One Hundred Percent Pure Sam
Title: One Hundred Percent Pure Sam
Summary: "And hell, maybe crossroads demons are as half-assed about killing people as they are about bringing them back to life. If you die from this asthma attack you're gearing up towards, I want a refund.” Immediately post Season 2 finale.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through Season 2 at least, through 3 would make you happier. They curse a lot, etc.
Wordcount: 5,025
Author's Note: Sammyverse of course. Basically I wanted to be able to write Season 3 fic and I couldn't deal with canon Dean. Now I have my own.
-
Dean will get this out of the way first thing, all right?
He doesn't want to die.
He has no intention of dying.
He has a genius kid who's going to get him the hell out of this without dropping dead his own self because that's what genius kids do, and and Dean intends to stay here on earth with said genius kid until they're rolling each other out to sit in the sun, okay?
Cool.
**
So all of that bullshit out of the way, and Dean's feeling pretty damn good. Yeah, the world's crawling with demons, but they're fucking experts at them at this point, as evidenced by fucking Yellow-Eyes back there with a hole through his damn self, and Dean has a mission and a living, breathing, whimpering kid in the passenger seat, so everything's looking like it'll be fine.
Wait, whimpering?
Sam's completely fucking still over there, forehead against the window, wheezing like hell (but are you going to fucking blame the kid after the week he's had?) and yeah, Dean thinks he just whimpered.
“Sammy. Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.” He sounds like he's being fucking choked, and thank you, Sam's life, thank you very fucking much that Dean knows Sam sounds like when he's being choked.
“No. You don't get to fuck with me right now. Your head?” Would make fucking sense since the thing that's been beaming him headaches for the past few years just exploded, so he wouldn't blame Sam's head if it did too.
But Sam shakes his head.
“Just chest? Fucking tell me, Sam.” He reaches over and puts a hand on Sam's back, and Sam flinches so hard he fucking jumps and then he's curled up like he's never going to fucking uncurl ever again.
“Oh, God,” Dean says. “Your back?”
He doesn't need to wait for Sam's nod.
Shit.
**
The asthma means Sam's never been able to tolerate lying on his stomach, so Dean lets him stay on his side and winds an ace bandage around Sam's middle to hold the ice pack in place. It's just way too close to his lungs, and Dean's spent an entire fucking lifetime trying to make sure Sam's lungs stay warm so he just feels like he's killing his kid while he's wrapping him up and isn't that just the kind of irony this weekend needed? He touches Sam between his shoulder blades but even that's too close, apparently, even that makes Sam cry out, so he pulls the hell away.
“Should do research,” Sam says, quietly.
“I talked to Bobby already. He said no reason to believe this won't be way better in a few days. Just like any old injury, you know? Just worse.”
“No. For you.”
Do they have to do this now? “There's a whole year for that. And hell, maybe crossroads demons are as half-assed about killing people as they are about bringing them back to life. If you die from this asthma attack you're gearing up towards, I want a refund.”
Sam gives him a weak smile, and Dean pinches his cheek. “That's what I was going for,” he says. “Stay brave.”
“You know it,” Sam says, and he breathes out long and slow and presses his face into his pillow.
Dean mixes up the nebulizer and tries not to throw it (and himself, and everything) at the fucking wall.
This sucks, but it's temporary. This is all just temporary.
Sam's drifted off a little-he's on every single fucking painkiller his body doesn't fucking freak out about-so Dean wakes him up with the world's most fucking gentle hand on top of his head and offers the mouthpiece.
“You can sleep with it in,” he says.
Sam's watching him, this funny look on his face.
A hundred percent pure Sam? plays itself in Dean's head, and he'd really rather Sam didn't make funny faces right now.
“What's in that head of yours?” Dean says.
“You want to say it.”
“What?”
“You don't have to say it. I'm just saying you want to. And that that's pretty funny.”
“I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.”
“Mmm.” Sam puts the mouthpiece in and closes his eyes.
**
The nebulizer doesn't do shit because the problem is that it hurts way too fucking much for Sam to let his lungs expand enough, so he's taking these shallow breaths and that's freaking his lungs out so they're doing what they do best and crapping out on him and Sam's clutching Dean's sleeve and saying “Shit I have to cough I have to cough.”
“No. Don't. You don't have to. It's okay.”
“Fucking junk in my chest is choking me. Talk to me.”
“Okay.” Dean kneels beside the bed and just watches Sam because it's like there's no fucking place he can touch him that doesn't hurt him and he says, “How bad's the pain?”
“Where's crying?”
“For you or me?”
“Both.”
“You cry at like a nine, nine point two. I cry at an eight because I'm a fucking pussy, plus I get a lot less ugly when I cry than you do so I can afford to let it happen. Breathe in, Sam.”
Sam pulls a breath in, gives Dean a feeble laugh. “Nine, maybe.”
“Not crying, though.”
“Don't have the air for it.”
“I'm giving you more pain meds.”
Sam closes his eyes and whispers, “Please do.”
**
He's been lying completely fucking still for the past twenty minutes, so when he cracks open an eye and wheezes, “Bath, maybe,” yeah, Dean's on his fucking feet.
He runs a bath as hot as it will go and comes back to help Sam through what he knows is going to be the fucking excruciating process of getting him up and undressed. “Don't try to help,” Dean says. “Just stay as still as you can and let me do it, all right?” Sam gets himself sitting up on the edge of the bed, and Dean starts with socks.
Sam wheezes out a breath, winces, and says, “Tell me again about how I'm going to save you.”
“You're going to fucking save me, Sammy.” He unbuttons Sam's shirt and eases it as slowly as he can off his shoulders. “You always do.”
“Like when?”
Dean looks at Sam's t-shirt, at the spot fucking caked with blood still clinging to the kid's skin, and says, “I'm going to cut this off you. It's ruined anyway.”
“Okay.”
Dean roots around in the first-aid kit for scissors and starts cutting Sam's shirt, working from the front bottom seam up to his collar. “Like that time when you were twelve. The werewolf?”
Sam closes his eyes and smiles a little. “Yeah.”
Dean starts peeling off the shirt, cutting through the sleeves so he doesn't have to rotate Sam's shoulders to get it off. Seeing the kid shirtless during a bad asthma attack scares the fucking shit out of him, always has, because shit, do most people have that many muscles in their chest, and does it really take that many of them to breathe, and can just a few of them fucking give Sam a goddamn break?
“How you doing in there?” Dean mumbles.
“Keep talking.”
“Time when you were fifteen, I was drunk, you took my keys.”
“You made a big fuss and said you were fine.”
“And then passed out two minutes later. Yep.”
“Scared the shit out of me.”
“You pass out on me all the time. Only fair. Need you to hold on for a second, kiddo, okay? Can you move your arms?”
“I don't know. You do it?”
Dean nods and swallows and moves one of Sam's hands to Dean's shoulder and curls the other one around the pendant around his neck and Sam immediately wracks forward with a few sobs and Dean resists the urge to just fucking hold his kid (because that will hurt him more) and instead peels the t-shirt the rest of the way off Sam's back, old blood stuck to new pain, and Sam's dropping out, he thinks, so he hauls him up as fast as he possibly fucking can and Jesus Christ he must be killing him and he leans him against the sink to get his pants off and Sam grips the sink and retches and name one thing Dean wants to do more than rub his kid's back, name one fucking thing.
Sam's clutching the sink (like a dying man) and Dean gets around next to him and puts his hands over Sam's, holds them there.
“I've got you, kid. I've got you.”
Sam closes his eyes. “Asthma's getting worse.”
“Warm water will help. We're going to get you in.” He wets a washcloth-cold water-and holds it to Sam's forehead. “Think you can stop crying? You need the air.”
“Tell me again how I'm gonna save you.”
“You always save me. You are right now, you know?”
Sam looks up at him. “What?”
“Don't be stupid. You're my fucking miracle. Come on, warm water's going to make you feel so much better.”
**
The bath seems to help. Sam stays very still, head against the wall, and says, “Where'd it come from anyway?”
“Knife. Like this long.”
“No.” He gestures to his chest.
“Oh. Fuck if we know. Coughing baby Sammy in my arms watching the house burn down, and that's the earliest I remember. Dad said once that you were a sick baby. I don't know if he meant before or after the fire.”
“Why'd Azazel want a sick kid anyway?”
“Because you're awesome. Remember the part where you beat all the healthy kids?”
“Remember the part where one of them stabbed me? Jesus.” He pushes a hand into his chest. “Can't breathe.”
“Yeah you can. Remember the part where I brought you back to life? You don't need to be healthy when you have a big brother. Lesson of the day.”
“Don't go to hell.”
“I won't.”
“Still kinda wish I were healthy.”
Shit. Sam never does this.
Sam is the one who's supposed to fucking keep Dean from doing this.
“You're like drowning in how much you want to say it,” Sam says.
“I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about,” Dean says, even though he thinks that maybe he might.
Sam coughs, whispers, “Aw fuck,” and curls up.
“Can I rub your chest or something?”
“No, I hate it.”
“You're killing me here.”
“Ha.”
“Ugh.”
“Just fuck with my hair some.”
“Doesn't do anything.”
“Makes me feel better.”
Dean plays with Sam's hair and is fucking glad that he never went through with his plans to shave it in Sam's sleep the next time he pissed him off. He wouldn't even look right. One hundred percent pure Sam.
**
“Dean,” Sam says, when the pain's hitting hard, when he's shaking with it and he can't stop, and Dean keeps checking the water to make sure it's still hot and checking Sam's forehead to make sure it's still hot and Sam's just trembling and that's hurting him and Jesus, Sam.
“Breathe. You can do this.”
“What if I can't?”
Dean puts his hand against Sam's forehead. “For all the times you say you can't breathe, you always end up doing it, you ever notice that?”
“Save you. What if I can't?”
“Hey. We can.”
“What if-”
“Hey. Calm down.”
“I can't calm down, it hurts, Dean, I don't know, what if I can't save you?”
“Okay, c'mere.” Dean shakes out a few more pills-more than the kid's supposed to have-and holds them up to his lips, helps him drink some water. “Just stay still. It's okay.”
**
The water starts to go cool and the pills are still doing their job so Dean hauls a very groggy Sam out of the bath. He winces and shakes and clings but doesn't cry out or throw up, so another win for Vicodin, pretty much.
He helps him into some sweatpants and then back into bed.
Problem with painkillers is they fucking slow down breathing, so he's sitting here like he's doing some vigil, just watching Sam's chest rise and fall way too fucking quietly with these shitty shallow breaths, and Sam's asleep and Dean kind of fucking loses it, because Jesus fucking Christ, who is going to take care of his fucking kid when he's in Hell, who is going to sit by his bedside and time his breaths, who is even going to know how to do that? And Dean knows all the bullshit that John taught him when he was a kid-that how bad Sam's asthma was needed to be something that was just for them, something that other hunters didn't get to fucking know about because the last thing they needed was some asshole with a gun thinking that Sam was a liability when Sam was out there kicking more ass than John and Dean could believe half the time, the last thing they needed was information leaking out to some fucking bad guy that Sam's entire fucking torso is his Achilles's heel (Dean is Sam's fucking Achilles's heel, fuck you, asthma, Dean's not in the mood to share today and isn't that just the fucking problem here) because Sam's an adult and Dad's dead and Dean just didn't want to fucking share. He didn't want Bobby or Ellen or anyone who could fucking help the kid knowing how bad this was, because he wanted Sam all to his damn self because Dean is the worst fucking brother this side of anywhere and Sam was supposed to go dark side and who the fuck knew when and this, this fucking wheezing, was Sam, Sam was one hundred percent his and yeah, so Dean was clinging to every part of him with both fucking hands, Dean didn't know this was going to happen.
But what the fuck is the warranty on his kid? How the hell does he know this won't kill Sam tomorrow? Sammy can't fucking breathe.
And who the fuck ever got out of a crossroads deal, anyway?
But what the fuck was he supposed to do? Wherever the fuck that knife in the back sent Sam, wherever the fuck they put good people, did they even have asthma meds there? (They didn't have Dean.)
Sam takes a series of quick breaths, whimpering, and Dean pushes his hair back and holds on.
Because the truth is he's sitting right here and he's still not making Sam better, so why the hell does it matter whether or not he sticks around? Sam's body is locked all around him and Dean can't get in.
**
“I remember doing this when you had pneumonia,” Dean says, slipping another ice cube into Sam's mouth. “And after that bitch possessed you. Those were real ice chips, though. Fucking smaller than this.”
Sam smiles.
“These I feel like I'm fucking cramming these blocks of ice into your mouth. Eat the fucking ice, Sammy!”
Sam brings a hand up to cover his mouth when he smiles too big, and he doesn't cry out in pain, so maybe they're fucking getting somewhere.
“It's cracking me up how badly you want to say it,” Sam says, and the sentence leaves him all out of breath.
“Ugh, shut up, Sam.”
“The fact that you know what I'm...” wheeze “talking about proves...my point, y'know?”
“You're so full of shit.”
“Mmm.”
**
Sam starts crying about half an hour later. Dean can tell the pain's not as bad as it was when Dean was getting his shirt off, but it had ebbed off a bit and now it's back, hard, and he's still out of it from the meds and his breathing sounds worse, so yeah, he's feeling a little overwhelmed, fucking sue him.
Crying hurts him and takes air he doesn't have, but Dean doesn't know how the hell to stop him. And he can't rub his fucking back.
Sam gestures to his lungs, that clawed hand on his chest.
“Oh, Jesus, that's what's bad? Not your back?”
He nods.
“We've got to sit you up a little, then.”
He nods and actually fucking sits up on his own, and Dean prompts a lot of pillows behind him and gets up on the bed. He puts an arm around Sam really slowly, to see if it hurts.
Sam turns his head enough to press his face under Dean's arm.
“You were touchy with your Stanford friends too, yeah?”
He feels Sam nod.
“I like that about you.”
“You like a lot about me,” Sam says, his voice muffled into Dean's shirt.
“You're such a douchebag.”
“Yeah, but your douchebag.”
He puts his lips against the top of Sam's head, just for a second. “You're the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Mmmm.”
The truth is, Sam is the only fucking thing that's ever happened to him.
Dean moves his other hand to the back of Sam's head, just holds him there. Sam's breath hitches with a few more sobs and Dean plays with his hair because Sam fucking likes it.
“I don't want you to die,” Sam says, and Dean's chest hurts and he says, “Sam, please, you got to stop that.”
“I don't want you to be alone.”
“Sammy.”
Sam takes a few choked breaths and then says, “If you go to hell, I won't be the worst thing that ever happened to you anymore,” and Dean grabs the trash can next to the bed and gets it under Sam's mouth before he throws up.
**
The breathing thing isn't getting any better, so it's back to the bathroom, this time to steam it up and just sit against the tub for a while. The last round of pills took the edge off the pain again, but Sam's lungs are choking him so badly he doesn't want to be touched. This doesn't happen very often, and they both hate it.
Sam plays with Dean's shoelace.
“You remember...before...I left for Stanford?” Sam says.
“I remember a lot before you left for Stanford. More than you, short stack. I don't think you should be talking.”
“August before. Wouldn't...let you help.”
Sam had this brilliant theory that since Dean wouldn't be around to help him at Stanford, Sam had to do everything himself, which was all well and good when he was just waking up a little breathless and taking his inhaler, he'd been handling that alone since he was eight years old, but when he was wheezing too badly to stand up straight and trying to set up the fucking nebulizer, you're telling Dean he's not supposed to help? And it ended up being fucking stupid because his first few bad attacks at Stanford Dean was right there on the phone talking him through it, because the truth is when you can't breathe you fucking need help, you can't just do that shit alone. That's not how it fucking works. At this point, Dean knows how it fucking works, okay?
“I don't like where you're going with this,” Dean says. “I think you should breathe and not talk.”
“If...this doesn't...work out. Need...to practice again.”
“For someone who doesn't want me to go to Hell, you're spending a fuck of a lot of time talking about it.”
Sam looks up at him, that hideous wide-eyed frown of a look, and just fuck.
“Be nice...to me right now, okay?” Sam says.
Dean sighs. “Yeah. I'm sorry.”
“No. Nice.”
“You stupid son of a bitch. Get back the fuck under my arm.”
Sam smiles. “That's the one.”
**
“Okay, no, you want to talk pathetic?” Dean says. The steam's thick in the bathroom, now, and he can't see Sam, but he can hear him breathing and feel him there under his arm, so it's okay.
“Being...afraid of the tooth fairy...fucking pathetic.”
“Yeah, but I didn't have a tooth fairy, so I was just going to school and hearing about this shit and the kids were telling me that some fucking woman comes into your house when you lose teeth. I knew about fucking monsters, you think I wanted some bitch going under my pillow? Of course I put a fucking knife under there. And Dad took all my teeth anyway, wasn't fucking sneaky about it. Said he was going to grind them up and make magic out of them.”
“I had...a tooth fairy, though.”
“No, you had a tooth elf, remember? I was too traumatized to do fairy. But no, you want to talk pathetic?”
Sam rubs his face against Dean's shoulder and sneezes into his shirt. Fucking Sam.
Dean tangles his fingers in Sam's hair. “Dad would sing you rock-a-bye baby, rock-a-bye Sammy, and you were so fucking morbid. You were, like, four, and you'd say, well, what happens after me and the cradle fall? Then what happens? And you'd want to know how high up the branch was and if you were wearing a fucking helmet and if there were blankets in the cradle for you to get all bloodstained, and I would just fucking die laughing and Dad would be looking at you like who the fuck is this child?”
Sam chuckles.
“So then he had to fucking add a line about catching you, do you remember that? Down will come Sammy-butI'llcatchhim--cradle and all.”
Sam laughs. “That is pathetic.”
“That's what I'm telling you.”
**
“Think you're feeling a little better,” Dean says.
“Uh-uh.”
“No, you definitely are.”
Ten minutes later Sam's puking again, just to fucking spite him, Dean swears.
**
Back in bed, Sam sleeps with his head on Dean's chest-fucking clingy kid still impresses and embarrasses him, still frustrates the fuck out of him because Dean can't fucking hold him right now-and Dean gets on the phone with Bobby and opens Sam's laptop up on his knee.
“I've never heard of anyone getting out of a deal like this,” Bobby says. “Not ever.”
“Jesus, don't soften the blow or anything.”
“You knew what you were getting into, Dean. You're really going to tell me that you didn't fucking consider the possibility that this might be legit, that you might not be able to stop this?”
“It's Sam.”
“You stupid son of a bitch.”
“Hey. I just called Sam that.”
“Will you stop talking about Sam for one fucking minute?”
So Dean is quiet for one fucking minute and then he says, “When I'm gone, you'll look after him, right?”
“He's not a fucking piece of meat, boy. He's going to have to want me to look after him, and does that sound like the Sam you know? You think he's going to be gunning to replace you?”
Dean looks down at the top of Sam's head.
“He doesn't need me,” Dean says. “He just needs someone around for emergencies. He doesn't really need me.”
“The amount of bullshit you had to tell yourself to make this deal, I'm fucking suffocating in it.”
“I don't want to hear you talk about fucking suffocating right now, all right?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“You wouldn't be jumping to that word either if you could see Sam right now.”
“Who do you think's going to be listening to the kid wheeze at your fucking funeral, Dean?”
“Stop.”
“I need time before I can talk about this, Dean. I just don't know what the hell to say.”
“Say Sam will be fine.”
“Sam won't be fine. And I'm not talking about his fucking lungs.”
Dean hangs up because fuck all of this and just listens to Sam breathe because that is fucking here and now and important, okay? Fuck you, Bobby.
“We're going to get me out of this,” Dean whispers. “My genius kid. We'll figure it out.”
**
“Why didn't you get them to fix me?” Sam says. He started crying again so he's on even more fucking pills, and he's slurring his words everywhere and the mouthpiece of the nebulizer keeps falling out from between his lips.
“Because I thought they'd fucking fix up the hole in your back. Didn't even consider that they might not. Have I mentioned I fucking hate demons?”
Sam closes his eyes. “You keep doing that.”
“Mentioning that I fucking hate demons? Good.”
He shakes his head. “Talking about my back when I mean my chest.”
Dean swallows. “Why didn't I tell them to fix your lungs?”
“Yeah.”
Jesus, Sammy.
“Did you try?” Sam says. “You tried and they said no? Or they said...” he wheezes for a while. “They said less than a year, so you said no? That's okay too.”
“I didn't try.”
“Why?”
“Didn't think to.”
“Maybe you coulda fixed me before you go.”
Dean runs his thumb over Sam's forehead. Still really hot. “You're not broken.”
Sam opens his eyes.
“Didn't even think to ask,” Dean says. “Didn't ask for you to come back shorter or less annoying either, you know?” He forces a grin. “Just wanted you back. Wanted you back exactly how you're fucking supposed to be. A hundred percent you.”
“Means sick.”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” He closes his eyes again. “Okay, that's okay too.”
**
He doesn't like lying to Sam.
But what the fuck was he supposed to say?
(Yes, Sammy, I didn't just try, I begged like a fucking dog? I got down on my goddamn fucking knees in the fucking dirt and said he can't do this without me, he can't fucking live like this alone, with the amount of shit you fucking demons are throwing at him I don't think he's going to make it another year even with me here holding his fucking hand, I don't think this kid has a fucking prayer if this war really happens and and he's asked to fight, I don't think Sam can fucking do it, my soul's got to be worth this much, it fucking has to be, I'll take six months if you fix Sam's lungs, I'll take three months, I'll take twenty-four hours, just fucking fix him, fucking let him breathe and that bitch laughed at him.)
What the fuck is he supposed to say besides I'm not fucking going anywhere, we can do this together, because he made an executive fucking decision in the car on the way back to see his fucking lying on some goddamn table with a hole in his back and shitty lungs, he decided that he was goddamn not going to die and also that Sam can do fucking anything when Dean is holding his hand, all right? All fucking right?
“Love you, okay?” he mumbles.
Sam laughs softly. “Gets all caught in your throat, you can't even fucking say it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Slurring worse than I am.”
“I wish you'd never been born. I wish Dad had never caught you when you fell out of the tree.”
Sam mumbles into Dean's side.
“You're so fucking annoying,” Dean says.
**
Two hours later, something gives, and Sam relaxes and breathes.
Dean celebrates by leaving him a note, going to the convenience store, drinking everything he can, and punching a brick wall.
Because fuck all of this shit.
**
He wakes up with a headache the size of whateverthefuckstatethey'rein and Sam's hands gently sitting him up. “Here we go, champ,” Sam says. “No problem.”
The lights are out, thank fucking God, but it's still fucking daytime so he can see Sammy sitting in a chair by his bed, sitting funny and still clearly sore and still breathing like shit and still gray and sweaty but better, Sam's getting better, soon he'll look like Sam again.
Sam takes Dean's hand and gently cleans out the cuts, feels the swelling in his fingers.
“It's okay,” Sam says. “No problem.” He dabs alcohol on the cuts.
“Shit.”
“Shhh, you're okay.”
“How are you doing?”
“Eighty percent better.” He winds a bandage around Dean's hand. “And you? Feel a little better now?”
“Not really.”
Sam swallows and nods, looking down. “I talked to Bobby. He said...”
“Yeah.”
“But there's a legend, fourteenth century? Selling your soul to the devil, same old stuff, but she got out of it by burning an actual physical contract. I don't know if one exists for you somewhere, but I've been looking up stuff about demon record keeping...” and Sam keeps babbling on and fucking on with his geeky bullshit, fussing over Dean's hand like it's a fucking problem, wheezing every few words, shaking and coughing and getting well, and Dean leans forwards and taps his forehead against Sam's.
Sam stops talking. “What?”
Dean shrugs. “Just glad the demon brought you back exactly right.”
“Sappy.”
“Yeah.”
Sam scratches at the stubble under Dean's chin and doesn't say anything for a while. With his wrist that close to Dean's ear, Dean can hear his watch clicking out seconds.
But Sam's wheezing, and Sam's talking, so Dean listens to that instead.
Summary: "And hell, maybe crossroads demons are as half-assed about killing people as they are about bringing them back to life. If you die from this asthma attack you're gearing up towards, I want a refund.” Immediately post Season 2 finale.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through Season 2 at least, through 3 would make you happier. They curse a lot, etc.
Wordcount: 5,025
Author's Note: Sammyverse of course. Basically I wanted to be able to write Season 3 fic and I couldn't deal with canon Dean. Now I have my own.
-
Dean will get this out of the way first thing, all right?
He doesn't want to die.
He has no intention of dying.
He has a genius kid who's going to get him the hell out of this without dropping dead his own self because that's what genius kids do, and and Dean intends to stay here on earth with said genius kid until they're rolling each other out to sit in the sun, okay?
Cool.
**
So all of that bullshit out of the way, and Dean's feeling pretty damn good. Yeah, the world's crawling with demons, but they're fucking experts at them at this point, as evidenced by fucking Yellow-Eyes back there with a hole through his damn self, and Dean has a mission and a living, breathing, whimpering kid in the passenger seat, so everything's looking like it'll be fine.
Wait, whimpering?
Sam's completely fucking still over there, forehead against the window, wheezing like hell (but are you going to fucking blame the kid after the week he's had?) and yeah, Dean thinks he just whimpered.
“Sammy. Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.” He sounds like he's being fucking choked, and thank you, Sam's life, thank you very fucking much that Dean knows Sam sounds like when he's being choked.
“No. You don't get to fuck with me right now. Your head?” Would make fucking sense since the thing that's been beaming him headaches for the past few years just exploded, so he wouldn't blame Sam's head if it did too.
But Sam shakes his head.
“Just chest? Fucking tell me, Sam.” He reaches over and puts a hand on Sam's back, and Sam flinches so hard he fucking jumps and then he's curled up like he's never going to fucking uncurl ever again.
“Oh, God,” Dean says. “Your back?”
He doesn't need to wait for Sam's nod.
Shit.
**
The asthma means Sam's never been able to tolerate lying on his stomach, so Dean lets him stay on his side and winds an ace bandage around Sam's middle to hold the ice pack in place. It's just way too close to his lungs, and Dean's spent an entire fucking lifetime trying to make sure Sam's lungs stay warm so he just feels like he's killing his kid while he's wrapping him up and isn't that just the kind of irony this weekend needed? He touches Sam between his shoulder blades but even that's too close, apparently, even that makes Sam cry out, so he pulls the hell away.
“Should do research,” Sam says, quietly.
“I talked to Bobby already. He said no reason to believe this won't be way better in a few days. Just like any old injury, you know? Just worse.”
“No. For you.”
Do they have to do this now? “There's a whole year for that. And hell, maybe crossroads demons are as half-assed about killing people as they are about bringing them back to life. If you die from this asthma attack you're gearing up towards, I want a refund.”
Sam gives him a weak smile, and Dean pinches his cheek. “That's what I was going for,” he says. “Stay brave.”
“You know it,” Sam says, and he breathes out long and slow and presses his face into his pillow.
Dean mixes up the nebulizer and tries not to throw it (and himself, and everything) at the fucking wall.
This sucks, but it's temporary. This is all just temporary.
Sam's drifted off a little-he's on every single fucking painkiller his body doesn't fucking freak out about-so Dean wakes him up with the world's most fucking gentle hand on top of his head and offers the mouthpiece.
“You can sleep with it in,” he says.
Sam's watching him, this funny look on his face.
A hundred percent pure Sam? plays itself in Dean's head, and he'd really rather Sam didn't make funny faces right now.
“What's in that head of yours?” Dean says.
“You want to say it.”
“What?”
“You don't have to say it. I'm just saying you want to. And that that's pretty funny.”
“I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.”
“Mmm.” Sam puts the mouthpiece in and closes his eyes.
**
The nebulizer doesn't do shit because the problem is that it hurts way too fucking much for Sam to let his lungs expand enough, so he's taking these shallow breaths and that's freaking his lungs out so they're doing what they do best and crapping out on him and Sam's clutching Dean's sleeve and saying “Shit I have to cough I have to cough.”
“No. Don't. You don't have to. It's okay.”
“Fucking junk in my chest is choking me. Talk to me.”
“Okay.” Dean kneels beside the bed and just watches Sam because it's like there's no fucking place he can touch him that doesn't hurt him and he says, “How bad's the pain?”
“Where's crying?”
“For you or me?”
“Both.”
“You cry at like a nine, nine point two. I cry at an eight because I'm a fucking pussy, plus I get a lot less ugly when I cry than you do so I can afford to let it happen. Breathe in, Sam.”
Sam pulls a breath in, gives Dean a feeble laugh. “Nine, maybe.”
“Not crying, though.”
“Don't have the air for it.”
“I'm giving you more pain meds.”
Sam closes his eyes and whispers, “Please do.”
**
He's been lying completely fucking still for the past twenty minutes, so when he cracks open an eye and wheezes, “Bath, maybe,” yeah, Dean's on his fucking feet.
He runs a bath as hot as it will go and comes back to help Sam through what he knows is going to be the fucking excruciating process of getting him up and undressed. “Don't try to help,” Dean says. “Just stay as still as you can and let me do it, all right?” Sam gets himself sitting up on the edge of the bed, and Dean starts with socks.
Sam wheezes out a breath, winces, and says, “Tell me again about how I'm going to save you.”
“You're going to fucking save me, Sammy.” He unbuttons Sam's shirt and eases it as slowly as he can off his shoulders. “You always do.”
“Like when?”
Dean looks at Sam's t-shirt, at the spot fucking caked with blood still clinging to the kid's skin, and says, “I'm going to cut this off you. It's ruined anyway.”
“Okay.”
Dean roots around in the first-aid kit for scissors and starts cutting Sam's shirt, working from the front bottom seam up to his collar. “Like that time when you were twelve. The werewolf?”
Sam closes his eyes and smiles a little. “Yeah.”
Dean starts peeling off the shirt, cutting through the sleeves so he doesn't have to rotate Sam's shoulders to get it off. Seeing the kid shirtless during a bad asthma attack scares the fucking shit out of him, always has, because shit, do most people have that many muscles in their chest, and does it really take that many of them to breathe, and can just a few of them fucking give Sam a goddamn break?
“How you doing in there?” Dean mumbles.
“Keep talking.”
“Time when you were fifteen, I was drunk, you took my keys.”
“You made a big fuss and said you were fine.”
“And then passed out two minutes later. Yep.”
“Scared the shit out of me.”
“You pass out on me all the time. Only fair. Need you to hold on for a second, kiddo, okay? Can you move your arms?”
“I don't know. You do it?”
Dean nods and swallows and moves one of Sam's hands to Dean's shoulder and curls the other one around the pendant around his neck and Sam immediately wracks forward with a few sobs and Dean resists the urge to just fucking hold his kid (because that will hurt him more) and instead peels the t-shirt the rest of the way off Sam's back, old blood stuck to new pain, and Sam's dropping out, he thinks, so he hauls him up as fast as he possibly fucking can and Jesus Christ he must be killing him and he leans him against the sink to get his pants off and Sam grips the sink and retches and name one thing Dean wants to do more than rub his kid's back, name one fucking thing.
Sam's clutching the sink (like a dying man) and Dean gets around next to him and puts his hands over Sam's, holds them there.
“I've got you, kid. I've got you.”
Sam closes his eyes. “Asthma's getting worse.”
“Warm water will help. We're going to get you in.” He wets a washcloth-cold water-and holds it to Sam's forehead. “Think you can stop crying? You need the air.”
“Tell me again how I'm gonna save you.”
“You always save me. You are right now, you know?”
Sam looks up at him. “What?”
“Don't be stupid. You're my fucking miracle. Come on, warm water's going to make you feel so much better.”
**
The bath seems to help. Sam stays very still, head against the wall, and says, “Where'd it come from anyway?”
“Knife. Like this long.”
“No.” He gestures to his chest.
“Oh. Fuck if we know. Coughing baby Sammy in my arms watching the house burn down, and that's the earliest I remember. Dad said once that you were a sick baby. I don't know if he meant before or after the fire.”
“Why'd Azazel want a sick kid anyway?”
“Because you're awesome. Remember the part where you beat all the healthy kids?”
“Remember the part where one of them stabbed me? Jesus.” He pushes a hand into his chest. “Can't breathe.”
“Yeah you can. Remember the part where I brought you back to life? You don't need to be healthy when you have a big brother. Lesson of the day.”
“Don't go to hell.”
“I won't.”
“Still kinda wish I were healthy.”
Shit. Sam never does this.
Sam is the one who's supposed to fucking keep Dean from doing this.
“You're like drowning in how much you want to say it,” Sam says.
“I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about,” Dean says, even though he thinks that maybe he might.
Sam coughs, whispers, “Aw fuck,” and curls up.
“Can I rub your chest or something?”
“No, I hate it.”
“You're killing me here.”
“Ha.”
“Ugh.”
“Just fuck with my hair some.”
“Doesn't do anything.”
“Makes me feel better.”
Dean plays with Sam's hair and is fucking glad that he never went through with his plans to shave it in Sam's sleep the next time he pissed him off. He wouldn't even look right. One hundred percent pure Sam.
**
“Dean,” Sam says, when the pain's hitting hard, when he's shaking with it and he can't stop, and Dean keeps checking the water to make sure it's still hot and checking Sam's forehead to make sure it's still hot and Sam's just trembling and that's hurting him and Jesus, Sam.
“Breathe. You can do this.”
“What if I can't?”
Dean puts his hand against Sam's forehead. “For all the times you say you can't breathe, you always end up doing it, you ever notice that?”
“Save you. What if I can't?”
“Hey. We can.”
“What if-”
“Hey. Calm down.”
“I can't calm down, it hurts, Dean, I don't know, what if I can't save you?”
“Okay, c'mere.” Dean shakes out a few more pills-more than the kid's supposed to have-and holds them up to his lips, helps him drink some water. “Just stay still. It's okay.”
**
The water starts to go cool and the pills are still doing their job so Dean hauls a very groggy Sam out of the bath. He winces and shakes and clings but doesn't cry out or throw up, so another win for Vicodin, pretty much.
He helps him into some sweatpants and then back into bed.
Problem with painkillers is they fucking slow down breathing, so he's sitting here like he's doing some vigil, just watching Sam's chest rise and fall way too fucking quietly with these shitty shallow breaths, and Sam's asleep and Dean kind of fucking loses it, because Jesus fucking Christ, who is going to take care of his fucking kid when he's in Hell, who is going to sit by his bedside and time his breaths, who is even going to know how to do that? And Dean knows all the bullshit that John taught him when he was a kid-that how bad Sam's asthma was needed to be something that was just for them, something that other hunters didn't get to fucking know about because the last thing they needed was some asshole with a gun thinking that Sam was a liability when Sam was out there kicking more ass than John and Dean could believe half the time, the last thing they needed was information leaking out to some fucking bad guy that Sam's entire fucking torso is his Achilles's heel (Dean is Sam's fucking Achilles's heel, fuck you, asthma, Dean's not in the mood to share today and isn't that just the fucking problem here) because Sam's an adult and Dad's dead and Dean just didn't want to fucking share. He didn't want Bobby or Ellen or anyone who could fucking help the kid knowing how bad this was, because he wanted Sam all to his damn self because Dean is the worst fucking brother this side of anywhere and Sam was supposed to go dark side and who the fuck knew when and this, this fucking wheezing, was Sam, Sam was one hundred percent his and yeah, so Dean was clinging to every part of him with both fucking hands, Dean didn't know this was going to happen.
But what the fuck is the warranty on his kid? How the hell does he know this won't kill Sam tomorrow? Sammy can't fucking breathe.
And who the fuck ever got out of a crossroads deal, anyway?
But what the fuck was he supposed to do? Wherever the fuck that knife in the back sent Sam, wherever the fuck they put good people, did they even have asthma meds there? (They didn't have Dean.)
Sam takes a series of quick breaths, whimpering, and Dean pushes his hair back and holds on.
Because the truth is he's sitting right here and he's still not making Sam better, so why the hell does it matter whether or not he sticks around? Sam's body is locked all around him and Dean can't get in.
**
“I remember doing this when you had pneumonia,” Dean says, slipping another ice cube into Sam's mouth. “And after that bitch possessed you. Those were real ice chips, though. Fucking smaller than this.”
Sam smiles.
“These I feel like I'm fucking cramming these blocks of ice into your mouth. Eat the fucking ice, Sammy!”
Sam brings a hand up to cover his mouth when he smiles too big, and he doesn't cry out in pain, so maybe they're fucking getting somewhere.
“It's cracking me up how badly you want to say it,” Sam says, and the sentence leaves him all out of breath.
“Ugh, shut up, Sam.”
“The fact that you know what I'm...” wheeze “talking about proves...my point, y'know?”
“You're so full of shit.”
“Mmm.”
**
Sam starts crying about half an hour later. Dean can tell the pain's not as bad as it was when Dean was getting his shirt off, but it had ebbed off a bit and now it's back, hard, and he's still out of it from the meds and his breathing sounds worse, so yeah, he's feeling a little overwhelmed, fucking sue him.
Crying hurts him and takes air he doesn't have, but Dean doesn't know how the hell to stop him. And he can't rub his fucking back.
Sam gestures to his lungs, that clawed hand on his chest.
“Oh, Jesus, that's what's bad? Not your back?”
He nods.
“We've got to sit you up a little, then.”
He nods and actually fucking sits up on his own, and Dean prompts a lot of pillows behind him and gets up on the bed. He puts an arm around Sam really slowly, to see if it hurts.
Sam turns his head enough to press his face under Dean's arm.
“You were touchy with your Stanford friends too, yeah?”
He feels Sam nod.
“I like that about you.”
“You like a lot about me,” Sam says, his voice muffled into Dean's shirt.
“You're such a douchebag.”
“Yeah, but your douchebag.”
He puts his lips against the top of Sam's head, just for a second. “You're the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Mmmm.”
The truth is, Sam is the only fucking thing that's ever happened to him.
Dean moves his other hand to the back of Sam's head, just holds him there. Sam's breath hitches with a few more sobs and Dean plays with his hair because Sam fucking likes it.
“I don't want you to die,” Sam says, and Dean's chest hurts and he says, “Sam, please, you got to stop that.”
“I don't want you to be alone.”
“Sammy.”
Sam takes a few choked breaths and then says, “If you go to hell, I won't be the worst thing that ever happened to you anymore,” and Dean grabs the trash can next to the bed and gets it under Sam's mouth before he throws up.
**
The breathing thing isn't getting any better, so it's back to the bathroom, this time to steam it up and just sit against the tub for a while. The last round of pills took the edge off the pain again, but Sam's lungs are choking him so badly he doesn't want to be touched. This doesn't happen very often, and they both hate it.
Sam plays with Dean's shoelace.
“You remember...before...I left for Stanford?” Sam says.
“I remember a lot before you left for Stanford. More than you, short stack. I don't think you should be talking.”
“August before. Wouldn't...let you help.”
Sam had this brilliant theory that since Dean wouldn't be around to help him at Stanford, Sam had to do everything himself, which was all well and good when he was just waking up a little breathless and taking his inhaler, he'd been handling that alone since he was eight years old, but when he was wheezing too badly to stand up straight and trying to set up the fucking nebulizer, you're telling Dean he's not supposed to help? And it ended up being fucking stupid because his first few bad attacks at Stanford Dean was right there on the phone talking him through it, because the truth is when you can't breathe you fucking need help, you can't just do that shit alone. That's not how it fucking works. At this point, Dean knows how it fucking works, okay?
“I don't like where you're going with this,” Dean says. “I think you should breathe and not talk.”
“If...this doesn't...work out. Need...to practice again.”
“For someone who doesn't want me to go to Hell, you're spending a fuck of a lot of time talking about it.”
Sam looks up at him, that hideous wide-eyed frown of a look, and just fuck.
“Be nice...to me right now, okay?” Sam says.
Dean sighs. “Yeah. I'm sorry.”
“No. Nice.”
“You stupid son of a bitch. Get back the fuck under my arm.”
Sam smiles. “That's the one.”
**
“Okay, no, you want to talk pathetic?” Dean says. The steam's thick in the bathroom, now, and he can't see Sam, but he can hear him breathing and feel him there under his arm, so it's okay.
“Being...afraid of the tooth fairy...fucking pathetic.”
“Yeah, but I didn't have a tooth fairy, so I was just going to school and hearing about this shit and the kids were telling me that some fucking woman comes into your house when you lose teeth. I knew about fucking monsters, you think I wanted some bitch going under my pillow? Of course I put a fucking knife under there. And Dad took all my teeth anyway, wasn't fucking sneaky about it. Said he was going to grind them up and make magic out of them.”
“I had...a tooth fairy, though.”
“No, you had a tooth elf, remember? I was too traumatized to do fairy. But no, you want to talk pathetic?”
Sam rubs his face against Dean's shoulder and sneezes into his shirt. Fucking Sam.
Dean tangles his fingers in Sam's hair. “Dad would sing you rock-a-bye baby, rock-a-bye Sammy, and you were so fucking morbid. You were, like, four, and you'd say, well, what happens after me and the cradle fall? Then what happens? And you'd want to know how high up the branch was and if you were wearing a fucking helmet and if there were blankets in the cradle for you to get all bloodstained, and I would just fucking die laughing and Dad would be looking at you like who the fuck is this child?”
Sam chuckles.
“So then he had to fucking add a line about catching you, do you remember that? Down will come Sammy-butI'llcatchhim--cradle and all.”
Sam laughs. “That is pathetic.”
“That's what I'm telling you.”
**
“Think you're feeling a little better,” Dean says.
“Uh-uh.”
“No, you definitely are.”
Ten minutes later Sam's puking again, just to fucking spite him, Dean swears.
**
Back in bed, Sam sleeps with his head on Dean's chest-fucking clingy kid still impresses and embarrasses him, still frustrates the fuck out of him because Dean can't fucking hold him right now-and Dean gets on the phone with Bobby and opens Sam's laptop up on his knee.
“I've never heard of anyone getting out of a deal like this,” Bobby says. “Not ever.”
“Jesus, don't soften the blow or anything.”
“You knew what you were getting into, Dean. You're really going to tell me that you didn't fucking consider the possibility that this might be legit, that you might not be able to stop this?”
“It's Sam.”
“You stupid son of a bitch.”
“Hey. I just called Sam that.”
“Will you stop talking about Sam for one fucking minute?”
So Dean is quiet for one fucking minute and then he says, “When I'm gone, you'll look after him, right?”
“He's not a fucking piece of meat, boy. He's going to have to want me to look after him, and does that sound like the Sam you know? You think he's going to be gunning to replace you?”
Dean looks down at the top of Sam's head.
“He doesn't need me,” Dean says. “He just needs someone around for emergencies. He doesn't really need me.”
“The amount of bullshit you had to tell yourself to make this deal, I'm fucking suffocating in it.”
“I don't want to hear you talk about fucking suffocating right now, all right?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“You wouldn't be jumping to that word either if you could see Sam right now.”
“Who do you think's going to be listening to the kid wheeze at your fucking funeral, Dean?”
“Stop.”
“I need time before I can talk about this, Dean. I just don't know what the hell to say.”
“Say Sam will be fine.”
“Sam won't be fine. And I'm not talking about his fucking lungs.”
Dean hangs up because fuck all of this and just listens to Sam breathe because that is fucking here and now and important, okay? Fuck you, Bobby.
“We're going to get me out of this,” Dean whispers. “My genius kid. We'll figure it out.”
**
“Why didn't you get them to fix me?” Sam says. He started crying again so he's on even more fucking pills, and he's slurring his words everywhere and the mouthpiece of the nebulizer keeps falling out from between his lips.
“Because I thought they'd fucking fix up the hole in your back. Didn't even consider that they might not. Have I mentioned I fucking hate demons?”
Sam closes his eyes. “You keep doing that.”
“Mentioning that I fucking hate demons? Good.”
He shakes his head. “Talking about my back when I mean my chest.”
Dean swallows. “Why didn't I tell them to fix your lungs?”
“Yeah.”
Jesus, Sammy.
“Did you try?” Sam says. “You tried and they said no? Or they said...” he wheezes for a while. “They said less than a year, so you said no? That's okay too.”
“I didn't try.”
“Why?”
“Didn't think to.”
“Maybe you coulda fixed me before you go.”
Dean runs his thumb over Sam's forehead. Still really hot. “You're not broken.”
Sam opens his eyes.
“Didn't even think to ask,” Dean says. “Didn't ask for you to come back shorter or less annoying either, you know?” He forces a grin. “Just wanted you back. Wanted you back exactly how you're fucking supposed to be. A hundred percent you.”
“Means sick.”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” He closes his eyes again. “Okay, that's okay too.”
**
He doesn't like lying to Sam.
But what the fuck was he supposed to say?
(Yes, Sammy, I didn't just try, I begged like a fucking dog? I got down on my goddamn fucking knees in the fucking dirt and said he can't do this without me, he can't fucking live like this alone, with the amount of shit you fucking demons are throwing at him I don't think he's going to make it another year even with me here holding his fucking hand, I don't think this kid has a fucking prayer if this war really happens and and he's asked to fight, I don't think Sam can fucking do it, my soul's got to be worth this much, it fucking has to be, I'll take six months if you fix Sam's lungs, I'll take three months, I'll take twenty-four hours, just fucking fix him, fucking let him breathe and that bitch laughed at him.)
What the fuck is he supposed to say besides I'm not fucking going anywhere, we can do this together, because he made an executive fucking decision in the car on the way back to see his fucking lying on some goddamn table with a hole in his back and shitty lungs, he decided that he was goddamn not going to die and also that Sam can do fucking anything when Dean is holding his hand, all right? All fucking right?
“Love you, okay?” he mumbles.
Sam laughs softly. “Gets all caught in your throat, you can't even fucking say it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Slurring worse than I am.”
“I wish you'd never been born. I wish Dad had never caught you when you fell out of the tree.”
Sam mumbles into Dean's side.
“You're so fucking annoying,” Dean says.
**
Two hours later, something gives, and Sam relaxes and breathes.
Dean celebrates by leaving him a note, going to the convenience store, drinking everything he can, and punching a brick wall.
Because fuck all of this shit.
**
He wakes up with a headache the size of whateverthefuckstatethey'rein and Sam's hands gently sitting him up. “Here we go, champ,” Sam says. “No problem.”
The lights are out, thank fucking God, but it's still fucking daytime so he can see Sammy sitting in a chair by his bed, sitting funny and still clearly sore and still breathing like shit and still gray and sweaty but better, Sam's getting better, soon he'll look like Sam again.
Sam takes Dean's hand and gently cleans out the cuts, feels the swelling in his fingers.
“It's okay,” Sam says. “No problem.” He dabs alcohol on the cuts.
“Shit.”
“Shhh, you're okay.”
“How are you doing?”
“Eighty percent better.” He winds a bandage around Dean's hand. “And you? Feel a little better now?”
“Not really.”
Sam swallows and nods, looking down. “I talked to Bobby. He said...”
“Yeah.”
“But there's a legend, fourteenth century? Selling your soul to the devil, same old stuff, but she got out of it by burning an actual physical contract. I don't know if one exists for you somewhere, but I've been looking up stuff about demon record keeping...” and Sam keeps babbling on and fucking on with his geeky bullshit, fussing over Dean's hand like it's a fucking problem, wheezing every few words, shaking and coughing and getting well, and Dean leans forwards and taps his forehead against Sam's.
Sam stops talking. “What?”
Dean shrugs. “Just glad the demon brought you back exactly right.”
“Sappy.”
“Yeah.”
Sam scratches at the stubble under Dean's chin and doesn't say anything for a while. With his wrist that close to Dean's ear, Dean can hear his watch clicking out seconds.
But Sam's wheezing, and Sam's talking, so Dean listens to that instead.