Dean Cracks

You wake up in a hospital bed. You hate hospitals. You make the mistake of trying to swallow a pool of saliva and your throat screams in agony. Your hands instinctively move to your neck.

“Hey,” Sam says, coming to the side of your bed. “Don’t talk. Just blink once for no, and twice for yes.”

You blink twice.

His puppy dog eyes are more intense than you’ve ever seen them (in the short time you’ve known him). “You’re going to be okay. There’s no major damage. The swelling should start coming down soon with all the anti-inflammatories they’ve got in you.”

You don’t blink at all as the hot tears brim your eyes.

Sam kneels beside the bed and cups your hand in both of his. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened in there. Just answer the best that you can, whatever you can remember. It’s important.”

Two watery blinks.

His voice is soft. “Did you smell anything strange? Sulfur?”

Blink.

“Did the lights flicker?”

Blink.

Lines form in the middle of his forehead. “Did you see any light in the dark? Even the tiniest spark?”

Blink.

He squeezes your hand. “Okay. Uh... What can you tell me about the thing that... choked you?”

You think: This isn’t a yes or no answer, Sam. You blink twice and his face lights up.

“You can?”

With your free hand, you mime scribbling in the air with a pen.

“Right,” he says. He drops your hand and goes to his backpack sitting on the chair.

You need to swallow, so you brave the pain as carefully as you can. It still hurts like hell. You think: I almost died today.

“Here,” Sam says, placing a pen in your hand and handing you a notebook.

At your angle, you can’t see the paper well enough so you have to write blindly. You start to scratch out the word invisible while you watch for his reaction.

“Invisible? Okay, that’s a start. Anything else?”

You pause, trying to think of the best and shortest way to describe that while you felt it around your neck, you couldn’t feel it with your hands. No touch, you write.

He cocks one eyebrow. “What?”

You drop the pen and reenact the way you tried to grasp whatever it was.

He shakes his head. You’re going to have to get creative. I tried to grab, you write.

“You tried to grab it,” Sam says, and you blink twice. “But you couldn’t touch it?”

Blink blink.

After a moment lost in thought, Sam gets it. “There was nothing there for you to grab.”

Blink. Blink.

He runs his hand up over his forehead, smoothing down his hair. “What the hell is this thing?” He turns and paces the room. “Maybe Dean’s right. Maybe it’s more than one. But why are they all after you? Why not attack us? We’re here...” He moves back to the bed. “Did you hear anything?”

You search your memory through the loud bangs of Sam’s body slams against the bathroom door, but you can’t find anything else.

“Okay. It’s okay. Listen, I need to go look some things up. Dean’s not so good at research. Uh... you can’t leave the hospital yet, so he’s going to sit in with you while I’m gone. Okay? Just in case.”

You forget you’re not supposed to nod and regret it immediately. You manage to squeeze two blinks and a tear through the pain.

He kneels by the bed again. “I promise I’m going to find this thing.” He is looking at you, but his eyes are suddenly glazed over like he’s somewhere else. Revisiting another memory. You reach for his hands as the corners of his eyes glisten and he comes back to you. “I’m going to...” He doesn’t finish that sentence and if you could talk, you would ask him what he was thinking about just a moment ago.

“Evenin’, lovebirds,” Dean quips when he walks in the room. He’s got his own bag with him and a cup of coffee in his hand.

You could swear Sam blushes a little, but he looks away too soon. “Alright. I should only be a few hours at most,” he says to Dean.

“Great. Let’s destroy this thing and get the hell outta Dodge.” He plops his bag in the chair with Sam’s and sips his coffee by the window. Your eyelids are growing heavy, but you fight to keep them open. You don’t like to be asleep anymore; if you’re sleeping, you aren’t observing your surroundings. What if Dean decided not to help you? You still don’t get any warm and fuzzy feelings from him.

Dean glances at the notebook on your bed as Sam talks to him. You know what he’s telling him even though he’s speaking too low for you to overhear. You’re tired of fighting your eyelids (it’s a losing battle anyway) and you close your eyes, drifting off.

You wake up some time later, but don’t open your eyes. You’re afraid to see something scary, something that has appeared out of nowhere. You hear the beeping of the machines hooked up to your body. Your neck feels a smidgeon better, but the memory of that pain is enough to keep you stone still for a week.

“I don’t know what to do.” Dean’s voice is low. He sighs. “I know you didn’t ask for this. I don’t know why it’s using you to send us a message. Hell, I don’t even know what the damn message is.” He doesn’t realize you’re awake because you can’t open your eyes yet. “Damn, I wish Bobby were here. He’d know what to do. He’d say, ‘Git yer head on straight, ya idjits!’ That’s how he talked. I hear him, still, in the back of my mind whenever something goes wrong. Like today at the diner. As soon as Jonah yelled, I could hear Bobby sayin’, ’Balls!’” Dean chuckles. “You know, I think he’d a liked you. You’re strong. Stronger than most. We’ve been doing this for a long time and most people go nuts when this kind of thing happens to them. You know, because it’s not supposed to be real.” He pauses and takes a breath, exhaling slowly. “Their safe, happy world is slashed to pieces. And they can never have it back. And they freak out. I’m telling you. But you... you hold your shit together better than I expected. You’re rolling with the punches. You almost died, for God’s sake, and here you are, giving Sam details to help us solve this damn case.”

You twitch your eyelids as you consider opening them to let him know you’re awake, but you want to hear what else he has to say. He’s letting you see past his shell, now, and you’re afraid he’ll close back up the minute he knows you’re listening.

The vinyl chair squelches as he shifts in the seat. After a moment, he says, “I think our best move is to get you back to the bunker. It’s the only place you’ll be safe, guaranteed. If only Cas... That guy... He zeroes in on something and good luck getting him to do anything else. Which is exactly how he got himself into the little predicament he’s in now. Damn you, Cas.”

The beeping of the machine is the only sound you hear as he pauses again.

“Sammy’s falling hard. I don’t know why. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re beautiful; it’s just not like him. I’ve only seen this happen a few times in the last eleven or so years. I could count them on one hand. It never ends well, and that’s what worries me. I don’t want to see his heart break again. I don’t want him to give up on love, but that kind of life just isn’t in our cards right now. You know?” His voice trembles. “I mean, you don’t know, but there’s this thing... bigger than the apocalypse thing. If you even remember the apocalypse. She’s the opposite of everything that is this world. Our world. We can’t rest until she’s taken care of and put back where she belongs.”

You had no idea Dean was holding so much inside, or that he was so broken, but now you know your assumptions were on track. And it breaks your heart.

“The way he looks at you... I don’t know who you are or why you came into our life. I mean, I could understand if you were someone Sam’s been crazy about for a long time, but he only just met you. And it wasn’t even anything. He didn’t tell me about the library. But I knew there was something when I picked him up. It was the look on his face. He started looking up lore on Dragons that night.” The vinyl squelched under his weight as he shifted again. “There’s no other options, [Y/N]. You’ve gotta come back to the bunker. At least if you’re there, Sam and I can work together on this. You’ll be safe.” There’s a tenderness in his voice you hadn’t expected.

When his phone rings, you open your eyes and make eye contact. He holds his gaze as he answers his phone. “Sam.”

You wish you could hear Sam, but Dean’s looking at you with soul-piercing eyes. You’re sure you look like something the cat dragged in after it played with you for a while, leaving you on the brink of death for some poor, unsuspecting housewife to discover and scream at. But he doesn’t look away. His green eyes melt your reserve against him and you realize that maybe he’s not such an ass after all.

When he disconnects the call, he leans forward in the vinyl chair. “He’s on his way back. We’re going to take you somewhere safe as soon as the doctors let you go.”

You blink twice, though you want to say, Thank you, Dean.