, and the demon releases his brother so that he can bend down and pick up the Colt. Dean closes his hand around it like he means to use it, and it’s clear to Sam that he wants to, but when the demon reaches out, Dean lets it take the gun away.
“Good boy,” the demon says, mocking, and then yanks Dean in again. With a single movement, it cocks the Colt, setting the muzzle against Dean’s temple, and then slides its arm back into place around Dean’s neck. “Pleasure doing business with you, Sammy.”
“No!” Sam yells. He jerks forward a step before bringing himself up short, mindful of the gun barrel pressed against his brother’s head. “We had a deal!”
“It’s not a deal unless it’s sealed with a kiss,” the demon responds, backing up and bringing Dean with it. “That was just you playing the sucker. Don’t worry, though: I’ll take good care of your brother for you. You didn’t want him yet anyway—boy can’t suck cock for shit.”
Sam chokes at that, looking to Dean for confirmation that it isn’t just an idle taunt—that the demon knows what it’s talking about. Dean isn’t looking back at him, though. He has his eyes closed, his face stiff with determination as he struggles to pull the demon’s arm away from his throat. He’s either oblivious of the gun at his temple or just doesn’t give a shit.
Sam prays it’s the former.
“Pity,” the demon muses insincerely. “You’d think he’d be a natural with that mouth, wouldn’t you?”
“You son of a bitch,” Sam whispers, sickened by how much it’s enjoying this, by what it’s saying, by the fact that he just gave his brother to it again, and that’s when Dean gives up on trying to get away.
Instead, Dean grabs the barrel of the gun with one hand and the grip with the other. Before Sam has time to process the movement, Dean has shoved a finger over the trigger on top of the demon’s. The sound of the shot is deafening in the closed stairwell, and Sam’s scream of denial is lost amid the echoes.
He sprints forward, catching Dean before he can fall, and staring at the blood spilling down through his brother’s hair.
“No,” he moans. “No no no no no.”
But then Dean blinks, and his hand comes up to grab Sam’s shoulder. He moves in Sam’s arms, conscious and alive, and Jesus Christ, how is that possible? Sam shifts his grip on his brother, getting Dean up into the crook of his arm so that he can position Dean’s head with one hand and feel for the bullet hole with the other. There is no hole, though: there’s only a furrow of torn skin back behind and above his right ear, no more than a flesh wound.
Belatedly, Sam looks back at the demon and finds it on the floor, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling while its body shakes and flashes with white lightning. There’s a red hole where its right eye used to be, and the left is draining of yellow, returning to its normal brown.
Dead.
The demon’s dead.
Dean killed it.
Sam recognizes the body now that he can see it fully—one of Dean’s two police-provided bodyguards. The man is still wearing his uniform, which isn’t as bloodied as Dean’s body, but still sports its own share of gore. A dead cop. A dead cop Dean just killed.
Jesus Christ.
“Sam,” Dean coughs, and Sam’s attention snaps back to his brother.
“Hey man, it’s okay,” he promises.
Cradling Dean’s body close, he soothes a hand through his brother’s hair, careful of the wound behind his ear. Fuck, he doesn’t want to think of how close Dean came to sending that bullet through his own skull instead of the demon’s. He doesn’t want to consider the possibility that Dean didn’t particularly care which one of them died when he pulled that stupid, stupid stunt.
There’s a footstep behind him and Sam spins, reaching for a weapon he doesn’t have. In his arms, Dean makes a frightened, lost noise and pushes closer, hiding his face against Sam’s chest.
But it’s just Jill. Jill standing there with her face ashen and her eyes wide and shocked. “Is it dead?” she whispers. “Is it—” Then she catches sight of the body and her breath catches. “Jesus, it’s Chris.”
“He was possessed,” Sam explains shortly, already turning away from her to see to his brother. When he tries to ease back, Dean’s hold on him tightens, resistant. “Hey. Dean, it’s okay. It’s just Jill. You’re safe.”
“No,” Dean pants between labored breaths. “Doesn’t matter ... demons ... could ... could come back.”
“It’s dead,” Sam promises, rubbing a hand up and down his brother’s bare back. “You killed it, man.”
Dean doesn’t respond, but Sam realizes that his brother is shivering every time his hand drops lower than the bottom of Dean’s shoulder blades, and then he remembers the demon’s taunts, and he freezes. “Dean, are you—did it hurt you?”
Dean goes stiff.
“Dean?” Sam asks again, chest clenching.
Dean shakes his head once, which could really mean anything, and Sam looks back up at Jill. “Can you help me get him up?” he asks. “He needs to be checked out.”
But Dean pulls away at that, shaking his head again and scrambling to his feet on his own. “I’m fine,” he says, although the way he’s clutching at the wall and fighting for breath brands him a big fat liar. “Nothing happened.”
Not looking at Sam. Not looking at any of them.
“Dean,” Sam tries softly. “If you’re hurt, we need to have the doctors—”
“No one’s touching me,” Dean gasps out.
“At least let Jill look at your head, okay?” Sam compromises, but Dean shakes his head again and backs up, still hugging the wall. He’s trembling all over, like a frightened dog. There’s blood dripping from his head onto his shoulder now, adding to the mess already there.
“Dean,” Jill says, keeping her voice as soft as Sam’s. “Dean, can you let Sam look at you if I talk him through it?”
Sam glances at her, surprised and grateful for the suggestion. Jill still looks shocked and winded, but she manages a wavering smile in Sam’s direction, and Sam has never felt so much like kissing anyone in his life. When he looks back over at his brother, Dean has straightened a little, and he isn’t meeting Sam’s eyes but he’s at least looking at his chest. Which is a start.
After a moment, he licks his lips and nods.
They keep the examination above the waist and as brief as possible, and by the time Jill declares herself satisfied, Sam’s touch seems to be calming Dean again instead of frightening him. Dean’s leaning into his hands, heedless of Jill’s presence, and his eyes are painfully trusting as he watches Sam’s face.
When the stairwell door slams open unexpectedly, he flinches into Sam instead of away.
Sam’s heart lurches as he jumps forward, pushing Dean behind him, and Jill lets out a startled, half-smothered shriek. Then Sam catches sight of a familiar baseball cap and floods with relief as Bobby steps into the stairwell. From the wide-eyed, breathless look on the man’s face, Sam is pretty sure he’s safe, but he gasps a check out anyway.
“Christo.”
Bobby doesn’t even acknowledge it, too busy taking in Dean pressed close against Sam’s back and the body behind them on the floor. He’s holding his left side and moving with a weary limp, and Sam would ask if he’s okay if his attention weren’t suddenly snapping to Dad as he limps in after him. Their father doesn’t look much better off, using only one dented crutch and sporting a gash high on his right cheekbone. The fingertips on his free hand are coated with blood Sam guesses isn’t his own.
Dad’s eyes sharpen as he catches sight of Dean behind Sam, face filling with a terrible emotion that isn’t quite relief or sorrow or guilt but some mix of all three.
“Dean,” he breathes, starting forward.
Dean jerks into Sam more firmly. His hands tighten where they’re locked on Sam’s arm and bunched in the back of his coat. Sam can feel his brother trembling against him; can hear Dean’s breathing, which was starting to calm, slip into an erratic, shallow rhythm again.
Over by the door, Dad stops. His face crumples into a broken, devastated expression and his eyes water. Sam’s chest tightens uncomfortably at the sight, and he searches for something to say—some small comfort he can offer as a patch for the moment—but before he can find anything even remotely suitable, Dad straightens. His mouth twitches once and then the professional, cool mask of a hunter at work slips down over his face. Only his eyes give him away, darker and more damned than Sam has ever seen them.
“He okay?” Dad asks, turning his attention on Sam.
The answer to that question is no, not at fucking all, but Sam knows that their father isn’t asking about Dean’s emotional or mental state so he only answers, “The bullet grazed him, but he’s fine.”
Dad’s eyes flick down to the body on the floor and back up again to linger on Dean’s hand where it’s visible on Sam’s arm. “The demon?”
“Dead.”
Bobby nods where he’s leaning against the wall with his hand still clasped to his side. “Figured as much. Bastards had us cornered when they suddenly decided to blow out of here for no good reason.”
“Okay,” Dad says, taking a deep breath and forcing his eyes away from Dean’s hand. “We can’t stay here. We’ll drive for a couple of hours, get Dean checked in somewhere else.”
“No,” Dean says. His face is still pressed between Sam’s shoulder blades, but the protest is clearly audible. “No hospitals.”
“Dean,” Dad tries softly. “Son, you’re hurt. You need medical care.”
Although he’s gripping Sam tightly enough now to be leaving bruises, Dean lifts his head at that. Sam can’t see behind him, but he knows from the sudden stiffness of Dad’s body that Dean’s peering over his shoulder. “I’m okay. She said I was okay.”
Dad frowns a little at that, looking around as though he’s confused just who ‘she’ might be. Sam can sympathize. He keeps forgetting Jill is there too. The nurse fidgets uncomfortably as their attention shifts to her—to the outsider in their midst—and then the alarm over the emergency exit door goes off. Sam hears the same siren echoing deeper within the hospital, the sound of panic.
Someone found the bodies.
Bobby swears and Dad’s face creases in annoyance, but Sam can only laugh softly. Fucking figures. With their luck, the police will throw them all in lockup as murderers, Dean included.
“You have to get out of here,” Jill announces, yelling to be heard over the alarm.
Sam blinks at her, surprised, and Jill looks back at him with the clearest expression she’s worn since they stepped out of the elevator into ICU.
“I’m not stupid,” she says. “There’s going to be a whole host of questions you can’t answer about this, and Chris—” She swallows thickly, turning her face further away from the body on the floor. “You need to get out of here. Take Dean and go. I’ll call you later. I can—if you’re worried about Dean, I can check on him.”
Sam feels a thick pulse of gratitude, and he offers her a sincere, “Thank you,” before turning to herd Dean back over the cop’s body and out the emergency exit and into the night.