Sammy Left the Water Running
Title: Sammy Left the Water Running
Summary: Stanford. John stops by to see how Sam's doing. Not so great, it turns out.
Warnings/Spoilers: None of 'em.
Wordcount: .3,391
Author's Note: Sammyverse--asthma Sam and BFF Winchesters, but Dean's not in this one except on the phone. We will return to your regularly scheduled season 4 soonish, but sometimes we need a break, yeah?
--
John goes to Stanford once a month, for one day. The 9th, if he can. It feels casual enough, easier to explain away, if he's caught, than coming on the first or over long weekends.
Dean knows he goes but they rarely discuss it, the same way they rarely discuss the trips that John knows Dean makes when Sam's sick or bored or Dean's anywhere close to the west coast. Although, the two are very different beasts, because John never talks to Sam. Sam is the one he's always worried will catch him. John makes his trips regardless of whether Dean's been recently.
John needs to see for himself.
It's October 9th of Sam's sophomore year, and this is John's 13th such trip. He knows Sam's class schedule (first class on Tuesdays is a 10 AM Hemingway class) and his dorm (a suite with two other boys, neither of which Sam lived with last year, so they must not have been close) and he waits in the parking lot, cigarette in his hand, where he will be able to see, fifty feet from him, the unmistakable shape of his youngest son walking from his dorm to his class.
That's all he needs.
It doesn't happen.
Sammy isn't one to be late, but John gives him ten minutes anyway before he curses under his breath and heads to Sam's dorm. He's prepared to see his boy asleep, maybe hungover, wasting the education that was so damn important to him. Hell, he's even prepared to see the kid sick, because it's happened before; a few months ago, Sam missed a day of his summer class and John panicked and called Sam from a payphone. Sam answered, sounding breathless but not dreadful, and John hung up.
He calls today and gets no answer.
He's about to find a way to look into the kid's damn window when he decides, just to calm himself down, just to eliminate it as a possibility, to call the Stanford hospital.
He remembers halfway through describing Sam that they would have his real name.
“Sam Winchester,” the receptionist says. “Yes, he's been here for four days.”
Four days.
**
Sam looks like hell.
He's thin and bruised, free of wires and tubes aside from an IV, just saline. He's asleep, but John waits until he's rolled himself with his back to the hallway before he stands by his window for any length of time.
The doctor is explaining what the hell happened to Sam, which is basically that he had a bad cold he was keeping under control until he ate something he shouldn't have and had an allergic reaction that essentially ran him utterly into the ground and let the cold morph into something worse. The fever's gone, and the reaction, though absolutely hideous, from the doctor's description, left no permanent damage.
“Peanuts?” John says.
“That's what he thinks. Something he thought was safe. He managed to call 911 himself, but the reaction hit very quickly. He was unconscious for most of the first day and we kept him intubated for a few hours after that. We've been impressed with his breathing, considering his asthma, but there have been rough spots. Yesterday went fairy smoothly. We're sending him home today.”
“Home?”
“He just needs rest now. And...hospital-acquired infections can be very tough, especially for an asthmatic. We like to get them in and out as quickly as possible.”
Sam once caught pneumonia from a half-hour stay while Dean was getting stitches, so John isn't about to argue that point.
But...home.
“Who's he going home with?” John says. Maybe Dean knew about all of this. Maybe Dean is coming to get him.
“He said he had someone to look after him,” the doctor says. “Otherwise we wouldn't let him go.”
**
John waits around to see who picks Sam up, but instead he sees, a few hours later, a nurse pushing him out in a wheelchair and helping him into a taxi. Even from his distance, at the back of the parking lot, John can tell his boy is shaking and leaning heavily on the nurse. His roommates are willing to watch over him, but not to pick him up? Sam doesn't even look like he could make it in and out of the cab on his own.
The taxi turns the wrong way out of the parking lot, and that about settles it for John. He follows. Halfway through, he realizes he recognizes the route; the taxi is taking them to the same motel John checked into late last night.
A motel where, as far as Sam knows, there is absolutely no one to look after him.
There isn't a choice to be made. He parks and, as soon as the taxi stops, nods to the driver and opens Sam's door.
John doesn't have to say anything because Sam doesn't hesitate even for half a second. His arms are up, immediately, wrapped around John's neck, and he leans against him as he maneuvers himself out of the taxi. John gets him out and disentangles himself to pay the driver, and Sam leans against the car with his arms around his chest. His legs are shaking, and John keeps an arm across him like a harness.
“Okay.” He puts both hands on Sam, one on his shoulder and the other snaked around to grip his waist, and he says, “Not far. Not far to go at all, Sammy.”
And Christ, Sam feels so fucking frail, his entire body shivering, and John doesn't think he's ever seen Sam like this. Even at his sickest, he's fought for some kind of independence, but now, John doesn't think he'd fight if John outright scooped him up.
Which, after Sam stops abruptly and starts to cough, hard, his forehead nestled into John's neck, every bone in the kid's damn body shaking, he does. Sam is warm and wheezy and God, the shaking.
By the time John gets him into the bed, he's crying a little.
John pushes his hair back. “What's wrong?”
He breathes out, long and slow. “Just so sick.”
“I know.” He rubs Sam's back. Shit, but he's thin. “You're getting better. We're going to get you better.” He thumbs a tear off of Sam's cheek and says, “Christ, Sammy, why were you coming to a motel? How the hell were you going to get better on your own? Have you even called Dean?”
Sam hugs his pillow to his chest. “Didn't tell Dean.”
“Okay. It's all right.”
“Almost died,” Sam says. “Almost died and didn't get to tell Dean,” and then he's crying hard, shaking, muffling it into his pillow.
He gets to do this right now.
John knows what to do when his boys cry for bad reasons, but these, these good reasons...all he can do is rub circles on Sam's back and say, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you're sick,” over and over.
**
John's used to seeing a whole host of frightening as hell symptoms plow through his boy, but what isn't normal, what's scaring the hell out of him now, is how shaky Sam is. It's every damn muscle, down to his feet, and he can barely sit up on his own, let alone drag himself to the bathroom or hold a cup to his lips, and John has no idea how the hell the doctors thought a couple of college students back at Stanford would be able to give Sam what he needs right now.
They spend most of their first day back at the motel sitting up against the headboard, Sam crammed up against John's side. He's quivering and rubbing at his eyes and coughing like his lungs are clawing up to his throat, and John just cups his cheek and kisses his forehead and thinks about hospital-acquired infections and worries. But Sam's temperature stays down. He refuses food and curls up against John's side like it's his only hiding place.
He doesn't ask for Dean.
**
Sam wakes up the next morning wheezing too hard to talk, and his eyes are red-rimmed even though he hasn't been crying anymore. He's so allergic. He's always like this for a few weeks after a bad reaction--hypersensitive even by his standards, and that's why he needs someone to watch him and comfort him and fucking take care of him, this is why he is not allowed to curl up in a dirty motel room like a condemned man. Christ, Sammy.
So John has a call to make, but he doesn't like not touching Sam right now, not when Sam can't hold himself steady, so he hoists his sleeping broken bird of a boy into his arms and paces with him while he talks, the phone against one shoulder, Sam's sweaty little head against the other.
"Where are we going?" Sam wheezes out, while John's putting him into his shoes.
"Shhh. Somewhere safe."
"Home?"
"No. You're going to stay with me for a while."
Sam nods, and in the car, John says, for the dozenth time, "What were you thinking, Sammy?"
"I don't know."
"What were you going to do in a motel all by yourself?"
"Sleep. Just sleep."
"How were you going to take your meds, or get yourself some water, or eat? You needed help, Sam. Why didn't you go home? How could you rely on the miracle that I would find you?"
But then Sammy gives this tiny wheeze of a sigh and shakily scoots over, rests his head on John's knee. John shoves his hand into his hair.
Maybe it wasn't a miracle.
Maybe this is what happens when you have a sick son.
"I didn't care if anyone found me," Sam says.
**
This hotel costs as much per night as the shitty motel did for a week and a half, but it comes with vacuumed floors and a big soft bathrobe for Sam, so John considers it money well spent. He helps Sam straight into bed and sets up the nebulizer while he drifts off, then slips the mouthpiece between Sam's teeth and takes out his phone for the other call he has to make today.
Text. Text will be easier.
Best to just be straightforward. With Sam. A little sick. Will be a few days.
Dean's response comes in half a minute later. Hospital?
No. It isn't technically a lie, and John tamps it down anyway by telling himself that if Sam wanted Dean here, he would be asking for him.
He ok?
Yes. Go to TX and check up on twin spirits. Will keep you updated.
Yessir Dean texts back, and a minute later, John hears Sam's phone vibrate on the nightstand. He picks it up. It is, of course, a text from Dean.
feel better, sammer. stay big.
John will not feel guilty, he won't, because if this works out the way it should, he and both his boys will be making homemade damn ice cream a week from now to celebrate Sam's being all the hell better before they all three drive off into the horizon, so right now he just needs to get them through it. He just needs to get Sammy through it, and Sammy is so damn sick.
So he sits next to the bed and strokes Sam's hair and whispers to him all the things they'll put in the ice cream, how safe it will all be for him, how no one's ever going to let him have a reaction ever again. Sam cries into his pillow and shakes a little less.
**
Sam is a little better the next day. He wears a big sweater of John's and sits at the table in the motel room, knees feet drawn up onto the chair. He draws, like he used to when he was a sick kid, and twists his hair around his fingers.
"Did you tell Dean?" he says, finally. "He texted."
"I told him you were sick. Didn't give details."
"Good."
"I kind of got the feeling you didn't want me to."
Sam shrugs a little. "He'd be mad."
"No, Sam. He wouldn't be."
Sam shrugs again, clearly doesn't believe him.
"We know that these happen, Sammy. That they're not your fault."
"Not for the reaction. For the going off alone thing."
Well. John can't argue with that.
"Are you going to tell me why?" John says.
"Are you going to let it go if I don't?"
"No."
Sam gives this wheezy sigh, runs his hand through his hair.
"They got into my food," he says. "Cross-contaminated the shit out of it. I told them not to. They didn't mean to, but they weren't careful. I told them not to, Dad. I gave them these big talks I got off the internet. I explained all of it to them. It was scary as fucking shit, but I played the little sick kid like I'm supposed to and told them where the epipens were and how to know if I need help, and one of them was fucking home when I had the reaction and he just panicked and didn't help."
John is going through Sam's roommates' names in his head. He is visioning ripping them from limb to limb.
He is gripping the fuck out of his boy's hand.
"What did they do?" John says.
"Same knife to use peanut butter and my fucking regular butter, I think. So I cooked with it and almost fucking killed myself."
"You're living in a house with goddamn peanut butter?"
"It's their house too, Dad."
"And not having peanut butter would fucking kill them?"
"Stop yelling." He's shaking, hard. "You're acting like Dean."
"I'm just..."
"I can't take this," Sam says. He sinks his forehead to the table. "I can't go home."
"You don't have to. You don't ever have to. I'll go over and get your stuff and we'll get you the fuck out of here, okay?"
Sam lifts his head up and nods.
John can't believe it was that easy.
"We'll get you away," he says. "Dean and I will take care of you forever."
"Okay. Okay."
John makes him soup and a sandwich, and Sam, John's fucking hero, eats.
Time to call Dean.
**
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Dean says. "No. I don't care how fucking sick he is, he's not dropping out of school."
John looks at Sam fast asleep and hisses, "Are you ordering me around, Dean?"
"Do you have any idea how much he wants this? How fucking badly he wants to go to those stupid classes and learn about abnormal psychology and postmodern literature--"
"How the fuck can something be postmodern?"
"--fuck if I know, but Sam does. This shit is important to him. It's so fucking important."
"He was really fucking sick, Dean."
"You said he wasn't in the hospital," Dean says, and fuck does John wish that Sam hadn't begged him not to give Dean details, because he knows that anaphylaxis, intubation, goddamn fucking coma would have Dean agreeing to electroshock Sammy if it would keep him safe. Pull him out of school? This isn't a decision anymore than helping him out of the cab was. This is necessary. This isn't selfish. This is for Sam.
"If you do this, I will never forgive you," Dean says. "I will travel around and hunt with the world's most miserable Sam and I will take care of him and love him up and try to convince him that the world really does want him to be happy, he just can't fucking have it, and I will do it all without ever, ever fucking speaking to you."
"How the fuck aren't you scared for him?"
"I'm scared out of my fucking mind, but I'm always scared out of my fucking mind for him. How sick he was this week doesn't change anything."
"He wants to drop out, Dean."
"Yeah, after I'm done with him, he won't."
"And I'm the one pushing him?"
"He's shaken up, Dad, he hasn't fucking changed. He's wanted to go to college since he was a fucking two-year-old tearing through those I Can Read Even Though My Six-Year-Old Brother Goddamn Can't books. He's the smartest thing either of us has ever met, and he's not wasting that getting his asthmatic little head blown off during some hunt. No."
"He's not safe at school, either."
"No. But he's happy."
"He's not happy."
"Ask him about what he's studying and tell me I'm wrong."
"It was a reaction, okay? A really fucking bad one, because someone he lived with fucked up."
Dean breathes out.
Takes a minute.
John thinks he has him.
Dean says, "Then the solution is to get him his own fucking apartment, not to pull him out of school."
Shit.
"Put him on the phone," Dean says, and John doesn't argue.
**
John doesn't leave the room for Sam's half of the call, and Sam doesn't ask him to. He just sits on the edge of the bed and scuffs his feet against the ground while he talks.
"Please," he says. "But...please. Okay?"
"Fuck, Dean, I was so fucking scared."
"Yeah."
"Yeah. It's not as hard to breathe. Not as shaky. I ate some."
"Like a week. So much fucking catching up to do. Freaking out."
John sits next to him on the bed, puts his hand on top of Sam's head.
"I don't know. I don't think I can. I'm too sick. I was fucking crazy coming out here. Toofuckingsick to be alone."
"Uh, yeah. She's in my psych class. I had coffee with her last week."
There's a girl?
"Yeah." Sam nods a little. "Yeah, she is."
And then Sam laughs a bit at whatever Dean says, clears his throat. "It's like...modern isn't modern, it's modernism, this period in literature, around the 20s or so. You know Fitzgerald? Like him. Ezra Pound, he's a good example. The one with the hair. So postmodern is just after that. Really it's post-World War II, post-Holocaust. Will probably be post 9/11, but it's kind of early to tell. My professor thinks that'll be big."
Shit.
**
A week later, he's moving Sam into his new apartment.
"So they gave the chimps two choices," Sam's saying. "This fake-Mom that was all cuddly, warm, felt real, and this one that was cold and fake but had food. And the chimps would run over to get food when they really needed it, and then run back and hide in these moms that couldn't even do anything. Just to feel safe. It's the most tragic fucking thing. They practically starved just to feel safe, and these fake moms, they couldn't even protect them."
John's cooking while Sam organizes his shelves. Making him a stockpile of food so he won't have to find his own for a while.
"I just can't get over that they ripped them from their moms in the first place," Sam says. He's arranging his books alphabetically, not looking at John. "Fucking cruel."
John cries quietly into his casserole and Sam has no idea.
**
He and Sam play a few games of checkers, and then it's time for John to go.
He hugs him for a really fucking long time. Sam pushes his face into his chest.
"Love you," John says.
"Love you too. A lot. Thank you for...everything."
John kisses the top of his head. "If you ever change your mind."
"I know." Sam pulls away. He's wheezing. "Love to Dean."
"I will." He gives Sam's collarbone a little flick. "Do something about that, okay?"
Sam nods. "I'll be fine."
"I know." He rubs his knuckles over Sam's cheek. "You call if you need anything, okay?"
He nods.
"Bobby's in Las Vegas right now. Call him if you need someone."
"Okay."
"One of us will be out to check on you in a few weeks. You take care until then, okay? Do your homework. Get some sleep. Don't make yourself sick worrying about any of this. Have coffee with that girl again."
"Yessir."
It's the first time he's said that all week.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and opens the door. Says, "Bye, Sammer. Be big."
Summary: Stanford. John stops by to see how Sam's doing. Not so great, it turns out.
Warnings/Spoilers: None of 'em.
Wordcount: .3,391
Author's Note: Sammyverse--asthma Sam and BFF Winchesters, but Dean's not in this one except on the phone. We will return to your regularly scheduled season 4 soonish, but sometimes we need a break, yeah?
--
John goes to Stanford once a month, for one day. The 9th, if he can. It feels casual enough, easier to explain away, if he's caught, than coming on the first or over long weekends.
Dean knows he goes but they rarely discuss it, the same way they rarely discuss the trips that John knows Dean makes when Sam's sick or bored or Dean's anywhere close to the west coast. Although, the two are very different beasts, because John never talks to Sam. Sam is the one he's always worried will catch him. John makes his trips regardless of whether Dean's been recently.
John needs to see for himself.
It's October 9th of Sam's sophomore year, and this is John's 13th such trip. He knows Sam's class schedule (first class on Tuesdays is a 10 AM Hemingway class) and his dorm (a suite with two other boys, neither of which Sam lived with last year, so they must not have been close) and he waits in the parking lot, cigarette in his hand, where he will be able to see, fifty feet from him, the unmistakable shape of his youngest son walking from his dorm to his class.
That's all he needs.
It doesn't happen.
Sammy isn't one to be late, but John gives him ten minutes anyway before he curses under his breath and heads to Sam's dorm. He's prepared to see his boy asleep, maybe hungover, wasting the education that was so damn important to him. Hell, he's even prepared to see the kid sick, because it's happened before; a few months ago, Sam missed a day of his summer class and John panicked and called Sam from a payphone. Sam answered, sounding breathless but not dreadful, and John hung up.
He calls today and gets no answer.
He's about to find a way to look into the kid's damn window when he decides, just to calm himself down, just to eliminate it as a possibility, to call the Stanford hospital.
He remembers halfway through describing Sam that they would have his real name.
“Sam Winchester,” the receptionist says. “Yes, he's been here for four days.”
Four days.
**
Sam looks like hell.
He's thin and bruised, free of wires and tubes aside from an IV, just saline. He's asleep, but John waits until he's rolled himself with his back to the hallway before he stands by his window for any length of time.
The doctor is explaining what the hell happened to Sam, which is basically that he had a bad cold he was keeping under control until he ate something he shouldn't have and had an allergic reaction that essentially ran him utterly into the ground and let the cold morph into something worse. The fever's gone, and the reaction, though absolutely hideous, from the doctor's description, left no permanent damage.
“Peanuts?” John says.
“That's what he thinks. Something he thought was safe. He managed to call 911 himself, but the reaction hit very quickly. He was unconscious for most of the first day and we kept him intubated for a few hours after that. We've been impressed with his breathing, considering his asthma, but there have been rough spots. Yesterday went fairy smoothly. We're sending him home today.”
“Home?”
“He just needs rest now. And...hospital-acquired infections can be very tough, especially for an asthmatic. We like to get them in and out as quickly as possible.”
Sam once caught pneumonia from a half-hour stay while Dean was getting stitches, so John isn't about to argue that point.
But...home.
“Who's he going home with?” John says. Maybe Dean knew about all of this. Maybe Dean is coming to get him.
“He said he had someone to look after him,” the doctor says. “Otherwise we wouldn't let him go.”
**
John waits around to see who picks Sam up, but instead he sees, a few hours later, a nurse pushing him out in a wheelchair and helping him into a taxi. Even from his distance, at the back of the parking lot, John can tell his boy is shaking and leaning heavily on the nurse. His roommates are willing to watch over him, but not to pick him up? Sam doesn't even look like he could make it in and out of the cab on his own.
The taxi turns the wrong way out of the parking lot, and that about settles it for John. He follows. Halfway through, he realizes he recognizes the route; the taxi is taking them to the same motel John checked into late last night.
A motel where, as far as Sam knows, there is absolutely no one to look after him.
There isn't a choice to be made. He parks and, as soon as the taxi stops, nods to the driver and opens Sam's door.
John doesn't have to say anything because Sam doesn't hesitate even for half a second. His arms are up, immediately, wrapped around John's neck, and he leans against him as he maneuvers himself out of the taxi. John gets him out and disentangles himself to pay the driver, and Sam leans against the car with his arms around his chest. His legs are shaking, and John keeps an arm across him like a harness.
“Okay.” He puts both hands on Sam, one on his shoulder and the other snaked around to grip his waist, and he says, “Not far. Not far to go at all, Sammy.”
And Christ, Sam feels so fucking frail, his entire body shivering, and John doesn't think he's ever seen Sam like this. Even at his sickest, he's fought for some kind of independence, but now, John doesn't think he'd fight if John outright scooped him up.
Which, after Sam stops abruptly and starts to cough, hard, his forehead nestled into John's neck, every bone in the kid's damn body shaking, he does. Sam is warm and wheezy and God, the shaking.
By the time John gets him into the bed, he's crying a little.
John pushes his hair back. “What's wrong?”
He breathes out, long and slow. “Just so sick.”
“I know.” He rubs Sam's back. Shit, but he's thin. “You're getting better. We're going to get you better.” He thumbs a tear off of Sam's cheek and says, “Christ, Sammy, why were you coming to a motel? How the hell were you going to get better on your own? Have you even called Dean?”
Sam hugs his pillow to his chest. “Didn't tell Dean.”
“Okay. It's all right.”
“Almost died,” Sam says. “Almost died and didn't get to tell Dean,” and then he's crying hard, shaking, muffling it into his pillow.
He gets to do this right now.
John knows what to do when his boys cry for bad reasons, but these, these good reasons...all he can do is rub circles on Sam's back and say, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you're sick,” over and over.
**
John's used to seeing a whole host of frightening as hell symptoms plow through his boy, but what isn't normal, what's scaring the hell out of him now, is how shaky Sam is. It's every damn muscle, down to his feet, and he can barely sit up on his own, let alone drag himself to the bathroom or hold a cup to his lips, and John has no idea how the hell the doctors thought a couple of college students back at Stanford would be able to give Sam what he needs right now.
They spend most of their first day back at the motel sitting up against the headboard, Sam crammed up against John's side. He's quivering and rubbing at his eyes and coughing like his lungs are clawing up to his throat, and John just cups his cheek and kisses his forehead and thinks about hospital-acquired infections and worries. But Sam's temperature stays down. He refuses food and curls up against John's side like it's his only hiding place.
He doesn't ask for Dean.
**
Sam wakes up the next morning wheezing too hard to talk, and his eyes are red-rimmed even though he hasn't been crying anymore. He's so allergic. He's always like this for a few weeks after a bad reaction--hypersensitive even by his standards, and that's why he needs someone to watch him and comfort him and fucking take care of him, this is why he is not allowed to curl up in a dirty motel room like a condemned man. Christ, Sammy.
So John has a call to make, but he doesn't like not touching Sam right now, not when Sam can't hold himself steady, so he hoists his sleeping broken bird of a boy into his arms and paces with him while he talks, the phone against one shoulder, Sam's sweaty little head against the other.
"Where are we going?" Sam wheezes out, while John's putting him into his shoes.
"Shhh. Somewhere safe."
"Home?"
"No. You're going to stay with me for a while."
Sam nods, and in the car, John says, for the dozenth time, "What were you thinking, Sammy?"
"I don't know."
"What were you going to do in a motel all by yourself?"
"Sleep. Just sleep."
"How were you going to take your meds, or get yourself some water, or eat? You needed help, Sam. Why didn't you go home? How could you rely on the miracle that I would find you?"
But then Sammy gives this tiny wheeze of a sigh and shakily scoots over, rests his head on John's knee. John shoves his hand into his hair.
Maybe it wasn't a miracle.
Maybe this is what happens when you have a sick son.
"I didn't care if anyone found me," Sam says.
**
This hotel costs as much per night as the shitty motel did for a week and a half, but it comes with vacuumed floors and a big soft bathrobe for Sam, so John considers it money well spent. He helps Sam straight into bed and sets up the nebulizer while he drifts off, then slips the mouthpiece between Sam's teeth and takes out his phone for the other call he has to make today.
Text. Text will be easier.
Best to just be straightforward. With Sam. A little sick. Will be a few days.
Dean's response comes in half a minute later. Hospital?
No. It isn't technically a lie, and John tamps it down anyway by telling himself that if Sam wanted Dean here, he would be asking for him.
He ok?
Yes. Go to TX and check up on twin spirits. Will keep you updated.
Yessir Dean texts back, and a minute later, John hears Sam's phone vibrate on the nightstand. He picks it up. It is, of course, a text from Dean.
feel better, sammer. stay big.
John will not feel guilty, he won't, because if this works out the way it should, he and both his boys will be making homemade damn ice cream a week from now to celebrate Sam's being all the hell better before they all three drive off into the horizon, so right now he just needs to get them through it. He just needs to get Sammy through it, and Sammy is so damn sick.
So he sits next to the bed and strokes Sam's hair and whispers to him all the things they'll put in the ice cream, how safe it will all be for him, how no one's ever going to let him have a reaction ever again. Sam cries into his pillow and shakes a little less.
**
Sam is a little better the next day. He wears a big sweater of John's and sits at the table in the motel room, knees feet drawn up onto the chair. He draws, like he used to when he was a sick kid, and twists his hair around his fingers.
"Did you tell Dean?" he says, finally. "He texted."
"I told him you were sick. Didn't give details."
"Good."
"I kind of got the feeling you didn't want me to."
Sam shrugs a little. "He'd be mad."
"No, Sam. He wouldn't be."
Sam shrugs again, clearly doesn't believe him.
"We know that these happen, Sammy. That they're not your fault."
"Not for the reaction. For the going off alone thing."
Well. John can't argue with that.
"Are you going to tell me why?" John says.
"Are you going to let it go if I don't?"
"No."
Sam gives this wheezy sigh, runs his hand through his hair.
"They got into my food," he says. "Cross-contaminated the shit out of it. I told them not to. They didn't mean to, but they weren't careful. I told them not to, Dad. I gave them these big talks I got off the internet. I explained all of it to them. It was scary as fucking shit, but I played the little sick kid like I'm supposed to and told them where the epipens were and how to know if I need help, and one of them was fucking home when I had the reaction and he just panicked and didn't help."
John is going through Sam's roommates' names in his head. He is visioning ripping them from limb to limb.
He is gripping the fuck out of his boy's hand.
"What did they do?" John says.
"Same knife to use peanut butter and my fucking regular butter, I think. So I cooked with it and almost fucking killed myself."
"You're living in a house with goddamn peanut butter?"
"It's their house too, Dad."
"And not having peanut butter would fucking kill them?"
"Stop yelling." He's shaking, hard. "You're acting like Dean."
"I'm just..."
"I can't take this," Sam says. He sinks his forehead to the table. "I can't go home."
"You don't have to. You don't ever have to. I'll go over and get your stuff and we'll get you the fuck out of here, okay?"
Sam lifts his head up and nods.
John can't believe it was that easy.
"We'll get you away," he says. "Dean and I will take care of you forever."
"Okay. Okay."
John makes him soup and a sandwich, and Sam, John's fucking hero, eats.
Time to call Dean.
**
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Dean says. "No. I don't care how fucking sick he is, he's not dropping out of school."
John looks at Sam fast asleep and hisses, "Are you ordering me around, Dean?"
"Do you have any idea how much he wants this? How fucking badly he wants to go to those stupid classes and learn about abnormal psychology and postmodern literature--"
"How the fuck can something be postmodern?"
"--fuck if I know, but Sam does. This shit is important to him. It's so fucking important."
"He was really fucking sick, Dean."
"You said he wasn't in the hospital," Dean says, and fuck does John wish that Sam hadn't begged him not to give Dean details, because he knows that anaphylaxis, intubation, goddamn fucking coma would have Dean agreeing to electroshock Sammy if it would keep him safe. Pull him out of school? This isn't a decision anymore than helping him out of the cab was. This is necessary. This isn't selfish. This is for Sam.
"If you do this, I will never forgive you," Dean says. "I will travel around and hunt with the world's most miserable Sam and I will take care of him and love him up and try to convince him that the world really does want him to be happy, he just can't fucking have it, and I will do it all without ever, ever fucking speaking to you."
"How the fuck aren't you scared for him?"
"I'm scared out of my fucking mind, but I'm always scared out of my fucking mind for him. How sick he was this week doesn't change anything."
"He wants to drop out, Dean."
"Yeah, after I'm done with him, he won't."
"And I'm the one pushing him?"
"He's shaken up, Dad, he hasn't fucking changed. He's wanted to go to college since he was a fucking two-year-old tearing through those I Can Read Even Though My Six-Year-Old Brother Goddamn Can't books. He's the smartest thing either of us has ever met, and he's not wasting that getting his asthmatic little head blown off during some hunt. No."
"He's not safe at school, either."
"No. But he's happy."
"He's not happy."
"Ask him about what he's studying and tell me I'm wrong."
"It was a reaction, okay? A really fucking bad one, because someone he lived with fucked up."
Dean breathes out.
Takes a minute.
John thinks he has him.
Dean says, "Then the solution is to get him his own fucking apartment, not to pull him out of school."
Shit.
"Put him on the phone," Dean says, and John doesn't argue.
**
John doesn't leave the room for Sam's half of the call, and Sam doesn't ask him to. He just sits on the edge of the bed and scuffs his feet against the ground while he talks.
"Please," he says. "But...please. Okay?"
"Fuck, Dean, I was so fucking scared."
"Yeah."
"Yeah. It's not as hard to breathe. Not as shaky. I ate some."
"Like a week. So much fucking catching up to do. Freaking out."
John sits next to him on the bed, puts his hand on top of Sam's head.
"I don't know. I don't think I can. I'm too sick. I was fucking crazy coming out here. Toofuckingsick to be alone."
"Uh, yeah. She's in my psych class. I had coffee with her last week."
There's a girl?
"Yeah." Sam nods a little. "Yeah, she is."
And then Sam laughs a bit at whatever Dean says, clears his throat. "It's like...modern isn't modern, it's modernism, this period in literature, around the 20s or so. You know Fitzgerald? Like him. Ezra Pound, he's a good example. The one with the hair. So postmodern is just after that. Really it's post-World War II, post-Holocaust. Will probably be post 9/11, but it's kind of early to tell. My professor thinks that'll be big."
Shit.
**
A week later, he's moving Sam into his new apartment.
"So they gave the chimps two choices," Sam's saying. "This fake-Mom that was all cuddly, warm, felt real, and this one that was cold and fake but had food. And the chimps would run over to get food when they really needed it, and then run back and hide in these moms that couldn't even do anything. Just to feel safe. It's the most tragic fucking thing. They practically starved just to feel safe, and these fake moms, they couldn't even protect them."
John's cooking while Sam organizes his shelves. Making him a stockpile of food so he won't have to find his own for a while.
"I just can't get over that they ripped them from their moms in the first place," Sam says. He's arranging his books alphabetically, not looking at John. "Fucking cruel."
John cries quietly into his casserole and Sam has no idea.
**
He and Sam play a few games of checkers, and then it's time for John to go.
He hugs him for a really fucking long time. Sam pushes his face into his chest.
"Love you," John says.
"Love you too. A lot. Thank you for...everything."
John kisses the top of his head. "If you ever change your mind."
"I know." Sam pulls away. He's wheezing. "Love to Dean."
"I will." He gives Sam's collarbone a little flick. "Do something about that, okay?"
Sam nods. "I'll be fine."
"I know." He rubs his knuckles over Sam's cheek. "You call if you need anything, okay?"
He nods.
"Bobby's in Las Vegas right now. Call him if you need someone."
"Okay."
"One of us will be out to check on you in a few weeks. You take care until then, okay? Do your homework. Get some sleep. Don't make yourself sick worrying about any of this. Have coffee with that girl again."
"Yessir."
It's the first time he's said that all week.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and opens the door. Says, "Bye, Sammer. Be big."