Title: In the Forest, 7/7
Author: Mad Server
Rating: T
Characters: Sam, Dean
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: Still don't own Supernatural. (I would have noticed, right?)
A/N: I've never done a serial before, guys. I had fun... and I couldn't have done it without people caring what happened next. Really. The first chapter would have just sat on my hard drive forever, because, long fics daunt me. So, thanks. And many thanks are due to ispeaktongue for getting her beta on again, with the generous and the insightful and the good.
Summary: Dean is sick. Sam can tell. There's a monster in the forest.

Back at the motel, I herd Dean into the bathroom and sit him down on the edge of the tub. He's pale under the blood, and leans forward woozily to cradle his head in his hands. I wet a clean cloth and press it against his forehead; he glances up, dazed, then takes the cloth from me and holds it in place.

I start unbuttoning his coat and he's surprisingly permissive, and that just can't be good. He helps me get his arms free, and then takes the coat, holds it up and examines it.

The arms are pretty much in shreds. I see him run his thumb regretfully over the collar, see his lips curl in pissy dismay as he tosses it into the corner.

'Give me a hand with these other layers.'

I reach for his shirts but Dean smacks at my hands, cranky now. He wants to do it himself I guess, but he's slow, and I'm in a hurry to get at his scratches; an infection is the last thing he needs at this point, and I don't know if the antibiotics he's on for his throat are the right kind to help with this.

'Dude, come on.'

But he's on it, face cloth ditched and both hands in action, and so I grit my teeth and wait.

When he's down to his wife beater, I finally get a good look at the cuts on his arms. Luckily, his clothes seem to have taken most of the damage; there's a lot of blood, but the flow has already stopped.

I fill a glass with warm water and pour it over his arms and hands, the runoff dripping red into the tub, then pink and paler pink as I repeat the process. Dean is grudgingly tolerant.

When the water's running clear off his arms, I wring out the cloth and pass it over the scratches on his face. Two big ones down his jaw are the worst of it. Dean watches me guardedly, but I can see he's fighting to keep his eyes open now. I wipe down the skin around the cuts, getting the last of the blood off, and I see him relax fractionally, eyes slitting in what might be contentment.

I'm dabbing polysporin onto his arm when he pushes it away, suddenly alert, and reaches over my shoulder for a handful of toilet paper. He twists away from me and sneezes urgently into it three or four times, then grimaces and blows his nose. That sets him off coughing, a deep, jarring rumble that it takes him some time to get under control.

I shake my head. 'You shouldn't have come.'

He frowns and tries to look like he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but he's too sleepy and too messed up to pull it off.

I finish with the cuts and bandage him up, steady him as he stands. Then he pulls out of my grasp, gives me a look that says Back off, and makes his way over to the couch, snow pants swishing. He sits down heavily and leans over to untie his boots.

I pack up the first aid kit, wash my face and brush my teeth, and when I come out of the bathroom Dean's still working on those boot laces. I'm not really surprised. I go over to the couch and sit down beside him, undo my own boot laces, and then I just lean over and do Dean's too. He moves his hands out of the way and lets me work.

Picking at a knot, I steal a look at Dean's face and see he's watching me. He has a funny look on his face: astonishment, and something else.

Three weeks later we're down in Tampa, looking into a string of mysterious disappearances, and I wake up in the night from a dream, just some dumb dream where we're hustling people at bumper cars, and suddenly I know what that look was.

Admiration.

end