Archive of Our Own

He wasn’t sure how long it had been.

His voice went hoarse hours ago. He had felt it thrumming in his chest, buzzing in his head, the rounded tone curling in his mouth in the shape of his brother’s name. Dean, he had screamed, help. Or maybe he had whispered – or maybe it all just vibrated in his body the same way when panic rushed beside it. All he knew was that he had strained, the insides of his throat coated with blood and scratched-carved out from the effort of it; he coughed hard against the sandpaper sensation and fluttered his eyes shut, resting his head back against the wall.

Sam wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dead yet. The shifter that was keeping him hadn’t made itself known to him – he had received one clean hit against the back of his head that burst white light behind his eyes before he passed out. This was why Dad didn’t like him going off alone, he guessed; it was harder to call for help if he couldn’t hear a response in turn.

He had been fine up until then. Almost eighteen years of being deaf, and he had managed to get through things without much babysitting and hand-holding, despite all of Dad’s reservations. He’d been on more hunts in the eight years he’d been doing it than some other hunters had their whole lives; he thought he deserved more credit.

Sam thought. A part of him – rebellious teen, maybe, the half that clung to his anger like it kept his heart beating – refused to change his beliefs. He did deserve more credit. He was a valuable asset and a damn good hunter, no matter what he thought about the lifestyle.

Still, his resolve had wavered at sight of the cuff around his ankle, keeping him bound to the nailed-down iron bed frame. On the list of places Sam knew were never good places to be, a windowless, derelict, unfamiliar room was ranked pretty high. The first God-knows-how-long was spent trying to find a way out. Beyond the locked door at the top of the stairs – reinforced with a steel frame, so even if Sam was able to get up there to kick it, it was unlikely he’d be able to break it down – and the bedframe sans mattress, there wasn’t much else in the room to help. He figured he had to be underground in a basement of sorts. Sam tried removing one of the nails out of the ground to use as a lockpick, but nothing gave except for his fingers, plucked bloody from attempting. He moved on to seeing how much the chain gave, if he could slip his ankle out with enough effort, but the metal cuff was already biting into the jut of his bone, rubbing it raw. He checked for his phone (missing), looked for something in his pockets (emptied), tried walking along the walls to find a way out (fruitless).

Then he had started calling for help.

There was a heavy shove to his shoe, and Sam startled awake, pushing himself further against the wall. He wasn’t even sure when he’d fallen asleep, which was never a good sign. His head was throbbing and his throat still felt raw and ragged; he swallowed dry, feeling nothing but sandpaper dust coating his mouth.

Sam brought his eyes up, squinting in the dim light – he wasn’t sure when it had been turned on, either, or where the switch was – and peered at the man standing in front of him. Panic and relief ran through him in equal torrents; his warring mind fed him I’m saved and oh, God.

It took him a second to realize the man was talking.

He was speaking too fast for Sam to catch anything – Sam had never been very good at lip-reading in the first place, not unless it was Dean’s or Dad’s short, clipped phrases, memorized like mantras behind his eyelids.

I’m deaf, Sam tried to say, and the words grated against his coarse, fever-heat throat. He reached up a hand and tapped his ear – the effort of it made him want to throw up, dizzying the already shock-pain daze of his brain. Eyes blinking slowly, trying to read the man’s expression, Sam tapped his ear again and shook his head, hands short-forming signs on reflex as he tried to speak aloud. I’m deaf, I can’t hear you.

He watched as the man paused, squaring his shoulders on instinct as the stranger stood straight. It was intimidating, staring up the long line, the deep-set frown; the man said something that Sam couldn’t understand, and Sam’s chest felt tight at the unsympathetic look in his eyes.

Help me, Sam tried, please.

The man’s eyes shone, a flash of unnatural glow that left Sam panic-paralyzed and breathless, and then he was left alone.

Sam looked down at the notepad that was tossed onto his lap.

He scowled. Sam threw the notepad back; it landed at the shifter’s feet, and Sam looked away defiantly.

The man grabbed his chin and jerked it to the side – Sam’s eyes grew fox-narrow as he tried to wrench out of the grasp, but he was held steady, the insides of his cheeks biting against his molars. The notepad was shoved into his face, the shifter’s expression a tight, impatient line.

Sam pressed his lips together.

Not a motel this time, which may have been Sam’s only saving grace. He thought about the shifter following the Impala through busy streets unnoticed, thought about him knocking on a motel door wearing Sam’s face; how easy it would have been to kill them all. He suppressed the shudder and acidic bite in his throat.

Sam had gotten moody over where they decided to squat, which felt petty now, all things considered. The cabin was far from pretty – that far out into the woods, Sam could have hardly expected anything beyond the mottled rotting wood and sooty, always-wanting fireplace. But the floorboards were still intact and it kept the bugs out; most of all, it was free to stay, and Dad had used up all but ten dollars for ammo after the last hunt he’d been on, so free was all they could afford. Dad had told him to stow his crap after the second hour passed of Sam’s passive-aggressive scowling and clipped complaints, and Sam had proceeded to lock himself in the only bedroom.

He felt stupid about it now, but hindsight was twenty-twenty.

He glared back, shaking his head. Fuck off, he wanted to say, signs forming in his mind, but he couldn’t open his mouth to verbalize it, not when his chin was still held in a death grip.

The first backhanded slap took Sam by surprise.

His head snapped to the side from the violence of it, pain sharp through his cheekbone and lighting up the back of his head where his skull smacked the wall. It brought a new wave of nausea, and he was only just able to hold back bile.

Sam saw the kick to his stomach coming but he could do little more than steel himself for it. It stole the breath from his lungs, forearms aching where he tried to brace for impact; he tried curling in on himself for the next kick to soften the blow, but it hurt, all the same.

The shifter grabbed the front of his shirt; Sam’s head lolled as he was dragged upright, spiking pain through his temples. The first punch across his jaw cut the inside of his cheek – Sam could taste the blood sharper, now, a pluck of metal coating his tongue. The second punch sent white sparks flashing behind his eyelids. The third threw him to the side, and the shifter released him so Sam could slump over and empty his already wanting stomach. A brief thought filtered through the daze: I wish I’d eaten that burger Dean left outside the door.

He retched. Water and stomach acid and nothing else, and his guts crawled.

Even with his swollen eye and burning jaw, even with the blood pooling with saliva in his mouth, even with the contents of his stomach splashed on the ground, he lashed out, falling just shy of reaching the shifter.

The shifter’s self-satisfied smirk fueled the equal parts rage and fear in his chest. Sam was choking on his own blood, and all the monster did was smile.

The first thing he saw upon being jolted into awareness was a plastic cup of water. Sam looked at it warily, eyes flicking upwards to the shifter suspiciously. The man rolled his eyes and took a sip from it. Sam drank the rest down in four gulps, the water an arctic shock to his burning throat. Like scraping against an iceberg in the heat of desert sun. He licked his lips.

The second thing he saw was the notepad.

Sam barely had time to read it all before the notepad was drawn back away from his face, clutched within the tightening fist of his captor – the words still lingered at the backs of his eyes, imprinted there in black ink across yellow memo paper.

There was no part of him that believed the shifter’s intentions of letting him go free. He knew the moment he revealed – gave in – that the man would slaughter his family and kill him for good measure. Sam couldn’t let that happen. He would sooner die alone in a basement at the shifter’s hands.

He stared back, steady and resolute. No, he mouthed. He pushed the vibrations from the back of his throat and tried again. No.

Sam could see it in the shifter’s tense frame – the moment it turned from sadistic fun to a slow crawling irritation, building up under his fabricated skin. The sharp drop fear that maybe things won’t turn out his way, the skittishness of his eyes when he realized that Sam wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

It bolstered something in Sam’s chest, a flicker-flame of hope that continued to burn. That meant he wasn’t having any luck finding Dad and Dean – that meant the pain through his clenched jaw was worth it. He managed a slow-dawning smirk, teeth bloodied where his tongue dragged across his incisors.

Shoved in his face, close enough that Sam had to cross his eyes to read it.

Last year, Sam had been on a hunt with Dad and Dean. Vamps, a whole den of them, preying on a sleepy town. Sam had gotten his stomach gashed open, and he’d held his viscera in his palms and sobbed in and out of consciousness while he hid in Idaho forest for three hours before he was found. The loneliness and the fear, just like now, and the unbearable fever-heat open wound bleeding out and burning like bubbling acid when he moved. That was pain – that hurt.

He survived that. He was going to survive this.

Sam gathered blood and saliva in the pool behind his teeth and spit at the shifter’s face.

Something snapped in the man, a cutting shift that sent a shockwave chill down Sam’s spine – he could see it in the monster’s eyes, a sudden cold and cruel narrow that pinned him down.

What the man said, Sam wasn’t sure. The tight line of the shifter’s lips mouthed around words Sam couldn’t read; all Sam knew was the heavy press of a hand against the center of his chest, pushing him back against the wall. Like a vice grip between brick and uncompromising strength; he pushed against it and was slammed back hard enough to make his head snap and send shattered-glass stars behind his eyes.

Let me go, he forced out. It felt like everything in his chest was being stopped where the fingers pressed into his collarbone. Let me go, fuck you, let me –

Sam struggled, fighting against the hold; his fists beat down wherever he could reach, but it did little to deter. Panic rose to the top of his chest and he could feel his breathing coming in with truncated hitches, and he pushed with everything he had; there was a foot against his shin, and he knew he was begging now, no, no, don’t falling from his lips.

From where he was, with the shifter’s hips obscuring his view, all Sam felt was the crack that whipped through his body and the searing heat of pain shocking across his nerves.

He screamed. It tore from his throat so deep, he felt like it was being strangled out of him, dragged up from his lungs through his battered throat and past his teeth. It left him scratched and raw again, the fresh blood tinting the roof of his mouth with copper, and bile followed the vibration.

The notebook dropped on his lap again. Sam struggled to read it.

Anger and panic felt the same in his lungs, a white-fire chill that burned through his ribcage. Sam could feel it ripping out of him: I’ll kill you!, he screamed, I swear to God, I’ll kill you!

Sam’s throat closed around his second-language fury, and when the door shut at the top of the stairs, it took everything in him not to scream again.

Sam passed out from the pain and the anguish. He wasn’t sure for how long; all he knew was that he woke up dizzy and unfocused, sick to his stomach. But his leg was broken and he had to set it before it got worse, so he grit his teeth and sobbed through his clenched jaw and forced the bone right. His throat felt ripped, blood coating his tongue whenever he breathed, and he coughed wetly as he tore strips off from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around his calf.

It hurt. It was a pain entirely its own – he had broken bones before, but this was different. It accompanied the kind of pain that smothered his lungs, like a slow, aching choke of helplessness. There would be no morphine drip to help him get through this, no caring hand over his hair, no soothing vibrations against his cheek. There was nothing to separate him from the pain, and he felt like it was splitting him open, flayed and exposed raw.

He was feverish. He pressed a palm against his forehead and felt the cold sweat dripping from his temples. If the fever didn’t kill him, infection would. If not the infection, the shifter. He was going to die here.

He was going to die.

No, he caught himself. No. No. I’ll live. I’ll live, I’ll make it, they’re looking for me. I’m going to make it out of here. You’re okay, Sam. You’re going to be okay.

The swelling had purpled down to his ankle; he could feel it pressing deeper into the cuff. Sam dropped his head back against the wall and grit his teeth against fury-fueled tears.

He thought about Dad. He thought about Dean. He was going to make it. He was going to live. He was going to be okay.

He repeated it to himself until he almost believed it.

There was a disturbance, a vibration ringing out and trembling through his legs; he dragged his eyes up with effort, exhausted and starved and worn, to the face of his captor.

Shut up, the shifter said, the first real phrase he was able to lipread clearly. Sam huffed out a scoff, fury bitterly rising to his throat; the lingering flame of defiance. The monster continued on, and Sam rolled his head away, wrinkling his nose and glaring at the ground.

The notepad hit his thigh.

Sam winced at the sudden pain but scowled nonetheless; if he was making noise, he wasn’t aware of it. Everything felt so scraped out that he couldn’t tell if the vibrating in his throat was sound or just his ragged breath scratching as he exhaled. Or what, he shot back. It felt thick in his mouth, this time, dragged out wet and coated.

I’ll make you, the man said, lips angry and tight. Another phrase he knew. Sam wondered when he’d started knowing the way violence looked like in other people’s mouths.

He raised his middle finger.

Sam didn’t want to flinch away from the shifter as he approached, but his body did anyway, trying to escape into where brick wall stopped him. He tried to angle his leg away – it shot new pain through his spine, and he doubled over, fingertips digging into his sides just to distract himself. Eyelids fluttered and chest heaved, and Sam struggled to take in a deep breath.

There was cold metal against his cheek, and his heart nearly stopped.

It slid across his jaw and pressed against the underside of his chin. Sam raised his eyes and bit down on the sides of his tongue.

Tell me where they are, the shifter mouthed.

Sam shook his head –

Last chance.

Sam shook his head.

His eyes stuttered shut at the rip of his collar. His jaw grit against the tear running down the center of his shirt; no lower, he prayed to himself, a sickly, copper-cold fear rattling unsettled in his stomach. The shifter didn’t, content on displaying the bruised ribcage, the littering of mottled purples across the plane of his shoulders.

Sam could stand the shallow cuts across his chest. He’d gotten worse during spars with Dean, going toe-to-toe with their blades clutched tight in their fists, their Dad’s heavy eyes on them. He felt them drip trails down his skin and breathed through his nose, eyes shut tight. It was easy if he couldn’t see. It was easy if he could fall into the safe space in his mind where he could tell himself that Dad and Dean were coming for him.

He could’ve prevented it, maybe. Sam could’ve reached up and grabbed the shifter’s wrist, or threw him off, or fought back – but his eyes were closed and his brain was settling back into numbness and his body was resigning itself, shutting down with shock just to survive.

The piercing heat through his shoulder tore something in his throat; he felt something break in his lungs, like whatever noise existed inside of him was finally cut off. Sam’s eyes snapped open, and he saw it – the blade stabbed half an inch into the meat of his shoulder.

New pains. New limits. Sam couldn’t hold back the tears, just as painful as everything else as they ran down his cheeks. Stop, he tried to say. It felt like smoke in his throat, just the useless gaping of his mouth moving to form words that wouldn’t come. Please, stop. Please.

Another pierce mirrored on the other side. Like being nailed to the cross by the broadness of his shoulders, like it was enough to keep him crucified. Sam curled in on himself, curled despite the pain, curled because fear was the strongest motivator he’d ever known.

Please, he tried to say. Useless. Hopeless. Nothing more than hitched and hiccuped breaths. Please. The shifter moved away, and Sam hated himself for needing to watch him leave – he hated himself for needing to know he was alone.

He wept.

Where the breaking point was, Sam wasn’t sure.

It always got worse. It always would, Sam knew that for certain – the kind of life they lived, doing what they did, the family business, it always amounted to sewn-up stitches and mottling bruises and broken bones. There was always another case. There was always another monster.

Sam thought his survival instincts were a hindrance now. All he wanted to do was die – that wasn’t true. He wanted to fight, to get free, to find his way back to his family, but that meant being alive, and being alive was a dragged out, splintering pain that he could barely take. If the point was to break his spirit, well –

He was tired. Everything in his body screamed out exhaustion; it was an effort to stay awake, to stay cognizant, to remain alert and cautious for when the light turned on, signaling the shifter’s arrival. Talking was an effort he fell away from, his throat too worn for him to know if he was speaking aloud for certain; it was easier to remain quiet, especially when it made his temples throb trying to speak a language he wasn’t confident in.

There was a small part of him that could still close his eyes and see Dean’s hands signing words of comfort. I’ll find you. I’m coming for you. I’ll save you, Sammy. Sammy, right hand an s-handshape, coming down on the left in a one-handshape. A modified sign for brother; a name sign reserved only for Dean.

I’m here, he signed back. Tears hot against his lashline, eyes closed tight to prevent them from falling. He lifted his hands with effort and pain and signed into the dark, hoping Dean could feel it wherever he was. I’m here. Come find me.

Sam thought about the first sign he made up on his own, the only one that had ever mattered in his young life. Dean. Built from the color of Dean’s eyes, the dip where Dean’s dimple was, the shape of the start of Dean’s name.

He lifted his shaking hand to the corner of his lips. Extended his forefinger, pinched the others together. Pushed away from his face into the still air. Dean.

Sam didn’t know how many more tears he had left in him, but his body persisted; the first tear fell, and he couldn’t hold back the rest.

Dean. Dean. Dean.

There was always a new ten.

Sam wasn’t even sure if he was hungry anymore. Pain registered all the same, just a dragged-out hollowing of his soul that lit up whenever he breathed. His throat hurt. His limbs ached. His ribcage felt bruised and his skin felt battered; his shirt clung to the clean-cut twin wounds with dried blood adhesive, and every time he moved, it was like reliving the sharp white-electric all over again. He closed his eyes tight against tears at the sensation of the sandpaper grate of his tongue in his mouth; straw, back.

He was tired. He was so tired, and the pain that had brought was a swallowing, carved-out void.

Light flickered at the corner of his eyes, and Sam was drawn to it, a natural selection instinct that he learned with rapidfire and unforgiving hands on his skin. He curled into the wall, heart starting a rabbit’s pace, taking off in his chest with the phantom sensation of hound-hot breath at his back. His eyes remained steady, aware, frightened; he watched the harried descent of the shifter down the stairs, kept his gaze trained tight on the coiled tension in the man’s shoulders and the blown-wide panic in his eyes.

He saw the knife before his mind really clicked aware of anything else – it was the same one from before, and his breath hitched fear into his lungs.

I can't do it again, Sam thought, I don’t want to survive that again.

The monster said something, but Sam couldn’t figure it out, the flurry of mouth movements that looked like nothing to his pain-addled mind. It was a dangerous mix of frenzied nerves mirrored between them, and it terrified Sam – if it was bad before – if it could always get worse –

Once the shifter was close, Sam kicked out his good leg. The curve of his ankle hit the man’s wrist, and Sam watched the knife fling across the room. A drop of triumph in a sea of despair, and it was smothered so quickly with hands gripping his hair.

Sam didn’t know what the shifter was saying, if he was talking or just moving his lips; all he knew was the oppressive weight of the man bearing down on his chest, splintering pain through his leg and shoulders. He was weak, his limbs like heavy weights he could barely lift, but he fought back anyway – if he could hold out for one more hour, if he could hold out for one more minute, Dean would find him – Dean was looking for him –

Hands wrapped around his already destroyed throat, crushing his windpipe. Sam’s fingers flew up to claw at the hold, mind careening into a panic.

He was going to die. The thought came back to him like a shock to the system; spots blurred in the corners of his vision. Warring thoughts within the fever-fear of his mind: just stay alive one minute longer and I’m going to die flashing repeatedly behind the flutter-close of his eyelids. His fingernails dug into forearm, tearing at flesh – fingers flexed uselessly until Sam couldn’t feel them anymore, until all Sam could feel was the burn of his lungs gasping helplessly for air that wasn’t coming.

Please, he thought desperately, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want –

The shifter stuttered against him. Sam’s eyes were rolling back when he felt a give of weakness in the grasp, and he inhaled hard, sharp to the back of his scraped-raw throat. The suddenness of static air brought new pain through his chest, lungs grasping for more desperately.

He flinched away when the shifter moved to the side, body primed to accept more torture – but what greeted him was Dean blotting out the light from the steel-lined door spreading like a halo around his hair. He was clutching a glinting knife in his fist, and Sam couldn’t bring himself to see if there was a wound in the monster’s back that matched the blood dripping from the blade.

Sam wasn’t sure if he was real, but he felt his lips move despite it all: Dean. Fingers lifted to the corner of his mouth, trembling, fearful, repeating the word in one motion: Dean.

Sammy, Dean signed back, and Sam felt something in him break.

Dean’s hands were on him suddenly, and relief flooded into his lungs. He tried to breathe through the sudden onslaught of tears; his chest rattled as he cried, hitched and hiccuped inhales that felt loud and pitiful.

Dean, I’m sorry, he tried to sign, and Dean shook his head. Sam could see him clearly, even in the dim light pouring in from the top of the stairs – his brother was shaken, rocked to his core with equal parts panic and joy. Everything in Dean was bright, lit up like he was made up of the same sunshine warmth Sam’s body had been deprived of, and he went into it like he was starving.

You’re okay, Sammy, Dean signed, and Sam felt his chest shake harder, fingers weakly curling into Dean’s jacket, I’ve got you, you’re safe now.

Under his hands, he could feel the rumble of Dean’s chest. He could feel every breath, the sharpness and suddenness like it couldn’t be anything less than violent. He could feel how it hurt for Dean to breathe, as surely as if it were his own lungs and his own chest – Sam could map out the complexities of everything his brother did with just his fingertips.

Dean was a steady and certain weight, and he had found him. Sam was safe. Sam was safe. Sam was finally safe, and he buried his face into Dean’s jacket and sobbed, the feeling vibrating from his wrecked throat into his brothers body. Dean’s hand held the back of his head, and Sam’s didn’t need to see to know what Dean was mouthing into his hair.

You’re okay. You’re okay.