Paper Sammy Nightmare
Title: Paper Sammy Nightmare
Summary: Broward County, Florida. Dean has one Monday, one Tuesday, and one Wednesday. Sam does not.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 3.
Wordcount: 8,093.
Author's Note: Sammyverse--asthma Sam and BFF Winchesters! The title's from Margot and the Nuclear So and So's "Paper Kitten Nightmare," God knows why. I promised this one for a long time. I hope I did an okay job.
--
The fact is, this ritual is their best shot so far. They have a few other things lined up, but this is the most promising. Probably because of the source.
This one is Ruby's idea.
“I have some old as fuck tomes I've been looking through,” she's saying. She's sitting on the floor in front of the bed, cross-legged in front of Sam, twisting string around her fingers. “I can let you see them if you want,” she says. “Don't have 'em with me. Stashed them.”
She holds her hands out to Sam. Sam sticks his fingers in the string and tries to get it wrapped around his fingers in the right way.
“Seriously,” Ruby says. “How the fuck did you never learn how to do this?”
“They play Cat's Cradle in Hell?” Sam says.
“This game's been around since the 1800s. You're not my first time back on earth, y'know?”
Dean says, “The ritual?”
“Runes, burning herbs, holding hands, wait an hour. I've written down all the details. Paper's in my pocket, one sec. Schooling your brother.”
“You need to be there for this thing?” Dean says.
“Would you still do it if I did?” She rolls her eyes. “No. Just you and Sam's fine. Going to be smoky, Sam, so be careful, okay?”
He's still trying to figure out the string. “I burn bones for a living, Ruby.”
“Hey. Just looking out for you.” She looks at Dean. “Someone should.”
Sam tries not to laugh, because Ruby's weird idea that Dean doesn't take good enough care of Sam is really baffling to both of them and Dean finds it fucking infuriating but Sam finds it hilarious, fuck you, Sammy.
“I can take care of my own kid brother, thanks,” Dean says.
“Sure,” she says. “If you're not in Hell in three months. So fucking listen to me when I offer help, all right?”
“All right. Jesus.”
Ruby smiles up at Sam. “There you go. You got it. Now this.” She moves his fingers around.
**
Ruby.
Dean has mixed feelings, how could he fucking not? She's a goddamn demon, and Dean has yet to be really pleased with one, that's for damn sure, but...fuck, you know? She sits on the floor of their motel room and plays cards with his little brother. She shows up on days off and she and Sam practice their shooting and he makes fun of her aim. She's held the kid's damn hand while Dean set up the nebulizer, and he came back from the motel a few weeks ago after some interviews to find Sam and a bad asthma attack curled up with a bowl of soup, Ruby sitting next to him clutching the damn EpiPen just in case he needed it.
She's a fucking demon.
She's the best lead they've got.
It's simultaneously really complicated and really fucking not, because they'll take any help they can fucking get to get out of this thing, and she makes Sam smile, and if Dean dies in three months (on Sam's twenty-fifth goddamn birthday) then Sam might fucking need that.
The problem is that Sam trusts too easily; he always has, because he's never had the option not to. He has to trust all the damn time that people aren't slipping shit into his food that will kill him, or that someone around will help if he fucking stops breathing.
But the kid's still goddamn alive, so who is Dean to tell him it's not working?
**
Anyway. This ritual. It's a cleansing thing, unbinding thing (and fuck if that doesn't make him think about two years ago, when he got that reaper to unbind him and Sam-it's the vaguest of vague memories like everything that happened when he was damn SpiritDean, and he's never told Sam about it, and he doesn't fucking plan to) so here they are in Broward County, Florida on a Monday night, full moon, because this is where and when the stars line up exactly right or something, which would be bad enough for Sam's twitchy lungs (fucking Florida, they've never done a hunt here that didn't leave Sam breathless) and now Sam's five minutes into the hour they have to wait and tilting his head back and saying, “Fuuuuck, I should have taken something.”
“You didn't take anything?”
“I'm an idiot.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Shit.” Sam pushes out a wheezy breath. “Okay. We can do this.”
“Turn your head away, breathe something but the smoke, Jesus.”
Sam twists away to breathe into his shoulder, and he takes he and Dean's clasped together hands and pushes them into his chest. Apparently it's all right when it's Sam's hand, and Dean's just along for the ride. Dean gets it.
“No fucking way we can work your inhaler like this,” Dean says. “If we could even get it out of your pocket.”
“I know.” Sam clears his throat, sneezes a few times. “It's not that bad. We can do this.”
“You sure?”
Sam turns his head back and gives him a look. “Uh, yeah, I think I'm willing to be uncomfortable for an hour if it'll save your life.”
“Hey, I'm not going to argue with that.” Dean's protective, but he's not a fucking madman, you know? An asthma attack in exchange for fifty more years with his kid? Yeah, give him a pen, he'll sign away Sam's lungs for an hour and he can only feel so fucking bad about it, y'know? Have you seen the kid breathe on a daily basis? He's wheezed a lot worse for a lot less. Again, protective, not psychotic. Sam's not exactly fragile. “But if it gets really bad, we stop, okay? I mean it.”
“Maybe it won't take an hour.” Sam ducks his head and coughs. “Maybe we'll get some...sign that it worked.”
Breathing in the middle of sentences already? Well, that's fucking awesome.
“Maybe don't talk,” Dean says.
Sam nods a little.
“You want me to, or just breathe with you for a while?”
Sam shrugs like either's okay, so Dean talks. He talks about how he's getting Sam out of this damn state first thing tomorrow, and hey, Sam, how amazing is it going to be if this works? How fucking incredible and fantastic is everything going to be? And what a fucking idiot Sam is for coming in here all unmedicated after, what, twenty-three years of this shit, at least, and he squeezes Sam's hands and takes breaks just to time his breaths with him. Sam's not doing so great, but he's working hard, taking slow deep breaths and doing all the fucking exercises, and Dean remembers stupid teenage Sam losing his inhaler all the damn time and how they used to get through attacks together then, but that was always on the way to the drug store or the fucking hospital, not cross-legged on some warehouse floor for a scrap of a chance of getting out of a deal (oh, and let's not forget the ever-present threat that trying to get out of this deal will just fucking kill Sam, that's one of Dean's favorite things to remember all of a sudden in the middle of the damn night, and it's a testament to how fucking badly he doesn't want to go to hell that he forgets that for even a fucking second) and God, he's trying not to be mad at Sam but he fucking is, a little, because how fucking hard would it have been to pop a few pills before they headed out the door? Seriously, how fucking hard?
Fucking burning leaves are really getting to him. He has his eyes closed and he's just breathing and breathing and nothing else.
“We've got to stop,” Dean says. “This is bad.”
Sam shakes his head, twists their wrists around to look at his watch. “Ten...more minutes.”
“This is risky enough for you, y'know? Do I need to explain to you again how there's no point getting out of this deal if it kills you in the process? I will seriously sell my soul again just to piss you off, not even because I like you.”
Sam gives him a half-smile. “Nine minutes.”
Dean tries to pull his hands away, but Sam gives him this do not fuck with me look and it's a rare one, which means Dean is fucking scared to shit of it, so he stops and shrugs and lets Sam do what he wants because fuck can Sam get bossy when he wants to.
It doesn't make him much happier with Sam, though, he can tell you that.
“All right,” Dean says. “Nine minutes.”
Thankfully, Sam doesn't seem to get much worse.
Unthankfully, the ritual doesn't seem to have done jack squat.
They don't say that bit out loud. They hold on a few minutes past the hour, just to be damn sure, but then eventually Sam's wheezing too badly to justify their denial so they let go. Dean packs up while Sam takes his inhaler and breathes with his hands on his knees for a while.
Dean doesn't feel like talking or looking at him or listening to him deal with this asthma attack he didn't fucking need to have if he'd just remembered his fucking meds. Dean feels like not the fuck much of anything, and he thinks while they're trudging towards the car that he has a much easier time being mad at Sam now than he used to. It's not that he is mad more often, but that he's more inclined to forgive himself for it, to just let himself be pissed off when Sam is infuriating. Because what the hell does he have to prove, really? He sold his soul for the kid. It's pretty damn clear that he's somewhat fond of him, you know?
Plus, you know, this isn't shaping up to be the night of drunken celebration he was hoping for.
He knows the chances, you know? And he knows they're running out of time. But...but he's not going to fucking die. He's just not. He feels fucking fine, and then here's fucking Sammy over there wheezing like a freight engine and you're telling Dean he's going to leave him here? (You're telling him Sam's going to be fine without him?) Just...no. Okay?
“You're mad at me,” Sam says, softly, when they're halfway back.
“No, not really.”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says. Apologizing for a damn lot.
“Hey, we still have options. Other stuff to try. Tomorrow we'll go back to the library, see what else we can scrounge up, add more items to our list. You're still breathing. It could be worse.”
“It could be worse,” Sam says, quietly.
Dean spends the rest of their Monday night teasing Sam for being a fucking hero and lying next to him on the bed trying to make his chest wheeze like Sammy's (Sam: You're doing it wrong. It's higher-pitched than that. Dean: I have testicles so I can't get that high, Princess) and tearing through every fucking bit of lore they haven't read already (not much) on demon deals and hell hounds.
“Tomorrow we'll get out of this fucking place,” Dean says. “Go somewhere where you're not this allergic. A library in another fucking state, okay?” He rubs Sam's back. “Tomorrow we'll figure it out.”
Sam's drifting off. “Sounds perfect.”
**
Dean wakes up Tuesday morning before the alarm because Sam sounds like absolute motherfucking crap, and Jesus, when did that happen? Dean stirred and rolled over in the middle of the night and Sam was just damn fine, thanks. Christ, they've got to get out of Florida.
He sits up and looks over. Sam is pale and his chest is fucking heaving and he looks...skinny. Shit, how had Dean not noticed that before? Sam's been eating just fine, but they have been jumping from hunt to hunt lately. Maybe he's burning more than he's taking in. Sammy needs more hamburgers in his life.
Anyway, Dean's biggest concern at the moment is that fucking noise coming out of his kid's chest, so he gets up and goes to the bathroom to grab his meds right as the alarm clicks on. Asia. Cool.
Sam startles awake and curls up with a coughing fit. Dean comes to the bed and offers a glass of water. “Rise and shine, Sammy. You doing all right there?”
Sam pushes himself up and rubs his chest. He gives Dean a short nod, like he's approving of his fucking presence or something. “Hey, Dean.”
“Hey.” He forces the water at him. “You sound like shit.”
“Yep. It's fine.” He starts to cough but forces himself to stop, then gets up and into a pair of pants. “C'mon, kiddo.”
“Yeah, don't call me kiddo.”
“We have shit to do. Up up and away. Why don't you have your boots on? You practically always have your boots on.”
“I was sleeping. Even I don't sleep in my boots.”
“Oh. Well.” Sam sneezes and goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth. “Come on, hurry up. We don't have much time.” He hops over and claps his hands on Dean's shoulders. “C'mon. C'mon.”
“We're not going anywhere until you're breathing a little better.”
“Then we'll be here for a really, really long time. Come on. Brush your fucking teeth. We've got places to go. I'm driving.”
“What?”
“I'm driving. Deal with it.”
**
“So!” Sam says, out of fucking nowhere, while he's steering Dean's baby around the town like he was fucking born here. “This is my hundredth and nineteenth Tuesday.”
“Unless you're two and a half, I think you've had more than that.”
And then Sam says, “Are you two and a half? That would explain a lot” at the exact same fucking time Dean does.
“Um,” Dean says. Intelligently.
“My hundredth and nineteenth of this Tuesday,” Sam says. He wheezes out a long breath. “I'm in a time loop. It's all very exciting.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You think I lost this much weight and wrecked my lungs this much overnight? C'mon.” He points out things as they pass. “See that house? Woman's about to run out saying heavens to Betsy!”
“Heavens to Betsy!” she yells
What.
“The quickest way out of town would be down this road here,” Sam says. “But there's a roadblock. You'll see in a second.”
Dean sees in a second.
“I'm going to switch lanes now, because the powerline's about to fall across this one and it would crush us. Watch, here I go!”
Sam changes lanes, and Dean flinches the fuck anyway as the line falls and car horns blare. Sam doesn't press theirs.
“Sam,” he says.
“Mmmm. Oh, and you die at the end of each one, did I mention that?” He sticks his tongue into his cheek.
“What?”
“You die. I wake up. Sorry if I'm kind of cold talking about this. I've explained the whole thing to you a hundred and eighteen times. I've done it mad, I've done it laughing hysterically, for ten in a row I did it crying.”
“And today you're...”
“Today I'm invigorated because today's going to be the last damn one. Made big tremendous gains yesterday.”
Dean can't believe they're talking about this like it's fucking normal. Like it's even fucking possible. “So, uh, you carry over? Because you remember...”
“Yep, I remember everything. And my body stays the same, too. That part's kind of awesome. Push my sleeve up.”
Dean does. Sam's arm-skinny, definitely fucking skinnier-is covered in notes in different colored pen. Websites. Addresses. Names.
“My computer clears its damn history,” Sam explains. “So I keep track of it on myself. Things I've already looked at.”
“Jesus, take a shower.”
He laughs. “Right?”
“Has Ruby been...”
He's answering all of Dean's questions, even Dean's goddamn banter, so quickly, like they've had these exact conversations before (Jesus, Dean, be a little less predictable, kid's gonna get sick of you). “Ruby resets too, and she doesn't come by on her own today. I've summoned her a few times but then I have to explain it all, and usually explaining it to you is exhausting enough.” He stops the car smoothly. “Kid and a ball, hold on.”
“What?”
Sam points to the sidewalk, where a kid chasing a ball runs out into the street.
Dean says, “Dude, have you killed this kid?”
“No, but someone else tried to once and you ran in front of the car.”
“Bizarro-Dean, such a hero.”
“For real.”
Dean just shakes his head for a minute because...well, shit. “So. You sick?”
Sam shrugs. “I'm allergic to Florida, and the trickster won't let me leave. Eating's hard because you keep dying before I can get enough calories down. We've tried to do hospital a dozen times, but half the time you die on the way there and the other half you die mid-treatment and I don't get much out of it.”
“I'm, uh, really inconvenient.”
“Yeah, but I like you.”
“You said trickster?”
“Yep. Found that out last week, after fucking months of no leads.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Now I have a nice big stake and the stuff for a ritual to pinpoint his location. We're just going to the library because the roof's a good spot for it.”
“Sammy?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“I've been taking care of you, yeah? When I wasn't busy dying?”
Sam says, “Yep. Always.”
“Okay. Just...you look sick, man. Past-Dean's been doing a shitty job?”
Sam shrugs a shoulder. “Past-Sam's been doing a shitty job, too. We've been busy trying to keep you alive. It's okay. And I don't want to think about how much worse I would be if you hadn't been helping me when you could.”
“Me neither, yeah.”
“So don't worry.” Sam parks. “Here we are.”
**
By the time they get to the roof of the library, though, Sam's pretty much spent, which is such complete bullshit because the kid's supposed to fucking fight monsters, and here he is breathless from a few flights of stairs, and Dean wants to kick Past-Dean in all hundred-and-nineteen iterations of his balls for not taking better care of Sammy than this.
Sam slices his hand open and starts painting sigils on the roof.
“I would have done it,” Dean says.
Sam doesn't look up from what he's doing, just shakes his head a little and keeps working. He's all stretched out now, across the ground, and Dean can't remember the last time he looked this sick. He kept expecting the librarians to fucking stop him, to ask why his fucking kid wasn't held down with tubes and an oxygen mask.
But nobody did, so yeah, he wants to fucking fuss a little, sue him.
“This must really be wearing you down,” he says.
Sam keeps concentrating. “Almost over now.”
“You need a hospital when this is all finished?”
“Yep.”
“No problem. Out of this fucking town, if we can.”
“Yeah, getting out of here is item number one.” He punctuates that with a few sneezes, then he stops for a minute and lowers his forehead to the ground. Like he's praying. Except he's just wheezing.
Dean says, “Easy there, Simba.”
Sam gives him a look while he shakes his inhaler. “Pulling out the childhood nicknames when I'm not even dying? And I let you get away with Sammy without complaining.”
“Shut up, you fucking love Sammy.”
Sam grins.
“It's your fault you even have all these nicknames, Samalot. I just wanted to call you Wheezy all the time, but you got all angsty about it.”
“Nope, I was fine with Wheezy. You're getting me confused with Dad again. I know the dimples can be confusing. Try to focus on the fact that one of us is alive.” He looks up. “One of us is very definitely not dying on you, okay?”
Dean breathes out and just looks at his damn kid for a second, okay?
“Okay, Wheezy,” he says.
Sam smiles at him, then looks down at the sigil. “It's ready now.” “
**
The ritual points them towards a cafe a few blocks down. They run, and Sam somehow doesn't keel the hell over, and the last thing Dean remembers is the trickster at stake-point, smirking at his baby brother, promising it will all be over, and then everything goes black.
**
He wakes up, the same motel, a different alarm, a clock that says Wednesday, and he feels like he's slept for a thousand years.
Then he looks at his kid in the next bed sleeping through the alarm and thinks that maybe he has.
It definitely didn't end when the trickster said it would, that's for damn sure, because yesterday, Tuesday, whateverthefuckday it was when they tracked down the trickster, Sam was thin but not this thin, not fucking scrawny, not fucking frail, and he was breathing badly but not this badly, and Jesus. Jesus. Dean doesn't give a shit if he was dying every day, because for all the time he was alive he should have been stuffing the kid full of milkshakes and pie and hamburgers and what the fucking fuck, Past-Dean, and what the hell, everyday Sam, how did you get this sick, what the fuck is wrong?
“Sam.” He puts his hand on his shoulder. Knobbly. Cold.
Sam jumps.
Dean sits down on the side of Sam's bed. “Hey, buddy, It's just me.”
Sam pushes himself up and stares at him.
“God, you look like shit,” Dean says.
And then Sam makes this noise in his throat and fucking propels himself into Dean, hands clutching at his shirt like he's drowning, face pushed into Dean's chest. He grabs him so hard it hurts, and Dean says “Whoa whoa whoa, Sammy, it's okay.” He presses his hands against Sam's back. “It's okay.”
Sam's crying. Shit.
“Whoa, hey. Sam.” Dean moves one hand to the back of Sam's head and holds onto his hair. “You're okay. Shhh. It's okay. I know you don't feel well. We're going to fix you all up. We're gonna...I'm not going to die today, okay? We're going to figure this out.”
Sam snuffles into Dean's shirt, nods. His breathing's for shit, now, with the crying, so Dean pulls away just a little and wipes Sam's cheeks off with his palms.
“Okay,” he says. “All right. Jesus. You okay?”
Sam nods.
“You feeling that sick? It's all right.”
He shakes his head. “No, no, I'm fine.”
He's clearly fucking not, but Dean will let that go for now. “I must have died really bad last night, huh?”
Sam looks confused, then coughs out a laugh.
“It's Wednesday,” Sam whispers.
“Yeah.” Dean's stomach squeezes. “Did you have...this isn't your first Wednesday?”
Sam is laughing or crying and Dean can't tell which, and eventually Sam says, “I had six months. I had six fucking months worth of Wednesdays.”
**
Six months.
Six fucking months on his own.
Six months that left Sam with a new bullet hole between his damn ribs and a new scar on his cheek and new muscles in his arms and shoulders (or maybe old muscles that he can see now because the kid is wasting away). Six months of migraines and exorcisms and trickster hunting and barely eating and barely breathing.
Six months of Sam taking his meds like clockwork and being the good little soldier Dean and John taught him to be. Six months of Sam curling up at the end of the day with his grief and his inhaler and an empty bed next to him.
Six months of just Sam being the Sammiest thing in the world and he barely made it.
**
He can't ignore the way Sammy looks at him whenever he's out of arm's reach-like he's going to fucking disappear on him, like he's already disappeared on the kid for six months and Jesus, this is what six months did to him. Six months.
Dean had hoped Sam and his shitty lungs would live fifty times that. More. (That was the fucking point. Dean was so, so, so stupid.)
Dean wants to get them the fuck out of this fucking town, but Sam gets all nervous at the suggestion and says he has to do a neb treatment first. “It's just...routine,” he says. “It's what I do. Okay?” Dean nods and gives the kid some space while Sam drags the machine and the mouthpiece around and makes the bed with perfect hospital corners.
He's seen this, is the thing. Sam gets like this. It was always something he and John shrugged their shoulders at and passed off as just something about Sammy, the way he has to brush his teeth before and after he takes his night meds and has to chew each bite of food a certain number of times and gets really agitated if he doesn't have time to check three times that his gun is loaded-three times, always three times-before a hunt.
And then Dean went to visit Sam at Stanford and Jess had all these coping mechanisms in place for him, ways to help him feel like he had everything controlled and in order when really his health and his grades were slipping, hard, and Dean wanted to punch himself in the face for not realizing that this shit made his kid miserable, and Jess had been in his life all of six months at that point and here she was making him feel so much better, here she was telling Sammy, who'd wanted nothing more in his whole life than to be normal, this isn't normal, let's help you. (And why the fuck had Dean never thought of those words when seven-year-old Sam was crying in gym class because he had to sit out Capture the Flag or seventeen-year-old Sam was breaking down late one night in the backseat of the Impala, whispering to Dean that he hated this life more than he could physically stand? Stop trying to tell him that the shit he has to do is normal and stop trying to tell him that it's good enough. This isn't normal. Let's help you. It doesn't mean you change the situation, doesn't even mean you can, but you can set his alarm exactly on the hour just the way he likes it and leave him alone after he does the dishes so he can arrange and rearrange the silverware drawer perfectly and you can help him figure out how many hits of his inhaler to take when and you can hug him and tell him that he doesn't have to love hunting, he just has help them fucking hold their family together. Let us help you, Sam.)
So Dean was going to be better. That was the whole plan. And then he saw Sam again during the month he was on anti-anxiety meds, before his body up and decided it was allergic to them, and he was happy and then he was off them and wound-up all the time again and worrying and counting his pills five hundred times and Dean has just been trying to keep the kid together and that's been fine because anything Sam needs is fine, and as long as Sam gets a reasonable amount of time to get his shit in order and Dean lets him unload on him for a while when he gets too stressed he's okay and he's calm and breathes, and way to fucking drop the ball, Dean, way to plan to bail out on your kid on his fucking birthday. His twenty-fifth birthday, a perfect solid number, a square, Sam should fucking love this birthday.
“Why no eating?” Dean says, quietly.
Sam shrugs a shoulder, then comes and sits all close to Dean and wraps his arms around, him, face-plants into Dean's shoulder. Dean chuckles a little and says, “You're such a girl. I didn't even miss you.”
“You had me with you the whole time, jackass.”
“Yep.”
“You never had to be alone.” Sam breathes out. “Good.”
Dean looks down at the top of this kid's head, and the thing is that he never fucking forgets hellfirehellhoundsdemonsSamSamSamherealone but he fucking forgets, he forgets all the time that on top of hellfirehellhoundsdemons he gets no Sam. It's not just Sam who's going to be alone.
He keeps making himself forget that.
“I'm not going to die,” Dean says, and if he didn't already know he was panicking, he can hear it in his voice. “We're going to get me out of this. I'm not going to die.”
Sam sits up. “Hey. Hey, it's okay.”
“I'm not going to fucking die, Sam, okay?”
“Okay. All right. I believe you.”
And now Sam hugs him. Sam fucking hugs Dean to his chest like Sam is big or something but Sam is so thin.
**
Dean waits until they're sitting in a diner-a diner in Georgia, thank you very much-and Sam's smiled and shaken his head at the waitress when she asked what he wanted before he tries asking again.
“Why no eating?”
“I had that protein thing in the car.”
“Yep. You have those a lot?”
He plays with his napkin, sleeves pulled over his hands like mittens. “Every morning.”
Dean can't stop watching his hands. Shit, Sam used to do that. He remembers now. When he was a little little kid, John was nervous to have him out in public where little kids were eating crap Sam couldn't and putting their hands on things, and when they were still really skittish about Sam eating anything more than baby food they'd go to restaurants and John would order something really really safe for himself and Dean and then take out the little lunch he packed ahead of time for Sammy and he'd tell Sam to put his sleeves over his hands if he had to touch anything else, and he'd keep watch and make sure Sam didn't die, he'd keep Sam the fuck alive, and Dean would make sure Sam just kept fucking chewing, because making sure Sam ate enough was always Dean's job. Making sure Sam was okay, that was Dean.
“Lunch?” Dean says.
“Salad and these chicken things I buy all the time.”
“Dinner?”
“Same.”
“Always?”
He nods a little.
“C'mon,” Dean says. “Why?”
“Guess how many times you have to go into anaphylactic shock all by yourself before you decide it's really not worth it to take risks?”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek. “How many?”
“Once.”
Yeah, Dean believes him.
Sam tries to change the subject, the little shit, and reaches out his sleeve-colored hands and twists Dean's fingers and says, “Can't believe you're here.”
“Bitch.”
“Shut up.”
“Food. Talk about it.”
Sam brings his hand up, messes up his stupid hair. “I was just being careful, you know? Eating. Just...carefully.”
“Not enough, though. Look at you.”
Sam shrugs and doesn't meet his eyes. “It stresses me out.”
“Even when you know it's safe?”
“I never know. Something always could have been fucked up or tampered with or...fuck, I don't know, but it's...”
“All right. Breathe.” Dean slides his water glass across the table. Sam hesitates, but he does drink.
“All right,” Dean says, quietly. “It's okay.”
“I had to be careful,” Sam says. “I had to make all these rules, and...I had to survive, you know? That was just...it was way more important than whether I liked what I was eating or whether I was too skinny, you know? I just had to survive and get out there and kill things and save you.”
“Jesus,” Dean breathes.
Sam looks up.
Dean shakes his head a little. “You just...just, fuck, you sound like Dad right now.”
**
Dean picks up the phone the second Sam's in the shower. “I thought we talked about this,” he tells Bobby. “If...when I die, you're supposed to look after the little bastard, haven't we done this little chat?”
“You want to give me some context here, boy?”
This would be a lot easier if Bobby could remember the fact that he let the kid waste away for six months. “You promised me you'd keep an eye on Sam. How sick would you let him get before you stepped in?”
“Where the hell is this coming from? You think I'd let the kid wheeze himself half to death alone in some hospital? Do I look like John fucking Winchester to you?”
Dean breathes out. “I'm not even talking...not just asthma, all right? Sam. The entire fucking entity of Sam.” And shit, he remembers Sam trying to make this distinction to him once-Sam after a goddamn panic attack trying to explain to Dean that sometimes what he needed wasn't help with the asthma but with the shit the asthma did to him. He needed help sleeping through nightmares about suffocating or help forgiving himself for days when he physically could not drag himself to class. He needed help sometimes, damn it, and where the fuck was Bobby these past six months?
Bobby says, “Dean, you know I'll always be around to help Sam whenever he wants me.”
Dean pauses, the tip of his tongue against his front teeth.
Oh.
**
“Why didn't you let Bobby help?”
Sam's toweling off his narrow fucking body. “What?”
“Don't what me, asshole.”
Sam wheezes and drags his arm under his nose. “Because he didn't get it.”
“Then explain it to him.”
“I got tired, Dean. You think I really want to explain the mechanics of oxygen deprivation when I'm fucking oxygen deprived?”
All right. So before Dean checks out, he's writing Bobby a massive fucking email. That's fine. No problem.
(Except he's not fucking dying so whatever.)
“What could he even do?” Sam says. He's setting up another neb treatment even though he doesn't sound too hideous, because this is his routine. After he's done, he's going to do a hundred push-ups. He's explained this all to Dean.
“Weep at your bedside. I don't know. Whatever the fuck you need. Whatever the fuck I do. Keep you alive.”
“I don't want Bobby sleeping in the next bed and rubbing my back through an asthma attack, you know?” He snaps the pieces of the nebulizer together. “The only thing Bobby could do is feed me some miracle cure, and until we find out what the fuck that is, he's just going to be worrying and stressing me out for nothing.”
Dean sits down heavily next to him on the bed.
“Sam, I just...”
Sam has the decency to look sheepish, at least.
“Can you just, can you not...I mean, just...shit, Sam. I want to fucking duct tape all the parts of you all together. Why do you have to just...ugh.” He wraps his hand up in Sam's shirt.
Sam watches. “It's part of my charm,” he says. “Staying alive against all the odds and stuff.”
Dean breathes out and doesn't look up.
Sam is quiet. “Guess it's not so charming when you're not around to see me do it.”
“No. No, it's not.” Dean straightens up and runs his hand over his mouth. “All right. We've got to figure out coping mechanisms and shit. Just, get formulas in place so that if...you know. If I don't get out of this. So you'll do better than this.”
“Dean...”
“No. We need to start making habits, get you on the right track. So do the neb treatment and then we're out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“You're going to eat, Sam. You're going to fucking eat.”
**
Fucking skinny Sam looks like a fucking skinny sixteen-year-old, sitting slumped across the booth from him with his hands all in his sleeves and bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Just taste it,” Sam says. “Please?”
Dean shakes his head so hard it hurts his neck.
“Please.”
“You have to do this on your own. Come on. We nagged the fuck out of the waitress. Tuna on toast. Doesn't get much simpler than that. You can do it.”
Sam shakes his head.
“Yeah, you can. EpiPen's right here.” Dean takes the EpiPen out of his pocket and rolls it across the table to Sam.
“Would you give it to me? If I needed it?”
“You think I'm going to let you fucking die to prove a point? Of course I'd give it to you. You're not going to need it. Eat.”
“Just...you first. Okay?”
“No. I will let you sit here for fucking hours to prove a point. And we're not leaving until you eat.”
Sam's nostrils flare. “I'm twenty-fucking-five-”
“Four. No birthday yet.”
“--Jesus. If I want to leave, I fucking leave. You're gonna tackle me?”
“Stop yelling.”
“Fuck you!” Sam drops his head into his hands, gripping his hair hard.
People are fucking staring, and this might be a little harder than Dean bargained for.
Because shit, his kid is really scared. His kid fucking fights monsters.
Dean sighs and scoots his chair in closer to the table, reaches across and gets Sam's plate. Sam looks up hopefully, but Dean doesn't eat anything, just takes apart one half the sandwich and pokes through it with Sam's fork.
“Don't see any peanuts hiding in here,” he says.
“It's not like I need a whole peanut,” Sam says. “And if it's cross-contaminated with shrimp-”
“Sammy.”
“Why can't I just eat what I was eating?”
“Because fucking look at you, Sam.”
“I'm getting by.”
“Yeah, well, what if getting by isn't enough for me, did you fucking think about that? What if I didn't sell my soul so that you would survive, but so that you could fucking be Sam again, and Sam isn't a fucking slave to his fucked-up little body, all right? Sam is bigger than all of that. That's why you're fucking big, Sammy.”
“That doesn't even make sense.”
“Yeah, well, it would if you'd grown up next to you for twenty-five-”
“Four. You had it right.”
“--fucking years. Do you know fucking infuriating you are? You are the most frustrating thing I've ever fucking seen, and you're fucking...you're out signing up for soccer when Dad fucking told you no because you can't even breathe and then you're winning some damn trophy, and you're destroying me at sparring when you're ten and shooting like an action hero when you're twelve and then you're coughing so hard you can't breathe and still fucking laughing at some cartoon you're a hundred years too old for and just...just fuck you, Sammy, okay? Because this, you right here? This is pathetic, and you were never pathetic, not once, not for twenty-four fucking years. You were sick and adorable and fucking pitiful sometimes, and sometimes you were covered in hives swollen snotty most ugly disgusting son of a bitch I've ever seen, but you are fucking fantastic, do you understand me? And I didn't volunteer for an eternity in hell so you could fizzle out like some weakass fucking sparkler. You're my goddamn firework, one of those crackly gold ones, so no, asshole, you're not wasting away. You're better than that. You've fucking thrived when most people would have given up and so, yeah, your asthma makes you a badass. It makes everything you do a fucking miracle and yeah, you're fucking right, it's charming as all hell and I don't ever, ever fucking forget it. You are fucking made to say fuck you, move the fuck over to some mountains, you got that? You going to waste that?”
Sam is quiet for a long time, digging the tines of his fork into his fingertip.
“I liked the speech,” he says, quietly. “I really did.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He pushes his the sandwich around, then wipes his fingers on his napkin, shaking a little. “I can't. I'm so sorry.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe if you help me. I'm sorry.”
“You have to do this alone, Sam. You have to...fuck.” Dean presses his palm against his forehead. “I'm getting a headache.”
Sam laughs a little. “Me too.”
**
Except it turns out Sam was really getting a headache, and maybe eight hours after dropping that bomb of surprise I'm not dead! on his kid wasn't really the best time to try to do some sort of intervention, because the kid had probably had enough for one day, and when Sam gets too stressed he gets migraines, and this one looks like it's trying to destroy him from the inside out.
Sometimes he thinks he's going to get to Hell and find out it's nothing but a big Sam-shaped voodoo doll.
Sam's throwing up, again, then he's completely fucking silent and still besides the wheezing and the heaving chest, and Dean puts his hand on Sam's back and Sam flinches and whispers, “Sorry, sorry.”
Dean hates touch-sensitive migraines with an intensity he usually saves for vampires and hey how about that fucking trickster, because now his fucking kid is balled up on the floor and Dean can't do anything but so, so carefully lower cold washcloths onto his neck and whisper for him to keep breathing.
Sam's in that stage where he can't deal with any noise, not even the sound of Dean's fucking heartbeat, so he's curled up on the bathroom floor with his arms around his head, in fucking agony from the high whine of his own goddamn breathing, when there's a creak of the other bedspring and Ruby is there, perched on the foot of Sam's bed.
Dean gives her a tired wave.
“Where's-” she says, and Sam groans immediately and Dean shoots Ruby a look. Her eyes and mouth go round; she mouths oh. Sick?
“Migraine,” Dean mumbles, and nods for her to follow him outside. It's fucking baking out there again, and he drags his arm across his forehead.
He doesn't know what the hell he wants, except someone to fucking talk to. Someone who knows Sam.
Someone who will look after Sam.
“What's up with him?” Ruby says, and Dean explains fucking all of it because doesn't know what the hell else to do.
Ruby says, “Shit,” in the right places, then says, “Was I...around?”
“I don't know. I don't think so.”
“Why the hell not?” She pulls all that hair hair back in her hand. “I told you I'd keep an eye on him.”
Dean shouldn't think this. Ruby is a fucking demon. (Ruby is Sam's friend, not his.)
Sometimes he kind of likes her.
“I don't think he wanted anyone,” Dean says.
“Well, that's fucked up. If he's this sick, clearly he's going to need to get over that. He's going to have to do something different than he did in this little six-month preview. Not exactly in any state to win a war, is he?”
“You think I don't know that? Fuck.”
She breathes out through her teeth. “Shit. Poor thing.”
“I don't know what to tell him.”
“I know. He's just...bad at being alone.”
“I won't leave him,” Ruby says. “Okay?”
If Sam could even give blondes a second look anymore, Dean would maybe worry.
So, you know, good.
“Do you know anything that might help the headache?” Dean says. “This one's a bitch and he can't keep his meds down.”
Ruby's mouth quirks up. “You want my demon voodoo?”
“No. Ugh.”
“I have something that might work, but I'm not drugging him without his permission, y'know? And I don't think crying on the floor begging for mercy counts as informed consent.”
“He's not crying.”
“He's pretty awesome. I'm still not drugging him without his permission. What do you think I am, Dean?”
He doesn't know, he thinks, as he's watching her write a Get Well Soon card on some hotel stationery. He doesn't know.
**
“Why no Ruby?” Dean says, so low, while he's helping Sam into bed. He's still a little blinded by the pain, but he's better. He's so much better. Sometimes it just takes time.
“Didn't want her. Demon, Dean.” He squints his eyes at the card, but Dean doesn't know if he can read it right now. He picks it up, plays with it for a minute, puts it back down.
Dean slaps a wet washcloth on Sam's forehead. “Did she try to see you?”
He nods. “Was worried about me. Told her to fuck off.”
Dean watches sam shifting around for a while, trying to get comfortable. His bony limbs all the fuck everywhere.
“You've got to do something different,” Dean says, quietly. “You've got to do anything different. You can't fucking die while I'm gone, Sam. You can't. The whole fucking time, no dying.”
“You're not going anywhere, remember?” He sounds so fucking tired.
“Yeah. I know.”
Sam pushes his face into the pillow.
“You've got to do something different,” Dean says. “You have to do whatever it takes.”
Sam sneezes and groans. That's got to hurt, poor damn kid.
“Please, Sammy,” he says. He lies down next to Sam and lowers his voice. “Please. Figure something out. Be my little fucking genius, okay?”
“Fucking genius was supposed to save you.”
What the hell is Dean supposed to say to that?
Thank fucking God Sam speaks. “Just stop getting me ready, okay? Stop fucking training me for the Living W-without Dean Olympics, okay?” He closes his eyes and breathes out. “Just help me for now, okay?”
Oh.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah. Let's help you.”
He fucking deserves that much, you know?
Sam pushes his face into Dean's chest. “Okay,” he says, like he's making this enormous sacrifice for Dean, the little shit. “Just a few months. Then we save you and we go back to normal.”
“Sounds good.”
Sam wheezes softly. “Am I still a badass?”
“Yeah, you're asking for what you need. You gonna eat with me?”
“Mmmhmm.” He closes my eyes. “But sleep now.”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, you're still my badass.”
**
They order pizza and eat together, bite by bite. Sam polishes off four pieces and rolls around happy and full.
“Way to go, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam gives him this enormous smile.
Three more months of that smile, man.
Three months.
That's got to be enough to get him through a long time of hell. (Have you seen that fucking smile?)
In fact...
Dean looks at his damn kid.
(He bets it will last him as long as it takes for his badass to figure out how to get him out. )
“What are you smiling at?” Sam says.
“Nothing. Not you.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Shut up, Simba.”
**
The next morning, Sam forgets to make his bed before breakfast.
Summary: Broward County, Florida. Dean has one Monday, one Tuesday, and one Wednesday. Sam does not.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 3.
Wordcount: 8,093.
Author's Note: Sammyverse--asthma Sam and BFF Winchesters! The title's from Margot and the Nuclear So and So's "Paper Kitten Nightmare," God knows why. I promised this one for a long time. I hope I did an okay job.
--
The fact is, this ritual is their best shot so far. They have a few other things lined up, but this is the most promising. Probably because of the source.
This one is Ruby's idea.
“I have some old as fuck tomes I've been looking through,” she's saying. She's sitting on the floor in front of the bed, cross-legged in front of Sam, twisting string around her fingers. “I can let you see them if you want,” she says. “Don't have 'em with me. Stashed them.”
She holds her hands out to Sam. Sam sticks his fingers in the string and tries to get it wrapped around his fingers in the right way.
“Seriously,” Ruby says. “How the fuck did you never learn how to do this?”
“They play Cat's Cradle in Hell?” Sam says.
“This game's been around since the 1800s. You're not my first time back on earth, y'know?”
Dean says, “The ritual?”
“Runes, burning herbs, holding hands, wait an hour. I've written down all the details. Paper's in my pocket, one sec. Schooling your brother.”
“You need to be there for this thing?” Dean says.
“Would you still do it if I did?” She rolls her eyes. “No. Just you and Sam's fine. Going to be smoky, Sam, so be careful, okay?”
He's still trying to figure out the string. “I burn bones for a living, Ruby.”
“Hey. Just looking out for you.” She looks at Dean. “Someone should.”
Sam tries not to laugh, because Ruby's weird idea that Dean doesn't take good enough care of Sam is really baffling to both of them and Dean finds it fucking infuriating but Sam finds it hilarious, fuck you, Sammy.
“I can take care of my own kid brother, thanks,” Dean says.
“Sure,” she says. “If you're not in Hell in three months. So fucking listen to me when I offer help, all right?”
“All right. Jesus.”
Ruby smiles up at Sam. “There you go. You got it. Now this.” She moves his fingers around.
**
Ruby.
Dean has mixed feelings, how could he fucking not? She's a goddamn demon, and Dean has yet to be really pleased with one, that's for damn sure, but...fuck, you know? She sits on the floor of their motel room and plays cards with his little brother. She shows up on days off and she and Sam practice their shooting and he makes fun of her aim. She's held the kid's damn hand while Dean set up the nebulizer, and he came back from the motel a few weeks ago after some interviews to find Sam and a bad asthma attack curled up with a bowl of soup, Ruby sitting next to him clutching the damn EpiPen just in case he needed it.
She's a fucking demon.
She's the best lead they've got.
It's simultaneously really complicated and really fucking not, because they'll take any help they can fucking get to get out of this thing, and she makes Sam smile, and if Dean dies in three months (on Sam's twenty-fifth goddamn birthday) then Sam might fucking need that.
The problem is that Sam trusts too easily; he always has, because he's never had the option not to. He has to trust all the damn time that people aren't slipping shit into his food that will kill him, or that someone around will help if he fucking stops breathing.
But the kid's still goddamn alive, so who is Dean to tell him it's not working?
**
Anyway. This ritual. It's a cleansing thing, unbinding thing (and fuck if that doesn't make him think about two years ago, when he got that reaper to unbind him and Sam-it's the vaguest of vague memories like everything that happened when he was damn SpiritDean, and he's never told Sam about it, and he doesn't fucking plan to) so here they are in Broward County, Florida on a Monday night, full moon, because this is where and when the stars line up exactly right or something, which would be bad enough for Sam's twitchy lungs (fucking Florida, they've never done a hunt here that didn't leave Sam breathless) and now Sam's five minutes into the hour they have to wait and tilting his head back and saying, “Fuuuuck, I should have taken something.”
“You didn't take anything?”
“I'm an idiot.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Shit.” Sam pushes out a wheezy breath. “Okay. We can do this.”
“Turn your head away, breathe something but the smoke, Jesus.”
Sam twists away to breathe into his shoulder, and he takes he and Dean's clasped together hands and pushes them into his chest. Apparently it's all right when it's Sam's hand, and Dean's just along for the ride. Dean gets it.
“No fucking way we can work your inhaler like this,” Dean says. “If we could even get it out of your pocket.”
“I know.” Sam clears his throat, sneezes a few times. “It's not that bad. We can do this.”
“You sure?”
Sam turns his head back and gives him a look. “Uh, yeah, I think I'm willing to be uncomfortable for an hour if it'll save your life.”
“Hey, I'm not going to argue with that.” Dean's protective, but he's not a fucking madman, you know? An asthma attack in exchange for fifty more years with his kid? Yeah, give him a pen, he'll sign away Sam's lungs for an hour and he can only feel so fucking bad about it, y'know? Have you seen the kid breathe on a daily basis? He's wheezed a lot worse for a lot less. Again, protective, not psychotic. Sam's not exactly fragile. “But if it gets really bad, we stop, okay? I mean it.”
“Maybe it won't take an hour.” Sam ducks his head and coughs. “Maybe we'll get some...sign that it worked.”
Breathing in the middle of sentences already? Well, that's fucking awesome.
“Maybe don't talk,” Dean says.
Sam nods a little.
“You want me to, or just breathe with you for a while?”
Sam shrugs like either's okay, so Dean talks. He talks about how he's getting Sam out of this damn state first thing tomorrow, and hey, Sam, how amazing is it going to be if this works? How fucking incredible and fantastic is everything going to be? And what a fucking idiot Sam is for coming in here all unmedicated after, what, twenty-three years of this shit, at least, and he squeezes Sam's hands and takes breaks just to time his breaths with him. Sam's not doing so great, but he's working hard, taking slow deep breaths and doing all the fucking exercises, and Dean remembers stupid teenage Sam losing his inhaler all the damn time and how they used to get through attacks together then, but that was always on the way to the drug store or the fucking hospital, not cross-legged on some warehouse floor for a scrap of a chance of getting out of a deal (oh, and let's not forget the ever-present threat that trying to get out of this deal will just fucking kill Sam, that's one of Dean's favorite things to remember all of a sudden in the middle of the damn night, and it's a testament to how fucking badly he doesn't want to go to hell that he forgets that for even a fucking second) and God, he's trying not to be mad at Sam but he fucking is, a little, because how fucking hard would it have been to pop a few pills before they headed out the door? Seriously, how fucking hard?
Fucking burning leaves are really getting to him. He has his eyes closed and he's just breathing and breathing and nothing else.
“We've got to stop,” Dean says. “This is bad.”
Sam shakes his head, twists their wrists around to look at his watch. “Ten...more minutes.”
“This is risky enough for you, y'know? Do I need to explain to you again how there's no point getting out of this deal if it kills you in the process? I will seriously sell my soul again just to piss you off, not even because I like you.”
Sam gives him a half-smile. “Nine minutes.”
Dean tries to pull his hands away, but Sam gives him this do not fuck with me look and it's a rare one, which means Dean is fucking scared to shit of it, so he stops and shrugs and lets Sam do what he wants because fuck can Sam get bossy when he wants to.
It doesn't make him much happier with Sam, though, he can tell you that.
“All right,” Dean says. “Nine minutes.”
Thankfully, Sam doesn't seem to get much worse.
Unthankfully, the ritual doesn't seem to have done jack squat.
They don't say that bit out loud. They hold on a few minutes past the hour, just to be damn sure, but then eventually Sam's wheezing too badly to justify their denial so they let go. Dean packs up while Sam takes his inhaler and breathes with his hands on his knees for a while.
Dean doesn't feel like talking or looking at him or listening to him deal with this asthma attack he didn't fucking need to have if he'd just remembered his fucking meds. Dean feels like not the fuck much of anything, and he thinks while they're trudging towards the car that he has a much easier time being mad at Sam now than he used to. It's not that he is mad more often, but that he's more inclined to forgive himself for it, to just let himself be pissed off when Sam is infuriating. Because what the hell does he have to prove, really? He sold his soul for the kid. It's pretty damn clear that he's somewhat fond of him, you know?
Plus, you know, this isn't shaping up to be the night of drunken celebration he was hoping for.
He knows the chances, you know? And he knows they're running out of time. But...but he's not going to fucking die. He's just not. He feels fucking fine, and then here's fucking Sammy over there wheezing like a freight engine and you're telling Dean he's going to leave him here? (You're telling him Sam's going to be fine without him?) Just...no. Okay?
“You're mad at me,” Sam says, softly, when they're halfway back.
“No, not really.”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says. Apologizing for a damn lot.
“Hey, we still have options. Other stuff to try. Tomorrow we'll go back to the library, see what else we can scrounge up, add more items to our list. You're still breathing. It could be worse.”
“It could be worse,” Sam says, quietly.
Dean spends the rest of their Monday night teasing Sam for being a fucking hero and lying next to him on the bed trying to make his chest wheeze like Sammy's (Sam: You're doing it wrong. It's higher-pitched than that. Dean: I have testicles so I can't get that high, Princess) and tearing through every fucking bit of lore they haven't read already (not much) on demon deals and hell hounds.
“Tomorrow we'll get out of this fucking place,” Dean says. “Go somewhere where you're not this allergic. A library in another fucking state, okay?” He rubs Sam's back. “Tomorrow we'll figure it out.”
Sam's drifting off. “Sounds perfect.”
**
Dean wakes up Tuesday morning before the alarm because Sam sounds like absolute motherfucking crap, and Jesus, when did that happen? Dean stirred and rolled over in the middle of the night and Sam was just damn fine, thanks. Christ, they've got to get out of Florida.
He sits up and looks over. Sam is pale and his chest is fucking heaving and he looks...skinny. Shit, how had Dean not noticed that before? Sam's been eating just fine, but they have been jumping from hunt to hunt lately. Maybe he's burning more than he's taking in. Sammy needs more hamburgers in his life.
Anyway, Dean's biggest concern at the moment is that fucking noise coming out of his kid's chest, so he gets up and goes to the bathroom to grab his meds right as the alarm clicks on. Asia. Cool.
Sam startles awake and curls up with a coughing fit. Dean comes to the bed and offers a glass of water. “Rise and shine, Sammy. You doing all right there?”
Sam pushes himself up and rubs his chest. He gives Dean a short nod, like he's approving of his fucking presence or something. “Hey, Dean.”
“Hey.” He forces the water at him. “You sound like shit.”
“Yep. It's fine.” He starts to cough but forces himself to stop, then gets up and into a pair of pants. “C'mon, kiddo.”
“Yeah, don't call me kiddo.”
“We have shit to do. Up up and away. Why don't you have your boots on? You practically always have your boots on.”
“I was sleeping. Even I don't sleep in my boots.”
“Oh. Well.” Sam sneezes and goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth. “Come on, hurry up. We don't have much time.” He hops over and claps his hands on Dean's shoulders. “C'mon. C'mon.”
“We're not going anywhere until you're breathing a little better.”
“Then we'll be here for a really, really long time. Come on. Brush your fucking teeth. We've got places to go. I'm driving.”
“What?”
“I'm driving. Deal with it.”
**
“So!” Sam says, out of fucking nowhere, while he's steering Dean's baby around the town like he was fucking born here. “This is my hundredth and nineteenth Tuesday.”
“Unless you're two and a half, I think you've had more than that.”
And then Sam says, “Are you two and a half? That would explain a lot” at the exact same fucking time Dean does.
“Um,” Dean says. Intelligently.
“My hundredth and nineteenth of this Tuesday,” Sam says. He wheezes out a long breath. “I'm in a time loop. It's all very exciting.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You think I lost this much weight and wrecked my lungs this much overnight? C'mon.” He points out things as they pass. “See that house? Woman's about to run out saying heavens to Betsy!”
“Heavens to Betsy!” she yells
What.
“The quickest way out of town would be down this road here,” Sam says. “But there's a roadblock. You'll see in a second.”
Dean sees in a second.
“I'm going to switch lanes now, because the powerline's about to fall across this one and it would crush us. Watch, here I go!”
Sam changes lanes, and Dean flinches the fuck anyway as the line falls and car horns blare. Sam doesn't press theirs.
“Sam,” he says.
“Mmmm. Oh, and you die at the end of each one, did I mention that?” He sticks his tongue into his cheek.
“What?”
“You die. I wake up. Sorry if I'm kind of cold talking about this. I've explained the whole thing to you a hundred and eighteen times. I've done it mad, I've done it laughing hysterically, for ten in a row I did it crying.”
“And today you're...”
“Today I'm invigorated because today's going to be the last damn one. Made big tremendous gains yesterday.”
Dean can't believe they're talking about this like it's fucking normal. Like it's even fucking possible. “So, uh, you carry over? Because you remember...”
“Yep, I remember everything. And my body stays the same, too. That part's kind of awesome. Push my sleeve up.”
Dean does. Sam's arm-skinny, definitely fucking skinnier-is covered in notes in different colored pen. Websites. Addresses. Names.
“My computer clears its damn history,” Sam explains. “So I keep track of it on myself. Things I've already looked at.”
“Jesus, take a shower.”
He laughs. “Right?”
“Has Ruby been...”
He's answering all of Dean's questions, even Dean's goddamn banter, so quickly, like they've had these exact conversations before (Jesus, Dean, be a little less predictable, kid's gonna get sick of you). “Ruby resets too, and she doesn't come by on her own today. I've summoned her a few times but then I have to explain it all, and usually explaining it to you is exhausting enough.” He stops the car smoothly. “Kid and a ball, hold on.”
“What?”
Sam points to the sidewalk, where a kid chasing a ball runs out into the street.
Dean says, “Dude, have you killed this kid?”
“No, but someone else tried to once and you ran in front of the car.”
“Bizarro-Dean, such a hero.”
“For real.”
Dean just shakes his head for a minute because...well, shit. “So. You sick?”
Sam shrugs. “I'm allergic to Florida, and the trickster won't let me leave. Eating's hard because you keep dying before I can get enough calories down. We've tried to do hospital a dozen times, but half the time you die on the way there and the other half you die mid-treatment and I don't get much out of it.”
“I'm, uh, really inconvenient.”
“Yeah, but I like you.”
“You said trickster?”
“Yep. Found that out last week, after fucking months of no leads.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Now I have a nice big stake and the stuff for a ritual to pinpoint his location. We're just going to the library because the roof's a good spot for it.”
“Sammy?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“I've been taking care of you, yeah? When I wasn't busy dying?”
Sam says, “Yep. Always.”
“Okay. Just...you look sick, man. Past-Dean's been doing a shitty job?”
Sam shrugs a shoulder. “Past-Sam's been doing a shitty job, too. We've been busy trying to keep you alive. It's okay. And I don't want to think about how much worse I would be if you hadn't been helping me when you could.”
“Me neither, yeah.”
“So don't worry.” Sam parks. “Here we are.”
**
By the time they get to the roof of the library, though, Sam's pretty much spent, which is such complete bullshit because the kid's supposed to fucking fight monsters, and here he is breathless from a few flights of stairs, and Dean wants to kick Past-Dean in all hundred-and-nineteen iterations of his balls for not taking better care of Sammy than this.
Sam slices his hand open and starts painting sigils on the roof.
“I would have done it,” Dean says.
Sam doesn't look up from what he's doing, just shakes his head a little and keeps working. He's all stretched out now, across the ground, and Dean can't remember the last time he looked this sick. He kept expecting the librarians to fucking stop him, to ask why his fucking kid wasn't held down with tubes and an oxygen mask.
But nobody did, so yeah, he wants to fucking fuss a little, sue him.
“This must really be wearing you down,” he says.
Sam keeps concentrating. “Almost over now.”
“You need a hospital when this is all finished?”
“Yep.”
“No problem. Out of this fucking town, if we can.”
“Yeah, getting out of here is item number one.” He punctuates that with a few sneezes, then he stops for a minute and lowers his forehead to the ground. Like he's praying. Except he's just wheezing.
Dean says, “Easy there, Simba.”
Sam gives him a look while he shakes his inhaler. “Pulling out the childhood nicknames when I'm not even dying? And I let you get away with Sammy without complaining.”
“Shut up, you fucking love Sammy.”
Sam grins.
“It's your fault you even have all these nicknames, Samalot. I just wanted to call you Wheezy all the time, but you got all angsty about it.”
“Nope, I was fine with Wheezy. You're getting me confused with Dad again. I know the dimples can be confusing. Try to focus on the fact that one of us is alive.” He looks up. “One of us is very definitely not dying on you, okay?”
Dean breathes out and just looks at his damn kid for a second, okay?
“Okay, Wheezy,” he says.
Sam smiles at him, then looks down at the sigil. “It's ready now.” “
**
The ritual points them towards a cafe a few blocks down. They run, and Sam somehow doesn't keel the hell over, and the last thing Dean remembers is the trickster at stake-point, smirking at his baby brother, promising it will all be over, and then everything goes black.
**
He wakes up, the same motel, a different alarm, a clock that says Wednesday, and he feels like he's slept for a thousand years.
Then he looks at his kid in the next bed sleeping through the alarm and thinks that maybe he has.
It definitely didn't end when the trickster said it would, that's for damn sure, because yesterday, Tuesday, whateverthefuckday it was when they tracked down the trickster, Sam was thin but not this thin, not fucking scrawny, not fucking frail, and he was breathing badly but not this badly, and Jesus. Jesus. Dean doesn't give a shit if he was dying every day, because for all the time he was alive he should have been stuffing the kid full of milkshakes and pie and hamburgers and what the fucking fuck, Past-Dean, and what the hell, everyday Sam, how did you get this sick, what the fuck is wrong?
“Sam.” He puts his hand on his shoulder. Knobbly. Cold.
Sam jumps.
Dean sits down on the side of Sam's bed. “Hey, buddy, It's just me.”
Sam pushes himself up and stares at him.
“God, you look like shit,” Dean says.
And then Sam makes this noise in his throat and fucking propels himself into Dean, hands clutching at his shirt like he's drowning, face pushed into Dean's chest. He grabs him so hard it hurts, and Dean says “Whoa whoa whoa, Sammy, it's okay.” He presses his hands against Sam's back. “It's okay.”
Sam's crying. Shit.
“Whoa, hey. Sam.” Dean moves one hand to the back of Sam's head and holds onto his hair. “You're okay. Shhh. It's okay. I know you don't feel well. We're going to fix you all up. We're gonna...I'm not going to die today, okay? We're going to figure this out.”
Sam snuffles into Dean's shirt, nods. His breathing's for shit, now, with the crying, so Dean pulls away just a little and wipes Sam's cheeks off with his palms.
“Okay,” he says. “All right. Jesus. You okay?”
Sam nods.
“You feeling that sick? It's all right.”
He shakes his head. “No, no, I'm fine.”
He's clearly fucking not, but Dean will let that go for now. “I must have died really bad last night, huh?”
Sam looks confused, then coughs out a laugh.
“It's Wednesday,” Sam whispers.
“Yeah.” Dean's stomach squeezes. “Did you have...this isn't your first Wednesday?”
Sam is laughing or crying and Dean can't tell which, and eventually Sam says, “I had six months. I had six fucking months worth of Wednesdays.”
**
Six months.
Six fucking months on his own.
Six months that left Sam with a new bullet hole between his damn ribs and a new scar on his cheek and new muscles in his arms and shoulders (or maybe old muscles that he can see now because the kid is wasting away). Six months of migraines and exorcisms and trickster hunting and barely eating and barely breathing.
Six months of Sam taking his meds like clockwork and being the good little soldier Dean and John taught him to be. Six months of Sam curling up at the end of the day with his grief and his inhaler and an empty bed next to him.
Six months of just Sam being the Sammiest thing in the world and he barely made it.
**
He can't ignore the way Sammy looks at him whenever he's out of arm's reach-like he's going to fucking disappear on him, like he's already disappeared on the kid for six months and Jesus, this is what six months did to him. Six months.
Dean had hoped Sam and his shitty lungs would live fifty times that. More. (That was the fucking point. Dean was so, so, so stupid.)
Dean wants to get them the fuck out of this fucking town, but Sam gets all nervous at the suggestion and says he has to do a neb treatment first. “It's just...routine,” he says. “It's what I do. Okay?” Dean nods and gives the kid some space while Sam drags the machine and the mouthpiece around and makes the bed with perfect hospital corners.
He's seen this, is the thing. Sam gets like this. It was always something he and John shrugged their shoulders at and passed off as just something about Sammy, the way he has to brush his teeth before and after he takes his night meds and has to chew each bite of food a certain number of times and gets really agitated if he doesn't have time to check three times that his gun is loaded-three times, always three times-before a hunt.
And then Dean went to visit Sam at Stanford and Jess had all these coping mechanisms in place for him, ways to help him feel like he had everything controlled and in order when really his health and his grades were slipping, hard, and Dean wanted to punch himself in the face for not realizing that this shit made his kid miserable, and Jess had been in his life all of six months at that point and here she was making him feel so much better, here she was telling Sammy, who'd wanted nothing more in his whole life than to be normal, this isn't normal, let's help you. (And why the fuck had Dean never thought of those words when seven-year-old Sam was crying in gym class because he had to sit out Capture the Flag or seventeen-year-old Sam was breaking down late one night in the backseat of the Impala, whispering to Dean that he hated this life more than he could physically stand? Stop trying to tell him that the shit he has to do is normal and stop trying to tell him that it's good enough. This isn't normal. Let's help you. It doesn't mean you change the situation, doesn't even mean you can, but you can set his alarm exactly on the hour just the way he likes it and leave him alone after he does the dishes so he can arrange and rearrange the silverware drawer perfectly and you can help him figure out how many hits of his inhaler to take when and you can hug him and tell him that he doesn't have to love hunting, he just has help them fucking hold their family together. Let us help you, Sam.)
So Dean was going to be better. That was the whole plan. And then he saw Sam again during the month he was on anti-anxiety meds, before his body up and decided it was allergic to them, and he was happy and then he was off them and wound-up all the time again and worrying and counting his pills five hundred times and Dean has just been trying to keep the kid together and that's been fine because anything Sam needs is fine, and as long as Sam gets a reasonable amount of time to get his shit in order and Dean lets him unload on him for a while when he gets too stressed he's okay and he's calm and breathes, and way to fucking drop the ball, Dean, way to plan to bail out on your kid on his fucking birthday. His twenty-fifth birthday, a perfect solid number, a square, Sam should fucking love this birthday.
“Why no eating?” Dean says, quietly.
Sam shrugs a shoulder, then comes and sits all close to Dean and wraps his arms around, him, face-plants into Dean's shoulder. Dean chuckles a little and says, “You're such a girl. I didn't even miss you.”
“You had me with you the whole time, jackass.”
“Yep.”
“You never had to be alone.” Sam breathes out. “Good.”
Dean looks down at the top of this kid's head, and the thing is that he never fucking forgets hellfirehellhoundsdemonsSamSamSamherealone but he fucking forgets, he forgets all the time that on top of hellfirehellhoundsdemons he gets no Sam. It's not just Sam who's going to be alone.
He keeps making himself forget that.
“I'm not going to die,” Dean says, and if he didn't already know he was panicking, he can hear it in his voice. “We're going to get me out of this. I'm not going to die.”
Sam sits up. “Hey. Hey, it's okay.”
“I'm not going to fucking die, Sam, okay?”
“Okay. All right. I believe you.”
And now Sam hugs him. Sam fucking hugs Dean to his chest like Sam is big or something but Sam is so thin.
**
Dean waits until they're sitting in a diner-a diner in Georgia, thank you very much-and Sam's smiled and shaken his head at the waitress when she asked what he wanted before he tries asking again.
“Why no eating?”
“I had that protein thing in the car.”
“Yep. You have those a lot?”
He plays with his napkin, sleeves pulled over his hands like mittens. “Every morning.”
Dean can't stop watching his hands. Shit, Sam used to do that. He remembers now. When he was a little little kid, John was nervous to have him out in public where little kids were eating crap Sam couldn't and putting their hands on things, and when they were still really skittish about Sam eating anything more than baby food they'd go to restaurants and John would order something really really safe for himself and Dean and then take out the little lunch he packed ahead of time for Sammy and he'd tell Sam to put his sleeves over his hands if he had to touch anything else, and he'd keep watch and make sure Sam didn't die, he'd keep Sam the fuck alive, and Dean would make sure Sam just kept fucking chewing, because making sure Sam ate enough was always Dean's job. Making sure Sam was okay, that was Dean.
“Lunch?” Dean says.
“Salad and these chicken things I buy all the time.”
“Dinner?”
“Same.”
“Always?”
He nods a little.
“C'mon,” Dean says. “Why?”
“Guess how many times you have to go into anaphylactic shock all by yourself before you decide it's really not worth it to take risks?”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek. “How many?”
“Once.”
Yeah, Dean believes him.
Sam tries to change the subject, the little shit, and reaches out his sleeve-colored hands and twists Dean's fingers and says, “Can't believe you're here.”
“Bitch.”
“Shut up.”
“Food. Talk about it.”
Sam brings his hand up, messes up his stupid hair. “I was just being careful, you know? Eating. Just...carefully.”
“Not enough, though. Look at you.”
Sam shrugs and doesn't meet his eyes. “It stresses me out.”
“Even when you know it's safe?”
“I never know. Something always could have been fucked up or tampered with or...fuck, I don't know, but it's...”
“All right. Breathe.” Dean slides his water glass across the table. Sam hesitates, but he does drink.
“All right,” Dean says, quietly. “It's okay.”
“I had to be careful,” Sam says. “I had to make all these rules, and...I had to survive, you know? That was just...it was way more important than whether I liked what I was eating or whether I was too skinny, you know? I just had to survive and get out there and kill things and save you.”
“Jesus,” Dean breathes.
Sam looks up.
Dean shakes his head a little. “You just...just, fuck, you sound like Dad right now.”
**
Dean picks up the phone the second Sam's in the shower. “I thought we talked about this,” he tells Bobby. “If...when I die, you're supposed to look after the little bastard, haven't we done this little chat?”
“You want to give me some context here, boy?”
This would be a lot easier if Bobby could remember the fact that he let the kid waste away for six months. “You promised me you'd keep an eye on Sam. How sick would you let him get before you stepped in?”
“Where the hell is this coming from? You think I'd let the kid wheeze himself half to death alone in some hospital? Do I look like John fucking Winchester to you?”
Dean breathes out. “I'm not even talking...not just asthma, all right? Sam. The entire fucking entity of Sam.” And shit, he remembers Sam trying to make this distinction to him once-Sam after a goddamn panic attack trying to explain to Dean that sometimes what he needed wasn't help with the asthma but with the shit the asthma did to him. He needed help sleeping through nightmares about suffocating or help forgiving himself for days when he physically could not drag himself to class. He needed help sometimes, damn it, and where the fuck was Bobby these past six months?
Bobby says, “Dean, you know I'll always be around to help Sam whenever he wants me.”
Dean pauses, the tip of his tongue against his front teeth.
Oh.
**
“Why didn't you let Bobby help?”
Sam's toweling off his narrow fucking body. “What?”
“Don't what me, asshole.”
Sam wheezes and drags his arm under his nose. “Because he didn't get it.”
“Then explain it to him.”
“I got tired, Dean. You think I really want to explain the mechanics of oxygen deprivation when I'm fucking oxygen deprived?”
All right. So before Dean checks out, he's writing Bobby a massive fucking email. That's fine. No problem.
(Except he's not fucking dying so whatever.)
“What could he even do?” Sam says. He's setting up another neb treatment even though he doesn't sound too hideous, because this is his routine. After he's done, he's going to do a hundred push-ups. He's explained this all to Dean.
“Weep at your bedside. I don't know. Whatever the fuck you need. Whatever the fuck I do. Keep you alive.”
“I don't want Bobby sleeping in the next bed and rubbing my back through an asthma attack, you know?” He snaps the pieces of the nebulizer together. “The only thing Bobby could do is feed me some miracle cure, and until we find out what the fuck that is, he's just going to be worrying and stressing me out for nothing.”
Dean sits down heavily next to him on the bed.
“Sam, I just...”
Sam has the decency to look sheepish, at least.
“Can you just, can you not...I mean, just...shit, Sam. I want to fucking duct tape all the parts of you all together. Why do you have to just...ugh.” He wraps his hand up in Sam's shirt.
Sam watches. “It's part of my charm,” he says. “Staying alive against all the odds and stuff.”
Dean breathes out and doesn't look up.
Sam is quiet. “Guess it's not so charming when you're not around to see me do it.”
“No. No, it's not.” Dean straightens up and runs his hand over his mouth. “All right. We've got to figure out coping mechanisms and shit. Just, get formulas in place so that if...you know. If I don't get out of this. So you'll do better than this.”
“Dean...”
“No. We need to start making habits, get you on the right track. So do the neb treatment and then we're out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“You're going to eat, Sam. You're going to fucking eat.”
**
Fucking skinny Sam looks like a fucking skinny sixteen-year-old, sitting slumped across the booth from him with his hands all in his sleeves and bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Just taste it,” Sam says. “Please?”
Dean shakes his head so hard it hurts his neck.
“Please.”
“You have to do this on your own. Come on. We nagged the fuck out of the waitress. Tuna on toast. Doesn't get much simpler than that. You can do it.”
Sam shakes his head.
“Yeah, you can. EpiPen's right here.” Dean takes the EpiPen out of his pocket and rolls it across the table to Sam.
“Would you give it to me? If I needed it?”
“You think I'm going to let you fucking die to prove a point? Of course I'd give it to you. You're not going to need it. Eat.”
“Just...you first. Okay?”
“No. I will let you sit here for fucking hours to prove a point. And we're not leaving until you eat.”
Sam's nostrils flare. “I'm twenty-fucking-five-”
“Four. No birthday yet.”
“--Jesus. If I want to leave, I fucking leave. You're gonna tackle me?”
“Stop yelling.”
“Fuck you!” Sam drops his head into his hands, gripping his hair hard.
People are fucking staring, and this might be a little harder than Dean bargained for.
Because shit, his kid is really scared. His kid fucking fights monsters.
Dean sighs and scoots his chair in closer to the table, reaches across and gets Sam's plate. Sam looks up hopefully, but Dean doesn't eat anything, just takes apart one half the sandwich and pokes through it with Sam's fork.
“Don't see any peanuts hiding in here,” he says.
“It's not like I need a whole peanut,” Sam says. “And if it's cross-contaminated with shrimp-”
“Sammy.”
“Why can't I just eat what I was eating?”
“Because fucking look at you, Sam.”
“I'm getting by.”
“Yeah, well, what if getting by isn't enough for me, did you fucking think about that? What if I didn't sell my soul so that you would survive, but so that you could fucking be Sam again, and Sam isn't a fucking slave to his fucked-up little body, all right? Sam is bigger than all of that. That's why you're fucking big, Sammy.”
“That doesn't even make sense.”
“Yeah, well, it would if you'd grown up next to you for twenty-five-”
“Four. You had it right.”
“--fucking years. Do you know fucking infuriating you are? You are the most frustrating thing I've ever fucking seen, and you're fucking...you're out signing up for soccer when Dad fucking told you no because you can't even breathe and then you're winning some damn trophy, and you're destroying me at sparring when you're ten and shooting like an action hero when you're twelve and then you're coughing so hard you can't breathe and still fucking laughing at some cartoon you're a hundred years too old for and just...just fuck you, Sammy, okay? Because this, you right here? This is pathetic, and you were never pathetic, not once, not for twenty-four fucking years. You were sick and adorable and fucking pitiful sometimes, and sometimes you were covered in hives swollen snotty most ugly disgusting son of a bitch I've ever seen, but you are fucking fantastic, do you understand me? And I didn't volunteer for an eternity in hell so you could fizzle out like some weakass fucking sparkler. You're my goddamn firework, one of those crackly gold ones, so no, asshole, you're not wasting away. You're better than that. You've fucking thrived when most people would have given up and so, yeah, your asthma makes you a badass. It makes everything you do a fucking miracle and yeah, you're fucking right, it's charming as all hell and I don't ever, ever fucking forget it. You are fucking made to say fuck you, move the fuck over to some mountains, you got that? You going to waste that?”
Sam is quiet for a long time, digging the tines of his fork into his fingertip.
“I liked the speech,” he says, quietly. “I really did.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He pushes his the sandwich around, then wipes his fingers on his napkin, shaking a little. “I can't. I'm so sorry.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe if you help me. I'm sorry.”
“You have to do this alone, Sam. You have to...fuck.” Dean presses his palm against his forehead. “I'm getting a headache.”
Sam laughs a little. “Me too.”
**
Except it turns out Sam was really getting a headache, and maybe eight hours after dropping that bomb of surprise I'm not dead! on his kid wasn't really the best time to try to do some sort of intervention, because the kid had probably had enough for one day, and when Sam gets too stressed he gets migraines, and this one looks like it's trying to destroy him from the inside out.
Sometimes he thinks he's going to get to Hell and find out it's nothing but a big Sam-shaped voodoo doll.
Sam's throwing up, again, then he's completely fucking silent and still besides the wheezing and the heaving chest, and Dean puts his hand on Sam's back and Sam flinches and whispers, “Sorry, sorry.”
Dean hates touch-sensitive migraines with an intensity he usually saves for vampires and hey how about that fucking trickster, because now his fucking kid is balled up on the floor and Dean can't do anything but so, so carefully lower cold washcloths onto his neck and whisper for him to keep breathing.
Sam's in that stage where he can't deal with any noise, not even the sound of Dean's fucking heartbeat, so he's curled up on the bathroom floor with his arms around his head, in fucking agony from the high whine of his own goddamn breathing, when there's a creak of the other bedspring and Ruby is there, perched on the foot of Sam's bed.
Dean gives her a tired wave.
“Where's-” she says, and Sam groans immediately and Dean shoots Ruby a look. Her eyes and mouth go round; she mouths oh. Sick?
“Migraine,” Dean mumbles, and nods for her to follow him outside. It's fucking baking out there again, and he drags his arm across his forehead.
He doesn't know what the hell he wants, except someone to fucking talk to. Someone who knows Sam.
Someone who will look after Sam.
“What's up with him?” Ruby says, and Dean explains fucking all of it because doesn't know what the hell else to do.
Ruby says, “Shit,” in the right places, then says, “Was I...around?”
“I don't know. I don't think so.”
“Why the hell not?” She pulls all that hair hair back in her hand. “I told you I'd keep an eye on him.”
Dean shouldn't think this. Ruby is a fucking demon. (Ruby is Sam's friend, not his.)
Sometimes he kind of likes her.
“I don't think he wanted anyone,” Dean says.
“Well, that's fucked up. If he's this sick, clearly he's going to need to get over that. He's going to have to do something different than he did in this little six-month preview. Not exactly in any state to win a war, is he?”
“You think I don't know that? Fuck.”
She breathes out through her teeth. “Shit. Poor thing.”
“I don't know what to tell him.”
“I know. He's just...bad at being alone.”
“I won't leave him,” Ruby says. “Okay?”
If Sam could even give blondes a second look anymore, Dean would maybe worry.
So, you know, good.
“Do you know anything that might help the headache?” Dean says. “This one's a bitch and he can't keep his meds down.”
Ruby's mouth quirks up. “You want my demon voodoo?”
“No. Ugh.”
“I have something that might work, but I'm not drugging him without his permission, y'know? And I don't think crying on the floor begging for mercy counts as informed consent.”
“He's not crying.”
“He's pretty awesome. I'm still not drugging him without his permission. What do you think I am, Dean?”
He doesn't know, he thinks, as he's watching her write a Get Well Soon card on some hotel stationery. He doesn't know.
**
“Why no Ruby?” Dean says, so low, while he's helping Sam into bed. He's still a little blinded by the pain, but he's better. He's so much better. Sometimes it just takes time.
“Didn't want her. Demon, Dean.” He squints his eyes at the card, but Dean doesn't know if he can read it right now. He picks it up, plays with it for a minute, puts it back down.
Dean slaps a wet washcloth on Sam's forehead. “Did she try to see you?”
He nods. “Was worried about me. Told her to fuck off.”
Dean watches sam shifting around for a while, trying to get comfortable. His bony limbs all the fuck everywhere.
“You've got to do something different,” Dean says, quietly. “You've got to do anything different. You can't fucking die while I'm gone, Sam. You can't. The whole fucking time, no dying.”
“You're not going anywhere, remember?” He sounds so fucking tired.
“Yeah. I know.”
Sam pushes his face into the pillow.
“You've got to do something different,” Dean says. “You have to do whatever it takes.”
Sam sneezes and groans. That's got to hurt, poor damn kid.
“Please, Sammy,” he says. He lies down next to Sam and lowers his voice. “Please. Figure something out. Be my little fucking genius, okay?”
“Fucking genius was supposed to save you.”
What the hell is Dean supposed to say to that?
Thank fucking God Sam speaks. “Just stop getting me ready, okay? Stop fucking training me for the Living W-without Dean Olympics, okay?” He closes his eyes and breathes out. “Just help me for now, okay?”
Oh.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah. Let's help you.”
He fucking deserves that much, you know?
Sam pushes his face into Dean's chest. “Okay,” he says, like he's making this enormous sacrifice for Dean, the little shit. “Just a few months. Then we save you and we go back to normal.”
“Sounds good.”
Sam wheezes softly. “Am I still a badass?”
“Yeah, you're asking for what you need. You gonna eat with me?”
“Mmmhmm.” He closes my eyes. “But sleep now.”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, you're still my badass.”
**
They order pizza and eat together, bite by bite. Sam polishes off four pieces and rolls around happy and full.
“Way to go, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam gives him this enormous smile.
Three more months of that smile, man.
Three months.
That's got to be enough to get him through a long time of hell. (Have you seen that fucking smile?)
In fact...
Dean looks at his damn kid.
(He bets it will last him as long as it takes for his badass to figure out how to get him out. )
“What are you smiling at?” Sam says.
“Nothing. Not you.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Shut up, Simba.”
**
The next morning, Sam forgets to make his bed before breakfast.