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nightspear) wrote2008-03-15 03:47 pm
Body and Mind
Title: Body and Mind
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of materialistic value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Summary: A few days after "Born Under a Bad Sign," the boys deal with a consequence of the possession. One-shot.
XXXXXXXXXX
Dean wakes up to the sound of the motel door slamming shut, and there’s only one possible reason for that.
“Sammy,” he mumbles. “Jesus, what the hell’re you doing up so early?”
Seven ‘o clock isn’t really all that early, considering the odd hours they’re used to pulling, but they’re not on a case now, and Dean really been looking forward to getting a few extra hours of sleep, especially considering that he just got shot in the shoulder two days ago.
And especially considering that the person who shot him is the same person who just woke him up at seven in the morning when they’re not even working.
Dean groans and carefully pulls himself into a sitting position, not bothering to suppress a wince as his shoulder complains, because no one’s there to see, anyway. In fact, Sam still hasn’t answered his question, and Dean can hear him rustling around in the bathroom. The tap’s on, and he hears Sam clear his throat. He waits, thinking his brother is about to say something, but all that happens is a splashing sound, and then it gets quiet again.
“Sam?” he tries again. “You tryin’ to drown yourself in there?”
Still, there’s no answer, and Dean grumbles, irritated, as he pushes himself out of bed with his good arm as leverage. He’s not concerned; the sound of water running from the tap’s just getting on his nerves. Like Chinese water torture or something. Which is fine if it’s a shower, because showers are supposed to last more than sixty seconds, but there’s no reason to be running water at a sink for that long.
When he drags himself to the doorway of the bathroom, Dean sees his brother bent over the sink, head hanging down as he supports himself with one forearm on the counter. He thinks at first Sam hurled, but the gagging would have been hard to tune out, and Sam’s face is dripping wet, like he was splashing it with water.
“Dude, what?” he asks.
“Headache,” Sam mutters back, and Dean’s on alert, reminded suddenly of that time when he found his brother in the same position at a gas mart restroom.
“Headache as in vision?”
But Sam shakes his head and finally turns the stupid faucet off. “No, just headache. Not that bad, just annoying.”
If Dean could have a quarter for every time something ‘not that bad’ turned into a goddamn nightmare for him, he could stop hustling pool for their income. Knowing how his brother hates being fussed over—not that Dean fusses, but, you know—he forces his tone to stay light as he asks, “You sure?”
Apparently it takes only two words this morning to set of the ticking bomb that Sam has become these days, and the younger man all but shouts, “Leave it, Dean! I told you what it was; just give me some freaking space.”
Sam brushes past him, and although he does take care not to jostle Dean’s shoulder, Sam is actually pacing across the motel floor, which is something that Dean does but Sam hates and only ever does when he’s really...
“What’re you all nervous about?” Dean asks, not quite managing to hide his apprehension, because the Winchesters are all about secrets, but these days the secrets tend to blow up pretty spectacularly in their faces. “Where were you just now?”
Sam doesn’t miss the unsubtly distrustful undertone, and he stops, fixing Dean with the kind of full-force scowl that only he can pull off. “Out,” he says. Actually, he’s not pacing so much as flitting from one duffel bag to the other, searching for something.
“Just ‘out’?”
Dean sees one of Sam’s fists clench—not a prelude to violence, but a sign of frustration. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. Where’s the damn aspirin?”
Dean knows that Sam doesn’t sleep very well at the best of times, and he’s been on edge, to say the least, since finding that he was possessed, committing crimes, and doing who knows what else they don’t know about for almost two weeks. Coupled with the headache, which seems to be real enough, he decides to let the attitude go this time.
“Here,” he says, picking the bottle up from the table Sam blew past earlier and tossing it. Sam catches, looks up at him, and flushes slightly, looking embarrassed.
“Sorry,” he says. “And for waking you up earlier. I don’t know why I’m so...”
“Prissy?” Dean suggests, though he’s thinking tense, jumpy, quick-tempered, unfocused. “Whatever. I’m up now, you’re up now—let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
XXXXXXXXXX
Sam is tapping a quick, staccato rhythm out on the table and doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. He catches Dean watching him eventually, though, and stops, sighing and rubbing at his temple, instead.
“What’ll you have, guys?” asked the waitress standing at their table.
More from habit than anything else, Dean lets his eyes trail down the woman’s unremarkable but attractive form, flashing her a smile and peering at her nametag. “Well, what do you recommend, Susie?”
Unmoved, she recites, “We have a special—two eggs, three pancakes with syrup, two pieces of toast, and a choice of sausage or bacon on the side.”
Dean’s a little disappointed in the lack of interest, but to be honest, he’s not all that interested either; his shoulder’s throbbing too much to do what he’d like to do with the girl, and it’s been a really long couple of weeks. She’s probably used to being hit on, though Sam will tease him about it later. “I’ll take that, with bacon,” he says, “and a cup of coffee, black.”
“And how ‘bout you?” Susie says without looking up from her pad of paper. There’s a pause, then, “Excuse me? Sir?”
Sam looks up with an expression that says, huh?, but he’s still not completely out of the game and recovers quickly with, “Uh, I’ll have...” He hasn’t glanced at a menu. “I’ll save the same,” he finishes.
Susie writes it down and walks away. She doesn’t think anything of it, but Dean does, because Sam is always bitching at Dean about cholesterol and never likes the kind of stuff he eats. They usually spend their breakfasts talking over a case, with interspersed derision from both of them about the other’s food choice. Dean wonders what Meg usually ate and whether preferences like that can linger after a possession. That’s not right, though, since he’s seen Sam eat normally since she (he? it?) was exorcized, so it means Sam’s just distracted. And while that means Dean won’t get any heckling for the cold shoulder their waitress gave him, it’s not a good sign.
He knows he’s right when Sam’s eyebrows lift at the amount of food on his plate and grimaces at the first sip of coffee, which doesn’t contain the usual mountain of sugar he’s used to.
Sam’s ripped one piece of toast to pieces and nibbled a bit on the other by the time he asks, “You said you found the car I was driving, right? And the things inside? A pack of cigarettes, right? And a knife.”
Dean chews a mouthful of eggs and says, “Yeah,” drawing out the word to tell Sam that he doesn’t know why he’s being asked.
“What d’you do with them?”
“With the car? I reported it and left it there. And I left the stuff, too. Car was stolen, Sam.”
Sam looks surprised, then wrinkles his brow. “I didn’t realize that. Probably should’ve, though.”
Dean sips his coffee to hide his frown. “Uh. Okay.”
When they’re walking back to the motel, Sam asks, “Dean, you don’t still smoke, do you?”
Dean stops then. Sam’s words are casual, but carefully so, and with the way he’s been acting lately, that in itself seems pretty suspicious. “I’ve never smoked.”
Irritation tinges Sam’s voice when he says, “I wasn’t stupid as a kid. I knew what cigarette smoke smelled like.” He nudges Dean a little to get him to keep walking.
“How? You never tried it back then, did you?” Dean really hopes Sam says no, because any other answer would mean Dean somehow managed to miss his kid brother lighting up somewhere.
Sam rolls his eyes. “No, Dean, but you pass people smoking on the street and you notice. So, do you or don’t you?”
“I was never a smoker, Sam. I tried it a couple of times with people from school, but Dad would’ve given me hell if he found me hiding smokes somewhere.” He doesn’t say that it was just that one time, since it sounds too cliché, but it really was for him. He lit up on a dare at a classmate’s high school graduation party and never touched it again, except once on a case years ago to blend in. “Why? You thinking about that pack of cigs I told you about in Meg’s car?”
He remembers now a few childhood conversations that confused him before, like the one with a fourteen-year-old Sam giving him statistics about cancer and lung disease. At the time, he believed the story about it being research for a school project, but he wonders now.
They’re at the motel now, and Sam says, “You got the keys, dude” instead of answering, then steps inside when Dean unlocks the door.
“All right,” Dean orders when the door’s closed and locked behind him. “Spill.”
“What?” Sam snaps back.
“What’s with the questions?”
“What, I’m not allowed to be curious about what my body did without me remembering?” The bitterness there reminds Dean of that first day, when Sam refused to sleep because he was trying to figure out what his body had done. Dean was more worried about what had been done to Sam’s body.
But enough is enough. “That’s another thing. Why’re you so cranky lately? We should get you laid or something, get it out of your system.”
Sam glares at him. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be, genius.”
Sam flushes but sits and shrugs. “I lost more than a week. Who knows what Meg was doing.” His foot’s tapping, but not in impatience so much as in restlessness.
Dean watches him exude nervous energy for a few seconds, then says, “Dude, are you on a caffeine high or something?” That earns him another scowl. “And the smoking thing? I really never got hooked, Sam; I didn’t smoke that pack of menthols we found, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Sam’s still scowling, but he looks away and scratches the back of his head. “Uh...do you know how long it takes to get addicted something like that?”
“Not really, no,” Dean says. “You’re the geek, not me.”
“Like...it takes more than a couple of weeks, right?”
It hits him then, and his stomach drops.
Smoked like a chimney, the store clerk had said.
“Sam, you’re...?”
Sam looks back at him, and the scowl is gone. “I don’t have a clue, Dean. It’s...I’ve been thinking, maybe Meg got my body hooked on something, and I didn’t know what it was that felt off since I’m not really craving it, you know, not in my mind. Can you be physically but not psychologically addicted to something?” Dean has no idea so he doesn’t answer. Sam hesitates, then says, “One of my friends at Stanford tried to quit smoking once, and I remember what the withdrawal symptoms were like for her.”
Dean’s thinking back over the last few days, wondering how much of what he’s seen matches what he knows himself. He doesn’t really know all that much about withdrawal, because Dad made sure all three of them were careful enough with their bodies that they never got to the addiction stage to begin with.
“You were trying to see if I had some on me,” he realizes. “You wanted a hit that bad?”
Sam doesn’t answer, so Dean sighs and sits on the other bed to face him.
“Look, Sam, that’s not the only explanation. You haven’t been sleeping, which I know always gives you a headache the next day. And you’re acting like a girl PMSing, which is normal, too.”
Sam snorts half-heartedly. “Yeah. I just...I wish I remembered what happened, you know? I can’t really be sure, can I, about whether I’m addicted since I don’t even remember what it was like to smoke a cigarette the first time.” He looks a little scared of that, and Dean realizes that it’s the not knowing—not just about the menthols, but about everything—that’s the most frightening to him. Sam’s always hated not knowing and tries to stay completely in control for the same reason. It’s a trait that helps a lot while hunting, but it’s hard, too, since so little of what they see and do is really in their control.
Their equivalent of the don’t-do-drugs speech was thirteen-year-old Dean teasing that Sammy had better not do anything stupid because he’d probably fixate on it like he did everything else and get hooked faster than normal non-OCD people, and that, Sammy, would be bad. And because Dean would kick his skinny little butt even before Dad did.
Dean wonders now how much of the uneasiness is from how fucked up this whole situation is, especially with Sam’s ability to become obsessed with everything they deal with, and how much is from an actual, physical addiction to something that was pumped into his body for two weeks before stopping cold. In the end, he decides it doesn’t matter, because their course of action is the same either way.
So when they’ve been staring at each other long enough to feel awkward, Dean says to him flatly, “I’m not going to give you a D.A.R.E. speech, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Sam laughs a little at that. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He stands, and Dean experiences a moment of panic when he thinks his brother is going to try to hug him at a time when he can’t even escape all that well because of his shoulder.
Luckily, Sam’s just gone to pull out his laptop to look for something interesting to hunt. His leg is still bouncing nervously under the table, but Dean sees him tighten his jaw and consciously stop fidgeting.
An hour later, he says, “I think I found something. Our kind of something.” He’s leaning back in the chair, looking relaxed the way that only Sam could while researching, and then they’re in the car, heading west.
Sam sleeps in the car. Dean catches him moving restlessly through most of it and knows the headache isn’t completely gone, but Sam’s looking calmer now. When they stop for gas and a few provisions, he thinks of the packs of cigarettes behind the counter at the convenience store and leaves his brother sleeping in the car while he makes the run.
They’re in a new motel by nightfall, Dean’s shoulder is killing him, and he’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. He wakes up once during the night to hear Sam puttering around, but he hears the sound of keys tapping and knows his brother’s just on the laptop again.
It’s past eleven the next morning when he wakes up and realizes it was the smell of hot coffee that woke him, not the sound of Sam moving around.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he complains.
Sam shrugs. “Thought you could use the sleep,” he says.
“Dude, we’re on a job, now.”
“It’s not a nine-to-five job, Dean. I brought breakfast,” Sam wheedles, and Dean grumbles and takes the bagel his brother offers him.
“Should’ve gotten me. We should be working,” he insists, but Sam shakes his head.
“S’okay, I called a few of the witnesses, and we’ve got appointments to interview them later this afternoon. Relax.”
Sam’s staring hard at a newspaper, not looking up, and Dean realizes this is his way of saying he’s ready for the job again. He still hasn’t been sleeping through the night and he lifts his fingers to rub at his temples when he thinks no one’s looking, but those they can deal with. Dean’s glad that they get to skip a nauseating conversation filled with sorry and thank you, and he takes a loud sip of the hot coffee in thanks.
“You’re a pig,” Sam informs him.
“You’re a bitch,” he snipes back. “And, hey, since you brought me breakfast, does this mean you’re my bitch now?”
“Jerk” accompanies the pillow that sails toward him, but Sam’s aimed carefully away from the food and the coffee and the injured arm. Dean takes a bite of his bagel and relaxes.
no subject
I also like that even when Sam’s most cranky, he’s still careful where Dean’s shoulder wound’s concerned.
Favorite lines:
He remembers now a few childhood conversations that confused him before, like the one with a fourteen-year-old Sam giving him statistics about cancer and lung disease.
Aww, Sam was worried about Dean’s health. *pets Sam*
“You’re a pig,” Sam informs him.
“You’re a bitch,” he snipes back. “And, hey, since you brought me breakfast, does this mean you’re my bitch now?”
LOL!
no subject