Archive of Our Own ^beta

            The salt and burn went easy, the ghost appeared, a man in a suit standing in the grass but he crackled in the electricity of the early night and didn’t attack. Dean fired a salt blast through him anyway. Sam dropped the lit matchbook and the bones lit blue and yellow in the too still air. He’d thrown his jacket and his shirt over a gravestone, and dug in just his t-shirt, the air was so close.

            “Feels like weather,” Dean said, looking up again at the night sky.

            Sam may not have grown up in Kansas but he had spent enough time on the plains to know what Dean meant. Somewhere out there was a storm. The sky above them was the deep green of a bruise. Tornado weather. It was as if he could feel the air pressure dropping, a great storm cloud turning above them.    He stuck his shovel in the dirt, time to fill the grave and finish this up.

            Then the wind started coming up and he could smell the coming rain.

            “Screw this,” Dean said. “It’s gonna come down in buckets.”

            They ran for the Impala but the rain came sheeting in a wall, chasing across the grass behind them, catching and passing them long before they got to the road. The engine could barely be heard over the pound of the rain. Dean drove slow, the wipers unable to keep up with the onslaught. Sam found a radio station calling out Oklahoma counties under tornado warning. Beckham, Greer, Washita, Kiowa.

            “They should just say all of them,” Sam said.

            Small branches battered Baby. Sam watched Dean’s face, lit by the dashboard. The car lurched and Dean yanked her back onto the blacktop. “Sorry Baby,” he said. Glancing at Sam, “No shoulder.” What he didn’t say was that he couldn’t see well enough to stay on the road.

            Up ahead was the blur of gas station lights where the blacktop met the highway. “Wait out the burst?” Sam suggested.

            Dean hesitated.

            “Gas station hotdogs with nacho cheese sauce? We can pick up beer,” Sam said.

            “You’re trying to bribe me with hotdogs?” Dean said.

            “And bad burritos,” Sam said.

            Dean swung the Impala into the lot.

#

            Inside they weren’t the only people stranded by the storm. About a dozen people were gathered around the register watching a television monitor mounted overhead where a tired looking weatherman was calling out sightings and urging everyone in the storm’s path to take cover.

            Sam looked around. Two sides of the building were glass. Dean was doing the same thing. He looked at quirked his eyebrows in a way that said, ‘we are so screwed.’ Sam agreed.

            Then the weatherman said, “We have a touchdown sighted near Hobart, around Highway 9 and Highway 283,” and everybody got still. The girl in the green and yellow uniform standing at the register actually covered her mouth with her hand. She was just a kid, early twenties, and her training had obviously not covered natural disasters. Everybody else fell silent.

            “Is there a beer cooler room or a basement or an office with no windows?” Sam said, raising his voice. He knew they were on Highway 9 and he was pretty sure they weren’t far from Highway 283 from the way people reacted.

            “There’s a beer cooler and an office,” the girl said.

            “How big is the cooler?” Dean asked. Everyone pivoted towards Dean. Coolers were insulated, reinforced rooms. “Big enough for all of us?”

            “I…I think,” the girl said.

            “OKAY,” Dean said, “LET’S MOVE.” To the register girl he said, “Hey—” he leaned over and read her name tag, “Carla, you want to hit the Emergency Shut Off for the pumps?”

            “I don’t think I’m supposed to do that unless it’s a real emergency,” she said.

            Dean flashed her a smile that would melt the heart of the wicked witch of the west. “Sweetheart, a tornado is kind of an emergency.”

            She bit her lip and reached down and pushed something. Dean gestured for her to lead the way.

            “Why the cooler?” a guy asked.

            “No windows, reinforced,” Sam said. He brought up the rear, herding.

            “Won’t we effing suffocate?” a middle-aged woman asked. She was, Sam noted with amusement, smoking.

            “It’s got a handle on the inside,” the girl said. No one was moving fast. Civilians were mind-boggling.

            The rain had slowed. Sam glanced over his shoulder as everyone shuffled towards the back of the store. A car pulled into the lot, stopping at the pumps. He heard a sound like a train. Not so good. A girl in jeans got out and looked out into the dark.

            He had it in his head that when you heard a tornado—and the classic description was sounding like a freight train—you had less than a minute to get to shelter. Already he was counting seconds in his head.

            “Get them in, Dean,” he called and ran out the front door.

            Outside he could hear the sound and feel it in his chest six…seven...eight…

            The girl by the car look a little startled to see a big guy running up to her but he just grabbed her arm. “It’s coming,” he said, “Come on.”

            She resisted his pull for just a second. She was little, Asian. The gas station was empty when he pulled the door open, seventeen…eighteen…Dean must have gotten them herded in. The sound was louder.

            Dean appeared at the door in the back. “Sam!”

            All the lights went out in the store, the electricity had gone out. The girl stopped, startled.

           “It’s okay, we gotta keep going,” Sam said. He pulled her gently forward.

           “SAM!”

           It no longer sounded like a freight train, it was louder, like a jet engine or something. The door swinging shut cut the sound down. Maybe it would miss them or skip them.

          “Keep talking!” Sam called.

          “TO MY VOICE, SAM, KEEP COMING!” and then a flashlight beam. Dean had had his flashlight in his pocket. Sam pulled the girl around in front of him and picked up his pace, able to see where the aisles were—

          The glass wall behind him blew in, his ears popped, the wind was like the inside of a turbine. Sam curled around the girl, her head under his chin, wrapping his arms around her. The glass wall on his right shattered and then it was like being inside of an amusement park ride without being strapped down. He had the sense of being tossed around but it didn’t feel the way it did when something magical did it. It felt more like falling or, well, natural. Things were hitting his back and his head and the backs of his legs. He was falling and he turned as best he could not to land on the girl, who didn’t need 6’5” of big sweaty guy landing on her.

           Then something was on them. Blinding rain driven into them so hard that it hurt and a strange feeling of airlessness.

           The sound was receding. He could breathe. He felt dazed.

           For a moment he just lay there in the warm air, listening to the beat of his heart in his ears.

          “You okay?” he asked the girl tucked in his arms and his voice sounded as if he had his fingers in his ears. He couldn’t tell what was laying on top of him.

          She answered something he couldn’t hear. He swallowed and his ears popped. “Don’t move for a moment, okay?” he said loudly, although he still sounded muted. He wondered if he’d ruptured his eardrums.

          He slowly loosened his hold. The girl moved a little in his arms.

          As best he could figure out part of the roof was laying half on them, partly held up by debris so they hadn't been crushed but he felt tangled and trapped. “Are you okay?” he asked again loudly.

         “Yeah,” she said and he could tell she was raising her voice so he could hear.

         “Can you wiggle your toes? Does your head or neck or back hurt?”

         “I can move everything,” she said.

         He braced his shoulder against whatever was on them and then felt everything start hurting. He could lift part of the slab of whatever four or five inches. “Can you climb out?”

         She wiggled out between his arms and he heard her sliding on debris. “Ow!” she said.

        “You okay?!”

        “There’s glass everywhere,” she said. “I cut my hand a little but I’m okay. I can’t hear so good. It’s like after a concert.”

        “Me, too,” he said.

        “Can you get out?” she said.

         He could move everything but he didn’t think he could pull out of the wreckage without help and he could feel blood running on his leg. “Not yet,” he said. “Have you got a phone? Call 911 and tell them there are people trapped here.”

         “Oh!” she said and after a moment her face lit up with the glow of her phone, shining in the rain.

#

         “SAMMY!”

          His ears were still ringing but his hearing was better. “DEAN!”

          The girl’s name was Suong Minh but mostly she went by Sue. She was eighteen and a senior in high school and was coming home from babysitting. Sam had kept her talking to keep her calm: emergency services were somewhat overloaded. She had called her parents but they were stuck in their neighborhood by fallen trees.  He was starting to feel signs that he might be in trouble. Lying still he hurt but not too bad (okay, his definition of too bad was probably not the average definition of too bad) but something was seriously going on because he was getting wonky. Sue turned on her phone so the screen was lit and waved it for Dean. “He’s here! He’s stuck!”

            He was stupidly, irrationally grateful to see Dean, who had a scrape on his forehead but otherwise looked good. “How did you get out?” he asked.

            “The roof is still held up by the back wall, like a lean to,” Dean said. “We just had to dig our way out.” Dean flicked the flashlight over the area. “Roof is not your best look.” He crouched and tried to shine the light under. “Are you pinned? Can you feel everything?”

            “Feel everything way too well,” Sam said. “This is Sue. Sue, this is my brother, Dean. Are you okay?

            “You’re the one under a roof. I’m fine.”

            “Did you check the car?”

            “Right, I’m going to check the car before I check you.  Sue, can you hold this flashlight so I can move some of this?” Dean pulled some of the wreckage aside.

            Sue stood holding the flashlight. A couple of more people trickled around. They were all soaked.

            “Anything feel broken?” Dean said.

            “No,” Sam said. “Not for certain.”

            “He saved me,” Sue said to no one in particular.

            “Yeah,” Dean said, sounding a little irritated, “he’s like that. Dale, can you help me lift this? Sam, you think you can move if we get this lifted off you?”

            “I’ll let you know,” Sam said.

            It was hard to read expressions in the light of the flashlight but Dean’s was a pretty clear, really?

            “One, two, three,” Dean said and they lifted, grunting, and the chunk of roof came up about a foot.

            Holy crap did it hurt when it did and Sam’s vision threatened to go black. He tried to elbow out, and felt hands pulling him. Then Dean going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” There was a clunk and he was being lifted by lots of people (of course lots of people, it took lots of people, Dean was going to make comments about his size any moment now.) Someone was saying ‘oh my God’ over and over again. Then he was on clear pavement. Someone was holding his right leg, keeping it off the ground. It didn’t feel broken but it felt cut up.

            Sam tried to sit up, saw white specks and felt hands pushing him down. “Lie still, Sammy,” Dean said.

            “Messed up, huh?” Sam said. Dean was sounding preternaturally calm. No jokes. That meant he was worried.

            “You’ve just got some glass in your leg.”

            Sam closed his eyes and took deep breaths until his head felt clearer. When he opened his eyes again, Dean was looking down at him, visible in flashlight. “Sue called 911,” Sam said. Then he raised his head. His boot as sitting on a chunk of wood so his leg was raised and there was a long shard of glass sticking out of his thigh. Which was weird because it was the back of his thigh that hurt. “Dean? Is it all the way through?”

            “Yep,” Dean said. “And it’s going to stay there until the professionals pull it out.” He was pulling his belt through his belt loops.

            “Good plan,” Sam said, feeling a little sick. Pull it out and he’d probably bleed like a drinking fountain. At least it wasn’t near the femoral artery.

            “Next time, you lead everybody to the promised land,” Dean said. He looped his belt around Sam’s thigh above the shard.

            “The promised land?” Sam said.

            “Dude, it was a beer cooler.” Dean pulled the belt tight into a makeshift tourniquet and Sam gasped. “I’m gonna go find some Gatorade in that mess. Stay here.”

            “Check the Impala,” Sam managed.

#

            The good news was that the Impala had been parked next to one of the non-glass walls and other than some scratches, a flat tire, and a blown out back window was in good shape. The Gatorade Dean found was clear for which Sam was grateful. Dean’s preference was for the blue stuff. Sam considered it a color not found in nature. Although honestly, in the dark, he wasn’t sure it mattered. Once the storm had passed the temperature dropped. Not a lot, but down from the pre-storm humid stillness. Lying on the wet pavement in wet clothes was cold.

            “Sam?” asked Sue, “Can I take a picture of your leg? Is that tacky?”

            “No,” Sam said. “It’s okay. Just can you make sure no one can tell who I am?”

            “Okay. I hate to have my picture taken, too.”

            Sam did kind of hate to have his picture taken but mostly it was just habit. No photos of his face in the media.

            Time was starting to move in little jumps. He’d close his eyes, open them, have the sense that he’d missed a chunk.

            Dean knelt down and took his wrist, searching for pulse. Sam knew he was breathing too fast. Everything felt a little too far away. “How you doing,” Dean asked.

            “Just don’t ask me to dance,” Sam said.

            “Have you seen you dancing? It’s kind of scary.” Dean pulled his other foot up on the wood so both feet were elevated. “I’m giving them another thirty minutes and then I’m putting you in the back seat of the Impala and heading for a hospital.”

            “How long has it been?” Sam asked.

            “Almost two hours.”

            “Time’s jumping,” Sam said. “Like with Gadreel.”

            He heard Dean’s sharp intake of breath.

            “Sorry,” Sam said. “Kind of out of it.”

            “It’s okay,” Dean said quietly and there was a hand on his forehead. “Just rest, okay?”

            He closed his eyes again and Dean was saying, “Sam. Sammy.” He opened his eyes and red lights were splashing across everything, the sound of an EMT truck bouncing over the curb. “Sam? Come on little brother. Eyes here.”

            Sam blinked at Dean. “Shock,” he tried to say but no sound came out.

            “Took you long enough,” Dean growled at someone.

“There’s an entire subdivision that’s just basically matchsticks and trees down blocking the roads", said a woman’s voice. An EMT leaned over him and said, “Hi, can you tell me your name?” She had blond hair pulled back in a pony tail and looked so clean and dry.

            “Sam,” he said and this time sound came out. “No medications or…allergies.”

            “Well, Sam no medications or allergies, you know the drill. Are you in the health profession?”

            He shook his head. “Accident prone,” he said.

            He heard Dean laugh and felt his brother squeeze his hand. “You have no idea,” Dean said.

            “This is a pretty impressive accident,” the EMT said.

            “He saved me!” Sue said from behind him where he couldn’t see, sounding very young.

            The EMT put a blood pressure cuff on him. “I’m Patty. Base, I’ve got a thirty-three year old male with a puncture wound through the right thigh and multiple abrasions. Blood pressure 90 over 78, tachycardic, patient is cold and clammy. He’s got a shard of glass going all the way through his leg. Going to need a surgeon.” To Dean, “How long ago, during the tornado?”

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “I’ve been giving him Gatorade.”

            “That’s smart.”

            “Like he said, he’s prone to accidents.”

            Sam lifted his hand (which was somehow incredibly heavy) and gave Dean the finger.

            The EMT laughed. “Patient is responsive. Preparing to transport.”

            “I’ll be there, Sam,” Dean said. “I’m coming with the Impala. We’ll get you fixed up.”

#

            They were back at the Bunker three days later. Castiel had healed the post-op. “This freaking long,” Dean explained, holding up his hands.

            “It was not,” Sam said. “Every time you tell it, it gets longer. It’s like a fishing story.” He preferred not to think about it.

            “What’s a fishing story?” Cas asked. He was sitting at the table with Sam while Dean leaned against the counter.

            “When fisherman tell stories about catching fish, every time they tell the story, the fish gets bigger,” Sam said, showing with his hands. He went back to his laptop. There was still news of the aftermath of the tornadoes all over the Internet. He clicked on a link about Hobart, hoping he could show Cas where they were. People survive in beer cooler or something.

            There was his leg. And the freaking piece of glass.

            “What’d you find,” Dean asked. He came behind Sam. “I WAS RIGHT! THERE IT IS!” It was Sue’s photo. The headline was NO DEATHS THREE INJURED IN HOBART and under it, Sam’s leg. Dean was ecstatic. “Look at the size of that, Cas! Did I exaggerate?”

            Cas studied the photo while Sam cringed. “No, you did not. That looks very painful, Sam.”

            Dean shrugged, “He was in shock most of the time. I was hoping they’d give him the piece of glass. You know, like they used to give people their tonsils in a little jar.”

            “Thanks, Cas. It actually hurt a lot,” Sam said.

            And Dean had been worried but you’d have to know Dean to know it. Sam knew. He remembered Dean’s hand on his forehead. He remembered Dean telling him to rest.

            Sometimes, though, Sam wished Dean would show it just a little better.

Fin