And Arbitrary Blackness Gallops In

Dean sits in the drivers seat, thrumming with rage and useless energy, his mind racing faster than his baby and that's saying something because his baby is flying.

“Sammy, you still with me?” he demands, flicking his eyes to the rear-view mirror and back to the road he's barrelling down.

The mirror reveals Sam, curled in the back seat, a ratty old blanket from the boot thrown over him, face pressed into the upholstery.

“Sam!” Dean damn near shouts when he doesn't get a reply. He wishes Sam was closer, so he could watch both him and the road at the same time.

“Yeah,” Sam moans finally, like talking is too much effort, like talking hurts. (It probably does.) “'m still here.”

He's bleeding on the seat. Dean can see the crimson smears but for once he doesn't care. He knows Baby understands. He's just grateful he found her waiting impatiently outside, anxious, he feels, and with good reason to be, even if it meant that Gordon must have driven her there. He'll check later to make sure he didn't hurt her but for now he's just glad that she's not MIA and he didn't have to waste time boosting a car.

“Good, you're doing real good, Sammy. We're nearly there, just hang on.” Encouragements come automatically. They always have when Sam's hurt. The dried blood on his arm itches as he spins the wheel, sluggishly welling up in the gashes circling his wrist but the ache is dull, pushed aside by necessity and adrenaline. They're nearly at the hospital and Dean remembers thinking what a bitch it would be to sew up his own arm. What a stupid thing to think. Of course they're going to the hospital. How could he think that he wouldn't be taking Sam to the hospital?

Anyway, someone there will sew it up. It's hard to think of cover stories while Sammy's screams are blasting in his head, while he's trying to split his attention between the road and the back seat, while he's trying really hard not to throw up, but they have to go to the hospital and they have to have a cover story. It's daylight now, before midday, and he has a vague memory of the sky growing dim before waking up in the Basement. A night must have passed. A whole night unconscious under Gordon's watch. The thought makes him shudder.

He'll have to say they were at a bar, they must have roofied, he doesn't remember, he just woke up and -

He swallows down the sourness rushing up his throat. The police are going to be involved, the hospital will notify them, no doubt, so he has to keep it simple. Can't have holes in his story. He's pretty sure whatever drugs are in his system will back him up. Hell, they probably were roofied, but how? Dean can't put the pieces together, can't remember enough of the pieces.

There'll be time for that later. For now he spins Baby into the hospital entrance and pulls her up right outside the doors. A man and woman in pale green nurses scrubs look up from their cigarettes, startled, as Dean unceremoniously staggers from the car.

“I need some help here!” he yells, cliché or not, right now he really does need some god damn help. He rounds the car, swinging the back door open.

Cigarettes hit the pavement and two sets of feet rush forward. The woman, who looks young enough to still be in high school, takes one look through the open door at Sam, bruised and bloodied and obviously not going anywhere under his own power, and turns sharply on her heel. “I'll get a gurney,” she calls over her shoulder.

The man nods distractedly and gently pushes past Dean to kneel beside the open back door. “What's his name?” he asks over his shoulder.

“Sam,” Dean answers promptly, torn between giving the nurse room and wanting to be as close to Sam as possible. “I think he has broken ribs, and a concussion. He needs x-rays and stitches and -”

“Okay,” the man cuts him, off, firm but not harsh, and Dean stops his rambling, hovering awkwardly over the nurses shoulder. He can smell the sharp scent of tobacco.

“Sam, can you hear me?” the nurse asks, loud and clear.

“Mm,” Sam manages, squeezing his eyes shut like the voice is too much.

“Good. Sam, we're gonna get you all fixed up, okay? Just try to relax.”

What a stupid thing to tell Sam to do. Kid's as relaxed as he can be, staying as still and calm as he can. He knows the drill, even if this drill is all fucked up and wrong.

“Hey.” The nurse catches Dean's attention. From the sound of it, it's not the first time he's tried.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me what happened. The more we know, the better we can treat him.”

“I don't – he was...” He can't bring himself to say it. “He was attacked. I don't know... I think we were roofied.”

He turns as he hears footsteps approaching and suddenly he's surrounded by people. The young nurse has brought a gurney and what seems like half the hospital staff, and they get Sam loaded onto it surprisingly fast. Everyone's calling out medical abbreviations that Dean's sure he should understand but there's too much noise, too much movement, and he finds himself pushed to the back of the group. He can't see Sam and someone's holding his arm and asking him something but he can't hear over the rush of blood in his ears. It's like now that he's got Sam to the hospital, he's shutting down. He feels himself stagger and tries to right himself but the ground's moving, spinning in circles, and it's easier to let himself fall.


Dean wakes to the sharp scent of bleach doing it's best to cover the smell of blood and vomit, the scent of rubber shoes and warm laundry, dozens of people in one place and even though his senses tell him hospital his stomach immediately goes to basement and clenches hard. He sits bolt upright, panic stirring through the disorientation and his head spins, something tugs at his hand.

He looks down, expecting handcuffs but it's a drip inserted in his hand. He follows it with his eyes to the bag of fluid hanging at his bedside. A look to his right shows him a heavily bandaged wrist.

Right. He forces himself to calm down, tells his stomach to chill the fuck out. He can't relax entirely because the absence of Sammy is like nails on a chalkboard, screeching down his spine. He's not entirely sure how he ended up in a hospital bed himself but that's really not important because he doesn't know where Sam is.

So obviously he's not staying where he is. He pulls the IV out gently and swings his legs over the side of the bed, realises then that his boots have been removed and finds them in the corner of the cubicle near the opening in the curtain.

Getting them on is a long and frustrating process. His wrist is bandaged tight enough that it's almost immobile and when he does manage to move it, he feels the sharp tug of stitches trying to tear.

He leaves them unlaced because screw these freaking boots, screw them for trying to keep him away from Sam, and tosses the curtain aside, marching out into the corridor with as little wavering as he can manage.

He finds the nurses station easily enough. It sits in the middle of the large room he appears to be in, surrounded by little curtained-off cubicles. Emergency department; they all look the same where ever he goes.

“Where's my brother?” he demands, stomping up to the station, trying to sound firm and non-negotiable, and ruining the effect by stumbling on his boot lace.

A frazzled-looking middle-aged woman glances up at him from her paperwork. “Aren't you supposed to be in bed?” she asks.

She eyes the pin prick from the IV, slowly welling up a drop of blood, and then his bandaged wrist. “Has someone seen you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean lies distractedly. “Look, I need to know where my brother is. Please.”

The woman looks like she might argue but then glances at her paperwork and seems to change her mind, probably too busy to battle with him. “Name?”

“Sam.” For a frightening moment he struggles to think of their current alias. “Sam Barrett.”

She tucks her pen behind her ear and taps away at her computer. “Sam Barrett... he's in room 415. Take the elevator up to level four and ask for Doctor Lindell. He can update you.”

“Lindell,” Dean repeats, committing the name to memory. “Thanks.”

The woman nods, retrieving her pen and returning to her paperwork, and Dean has to stop himself from sprinting to the elevators.


It's a terrifying list of injuries. Doctor Lindell put twenty stitches in Sam's face while Dean slept (why, why did he have to pass out like that? He should have been with Sammy.), x-rayed and found three broken ribs, all on Sam's right side, booked him in for surgery to remove bone fragments and replace his shattered cheekbone with a metal plate and is monitoring Sam's concussion. There's more but anything below Sam's waist is his own fucking business and the kid deserves some God damned privacy, okay?

(And if Dean just can't bring himself to think about it, well, shut up, he's entitled.)

There's still a couple of hours until Sam's surgery (Sam needs fucking surgery. Gordon fucking smashed Sammy's face into pieces.) and Dr Lindell allows Dean to spend the time with Sam. 'Allows', ha. As if Dean would be anywhere else, permission or no permission.

The doctor leads him to the door of Sam's room and gives him a pat on the shoulder that's more robotic than comforting and leaves him to it.

Dean takes a deep breath, suddenly struck by panic at the sight of the white door before him. What is he supposed to say? What's he supposed to do? This is unfamiliar territory and he feels woefully unprepared. Despite his rush to be by Sam's side, he doesn't feel ready. What if he says the wrong thing? What if he doesn't say something that Sam needs to hear? What if he somehow unintentionally makes things worse?

Then he remembers Lindell saying that Sam's spaced out on the good drugs (to paraphrase the doctor babble) and will probably be sleeping. He can handle a sleeping Sam. Hell, he's supposed to be able to handle any kind of Sam so stop being a god damned wuss, Dean, pull yourself together!

So he inches the door open and slips inside and shit. He knew it was bad, of course, but seeing it...

It would be easier to describe where Sam isn't bruised than it would be to say where he is, but Dean will go so far as to say that Sammy's face is a fucking mess. There are four stitches in the kid's lower lip, six lined up above his eyebrow and ten curling a messy path across his cheek. Dean counts them carefully, filing the information away.

Sam's stitched lip is swollen and purple, trailing bruising down his chin. His left eye is swollen completely shut, the skin around it puffy and black. The shiner covers almost half his face, smothering the shattered cheekbone. Dean wonders where the surgeons will cut to replace it with metal. He hopes it's somewhere discreet. Sammy doesn't need any more scars on his face.

Sam's right eye is blackened too and though it's no where near as bad as his left, the bruises stretch over the bridge of his nose and up to his eyebrow, deep purple fading to sickly greens and yellows at the edges.

Dean stands frozen in the doorway and takes all this in and curses himself for all the ways he's let Sam down. For allowing this to happen. For still not being able to figure out how Gordon got the drop on them, because if he can't figure it out then what's going to stop someone else from having a go?

There's a single chair at Sam's bedside, one of those horrible plastic bowl things supposedly shaped to support a persons spine but all they really do is make your butt go numb and your back hurt, and Dean knows that that's where he should be right now. He should sit with Sam and wait for him to wake up and just fucking be there, but he can't because there's this pressure building up in his chest that's trying to suffocate him and then it's in his throat and he has to flee the room, and this horrible, horrible part of him has to acknowledge that right now it's easier for him to fall to his knees before the sterile hospital toilet and vomit than it is to go into that room and be with his little brother.


It takes about half an hour before Dean's ready to even begin to pull himself together and it's only the memory of the doctor saying that Sam's going into surgery soon that really drags him to his feet.

He washes his face, careful of his bandaged wrist, rinsing and spitting a few times but he can still taste the vomit as he walks back to Sam's room, taking slow even breaths. He opens the door as quietly as he can but Sam's awake this time.

“Hey,” Dean's bashed up little brother says groggily when he sticks his head in.

“Hey,” Dean returns quietly, like talking any louder would be obscene, and this time he does cross the room to slip into that god awful chair. “You're awake.”

“Mm, so are you.” Sam manages a small tired smile that doesn't match his eyes. “Saw you faint.”

Dean puts on the best affronted face he can come up with at this moment, which admittedly isn't too great. “Dude, I didn't faint. I passed out. There's a difference.”

“You fainted,” Sam murmurs victoriously, but this is like some grotesque parody of normal, this banter, and Dean can't bring himself to play along.

He clears his throat, feeling awkward. “So, uh, how are you feeling?”

“Drugged,” Sam says, with that same pale imitation of a smile, but he raises his hand to his face like he can feel something there. Dean's eyes travel along the swollen rows of black stitches. “How's'it look?”

Dean hesitates, because he's not exactly going to tell the kid that he looks like he got hit by a freaking bus but he doesn't want to lie to Sam either. “Nothing that won't heal given time,” he says finally. He hopes it's true anyway. Dr Lindell was cautiously optimistic about whether Sam's face would scar or not. Honestly, all Dean wants right at this moment is for the swelling and bruising to fade. He wants Sam to look like Sam, not this beaten kid in a hospital bed.

“That bad, huh?” Sam sees right through him, as usual, and at least some fucking thing is usual about this because Dean feels like he's drowning and he'll grab on to anything that's offered. “The doctor said I'm having surgery.”

Dean nods. “Yeah.” And he's not sure what more there is to say about that.

He looks down at his hands. “Sammy-” he starts, but Sam cuts him off, thank God. He really had no idea where he was going with that.

“You should go to the nurses station. One of them has your jacket... can't remember her name, she said she'd look after it. Wouldn't let them cut it off.”

Dean blinks. He hadn't given a single thought to his jacket since putting it on Sam. He hadn't even realised it was missing until now.

This fucking kid of his. Beat to hell and thinking about Dean and his jacket, Dad's old jacket. It must have hurt like a bitch to take it off, would've been so much easier to let them cut it, and fuck, he's meant to watch out of Sammy but instead he fainted and left the kid alone. If he'd been there he would've told the nurses to just cut the thing. He's seen Sam in enough pain today.

“Jesus, Sammy,” he chokes out, and that's it. He raises his hands to cover his face, to try to push the tears back into his eyes. Everything's happened so fast but yesterday feels like a million years ago. He can't wrap his head around it. How did everything go so wrong so fast? How did Gordon get the drop on them? How could Dean not have had a back up plan? How did they end up here with Sammy, fucking Sammy, lying there a fucking brutalized mess, bruises and stitches and chopped hair and fucking surgery, and fighting to keep Dean's jacket intact? How could something like this happen to someone like Sam?

Dean wants to bring Gordon back to life and beat every inch of him, use every weapon in their arsenal on him and listen to him scream, listen to him beg and kill him anyway, then bring him back and do it all over again. (Until what? Until time rewinds?)

“Dean,” Sam murmurs, and Dean jumps when Sam's hand touches his, clenched in the bedsheets at Sammy's side. “Don't. Please.”

Dean swipes a hand down his face and looks at his battered little brother. “What am I supposed to do, Sammy?” His voice cracks and he doesn't give a shit.

Sam looks dangerously close to tears himself but he does a better job of composing himself than Dean. “Tell me the cover story. The doctor was asking me... I haven't said anything but they'll call the cops...”

“Right, yeah, of course.” So Dean fills him in on what meagre lies he's managed to come up with and they run through it until they both know it backwards and forwards, which is all kinds of horrible, and then the doctor comes and tells Sam it's time to prep him for surgery.
The surgery takes forever. Dean paces and chews his nails until he has nothing left to chew, fiddles with his bandages and flips through a couple of magazines without reading a single word, badgers the nurses for updates and drinks a fuck ton of crappy hospital coffee.

Somewhere in the middle of this, his hands are shaking from all the caffeine so he chucks the magazine he was flipping through onto the small coffee table and a voice says, “I'm guessing this is yours.”

Dean looks up to see the young nurse who's smoke break he interrupted, holding out his leather jacket.

“Uh, yeah.” He reaches for it automatically. “Thanks.”

The nurse smiles, the same smile all medical professionals give when someone you love is hurt or sick or fucked up in whatever way; sympathetic but detached. “No problem. Sam was quite insistent that you get it back.”

Dean's lip twitches at the girl's slight emphasis on 'quite insistent'. Yeah, he can imagine how insistent Sammy was.

“All right,” the nurse – Kelly, her name tag informs – says a little too brightly. “Well, I'll just give you these pamphlets to look through-” They appear in her hand as if out of no where but then, Dean wasn't really paying attention. “-and I'll leave you to it.”

She hands them over, three thick sheets of paper folded into thirds in varying pastel shades. The title of the first one is written in black capitals across the front.

HELPING YOUR LOVED ONE RECOVER FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT

Jesus. Well, there's the end of his denial. He can't exactly avoid thinking about 'it' with that staring him in the face.

Kelly's gone by the time Dean looks up.


Dean reads every damn word while he sits at Sam's bedside, waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off. The incisions are discreet, thankfully. Six stitches by Sammy's ear and a neat row of staples at his hair line. Sam sleeps so deeply that Dean's thankful for the monitors that assure him that the kid's still alive.

The pamphlets are good at distracting him from his thoughts, which mostly involve images of surgeons peeling Sammy's face off. Though the pamphlets just put other images in his head and he can't decide which are worse.

He glances up every now and then to keep track of any changes in the monitors as he reads the pamphlets cover to cover, and then again, because honestly, he needs all the help he can get. He has no idea how to deal with all of this. Suddenly it's like Sam's this foreign creature that he doesn't know what to do with, what to say to.

It's like Sam's this 'victim' that the pamphlets refer to him as. It makes Dean angry because Sam shouldn't ever be a victim but as much as he hates to admit it, that's what Sam is now and Dean needs to know how to help or fix it or at least what to fucking say to make this better because he's coming up empty. Nothings going to change what happened in that Basement and nothings going to make them forget.

And if all he has right now is some fucking pamphlets, then he's damn well going to read them.

He's at the part about supporting the victim through the court process (again, and yeah, there's not going to be a court process for them, whatever) when Sam starts stirring.

Dean shoves the pamphlets into his jacket pocket, like they're something he has to hide from the kid, and leans forward.

“Sammy?”

Sam's head twitches towards his voice.

“Hey, kiddo, that's it. Come on back.”

Sam twitches again and suddenly his heart monitor speeds up, beeping shrill and fast, and Sam jerks on the bed. “D'n,” he moans.

“Sammy, hey, calm down.” Dean grabs Sam's hand and squeezes, and Sam's eyes fly open. He yanks his hand back with as much strength as he can muster, which isn't much but Dean lets go anyway, and stares up at Dean with unfocused eyes that lack all emotion other than fear.

“Whoa.” Dean pulls back and raises his hands as if in surrender. “It's okay, Sammy, just me. It's just me.”

Because Dean knows exactly who Sam expected to see upon waking, drugged and confused. A person would have to be an idiot not to figure it out and that's why he's so pissed off when Kelly comes bustling into the room brandishing a syringe.

“Look who's awake,” she smiles vaguely. “I've got a little something here to help you calm down.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dean says as she goes to insert it into the IV connected to the back of Sam's hand, at the same time as Sam shies away and croaks, “What is that?”

“Just something to help you rest,” she says, like it's no big deal and, hello lady, can you not tell that Sam is fucking terrified? That drugging him is only going to make it worse? That this is a big fucking deal?!

“No,” Sam gasps. “No drugs.”

“You heard him,” Dean says firmly when Kelly hesitates.

“It's important for patients to stay calm-” she starts, clearly unsure.

“He's not going to calm down with you waving a fucking needle at him!” Dean damn near yells. He only just remembers to keep his voice down so that he doesn't get kicked out.

“Dean.” Sam's hand reaches for him. “'s okay... 'm fine. Please don't...”

The end of the sentence is directed at Kelly and Sam makes a show of controlling his breathing. The heart monitor slows down a fraction.

Dean sees the moment when Kelly relents, her face changing to understanding (took her fucking long enough) and then embarrassment.

“Sorry,” she stammers. “Sorry, I...” She busies herself checking the monitors. “Right, well, just press the call button if you need anything.”

She scurries off. Dean watches her go, as if she might leap on Sam with a needle if he turns his back before she's out of the room.

“You okay?” Dean asks, turning back to Sam.

Sam still seems to be focusing on his breathing. “Yeah, I just... anaesthetic, I guess? Di' I have th' surgery?”

“Yeah.” Dean has to take a calming breath of his own. “Yeah, it went fine. You want water?”

Sam nods, and lets Dean hold the little cup to his lips. Dean takes it away after a few mouthfuls and puts it down, but now he's not sure what to do and seriously, after all these years he should be able to do better than yelling at a nurse and giving Sam water, but this is all so off. Almost surreal. He still can't believe this is really happening. He stalls by picking up Sam's water and taking a sip.

“You don't have to talk,” Sam says, because the kid knows him so well and even now can see that he's floundering for something to say. “Just don't go anywhere.”

As if Dean has anywhere else to be.


He ends up getting kicked out at the end of visiting hours, after Sam's been relocated from Recovery to a ward, which is complete and utter bullshit, which he tells Kelly but she just says, “Rules are rules,” arms folded over his chest, and Dean just barely stops himself from causing a huge fucking scene. He bets she was the try-hard suck-up of her class at nursing school, determined to do everything by the book.

So Dean promises Sam that he'll be back in the morning and forces himself to walk away. The Impala reeks of Sam's blood and he can't stop his eyes from skittering to the rear-view mirror the way they did on the race to the hospital. He's grateful when he pulls into the motel parking lot.

It feels like a very long time since he was last at this motel. There's no sign of struggle but Gordon probably took them from here. Probably. Maybe. He doesn't know and the blank spaces in his memory are driving him crazy.

He does a thorough search of the room, looking for anything suspicious. He finds nothing.

He can't sleep so he goes out and scrubs the blood from his baby's upholstery, trying not to think or feel, but come on, it's Sammy's blood he's mopping up and Sammy's not here. Sammy's in the hospital all alone.

He keeps checking his phone, in case he's somehow missed a call from the nurses telling him Sam needs him, get down here now, and everything's still utter bullshit because he knows that Sammy needs him. He shouldn't have to wait for some stupid phone call from a stranger.

Somehow, he really doesn't know how, he falls asleep on the damp seat, the scent of blood replaced by the smell of cleaning fluids, and has some messed up dream about trying to wash the blood off of his brother, but Gordon's there and Dean feels like he's running through quicksand when he tries to chase him, then Gordon vanishes and Sam still needs his help, but when he turns Sam is gone too and Dean stumbles around in a panic searching for him until the alarm on his phone wakes him to announce that visiting hours start soon.

He feels hungover, though he's sure he didn't drink anything last night. It's probably from the fumes. He stumbles from Impala to motel room and drags his duffel into the bathroom with him. He showers, awkwardly holding his bandaged arm out of the spray, and shaves automatically, trying to forget about his dream. Nightmare. But it's hard without Sammy here to assure him that he hasn't actually disappeared.

Once he's dressed he steps out into the room and is immediately overwhelmed by the need to get out. Not just get to the hospital, but get out of this room where Gordon probably had his creepy hands all over him, all over Sammy, so he shoves their stuff into duffel bags with ruthless efficiency, picking up wayward socks, wondering if that empty take out coffee cup over there was behind their drugging, or maybe that one on the night-stand, and how the hell did Gordon manage to do this? How did he slip them drugs? How did he find them?

Is there even any point in wondering about it now?

Dean tosses the duffel’s into the Impala's trunk, takes more care with Sam's laptop, and has just enough time to stop for coffee before visiting hours start. He feels like he should be suspicious of his take away coffee but Gordon's dead and come on, he needs coffee. He chugs the last of it back before entering Sam's room and tosses the empty cup in the trash.

Sam's awake when he walks in but looking out the window, face unreadable. He doesn't seem to notice Dean's arrival so he allows himself a moment to look Sam over.

If possible, the kid looks worse than yesterday. Clean of blood, yes, but the bruises have darkened to pitch black overnight, sickly yellow spreading across Sam's swollen face. The staples look harsh and painful and the way he holds himself, even lying down, suggests that his ribs are bothering him.

He's so caught up with his inspection that he doesn't notice that Sam's switched his gaze from the window to him until the kid speaks.

“I guess I shouldn't ask for a mirror then.”

Dean actually jumps. “Huh?”

“If seeing me makes your face look like that, I'm thinking that a mirror isn't a good idea.” He's trying for casual but Dean can tell he's looking for some kind of confirmation on how bad he actually looks.

Dean immediately tries to wipe off whatever look it is he has on his face but he gets the feeling that he's just doing weird things with his eyebrows and lips. Sam gives him a tired smile.

“Just stop. You look ridiculous.”

“It's gonna heal,” Dean finds some words and latches on to them. “Your face, it, once the stitches come out , it'll be... well, and the staples, and when the swelling goes down, and then, then-”

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam cuts him off. “Shut up, okay?”

There's no heat behind the words, just, vaguely fond exasperation maybe? Dean shuts up. Sam could tell him to do pretty much anything right now and Dean would do it.

So Dean takes his seat and waits until he thinks of something less rambling to say.

“So, uh, how was last night? Did you sleep?” Okay, less rambling but still a stupid thing to say because Sam's face kind of closes off.

“A bit.” Sam runs his tongue over the stitches in his lower lip, clearly not willing to expand on the topic, but Dean can guess what the problem is. Nightmares. He wonders briefly what went on in Sammy's subconscious last night and then decides he'd rather not think about it.

“Yeah, me neither,” he concedes, and they leave that topic to die an awkward death, which leads to an even more awkward silence, and silence shouldn't ever be awkward with Sammy. God, he hopes this hasn't changed them forever.

“The police are coming today,” Sam says finally, fiddling with his IV. “One of the nurses told me.”

“Oh.”

“They want to talk to you too.”

“Yeah, of course.” Because of course the police want to talk to him. “You need to go through the cover story again? You were pretty drugged up when we talked about it.”

Sam won't look him in the eye, which is kind of okay 'cause Dean can't really bring himself to meet Sam's eye either. He just can't imagine how this must be for Sam, making up stories to tell the police about how he ended up beaten and fucking raped in this fucking hospital bed.

“No, I remember,” Sam says. Thank Whoeverthefuck.

They don't really talk much after that, aside from the odd comment. Sam's still woozy on the meds and falls asleep for a while, so Dean takes the opportunity to stretch his muscles, take a walk down the hallway to the vending machine he saw yesterday but didn't touch. Couldn't touch 'cause how could he eat after that? But man cannot exist on coffee alone forever and his stomach's reminding him so.

He stands and stretches his arms above his head, cracking his neck. He walks to the door and opens it just as a police officer is about to knock.

They have the initial moment of startle, during which Dean notes that it's a woman, in her early thirties, fairly attractive with her shoulder-length curly blonde hair.

He glances at Sam and back. “He's sleeping. Can we...?” He makes a motion outwards.

The officer steps back. “Are you Dean Barrett?”

“Yeah, that's me.”