Where to Find God
By: Ridley
Chapter 8
Dean once again looked up as the door to his brother’s room swung open and his father entered.
“I didn’t rate a coffee?” Dean asked with a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “Don’t tell me the whole bread and water thing has started already.”
John ignored the comment and walked over to the nightstand. “I passed Sam’s doctor. Is everything okay?”
The young hunter nodded. “About the same. Sammy’s still doing his impression of one of those fairytale chicks that he lusted after as a kid. You’d think he’d pricked his finger or ate a bad apple.”
His father was rummaging through his journal and only mumbled a response that Dean didn’t quite catch.
“Is everything okay with you, Dad?”
Finally, John seemed to find what he was searching for, and he tossed the book back on the stand and started for his eldest. “Lay your hands up here.” John nodded to the rails of Sam’s bed and Dean caught sight of the paperclip in his father’s hand.
“Uhh, Dad, is that such a good idea, considering Marty will be back up here any time now?”
“It was Marty’s idea.”
Dean smiled. “Dude is growing on me more and more. How’s he going to explain this to Barney Fife?”
“Well-you escaped-there’s not much to say.” John went to work on the lock with skilled precision.
Dean frowned. “But I’m not going anywhere.” The first cuff fell away.
“Yes, you are.” Another click and his son was a free man.
“The hell I am.” Dean rubbed his sore wrists. “Sam is still out of it.”
“And you being here isn’t going to change that. Marty put his neck on the line to get you out of this.”
“Where am I suppose to go?” Morgana was a small town. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of places to hide.
“As far away from Morgana as you can. I’ll call you when Sam and I are ready to leave.”
“What?” Leave. “It’s only December. Sam doesn’t graduate until May.”
“I’m sure arrangements can be made because of the accident. He can graduate early.”
“You promised him that he could stay the whole year. Finish the AP classes that he wanted.” I promised him.
“Yeah, well, none of us banked on this kind of trouble, now did we?”
“Sam didn’t do this on purpose.” Surely his father wasn't mad at Sam.
“I didn’t say he did.”
“Then why the hell are you punishing him?” Dean looked from his brother’s lifeless body to John. “If you want to blame someone, blame me. I encouraged him to go out with those kids.”
“I’m not trying to blame someone, Dean. I’m trying to keep you out of jail, and our family together.”
“So this is my fault now? Because I tore into Wilkerson?”
John sighed, and raked a hand through his hair. “That wasn’t your smartest move.”
“He did this.” Dean gestured to the countless machines that his brother was hooked to. “Wilkerson put us here. He put Sam here.”
“Your brother went to that party, Dean. They didn’t kidnap him.”
“But they drugged him, and from what the doctor said it sure the hell wasn’t some kind of prank.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dean sighed. “Sam’s blood work came back. It was positive for GHB and Oxycodone.”
“Isn’t that some kind of pain killer?”
“Yeah, cancer patient level pain killer.”
“Do you think that Wilkerson meant to overdose your brother?” John shook his head when Dean gave him a hell yeah I think he did it on purpose look. “What the hell is wrong with people?”
Dean hated to point out to his father that there was a lot of evil shit in the world that had nothing to do with the supernatural. Sometimes he thought the man only lived on the plane of existence where he hunted-everything else tuned out-good or bad.
“Now, do you get why I have to finish Wilkerson?”
John raised a brow. “You will do no such thing.”
“He tried to kill Sammy.”
“But he didn’t.”
Dean stepped back, as if his father had physically struck him. “And what if he had? Would you be out hunting him now?”
“God damn it, Dean! The boy is not a demon or a fucking poltergeist! He’s a kid.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
John blanched. Had he not made the boundaries clear enough? Could he have made such a fatal error ? He felt the room tilt as he steadily held his son’s hard green gaze. “You will not go near that kid, Dean Mathew Winchester. Do you understand me? That’s a fucking order.”
After a long drawn out moment, Dean looked away. “I hear you.”
“You will leave town and wait for my call, is that clear?”
Dean looked at Sam again. “I don’t want to leave him.”
The cold fury was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced now by the more recognizable, but still gut wrenching emotion of complete loyalty. John rubbed at his tired eyes and tried to get a reign of his own feelings. “You have no choice, son.”
Dean stepped closer to the bed, his hand reaching out and sliding gently through Sam’s hair. “Sorry, kiddo,” he breathed, quietly, but John still heard.
“I’m going to the nurses station,” the oldest Winchester waited for his eldest to look at him. “I want you gone when I get back, Ace. Disappear-like I taught you-got it?”
Dean nodded. “Will you call me?”
“As soon as he’s awake.”
“He will wake up. Right, Dad?”
“Yeah, Dean. He’ll wake up.”
The younger hunter watched him go, before turning back to face his kid brother. The only thing he could think of was the way Sam had looked at him when he’d first came into the ER examination room last night.
His kid brother had been terrified, and in pain, and even though Dean couldn’t help with the latter, his presence had taken away some of the fear. The older boy had instantly recognized the relief that had flooded Sam’s expressive brown eyes. He’d seen it a thousand times, when Sam would wake from a nightmare, or when Dean would show up just in the nick of time to save his ass from whatever evil thing they were battling.
Whether his brother would ever admit it or not, Dean knew he was a safety net. The one constant in Sam’s screwed up, freaky life. And now, when he needed that stability the most, Dean wasn’t going to be there.
“You know you could make this a lot easier for both of us, Sleeping Beauty, if you’d just wake up.” Dean watched the relaxed features, hoping for even a twitch of a finger, or even better a flutter of lashes. “If you don’t hurry up, you’re going to be stuck with the old man as the first face you see, and knowing Dad, he’s liable to give you a lecture on picking your friends wisely as a welcome back speech.”
Still nothing-only soft, steady breathing.
“Damn it, Sammy.” Dean leaned on the bed rails, his hand finding his brother’s. “I’ve got to go now. I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t have to. I swear. I would never leave you, if there was any way around it.”
The hunter bowed his head and laughed lightly at his own inability to will his feet to move towards the door.. “Damn. This is worse than when I had to leave you that first day of kindergarten. You know, I almost caved that day and blew the whole thing off-took you for some ice cream and a matinee.” Dean sighed. “But somehow hooky didn’t seem like the best concept to introduce on the first day of your educational career. And then there was that fear of the belt that Dad would have introduced to my backside.”
He smiled and raked his hand through Sam‘s hair again. “But I’ll be waiting on you, little brother, just like then. I won‘t be far. I promise.”
Dean glanced at the door, knowing he was pushing his luck. He quickly reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the pendant that Dr. Daniels had given back to him. Leaning down, he slipped it over Sam’s head and let his hand linger over his brother’s heart for just a moment. “This thing got you through that wreck without me. It’ll keep you safe until I can get back. I‘ll fix this, Sammy. All of it.”
The older hunter lifted his hand and touched Sam’s face lightly.
“Starting with Jeff Wilkerson.”