Spn fic: Flesh and Blood

[wesleysgirl]

For vylit's Gotta Have Cash ficathon.

Title - Flesh and Blood
Fandom - Supernatural, Dean & Sam
Rating - R
Disclaimer - This tv show and these characters, they do not belong to me. For fun only.
Many thanks to bethynyc for the beta and advice, and for the last line, which as far as I'm concerned can make or break a fic.


Flesh and Blood

He doesn't even see it happen.

When Dean turns around, Sam's on the ground, one hand resting on his stomach, chest heaving. He's staring up at the sky, which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that it's pouring rain and Sam doesn't even seem to notice.

Three steps -- the monster Dean just put a bullet into mostly forgotten, but not totally, because Dad taught him better than that, don't let down your guard even if you think it's dead -- and Dean's on his knees next to Sam, hands hovering over him but not touching, not yet. "Sam?"

Sam chokes, gasps, doesn't answer, and Dean doesn't have a choice -- he touches Sam's arm, runs his hand up and over his shoulder, down over his chest, watching for some kind of reaction.

"Oh no, Sammy, don't you do this to me. I will kill you if you die, do you hear me?" He moves Sam's hand out of the way and feels it -- heat, slicker than the water streaming over both of them. Blood. Sam's blood, and when Dean jerks his t-shirt up out of the way he cries out, body arching off the pavement that's black, damn it, and wet, hiding how much blood Sam's already lost.

Dean doesn't hesitate -- Dad taught him that, too. He pulls Sam to his feet as lightning flashes, ignoring the sounds Sam makes like they don't stab right into his heart, and drags him to the car. Good thing the Impala's got a big front seat. Dean lowers Sam in on the passenger side, thunder crashing, and picks up Sam's feet and lifts them in, shuts the door. As he runs around the front of the car, there's another crack of thunder -- he missed the lightning, no big surprise there -- and jumps into the car, starting it up. "Sam," Dean says warningly, turning to reach over into the back seat. He grabs the first fabric his hand touches, which turns out to be a t-shirt, and wads it up, pressing it down over the deep wound on Sam's belly. "Talk to me, Sammy."

"Didn't... see it coming," Sam manages, and he sounds like hell, but right then his voice is one of the best things Dean's ever heard.

"It's okay. You just hang in there. Here, hold this." Dean puts Sam's hand where his is. "There's a hospital five miles from here. You're gonna be fine."

Sam gasps as Dean puts the car into drive and floors it. "Doesn't. Feel like it."

"That's because you're a fucking baby," Dean growls. "This is nothing, you hear me?"

"Anyone ever tell you -- " Sam coughs wetly, they're both fucking soaked to the bone, and Dean is not losing him, won't, can't. "You're a shitty liar?"

"Yeah, you," Dean tells him. "Hundreds of times. And you're always wrong."

Sam doesn't laugh; just lies there, breathing harshly and painfully.

Dean drives.

When he screeches to a halt outside the emergency room doors, tires skidding on the wet pavement, Sam doesn't say anything. Not even when Dean leans on the horn a couple of times, then flings himself out of the car, keys still in the ignition, engine still running, and runs around to the other side. Sam practically falls out when he opens the passenger side door, and Dean catches him just as someone in scrubs appears. Then there's shouting and too many people, and somewhere along the way Dean gets pushed off to the left and all he can do is stand there with his brother's blood dripping off his hands.

This is the kind of crazy Dean hates -- the kind where he's not in control. Hunting's one thing; he knows how to do that, and how to do it well. This is different. The people around him know what they're doing, working as a team, and he's just standing there, watching, helpless.

He follows when they wheel Sam inside, shoving at someone who tries to keep him in the hallway.

"Are you family?" a woman's voice asks, but Dean can't manage to wrench his eyes away from Sam's pale, still face long enough to look at her.

"Yeah," he says. "Brothers."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

It's not the first time Dean's had to think fast. It comes easy now. "There was this guy," he says. "I think he had a knife." This is followed by more lies that send the police to the other side of town, far away from the monster that's probably but not definitely dead.

The woman melts into the foreground again. Someone comes and presses something hard but not unfamiliar into his hand, and his fingers close around it without telling him what it is. Dean's the one in the background, the fly on the wall, and he forgets everything else until things start to slow down, the number of people working on Sam dwindling from four to three to two. That's when he knows he can relax.

"You're the brother?" one of the doctors asks, and Dean nods. "We've slowed down the bleeding for now, but we're going to need to take him up to surgery. He lost a lot of blood and it'll be at least an hour before we can get some delivered from the nearest blood bank."

"He can have some of mine," Dean says, at the same time he realizes that the thing he's holding onto is his car keys. Doesn't have a house key. The Impala's the closest thing to home he has, other than Sam. He focuses on the doctor and puts the keys in his pocket. "We're the same blood type."

The doctor nods and calls someone else over. "Gina will help you get set up to do that."

"Come on." Gina's voice is gentle; she has to repeat it twice before he goes with her, and by then they're getting ready to take Sam upstairs anyway.

She leads him down a couple of hallways to a lab, where he shrugs out of his jacket. Dean looks down at his t-shirt and discovers that it's soaking wet not just with water but with Sam's blood, and he can't get it off fast enough, grimacing.

"Here; put this on," Gina says, handing him a scrub shirt.

Dean does, then lies down on the padded bed and stares at the ceiling as Gina asks him some questions -- he answers without really listening -- and sticks him with a needle.

She takes him upstairs to wait, afterward, and he sits in the hallway in the blue scrub shirt, a big wad of gauze taped to his inner arm and a sick, tight feeling in his stomach. He doesn't have to wait long; the surgeon comes out and tells him Sam's fine, they sewed him up and they're transfusing Dean's blood into him in recovery now. In a little while they'll move him into a room.

Someone from administration finds him then and drags him off to fill out a stack of forms an inch thick. Good thing he's got more than a couple of insurance cards in his wallet. He uses a fake last name but their real first ones -- no way either of them would remember to call each other by anything but the right names in a situation like this.

By the time he's done with the paperwork, Sam's in a regular room. He's still paler than Dean likes to see him, but he's peaceful, breathing slow and steady. He's got one of those little oxygen things under his nose and his lips look chapped. Dean drags a chair over next to the bed and sits.

He's starting to doze when Sam makes a sound, a pained sound.

"Sammy?" Dean's up and leaning over the bed.

Sam opens his eyes, clears his throat. It sounds like that hurts, too. "It's... Sam," he says, and Dean grins.

"Was starting to think you were gonna sleep all night," Dean says, one hand on the bed rail.

"You would have loved that." Sam licks his lips. "No competition for the nurses."

"Are you kidding? They've been all over me." Dean's already forgotten the name of the one who gave him the shirt he's wearing, and he couldn't care less.

"I'm sure." Shutting his eyes, Sam sighs. "So what's the damage?"

Dean shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tucks a thumb into the front pocket of his jeans. Even tired, he's no good at staying still. "Nothing permanent. Well, except for the scar you're going to have, but you know how chicks dig scars." Sam doesn't relax, though. Dean drops his hand down onto Sam's shoulder. "Told you you were gonna be fine, didn't I?"

Sam's mouth twitches. "Yeah," he says. "You did." He opens his eyes again and looks up at the IV bag hanging from the pole on the other side of the bed, then at Dean's arm. "Yours?"

"Yeah." Dean shrugs like it's not important. "What's a little blood between brothers?"

Sam's quiet long enough that Dean starts to think he's drifting off to sleep again, but then he says, "A lot." He looks at Dean, steady, unflinching. It's one of the things about Sam that makes Dean squirm; that he can be so open, so unafraid about what other people think of him, when all Dean's managing is to pretend he doesn't care. "It means a lot."

"Please tell me you're not gonna go all Hallmark on me, here," Dean says, shifting his weight again. "It's not a big deal, okay? Now shut up and get some sleep."

And for once, Sam has the sense to do what Dean tells him. He shuts his eyes and lies there, relaxes, his breathing evening out. Dean sits in his chair, waiting, while the clock ticks away twenty minutes and blood drips from the IV into Sam's arm, until he's sure Sam is asleep.

Then, and only then, does Dean reach through the gap in the bed rail and gently squeeze Sammy's hand.


End