Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/658718.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester
  Character:
      Sam_Winchester, Dean_Winchester, John_Winchester, Bobby_Singer, Azazel_
      (Supernatural)
  Additional Tags:
      Possession, Parent/Child_Incest, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
  Series:
      Part 2 of Waking_Up
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-01-28 Chapters: 1/? Words: 5695
****** Breathe Me In ******
by Enamourous
Summary
     Warnings are for earlier chapters. This chapter is a little dry,
     sorry!
The first thing Dean is aware of is Sam.
He can hear his voice. He’s talking to someone, not to him though. He can’t
open his eyes. He’s so tired. Wait, there. That’s who Sam is talking to, that
was Bobby’s voice. Why is Bobby here? Dean tries to open his eyes, but he’s 
tired. Too tired.
Sam sounds upset now, why is he upset? Where are they?
And now there’s someone touching him. They need to stop touching him. He can
feel their fingers prodding at his throat and it hurts. Dean winces at the pain
seeping throughout his body, it’s blossoming on the side of his head and in his
jaw, in his ass. Everything is aching. His skull is pounding. He doesn’t know
where the most pain is centered at, just that his skin is burning and his body
is aching and he can’t move.
Dean can feel his heart fluttering with anxiety. He must be drugged. Azazel
must have drugged him and now he’s going to rape him again now that he can’t
even move a muscle to fight back. Azazel must have Bobby too. Maybe a different
demon has gotten to him.
Everything in Dean’s head is muddled and he feels like he’s searching for
something hidden beneath murky water. Nothing is making sense and it occurs to
him that he might be dreaming.  No, this isn’t a dream. He feels a hand on his
head smoothing his hair. It isn’t a demon touching him this time, he’s sure of
it.
And then the pain is receding gradually, draining him and leaving him to feel
only the exhaustion weighing down his bones. He doesn’t have another thought
before he drifts to sleep.
                                      ***
Something is warm and heavy against Dean’s ribcage and he wants to shift under
the weight, arrange himself in a more comfortable position. But he can’t bring
himself to move. Not quite yet.
Both his body and his mind feel as if they’ve been dormant for a week, and Dean
can vaguely recall the fragmented voices and touches that he experienced while
fading in and out of consciousness. He now understands that that’s what it must
have been. His thoughts are coming much more clearly to him now, arranging
themselves in ways he’s familiar with. He can also feel some strength in his
muscles again, and he thinks that if he attempted to move them he would
actually be able to.
Dean opens his eyes slowly and sees that he’s in a dimly lit room, illuminated
by weak sunlight that’s filtering through some ratty curtains covering a window
to his right.  Warm relief spreads through him when he recognizes that they are
the familiar ratty curtains of one of Bobby’s guest bedrooms. The sunlight
casts a warm glow over what it can reach and Dean assumes it must be sometime
in the morning from what he can see of the brightness outside.
Now with his eyes open, Dean knows that the weight he’d felt that had gradually
roused him from sleep is Sam’s. His little brother is resting against him;
pressed against his side and breathing slow. The warmth of each breath is
permeating the cotton of Dean’s shirt and ghosting over the skin on his chest.
Sam’s eyes are closed, dark brown eyelashes shuttering them away from view.
Looking at his brother sleeping against him, Dean feels a powerful surge of
emotion, something like relief and contentedness and love mixed together. Sam
is safe. Sam is close to him again. They both made it through that night alive.
Nothing else matters.
But something very opposite of relief is welling up in Dean, coupled with pain.
It’s the same pain that he’d felt when he was too delirious to piece together
what was happening to him, dull and throbbing all throughout his body. Dean
stares up at the wood panels in the ceiling and his last fully conscious
moments play out in front of him.
He remembers making the deal, coming on the bed in front of Sam, and being
raped. He remembers seeing the sheets stained red with his blood before he
passed out. He remembers the grunting and the sweat and he remembers his Dad’s
eyes.
Dean feels hot tears sliding down the sides of his face. His lungs feel
suddenly heavy and they aren’t working right when he tries to breathe; it feels
like someone is sitting on him and panic flutters in his stomach. He closes his
eyes and focuses instead on Sam’s breath on his skin. It’s warm, it feels nice.
Sam feels nice, curled up next to him. He can feel the weight of his brother’s
head on the side of his ribcage, and somehow thinking about that grounds Dean
again. He inhales slowly, and exhales through his mouth. When he feels
confident that he isn’t going to have a panic attack he lifts an arm and gently
pushes his fingers through Sam’s hair.
His little brother stirs at the touch, nuzzling into Dean and drawing in a deep
breath. Through his sleepiness Sam seems to realize that Dean is awake because
he suddenly sits up, turning to face Dean and looking at him with a worried
expression.
“Hey Sam,” Dean rasps. Shit, his throat hurts too.
“Dean,” Sam says weakly, eyes welling up just enough to be visibly glossy.
“How long have I been out?”
“It’s been a day and a half,” Sam answers, still regarding him with a broken
expression that he doesn’t know how to respond to.
“You don’t look so hot,” Dean says with a small strained smile. And it’s true,
Sam doesn’t. He’s got dark shadows under his eyes that made him look as
exhausted as Dean feels. Sam ignores his feeble attempt at humor
“I thought you were dead Dean,” He says, voice wavering. “I thought he killed
you. I don’t know what I would have done—“ Sam’s voice trails off.
“What happened after..,” Dean hesitates. He didn’t want to say what had
happened out loud. “...uh, after I passed out?”
“After Dad threw you on the ground and you hit your head you didn’t move again.
I kept yelling at you to get up but you didn’t hear me.” Some of the tears that
had been threatening to come from Sam’s eyes spill over, leaving tracks down
his cheeks. “I thought you were dead. There was so much blood--”.
“Where is Dad?”
Sam pulls his sleeve down over his hand and wipes across his cheek. “Dad left
right after he brought us here.”
“Where did he go? Does he know what happened?” Dean asks, stress knotting in
his chest. “When is he coming back?”
“Azazel never left him. It was him who made Dad bring us here.”
“What? Why the hell would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Sam admits.
“Azazel better not have layed a finger on you,” Dean says, warning in his
voice.
“He didn’t,” Sam says quietly, but he doesn’t seem to feel relieved from that
fact like Dean does. He looks distraught when he continues.
“After you passed out he let me move again and he told me to get you dressed.”
That sets Dean cringing internally at the thought of Sam dressing his
unconscious body. “Then he picked you up and threw you in the back of the car
and started driving us here. I was so scared Dean. I didn’t know where we were
going, and he kept saying things to me the whole way here. He wouldn’t stop,”
Sam says looking stricken.
“What did he say?” Dean says, feeling anger rising in his belly.
“Lots of things. I remember he told me to keep checking your pulse and to let
him know if it stopped, because if it did he said he wanted to fuck you again
before you started going stiff. And he kept talking about it, what he’d do to
your body if you died. He told me that it was my fault you were gonna die,
because you traded places to save me.” The end of Sam’s sentence disintegrates
into a choked sound.
“None of this is your fault Sam, okay? None of it,” Dean says firmly, ignoring
the urge to shudder at the disgusting images in his head. “Don’t you ever think
that, do you hear me?” Sam just casts his eyes down miserably.
“Then what happened? Did he just bring us here?” Dean questions.
“Yeah. He gave you to Bobby, told me to keep my mouth shut and then he was gone
before the doctor came.”
“There was a doctor?”
“Yeah, you were bleeding everywhere and you weren’t waking up so Bobby called
one of his friends.” Sam’s face twists up and Dean doesn’t want to imagine what
he must have looked like to make Sam look so upset. “Bobby carried you into the
living room and they stitched you up, stopped the bleeding. When they were
finally done they told me they sedated you and they had you pumped full of pain
medication and that you probably wouldn’t wake up for a while. They told me to
let you rest but I didn’t want to leave you.” Sam chokes out a sob.
“Hey. I’m okay, calm down. I’m alright. I told you everything would be okay
didn’t I?” Dean says, pulling Sam back to him and rubbing his back again in an
attempt to soothe his brother into stopping his tears. He keeps reassuring Sam
quietly while he holds him, but his mind is drifting. He wants to know where
their Dad had gone and what he’s been talking with Bobby about. And why would
Azazel bring him here? What stopped him from just leaving Dean to bleed out on
the floor in that cabin, or even just finish the job then and there? He doesn’t
understand much of what happened over the past week; he doesn’t understand much
more than the fact that his life has been completely upturned and is just
growing more convoluted by the day.
Sam sniffs and looks up at Dean. Their faces are close enough that Dean can see
the tears clinging to Sam’s eyelashes, and the specks of green nestled in the
hazel of his irises. Sam just looks at him for a moment, and Dean shifts under
his gaze suddenly painfully aware that he’s still not immune to the feelings he
sometimes gets when he looks too closely at his brother. He wonders what Sam
must be thinking of him after everything that had happened. In fact, he’s
surprised Sam is even voluntarily in the same room. He’s got to be disgusted by
Dean’s presence.
“Sammy, did you do what I told you?” Dean asks, afraid he already knows the
answer. “Did you close your eyes?”
Sam shakes his head after a pause and Dean could swear he can feel whatever
pride he has left cracking into a million pieces. He can’t bear to look at his
brother anymore so he turns his head away and drops his eyes, heat flushing his
cheeks.
Sam surprises him when he sets a hand on Dean’s. “It’s okay Dean,” he says,
mirroring the words Dean had been repeating to him incessantly over the past
few days.
“Dammit, why didn’t you listen to me?” Dean asks, unable to keep the
humiliation and frustration out of his voice.
“I couldn’t,” Sam answers sounding hurt. “Dad wouldn’t let me close them.”
“That wasn’t Dad and you know it,” Dean says after Sam’s words sink in. He
brings his eyes back to his brother’s face.
Sam is quiet for a moment, and then says in a small voice. “He never showed his
eyes when he did stuff to me, I always thought it was Dad. I didn’t know he was
a demon until you came in and he changed. It still feels like it was Dad.”
“Well it wasn’t. That is the same son of a bitch that killed Mom okay? Don’t
you ever think of that thing as Dad. He would never do anything to hurt us,”
Dean says angrily, and Sam’s eyes widen momentarily as the information that
what they encountered the other night had been his mother’s killer sinks in.
“Okay,” Sam eventually mutters out and Dean feels immediately guilty. He’s
considering apologizing when the door to the bedroom creaks open and Sam slips
off the bed, putting distance between them.
The sight of Bobby’s familiar dirty jacket and worn trucker hat would usually
comfort Dean but not today. The thought of him knowing what happened doesn’t
make Dean feel anything but horrible. When the older hunter walks into the room
and his eyes fall on him, Dean’s expecting to see judgment there. But he
notices that instead, Bobby’s features noticeably relax. 
“I thought I heard you boys talking in here. How’re you feeling Dean?” The
question rolls off Bobby’s tongue in his familiar twang.
“Like hell,” Dean replies honestly. Bobby nods his head.
“That don’t surprise me,” Bobby says.  “Sam? Would you mind given’ me a moment
with your brother?”
Sam looks like he minds, but he doesn’t say anything, just glances briefly at
Dean and then nods and leaves the room without another word. Dean immediately
feels nervous with Sam out of his sight but tells himself this is Bobby’s
house. If they’re safe anywhere it’s here.
Dean watches as Bobby hooks an arm through the back of a wooden chair sitting
over in the corner and pulls it to sit next to the bed. Whatever this
conversation is going to be, Dean is pretty sure he’d rather skip over it.
 From the expression on Bobby’s face, Dean guesses he does too. The man looks
torn as hell and completely out of his element.
“You probably don’t feel much like talkin’ do you?” Bobby asks, regarding Dean
with a sympathetic expression.
That’s an understatement.
“Not really.”
“I figured as much,” Bobby says sighing. “But you and I both know that keepin’
everything bottled up is just gonna hurt more in the end, so I want you to know
that it’s okay to talk about things Dean. Me and Sam are here for you. I don’t
want you tryin’ to shut everyone out, you understand me boy?”
Dean nods.
“Good,” Bobby says in a softer tone. “You’re partly off the hook anyway. Sam
already told me a lot of what happened. Enough that I got the general picture.”
“Perfect,” Dean mutters feeling a blush on his cheeks and feeling the urge to
just snap at Bobby, tell him to leave him the hell alone, even though he knows
he’s only trying to help. He hopes that Sam didn’t get carried away with too
many details. It’s bad enough his brother had to be there to see what that
bastard to him. He doesn’t need to add Bobby to the list of people who know
just how weak he is.
“He told me you made a deal with it,” Bobby says in a low voice. “With the
demon inside your Dad.”
There isn’t any point in denying it so Dean doesn’t. “Yeah, I did,” He
confirms.
“I guess tellin’ you how unimaginably stupid that decision was won’t do much
good now,” Bobby grunts. “But why the hell didn’t you tell me when you found
out what was happening to Sam?”
“I needed more time to figure out what is going on.”
Bobby smacks his legs in frustration. “Dammit Dean! You could’ve been killed!
You don’t know how bad of shape you were in when you got here. I thought you
were gonna die on my dining room table.”
The anger isn’t directed at him and Dean understands that. He’s known Bobby
long enough to know that when people he cares about are hurt, he has one
emotional response and that’s anger. Hell, Dean probably deserves to be reamed
a little. His bright ideas didn’t exactly save the day. Still, Bobby’s
expression softens when he looks back at him and there is something tender in
his voice when he speaks again.
“You might be the biggest idjit I’ve ever met, but this still ain’t your fault
Dean. We’re going to get your Dad back, and send that evil son of a bitch
that’s possessing him straight to hell. You ain’t alone in this.”
“It’s the same demon that killed my mom,” Dean says quietly, and Bobby’s eyes
darken.
“It tell you its name?”
“Yeah. Azazel.”
“Sounds familiar,” Bobby says, making a face like he’s trying to place where
he’s heard it. Dean takes advantage of the break in conversation and figures he
should ask Bobby about the last day and a half. See if Sam had missed anything
while filling him in.
“What happened when Sam and I got here?”
“Well your dad showed up in the middle of the night holdin’ you in his arms,
told me you’d gotten hurt and that he couldn’t stay because there was someone
else still in danger. Asked me to look after you and Sam for a while. He barely
said anything else to me. Wouldn’t answer a damn question I asked him,” Bobby
says, scowling at the memory. “I knew somethin’ wasn’t right about him the
second he started talking. Your dad can be plain old stupid sometimes but he
wouldn’t leave you here hurt like you are.”
Bobby shakes his head, looking downwards and making a discontented sigh. “What
is it about your family that has that bastard comin’ back over and over again?”
He phrases the question in a tone that suggests that he isn’t expecting an
answer. But Dean does have an answer, at least a partial one.
“Azazel wants Sam for something,” He says.
“Not for more of the same sort of thing he wanted you for?” Bobby asks in a low
voice.
“No I don’t think so,” Dean says quickly. “When I asked him he said that the
stuff he did to Sam, he says he just did it because it made him happy.” There
is a rise of hatred in his gut as he remembers the demon’s words. That fun
stuff is just a bonus.
“You don’t have any clue what the demon wants him for?”
“No. I asked, but he wouldn’t say anything else about it, other than that Sam
is special to him.” Dean feels sick even thinking about what plans Azazel might
have for Sam. He hadn’t had much time to wonder about it before, but now that
he has time to think it is beginning to worry him that from the sound of it,
Sam is a playing piece in a game Azazel fashioned himself.
“Well it sounds to me like we gotta find this demon and send him back to hell
before he can get the chance to do anything else to either of you boys, or your
dad.”
Dean clenches his jaw and fights back the urge to tell Bobby that this isn’t
something he needs help with. He made the deal and Sam is his responsibility.
He can handle whatever this demon decides to throw his way. He’d made it
through that first night didn’t he?
 “I ain’t sayin’ it’s gonna be easy,” Bobby continues. “But we don’t got a
whole lot of options here. I know some people who know a thing or two about
exorcising demons, I’ll give them a call tonight and see what they think we
should do.”
An uncomfortable silence settles on the conversation then, and Dean knows that
they’re both thinking about what they’d avoided talking about so far-- what
happened to Dean. He thinks desperately for something he could say that would
distract Bobby from bringing it up, but there is nothing that wouldn’t sound
like an obvious attempt to change the subject. So Dean just waits for Bobby to
sort out how exactly to phrase his words. When they finally come, they’re
uncharacteristically gentle.
“I’m not gonna ask you to talk about what the demon did to you Dean. Like I
said, I got a pretty good idea.  Hell, I’ve never been good with stuff like
this,” Bobby says wincing. “But, I wanted to say again that I’ll always be here
for you whenever you need me.  Same goes for Sam, and he knows it.”
“Thanks Bobby,” Dean says, a little uncomfortable but sincere.
An awkward silence blankets the conversation for a moment before Bobby finally
speaks up. “You feel the pain comin’ back yet?”
Dean shifts his muscles slightly and it punctuates the soreness that’s been
persistent since he awoke. “Yeah.”
“You probably shouldn’t be movin’ much these next couple of days because of the
stitches. I don’t want you tearing them,” Bobby says and Dean feels
embarrassment on his face again.
“Bobby I’m sorry, but can I see Sam please?” Dean says, suddenly needing to
know that Sam is alright. Suddenly feeling like if Sam isn’t next to him
nothing is going to be okay.
At first Bobby looks like he’s about to argue, maybe tell Dean that they have
more to talk about first, but he closes his mouth and nods his head. “Yeah.
I’ll send him in.” He says rising from the chair. He turns and speaks as an
afterthought right before he leaves. “Mark’s comin’ back here later tonight to
check you and Sam over, make sure there’s nothin’ else that we need to be
worried about.”
Mark must be the doctor’s name. Dean immediately feels anxious at the thought
of being looked at. It was one thing while he was unconscious. It’s a
completely different story now that he’s awake and will be able to remember it.
He hopes that whatever “checking over” entails, allows him to be able to remain
fully dressed.
“In the meantime I’ll see what I can do about setting ourselves up an
exorcism,” Bobby says, and then he’s gone, leaving Dean alone.
                                      ***
Dean spends a good part of the day in bed. He wants to get up and move around
because after a couple hours he feels like he’s a damn invalid but Bobby tells
him he can’t be running around quite yet. When Dean disregards Bobby’s words
and makes to get up anyway he understands that it wasn’t a suggestion but a
fact. He physically cannot move without feeling more than enough pain to
dissuade him from walking around.
He has to get up to once to use the bathroom and that ends up hurting so bad it
takes him about 20 minutes to finish and he’s sweating and fighting back tears
stinging at his eyes. It’s even worse that Sam’s probably at the door waiting
for him, making sure that if Dean needs him he’ll be there. At one point Dean
does cry bit partly out of pain, partly out of embarrassment and partly in
frustration that he can’t even take a shit now without remembering every detail
of what happened to him.
He sees himself in the mirror the first time on the way out and stops to take a
better look. There’s a nasty bruise purpling the side of his face and some
bruising on his neck as well, along with a bite mark that stands out dark
against his skin. When he looks at it Dean can almost feel his Dad’s mouth on
him again and fights back the uncomfortable feeling that leaps up in him. He
leans forward and pulls at his cheek exposing his mouth where his tooth is
missing. He feels at the space with his tongue and it tastes a little like
blood. It’s sore but Dean’s just grateful it’s in the back of his mouth and not
where anyone’s going to see it.
When he’s finished he heads straight back to his bed and doesn’t move any more
than he has to for the next four hours.
Sam keeps him company, sitting cross legged by Dean’s knees and talking with
him. But they don’t talk anymore about what happened with Dad, they talk about
other things. Stupid things like T.V and sports. Eventually the conversation
degrades into Dean bitching about various things because he’s in pain and that
makes him feel better. And Sam listens while they eat the sandwiches that Bobby
made up for them for dinner.
Everything about their conversation is stilted and Dean hates it. He knows that
Sam’s still thinking about the other night too, and it’s enough to make Dean
want to scream at him to stop picturing it. To stop remembering him when he was
vulnerable and stripped down, nothing like he ever wanted to be around Sam.
But he’s grateful his brother is choosing to be around him now. It’s kind of
pathetic, but Dean’s grasping onto the fact that he woke up with Sam pressed
close to him like he hasn’t in weeks, and he almost wishes that his brother
would do that now, just stop trying to talk to him like everything is okay and
just lay next to him. Because Sam hating him for what he saw Dean do is bad,
but seeing the pity in Sam’s face and knowing that his brother feels bad for
him isn’t much better.
                                      ***
Bobby comes upstairs and knocks on Dean’s door later when it’s beginning to get
dark outside, and this time he’s got Mark with him, who doesn’t look anything
like Dean expected. He was prepared for some middle aged salt and peppered guy
in a button up shirt and glasses. The man standing in his room now looks like
he’s in his late twenties and is just about as scruffy as Bobby. He looks like
a hunter, but he’s got a kind face and even though Dean can’t quite place him
in medical school, he can see how he would be the type of man who would heal
people as a profession.
Though, no matter how friendly he looks, it isn’t enough to comfort Dean when
Bobby takes Sam with him out of the room because Dean knows that this means
he’s probably going to have to have his stitches looked at. They wouldn’t be
giving him privacy otherwise. And even though this guy is apparently the one
that stitched him up in the first place Dean’s not really in the mood to be
dropping his pants around anyone at the moment.
“Hi Dean, I’m Mark,” Mark says once they’re alone. “I’m just here to take a
quick look at you, make sure you’re doing alright. It’ll be over before you
know it. We’ve just got to make sure there’s nothing else going on with you now
that you’re awake and you can give me some feedback alright?”
“I’m okay,” Dean says.
“Trust me, it isn’t going to be as bad as you think it’s going to be. Now I
know this will probably hurt a bit but I’m gonna need you to stand up okay?”
It does hurt, like a bitch. But Dean eventually gets himself into a standing
position, and as long as he doesn’t move it’s not too bad. It’s mostly walking
that does it to him. He’s just wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and occurs
to him for the first time to wonder how he got to be wearing these clothes.
Mark walks up to him and starts touching him, first asking to take a look in
Dean’s mouth and then feeling his bruised throat. Dean’s heart is racing at he
feels a desire to punch the guy, just to get him the hell away from him, but he
understands it’s not Mark that’s making him feel this way it’s the memory of
what happened and he’s not going to snap and have a fit like a damn victim if
he can help it. He isn’t a victim. He doesn’t want to be treated like one and
that’s all being weak is going to get him.
So while Mark checks him over, poking at his ribs and asking where it hurts,
Dean just closes his eyes and tries not to panic.
“Well the good news is you don’t have any broken bones,” Mark says eventually,
stepping back.
Dean could have told him that. Wasn’t this guy a doctor?
“You’ve probably got some esophageal bruising so you’re going to want to stay
away from solid foods as much as you can for a week or so. It’ll be easier on
your throat and give your mouth some time to heal up too,” Mark hesitates for
just a second before continuing. “I want to take a quick look at your stitches
before I go. You’ve used the bathroom today right?”
“Yeah,” Dean says uncomfortably, while Mark motions for Dean to remove his
boxers. Turn around, take your clothes off. The demon’s words suddenly ring
loud in Dean’s ears and he tries to ignore them but his hands are shaking
slightly as he obeys and pushes his boxers down.
“I’m going to go ahead and have you turn and lean forward on the bed. It’ll
only take a minute but if you start to feel uncomfortable just focus on
breathing out through your mouth okay? Just remember that you’re okay and I’m
not going to hurt you,” Mark says in a gentle voice.
“I’m fine,” Dean snaps without meaning to. He tries to keep his breathing
steady as he bends over on the bed and swallows a hiss of pain when he feels
himself stretch. By some miracle Mark doesn’t touch him, Dean might unravel
right there if he did. True to his word, it only takes a couple of seconds and
then he’s telling Dean he can get dressed again.
“You’re going to want to make sure you keep yourself as clean as you possibly
can. Taking baths will help. You don’t want to get an infection. The stitches
look like they’re taking well but you might still have some bleeding over the
next few days, don’t be alarmed if that happens. It’s not anything to be
worried about. If you see more than some spotting though that might mean you’ve
torn them and you need to give me a call immediately. I’m giving Bobby some
medication to help with the pain.” Mark looks at Dean sadly and when he speaks
again it is in a less formal tone. “I’m sorry you had to go through what you
did. I can’t imagine how scary it would be.”
Dean doesn’t have anything to say to that so Mark continues.
“Alright, well we’re all done. Were there any other areas you were concerned
about that I didn’t check? Anything else hurt or not feel right?”
Other than the fact every inch of him aches like he was beaten with a bat?
“No,” Dean says.
“Everything’s probably gonna be pretty painful for a little while but I’m happy
to say that you’re going to recover just fine. You’re lucky you’re not in worse
shape. That could have easily been a concussion,” Mark says glancing at the
bloody area on the side of Dean’s head where his skull hit the floor before he
passed out.
Yeah, Dean thinks. It was my lucky day.
“So, again, just remember to keep the area around your stitches as clean as you
can, limit your foods to ones that are easy to swallow and take it easy okay?
If any problems arise, let Bobby know and he can give me a call.”
 Dean nods and Mark smiles at him warmly and is gone just as quickly as he
arrived. Dean lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding when the
door shuts behind Mark. He’s confused at the empty feeling it leaves inside
him.
                                      ***
The sun has long since sunk behind the trees when Sam eventually comes back
into Dean’s room later that night. Dean’s actually surprised it took him so
long. After an hour he’d considered going to find Sam himself but he didn’t
feel like talking to anyone but his brother and he was sure he’d run into Bobby
if he was walking around the house. So instead Dean tests out the archaic
looking TV in the corner. By the time hears the creak of the door that’s
signaling Sam’s entrance, Dean thinks he’s watched at least four episodes of
the General Hospital reruns that are playing on one of the few channels he can
get to come in. He clicks to the next channel quickly when he hears Sam coming
in. After his brother glances at the television he shoots Dean a weary look.
“You might as well switch it back to General Hospital. I hate M*A*S*H.”
Dean scoffs. “I wasn’t watching General Hospital.”
Sam raises his eyebrows and gives Dean a look.
“Seriously, I wasn’t.”
“Whatever,” Sam says, walking around Dean’s bed. “Move over?”
Dean gingerly moves himself over a little and Sam sits down next to him.
“What’d the doctor say?” He asks Dean quietly.
“I’m gonna be fine Sammy.”
Sam nods and settles against Dean, throwing an arm across his chest and
pressing up into the crook of Dean’s arm like he had that morning. Dean’s heart
is thumping in his chest. He’s not sure why exactly. He’s still surprised Sam
wants to be anywhere near him but he doesn’t think that’s it. This is something
new that Sam’s starting, the closeness during the day. It’s been the same for
years. They’re only close at night, only when they’re both half asleep and they
can blame it on the drowsiness. Sam’s deliberately putting himself close to
Dean and they both know it.
“Good. I’m gonna be okay too Dean. You’ll get better and we’ll be okay,” Sam
says, watching the TV.
Dean looks at the top of his brother’s head, and it occurs to him that this
might be Sam’s way of taking care of him. His little brother looks up at him
after a moment.
“Seriously Dean. I hate M*A*S*H,” He says dryly “Please change it back?” Dean
sighs and clicks the remote.
When Dean wakes up later the TV is off and Sam hasn’t moved, but his hand is
clenched around the amulet resting on Dean’s chest. 
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