Little Piece of Heaven
Title: Little Piece of Heaven
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Sam and Dean celebrate their first post-hell Christmas, and it is cathartic
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse.
I have an important question for you. Do you like 27_jaredjensen's awesome artwork? UPDATE: There is two of them!
Wrapping presents is harder than Dean makes it look, and Sam's annoyed. He can fold a military grade hospital corner, he can stitch a wound that doesn't leave a scar, but he can't fold a piece of paper around a book.
"Dude. How have you never done this before?" Dean takes the paper away from him and looks at the book. "Who's that for?"
"Who do you think?" They don't exactly have a long shopping list.
Dean cuffs his ear and hands Bobby's gift back to him, wrapped so neatly it could pass an inspection. "Why are you so good at this?" Sam grumbles good-naturedly.
"Because you were a greedy little kid, basically."
"What? I wasn't."
"One Christmas when you were about four, you got all excited about presents. I had to wrap everything we owned in newspaper."
"You did that?"
Dean rolls his eyes. "You were ridiculous. Exclaiming over everything like it was the first time you'd seen a plastic fork and a can of spaghettios. Then you wanted to play with it all. You sat there under the tree for about five hours..."
"We had a tree?"
"We had trees up until you were about seven." Dean glances at him. "You don't remember?"
Sam can't even imagine sharing quarters with a cactus, never mind a fir tree. "Not a real one?"
"Yeah. They were always really nice, too. I think Dad was probably cutting them down himself."
"Why'd he stop?"
"There was a year you had a bad reaction. It was like out of nowhere you were deathly allergic to sap, and you erupted in hives and couldn't breathe."
"God." It's always strange hearing about these emergencies, these times he almost died that he doesn't even remember. It's eerie, like the possibility that he could die in his sleep.
"Yeah. No one really mentioned trees again after that."
"I don't remember ever even celebrating Christmas with Dad."
Dean snorts. "I guess we know why you can't wrap presents."
"Dude, shut up."
***
Sometimes Sam's asthma is a little bastard and steals his ability to do things like eat. Dean reaches over and rubs his back while he picks at his fish sticks and scrapes the breading off of them and thinks about air filling his lungs and how fucking nice that would feel.
"Hey, hey, hey," Dean says, and his eyes are all soft, which clues Sam in that maybe this is worse than he thinks it is, and then Dean's propelling him to his bedroom and propping him against pillows and handing him the mouthpiece of his nebulizer. It's all happening so fast. He doesn't have enough air.
Sam holds his ribs and thinks about his chest muscles working so fucking hard, thinks about the reality of Dean's hand on his back, doesn't think about bright and cold and can'tbreathecan'tbreatheCAN'TBREATHE. He drinks in his medicine and closes his eyes and waits.
Dean stays beside him. "You're doing so great," he says.
He nods and things slip out of focus, and Dean would be yelling at him if he needed to stay awake, so he knows it's okay to sleep.
***
His lungs are better in the morning, maintenance-level shitty, which means he can think and move and not be plugged into a machine, but his chest burns and his throat is raw and he's kind of light-headed. But not too light-headed to make pancakes.
"What are you doing?" Dean's leaning against the doorframe with a look of practiced disbelief.
"Making pancakes?"
"They look like cancer patients. Pancakes are supposed to be round."
"Dude, they're holiday shaped."
"What?" Dean turns his head this way and that. "What's this one?"
"Rudolph!"
"What are you...how is that a reindeer?"
"The cranberry is his red nose, see?"
Dean stares in frank amazement. "Dude, don't quit your day job."
Sam laughs outright, and it feels good.
***
"What do you want for Christmas?" Sam asks.
This stupid wheeze is still hanging around, so he's in his pajamas and Dean's got about five blankets bundled around him in an attempt to keep his chest warm, which Sam puts up with because it's the holidays and it feels good to be babied by his big brother and he's letting himself have this.
"We're doing presents?" Dean quirks an eyebrow. They haven't done presents since...well. Anyway.
"Can we?" He cozies up to Dean, leans on his shoulder and blinks up at him sleepily because he knows Dean can't say no to it. Dean's hand goes to the amulet around his neck. Sam wonders if Dean knows he's doing that.
"Why do you want to do this all of a sudden?" Dean's got to be thinking of that last Christmas too, eggnog and trashy magazines and pagan gods who cut Sam's arms while Dean screamed leave my brother alone and the shadow of hellhounds that they never really could get out of their minds.
Sam doesn't want that to be their last Christmas.
Sam wants Christmas like he used to celebrate it with Jess - rumpled hair and sleepy eyes and coffee and a roaring fire, trading gifts and staying warm together and feeling the world recede from their private wonderland for just one day.
Dean listens with increasing skepticism as he says all this, and then shakes his head. "Sammy, we can't have a fire. Listen to you. You're barely fucking breathing."
"I'll breathe. I promise."
Dean shakes his head.
Then he grips Sam's neck and says, "What do you want for Christmas, kid?"
***
That night Sam dreams of Jess opening his gift by the fire, her long hair spilling around her shoulders, her face lighting up in a smile as she looks at her present and back at him, and in the dream he doesn't remember what he got her, but her gift to him is that goddamn smile all wrapped up and it's the only thing he wants in the world.
And then Sam's gift turns to flame in her hands and devours her whole, and Sam wakes up shivering and crying silently and decides maybe he doesn't need a fire after all.
***
Crying aggravates his lungs (which in turn makes it hard to stop crying, ha ha, you're hilarious, asthma), so he's breathing shitty in the morning. Dean brings him tea on a tray and pushes the TV into his room and says, "whatever you want, all day. Merry Christmas."
"My present is remote control dominance?"
"Don't be a little bitch," Dean says. "That's part one."
Sam turns on the weather channel and tracks tropical storm patterns all morning and Dean sits beside him, asks questions, pretends he gives a shit about storms, and Sam hugs him hard until Dean's squirming to get away and says "thank you, big brother."
***
That evening, Dean hands Sam a manilla envelope and says, "part two."
Sam sits up in bed and opens it carefully, slides out the paper inside.
And can't speak.
It's a drawing of Jess.
He didn't even know Dean could draw, not like this, not this soft, almost impressionistic rendering of Jess in the snow that as far as he knows exists entirely in his brother's mind, because he's never seen a photograph of this. He recognizes the setting immediately as a day the three of them spent together when Dean was visiting, a day of rare and amazing snowfall in california. Jess had never seen snow before, which Dean found amazing and hilarious in equal measure.
It was the day, he later confessed, that he decided Sam should marry her.
Sam hears himself making choked noises, and he needs to relax, he's going to fuck up his breathing, but oh god. Jess. Dean.
Dean's holding him, whispering "I'm sorry, Sammy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," and Sam shakes his head hard. He's not upset. He's overcome.
"Fucking beautiful," he whispers. "Thank you."
Dean kisses the crown of his head. "Merry Christmas, Sammy."
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Sam and Dean celebrate their first post-hell Christmas, and it is cathartic
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse.
I have an important question for you. Do you like 27_jaredjensen's awesome artwork? UPDATE: There is two of them!
Wrapping presents is harder than Dean makes it look, and Sam's annoyed. He can fold a military grade hospital corner, he can stitch a wound that doesn't leave a scar, but he can't fold a piece of paper around a book.
"Dude. How have you never done this before?" Dean takes the paper away from him and looks at the book. "Who's that for?"
"Who do you think?" They don't exactly have a long shopping list.
Dean cuffs his ear and hands Bobby's gift back to him, wrapped so neatly it could pass an inspection. "Why are you so good at this?" Sam grumbles good-naturedly.
"Because you were a greedy little kid, basically."
"What? I wasn't."
"One Christmas when you were about four, you got all excited about presents. I had to wrap everything we owned in newspaper."
"You did that?"
Dean rolls his eyes. "You were ridiculous. Exclaiming over everything like it was the first time you'd seen a plastic fork and a can of spaghettios. Then you wanted to play with it all. You sat there under the tree for about five hours..."
"We had a tree?"
"We had trees up until you were about seven." Dean glances at him. "You don't remember?"
Sam can't even imagine sharing quarters with a cactus, never mind a fir tree. "Not a real one?"
"Yeah. They were always really nice, too. I think Dad was probably cutting them down himself."
"Why'd he stop?"
"There was a year you had a bad reaction. It was like out of nowhere you were deathly allergic to sap, and you erupted in hives and couldn't breathe."
"God." It's always strange hearing about these emergencies, these times he almost died that he doesn't even remember. It's eerie, like the possibility that he could die in his sleep.
"Yeah. No one really mentioned trees again after that."
"I don't remember ever even celebrating Christmas with Dad."
Dean snorts. "I guess we know why you can't wrap presents."
"Dude, shut up."
***
Sometimes Sam's asthma is a little bastard and steals his ability to do things like eat. Dean reaches over and rubs his back while he picks at his fish sticks and scrapes the breading off of them and thinks about air filling his lungs and how fucking nice that would feel.
"Hey, hey, hey," Dean says, and his eyes are all soft, which clues Sam in that maybe this is worse than he thinks it is, and then Dean's propelling him to his bedroom and propping him against pillows and handing him the mouthpiece of his nebulizer. It's all happening so fast. He doesn't have enough air.
Sam holds his ribs and thinks about his chest muscles working so fucking hard, thinks about the reality of Dean's hand on his back, doesn't think about bright and cold and can'tbreathecan'tbreatheCAN'TBREATHE. He drinks in his medicine and closes his eyes and waits.
Dean stays beside him. "You're doing so great," he says.
He nods and things slip out of focus, and Dean would be yelling at him if he needed to stay awake, so he knows it's okay to sleep.
***
His lungs are better in the morning, maintenance-level shitty, which means he can think and move and not be plugged into a machine, but his chest burns and his throat is raw and he's kind of light-headed. But not too light-headed to make pancakes.
"What are you doing?" Dean's leaning against the doorframe with a look of practiced disbelief.
"Making pancakes?"
"They look like cancer patients. Pancakes are supposed to be round."
"Dude, they're holiday shaped."
"What?" Dean turns his head this way and that. "What's this one?"
"Rudolph!"
"What are you...how is that a reindeer?"
"The cranberry is his red nose, see?"
Dean stares in frank amazement. "Dude, don't quit your day job."
Sam laughs outright, and it feels good.
***
"What do you want for Christmas?" Sam asks.
This stupid wheeze is still hanging around, so he's in his pajamas and Dean's got about five blankets bundled around him in an attempt to keep his chest warm, which Sam puts up with because it's the holidays and it feels good to be babied by his big brother and he's letting himself have this.
"We're doing presents?" Dean quirks an eyebrow. They haven't done presents since...well. Anyway.
"Can we?" He cozies up to Dean, leans on his shoulder and blinks up at him sleepily because he knows Dean can't say no to it. Dean's hand goes to the amulet around his neck. Sam wonders if Dean knows he's doing that.
"Why do you want to do this all of a sudden?" Dean's got to be thinking of that last Christmas too, eggnog and trashy magazines and pagan gods who cut Sam's arms while Dean screamed leave my brother alone and the shadow of hellhounds that they never really could get out of their minds.
Sam doesn't want that to be their last Christmas.
Sam wants Christmas like he used to celebrate it with Jess - rumpled hair and sleepy eyes and coffee and a roaring fire, trading gifts and staying warm together and feeling the world recede from their private wonderland for just one day.
Dean listens with increasing skepticism as he says all this, and then shakes his head. "Sammy, we can't have a fire. Listen to you. You're barely fucking breathing."
"I'll breathe. I promise."
Dean shakes his head.
Then he grips Sam's neck and says, "What do you want for Christmas, kid?"
***
That night Sam dreams of Jess opening his gift by the fire, her long hair spilling around her shoulders, her face lighting up in a smile as she looks at her present and back at him, and in the dream he doesn't remember what he got her, but her gift to him is that goddamn smile all wrapped up and it's the only thing he wants in the world.
And then Sam's gift turns to flame in her hands and devours her whole, and Sam wakes up shivering and crying silently and decides maybe he doesn't need a fire after all.
***
Crying aggravates his lungs (which in turn makes it hard to stop crying, ha ha, you're hilarious, asthma), so he's breathing shitty in the morning. Dean brings him tea on a tray and pushes the TV into his room and says, "whatever you want, all day. Merry Christmas."
"My present is remote control dominance?"
"Don't be a little bitch," Dean says. "That's part one."
Sam turns on the weather channel and tracks tropical storm patterns all morning and Dean sits beside him, asks questions, pretends he gives a shit about storms, and Sam hugs him hard until Dean's squirming to get away and says "thank you, big brother."
***
That evening, Dean hands Sam a manilla envelope and says, "part two."
Sam sits up in bed and opens it carefully, slides out the paper inside.
And can't speak.
It's a drawing of Jess.
He didn't even know Dean could draw, not like this, not this soft, almost impressionistic rendering of Jess in the snow that as far as he knows exists entirely in his brother's mind, because he's never seen a photograph of this. He recognizes the setting immediately as a day the three of them spent together when Dean was visiting, a day of rare and amazing snowfall in california. Jess had never seen snow before, which Dean found amazing and hilarious in equal measure.
It was the day, he later confessed, that he decided Sam should marry her.
Sam hears himself making choked noises, and he needs to relax, he's going to fuck up his breathing, but oh god. Jess. Dean.
Dean's holding him, whispering "I'm sorry, Sammy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," and Sam shakes his head hard. He's not upset. He's overcome.
"Fucking beautiful," he whispers. "Thank you."
Dean kisses the crown of his head. "Merry Christmas, Sammy."