"You Lose Some"

[kellifer]

Title: You Lose Some
Author: kellifer_fic
Rating: PG
Fandom: SPN
Category: Gen
Warnings: None
Notes: Written for ancastar who wanted protective!Dean and hurt!Sam for spn_j2_xmas. Set some time after episode 2.10.
Summary: Sam had no idea if he'd been unconscious for two minutes or two hours.

Sam had no idea if he'd been unconscious for two minutes or two hours when the cold in the floor finally roused him. He felt numb down the side of his body pressed against the concrete and he was shivering. He sat up and pins and needles sprung to life in his right leg, making him whimper. He leaned forward and tried to knead the muscles back into life as the leg felt like a dead piece of wood. He bent it back against himself and stretched it out straight again and life and warmth finally starting flowing back through it. Sam pushed himself onto his haunches and stood, using the wall to lever himself upright.

Sam brought his left arm up, palm outstretched and slapped himself across the face, back and forth, two stinging blows that brought tears to his eyes. “Get it together,” he said grimly to the empty room. His cheek tingled with warmth and he held onto the feeling, shutting out anything else until his breathing was under control and the black panic that had arisen unbidden was quelled.

Sam stumbled away from the wall and made his way into the small bathroom he had just noticed off the cold room he was currently in. He pushed his way inside, opening the door further and placed his palms flat on the counter to either side of the metal sink, fighting for control.

There was an electric toothbrush to one side of the faucet, looking up at him with its impassive face of bristles. A new bottle of mouthwash and an unopened package of dental floss sat beside it.

Sam opened the cold tap on full, a spray of fine droplets pattering his stomach. He took a breath and plunged his head beneath the water, gasping for air and against the chill when he pulled his head free, flicking his wet hair behind him. He put both hands beneath the water and splashed what gathered there on his face, trying to shock himself out of the terrible weariness that was trying to take his body back down. There was a caramel coloured hand towel draped over a rack behind him. He pulled it free and wiped the water out of his eyes. He dropped the towel back onto the sink beside him and put his wrists back under the cold water while he thought.

How on earth had he ended up here?

Sam made him way back out to the main room now he could focus better and assessed his situation. The floor was polished concrete but there were two rugs, the same thick pile and light blue in color. There was a table in one corner that looked like the hundreds of tables Sam had seen in cheap motel rooms. There was a pitcher of water on it with a single glass sitting beside.

The door to this room was the thing that truly scared him. The one thing that made his mind deal with the fact that he was in trouble, and probably the really bad kind of trouble.

The door was normal sized, but padded on the surface with a thick layer of foam rubber, wine red. There was a small, square window set about half way up the door’s length, not even big enough for a small child to wriggle through. He noticed immediately what was missing from the door on the inside.

A handle.

There was a black panel on the wall to the right of the door with a light blinking red.

Sam reached for the water jug on the desk. As he reached forward he noticed that his hand was trembling. He had thought that his shakiness was due to his disorientation but he thought that perhaps it was a sign of something more sinister. There was a weariness in his body that he couldn’t seem to shake and he was still a little wonky on his feet, the kind of weak feeling after a bad flu.

Sam did another circuit of the room and the bathroom, looking for a weapon of some kind. His search didn’t yield anything at first, but when he returned to the padded door, he looked down at the water jug off to the side. Sam picked it up and dropped it on the floor, the heavy thing exploding on impact. One piece was still rocking back and forth on the floor when Sam leaned down to survey the damage. This piece was from the bottom, large, thick and snapped off so it formed a triangle.

Sam went back to the bathroom and retrieved the towel. Using the jagged edge of glass to get it started, Sam ripped the towel in two and then ripped again until he had a long piece of thick material. He brought that back over to the door and wrapped the bottom of the piece of glass in the material so he could pick it up and hold it without cutting his hand. He hefted the heavy piece of glass and swung his arm in an arc, the glass slicing through the air. He smiled grimly. It would have to do.

Sam laid his makeshift dagger on the desk carefully and then went to task, clearing the glass and spilled water away from the door as best as he could, hiding the evidence. He wanted anyone who came through the door not to see anything unusual.

Sam dropped the extra broken glass, wrapped in the remains of the towel, into the bathroom sink. Sam moved back out to the main room and to the door and looked it over critically. He couldn’t tell if it swung inward or outward but he could tell it opened from right to left. The window, also small, wouldn’t allow someone looking through to see anything directly on either side of the door. He placed himself on the hinge side of the door and lowered himself to a crouch, the glass knife clutched in front of him.

And waited.

000

Sam was dimly aware that someone was grasping his wrist and attempting to remove something gently from his hand. He was fighting his way back to consciousness and he knew there was a reason he shouldn’t be sleeping right then. He started wondering if he had slept through his alarm or Dean yelling at him to move his ass but in a rush everything came back and his hand clenched, bearing down on what he had been holding. There was a faint cracking sound and a sharp pain that jolted him all the way back into wakefulness.

"What have you done?” a voice in front of him grumbled and he tried to focus on the pale blob in his vision, resolving it into the shape of a man hunkering in front of him. The pain in his hand was hazing everything he saw in white. He brought his hands up in defense, pulling his wrist free of the grasp that had held it. Warm droplets spattered his face and he cried out, trying to scrabble backwards but there was only unyielding wall behind him.

“Stop… you’ve hurt yourself!” Both Sam’s wrists were captured in strong hands and pulled down away from his face. The pain in his right hand flared briefly and Sam slipped sideways, vision greying. The hold on his wrists relaxed and instead an arm came around him, pulling him to his feet. He was half dragged, half carried to the bathroom and sat down in front of the toilet. Sam slumped sideways until he had cool tile against his cheek. He dragged his hand in front of his face, not wanting to lift his head and saw that a shard of glass from his makeshift knife had speared all the way through the fleshy part of his palm when he had squeezed it. There was blood coating his hand and arm and he was dimly aware that it was still bleeding.

He heard the faucet turned on. Something was held under the water and then he felt strong hands again, only around his ankles and he was yanked forward, out from beside the toilet. Sam yelped in surprise, bringing his arms over him head and turning his face to the floor, expecting a blow but none came. Instead he was turned onto his back and something soft was shoved under his head. “Just take a few deep breaths,” a gentle voice instructed and the wrist of his hurt hand was taken again.

Sam raised his other arm and struck out blindly. He heard a grunt as he connected with something solid but his left arm was then pinned beneath a knee. “Hold still. I’m trying to help it,” the voice commanded, his hurt hand again being taken under control. He felt the piece of glass embedded in his skin being touched and he cried out, his eyes flying open wide.

The man sitting across his chest, one knee pinning his left arm while he worried the piece of glass in his right hand was someone he recognized with a jolt. He and Dean had been driving this guy towards Bobby in the hopes of trying to pry the demon loose of the same man now sitting astride him. They'd been about two hours out from Bobby's with the demon locked in a devil's trap imprinted trunk last he remembered.

Sam willed desperately to be able to fight through the fog in his mind long enough to remember just where he had been before this room. He thought maybe they'd stopped for food, Dean bitching that his stomach lining was eating itself. Had they done something else? What had happened to Dean?

The man bore down with his knee on Sam’s left arm and he cried out again, his head swinging sideways. The demon used this distraction to pull the glass free. Blood spurted, hitting him the demon in the face but he didn’t seem to notice. He was intent on getting a damp strip of material around Sam's hand.

“What on earth were you doing with that thing?” the demon asked, snugging the makeshift bandage tight with a clumsy knot. Sam turned his head away, searching the room for anything that might save him. A hand grabbed his chin and brought his face in line again.

Sam bucked his hips upwards. He very nearly managed to throw the demon above him off, so sudden and savage was his motion but the demon managed to regain his balance and bore down harder on the arm he was kneeling on.

“Stop this, Sammy, I don’t want to hurt you... yet,” the demon admonished with a wry chuckle.

Despite the pain, Sam brought his right arm up and around, slamming it against the demon's side while trying to roll left. This time he did manage to dislodge him. The demon who he thought was wearing some kind of dark blue uniform, was pushed sideways and he muttered an oath as his shoulder slammed the bathroom vanity, making the mirror above shudder in its mooring.

Sam was up on his feet the second he was free but a painful cramp twisted his leg out from under him. He fell heavily across the bathroom threshold but kept crawling, trying to get his knees under him long enough to get back up on his feet again. Then something caught his eye. There was the big piece of the glass he had been planning to use as a weapon lying on the floor by the door, obviously forgotten. It still had some of the towel around the base. Sam wrenched himself forward, grasping it in his left hand by the end still protected and used the door to push himself erect.

He turned, the glass held in front of himself to face the demon, now standing in the bathroom doorway. “Were you planning on killing me with that?” the demon asked with a grin, speaking softly and calmly as if talking to a wounded animal, which Sam figured he was by that point. The demon patted his own chest and grinned ghoulishly. "Y'know, Michael Guthry is still alive in here and his wife Amanda and baby Angie will be very disappointed to hear that the man who'd promised to rescue him gutted him like a fish instead."

“Where's Dean?” Sam ground out. He widened his stance, holding the glass low and at a slight angle.

“You need a six digit combination to get out of this room. There’s a numbered panel behind the black plate on the wall,” the demon said, almost as if he were explaining to a child. “You might hit the right combination, given a few months of trying every possible number.”

Sam was always a good judge of character in a crisis and he recognized that the man in front of him was bluffing. He turned his head slightly, enough to still keep him in the periphery of his vision and saw out of the very corner of him eye that the light above the door panel was now green.

The demon hadn’t locked it when he’d entered the room, probably because he'd been too busy pushing Sam's prone form out of the doorway.

Sam moved backwards the three steps necessary to bring him up flush against the door and used his hip to push. The door gave way behind him. He grinned, still feeling a little disoriented and knowing he must look wild.

“I'll be back for you as soon as I find Dean,” Sam said as he moved through the door and slammed it shut. He heard locks click into place and slumped down, knowing he needed to get moving but needing just a minute to catch him breath.

000

There was no one in the industrial-looking hallway when Sam peered around the corner, still with a death-grip on his hand-made weapon. There was another padded door a few feet from where he was and Sam moved to it, going up on his toes to look through the small viewing window. The room beyond was dim and he couldn’t see if anyone was inside.

Sam knew it was a risk, but he was hoping that Dean was being held close to him. He looked at the code panel set next to the door before using his glass-knife to pry the casing off. The inside mechanism was wired and he smiled to himself.

Easy.

It only took a few minutes but Sam heard the locks go on the door and he pushed it inwards, stepping warily around and then sliding sideways, his back to the wall. He saw a figure in the furthest corner of the room, curled with their back to the door and he moved quickly, recognizing Dean's jacket.

When he rolled the prone figure over, he found Dean, face slack but no visible injuries. Shaking didn’t wake him, but Sam found a similar setup to his own room he’d started in and used the bathroom sink to get a double handful of water, walking it back quickly into the main room and opening his hands above Dean’s head.

Dean coughed, swore and coughed again, rolling back onto his side. “Not funny, Sam,” he griped.

Sam hunkered down next to him, taking a shoulder in him hand and shaking firmly. “Wakey, wakey.”

"Sammy?” Dean rolled onto his back and blinked at him blearily. “Hell’s goin’ on?”

“I think we underestimated a demon safely locked in a trunk,” Sam said, getting his arm under Dean’s back and pushing him upright. “I think we’ve been drugged, I don’t really remember how we got here.”

“Where’s here?” Dean asked, shaking his head and scrubbing a hand over his face, looking as groggy as Sam still felt.

“Don’t know that either, but I’ve opened your door so I’d say we should get out of here and reassess later.”

Dean took a moment to blink up at Sam as he stood and offered him a hand. “You look like hell,” he noted dryly.

000

It took another ten minutes to check the remaining cells on their floor and find they didn’t contain anyone else, Sam sure they would be discovered at every turn. Dean was looking steadier and more concerned with each new empty cell.

"Where the hell are they?" Dean grumbled under his breath and Sam looked at him. "You got one trapped right? What about the other four?"

"What other four?" Sam asked, confused.

"You don't remember?" Dean asked incredulously and at Sam's shake of the head took a deep breath. "We had that guy Guthry and were on our way to Bobby's when I hit some chick standing in the middle of the road. She came out of nowhere. You screamed like a girl by the way," Dean added with a grin.

"Did not."

"You said you didn't remember."

"I don't but still I say, did not," Sam grumbled and Dean rolled his eyes.

"Whatever. Anyway, we both got out of the car which was a stupid rookie move, spotted another two guys standing on the side of the road, went for the trunk and that's when someone hit me in the back of the head."

"You think Guthry was a trap?" Sam hedged and Dean's lips thinned down as he nodded.

"Sorry Sam, but we gotta get out of here. We'll come back when we have something to fight with other than strong language."

"They'll be long gone by then," Sam protested, rubbing a hand over his face. All he could do was picture Amanda Guthry with her daughter balanced on her hip saying, I knew something was wrong with him but this kind of thing just doesn't happen, does it?

"It's a chance we gotta take. Those other guys could be anywhere, you're bleedin' like a stuck pig and I'm pretty sure I'm still halfway stoned from whatever shit they gave me."

"We promised her."

"I know Sammy, I know."

000

"Brandon and Zeke went and cleared it out," Bobby said, putting the phone down. Sam lifted the cloth that had been across his eyes and glanced from Bobby to Dean who was also lying prone and back again. Whatever cocktail the demons had pumped into them had been potent and had an awful come down. Sam still wasn't sure he could move without hurling up whatever he'd eaten in the last month.

"Anyone still there?" Sam asked.

"Nope," Bobby said. "Looks like you two stumbled on a bunch of enterprising sons of bitches. They had an operation going, snatching people and keeping them in the cells till they could bust one of their brethren loose from hell to slip into a nice, warm waiting body. Must have thought all their Christmases came at one when you two turned up to investigate their latest."

"Any sign of where they went?" Dean asked, sitting up slowly. He had purple smudges under his eyes and his hair was mashed flat.

"Not a clue. Zeke ringed the area but didn't hear a peep. I'd say they scattered which is something I guess. It's alright when these guys are all out for number one but when they get organized, that's a whole 'nother matter." Bobby disappeared into his kitchen and Sam eyed Dean for a second, who was looking anywhere but back at him.

"I had Guthry trapped," Sam said slowly and Dean blinked and finally looked at him.

"So?"

Sam tilted upright gingerly and put his arms on his knees, mindful of his bandaged hand. "So? We probably could have-"

"No we couldn't," Dean interrupted, words clipped off.

"Dean!"

"I said we couldn't. If it were a single demon then maybe but there were others, a whole goddamn party of them by what Bobby was saying. I couldn't risk it." Dean looked away again, suddenly finding his nails fascinating. "I couldn't risk you."

"You can't always put me first, Dean," Sam said with a frown.

"Yeah? Watch me," Dean snapped, getting to his feet with his hands clenched into fists.

"Saving people, hunting things, remember Dean?" Sam said, also coming to his feet. He felt like his head was going to roll off and bounce across the room the drug hangover was so bad but anger kept him standing. "That doesn't have an unless it gets my kid brother killed caveat!"

"It's implied," Dean said, suddenly sounding weary. "Look, I'm sorry as hell about that guy but you can't ask me to... I won't..."

Sam's anger drained out of him as quickly as it had come on. Dean had been protecting him all his life and for Sam to think that that was somehow going to change, that something written in Dean as permanent as an engraving on stone could ever be wiped clean...

Sam got a flash of Dean's face crumpling right before Dean turned away, clearing his throat with an angry sounding bark. "No, hey, I'm... I get it, okay?" Sam said in a rush.

"Whatever," Dean sniffed and his face was a careful, studied blank by the time he turned back to Sam. "I'm starving. You think Bobby will make us his special scrambled eggs?"

"Yeah, 'course," Sam nodded and Dean followed Bobby's earlier path through to the kitchen, Sam watching him go.

He knew, deep down, there would come a time when Dean's protectiveness would need to end, that he wouldn't be able to protect Sam from what was coming. Sam had started to think, over the last few months that maybe that horse had bolted when he was six months anyway, that the worst that could happen to him already had. That maybe knowing that, Sam could let Dean have his little victories for now, feel like he was doing some good.

Maybe that was Sam's way of protecting Dean.

"Better get your ass in here before your brother eats everything including my cutlery," Bobby's voice floated out from the kitchen and Sam smiled.