Together We'll Ring in the New Sam (PART 1)
Title: Together We'll Ring in the New Sam (PART 1)
Summary: Yeah, he's an addict, but he's Sam. So the usual rules don't apply. Those rules are for other people. It's the first half of a big Season 4 fic.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 4, please.
Wordcount: 9,074
Author's Note: Sammyverse--Sam has asthma and the boys are best buddies forever and they talk to each other and stuff. Yep. Second half to come shortly. Probably. Title is from Motion City Soundtrack's "Together We'll Ring in the New Year," one of my favorite songs ever.
---
Bobby says, “Your brother's a damn junkie.”
Ruby says, “Your brother is a hero.”
Cas says, “Why do you only ever talk about your brother, Dean?”
And Dean's brother squares his feet on a crack in the sidewalk and says, “I bet I can beat you to to that street sign.”
**
Dean sleeps with fire and dogs and potato-peelers for hands and wakes up in sweat and cool skin.
“There we go.” It's Sam, and Dean feels an enormous fucking hand rubbing up and down his back. It's Sam. “There we go,” he says. “Coming back now. There's my boy.”
“Sam, fucking...”
“It's okay. I'm here. What happened?”
And Dean spills out stories about salt water burns and skinned lips and tendons that get caught between his teeth. Sam listens and swallows and takes it all in. He plays with Dean's hair and says, “You're safe now,” and “Nobody blames you,” and “You did that for me, you saved me, you're the best brother in the whole fucking world.”
Dean's brother is big and strong.
**
“You're so strong,” Ruby purrs, lying on top of Sam, dangling her blood wrist over his mouth, hissing, as he works his hand up,cups her ass, slips her down between his legs, but Dean isn't sure if that part is a dream.
**
Anyway, Bobby, bitching on the phone yet again about how fucking stupid are you fucking boys? doesn't get it. Yeah, he's an addict, but he's Sam. So the usual rules don't apply. Those rules are for other people.
Because Sam? Sam doesn't lie. He doesn't sneak around. He doesn't do all those things addicts are supposed to do. He's Sam. He's big smiles and pink cheeks and Sam, always has been, always will be, so there really isn't anything to worry about. He's geeking out on his laptop in diners. He's bitching over whose turn it is to drive or choose the channel and stealing all the hot water and singing along to the radio and sleeping too late and balancing things on his head and shrinking Dean's laundry and cutting his hand slicing up an apple and blowing the faces off of fuglies and sneezing in libraries. He's picking at his salads and calling Dean from the store because he forgot for the third time what candy he's supposed to be getting. He's wheezing in his sleep. He's Sam.
He's just wheezing a little less in his sleep than he was before and sipping demon blood once a day (not every two days anymore, yeah, Dean knows, shut up) and eating without reading the labels and fucking a demon and exorcising shit with his mind and throwing temper tantrums like an eight-year-old, yeah, fine, but those are small things all in all, because he's still Sam.
And this blood thing, they have it under control, because it's Dean's responsibility and Sam's handed it over willingly, and Dean doesn't make it a big deal, and Dean isn't going to fucking let anything happen to Sam (and Sam, with his powers, with his broad shoulders, with his air, isn't going to fucking let anything happen to Dean, that's the fucking point as far as Sam's concerned, and Dean's not going to touch that, Dean doesn't want to to get anywhere near enough to hurt that or break that or see that).
So they keep it lighthearted, and Dean measures out doses from Ruby's flask and sets them out with Sam's other meds in the mornings. Ruby comes over, refills it, kicks Dean out of the room and rams his kid against the headboard. Dean doesn't spy.
Maybe Sam seems a little more high afterwards.
Sometimes.
Sam is crossed eyes and scrunched noses and rock paper scissors. Sam is breathing that's still a little rough around the edges. Sam is doing fine.
**
(And the fact is, sometimes their fucking lives are doing fine too-Sam in the armchair in a ratty motel he should by all logic be insanely allergic to, Ruby squished under his arm while the two of them share a beer and she makes him laugh so hard it comes out his nose, Cas sitting on the foot of the bed with his feet planted like he thinks he might blow away, asking Dean to explain a scar on his hand, and then Sam kicks an empty bottle across the floor to Dean just so Dean can kick it back.)
**
Which isn't to say that he doesn't still have rough days, and the air in this podunk Halloween town is on the thick side and the rain's kicking moldy leaves around. Sam's worn-out and wheezy in the passenger seat while they go over the shit these creepy-ass witches are doing for the dozenth time. Boiling a chick alive. Making some family man gag on razor blades. Witches are almost as gross as Sam's junky breathing.
Time to distract him a little. “So,” he says. “Halloween. You fucking loved it as a kid, you know? You dressed up as a badger, once. Trolled the motel.”
“That was my last night with Jess, you know?”
“Uh. Fuck. String me up.”
“No, it's okay.”
“I'm trying to make you breathe better and my strategy is to bring up Jess dying? Next time I'll just throw a dust mop at you, how about that?”
Sam laughs. "It's a good memory.” He hoists his feet up on the dashboard and tells him about Jess's slutty nurse costume and the shit she used to do to him in it when he was sick, and ugh, Sam really knows how to get revenge when he wants it, the little shit.
“Do you ever think about her?” Sam says, eventually.
“Are you kidding? Of course.”
“Yeah. You really liked her, right?”
“Loved her. But I kind of like people who put up with you. I don't know if you ever noticed that.”
“They get me out of your hair.”
“Exactly.”
Sam reaches over and fucks with Dean's hair.
He should be happy.
He should be glad that Sam can tell porny stories about his dead girlfriend and not get the least bit shivery.
It's been a long time.
It's nothing to worry about.
It's good.
God, Dean misses Jess sometimes.
**
They stop for dinner, and by the time they're done, Sam's going kind of gray and jittery so yeah, they have to get back. But when they open the door to their room, Cas is there with some angel they've never seen before, and they're both immediately all the hell over Dean asking him if he's taking care of this little Samhain problem and completely ignoring Sam except to throw in a derogatory blood-based comment every once in a while and the thing is that Dean gets, more than he fucking wants to, why the angels might have a problem with his kid here, but that doesn't mean it makes it any more okay with him that Sam gets ignored while they fucking fuss all over Dean (“That cut is new,” Cas is saying, “Are you hurt?” and it's a fucking shaving cut, Cas) because Sam still fucking loves angels, and yeah, say whatever you want, say Dean spoiled Sam, whatever, but thank fucking whomeverthehell that Sam got to twenty-five and still expects that people who aren't obvious hideous bad guys (Christ, Dean misses obvious hideous bad guys) will give a shit when he can't breathe in front of him, and here he is in front of these angels, wheezing with an arm around his ribcage, and he's not looking for a fucking hug, but maybe they could talk a little damn slower and get the hell out of his way so he could get to his bag? Maybe they could leave his brother alone for five minutes so Sam could get some help instead of going on and on and the fuck on about how they don't trust Sam and Dean to get rid of Samhain, so they'd rather just blow up the whole town and be done with it? There's not even a fucking discussion, here, and definitely not one that needs to be had when Sam's wheezing like that and just standing there ignored and all quietly baffled and Jesus, this sucks.
And this new guy, Uriel, his insensitivity to what's up in Sam's chest seems a fuck of a lot less innocent's than Cas's and a metric fuck of a lot less charming, so this stops right now, how about that? And Dean's about to call it when fucking Sam, in this wheezy wrecked voice (and shit, he really isn't doing well) says, “I'm going to need to bow out of this talk for the time being, I'll get filled in later-” and tries to cut to the bathroom and of course five seconds ago the angels were ignoring him, but now that he's trying to leave it's Where the fuck do you think you're going, Sam, if Dean's not going to make a decision about whether to annihilate a town without you then you better stay in the room blah blah blah.
Well, Uriel's like that, Cas just looks kind of sad, the way he always does when he finds out Sam isn't feeling great, and seriously, how does he not fucking hear it?
“I'm fine, Cas,” Sam says, “Just-” and then he braces himself against the doorway and coughs for a year and a half, and Cas frowns harder.
Uriel says, “This is the boy you think will help you take out Samhain, Dean? We're meant to trust you to get rid of this threat with a sidekick who can't breathe?”
“He's not my sidekick, and he can breathe, and we're not fucking going anywhere, so we have nothing to fucking talk about.” He crosses to Sam and puts both hands around his shoulder, shoves him gently into the bathroom. “Take stuff,” he says, and he nods when Sam catches his eyes. Yeah, he means stuff.
Sam closes the door to the bathroom and coughs brutally and Dean says, “You don't get to use this against him. That's not fucking okay. All right?” He says it to Cas, who nods a little.
Uriel says, “There were hex bags in your wall. Sam is a liability.”
“Sam is going to fuck your shit up if you keep talking about him like that.”
He hears Sam laugh a little, fucking Sam.
“This is a waste of time,” Uriel says, to Cas.
Cas is really not fucking amused. “And we. Have. Orders.”
There's nothing like this other asshole here to make Dean appreciate Cas (not that he wasn't sort of starting to already-hey, if Sam can have a friend, Dean can have a friend, all right?) but the way Cas is glancing towards the bathroom while Sam coughs, Dean thinks that maybe he's starting to fucking get it, that asthma isn't something to fuck with, and then Sam says, “Dean, I'm out,” and shit, he fucking knew that, he forgot.
“All right,” Dean says. “Sit tight.”
“Okay.”
“You need to go,” Dean says.
“We're all getting out of this town,” Uriel says, and then Dean gets all up his fucking face and plays that God loves me card even though he knows it's bullshit, God has work for him, but he doesn't want to say shitty things about all of this where Sam can hear him because Sam still believes and it's not Sam's damn fault that someone else is taking the fucking credit for yanking him out of Hell, but whatever he says seems to do the trick and Sam's hideous coughing that he is totally playing up in there (way to go, Sam, you make a regular asthma attack sound like it's killing you, you are awesome) probably has something to do with it, and Cas shuts Uriel the fuck up and they're gone.
Sam opens the door to the bathroom and leans against the doorway, rubbing his chest, calming down the cough.
“I'll call Ruby,” Dean says.
Sam nods a little, looks sad.
“Fuck 'em,” Dean says.
“It's stupid, yeah? That I thought they'd give a shit, just 'cause they're angels?”
“They're following orders. It's all they fucking do. Never appreciated your rebellious ass more, tell you that.”
Sam gives him a weak smile.
“Sit down, try to catch your breath, okay?”
Sam nods and opens up one of the hex bags the bitch stuck in their walls, starts going through it.
“Oh, that's a good idea,” Dean says.
“Shut up. If they're fucking with me, I should know what they use.”
“You're brave,” Dean says.
Sam shrugs a little.
Dean messes up his hair on the way out the door.
You're also dying for another hit.
He calls Ruby.
**
She rubs his back while she slices her arm open. “It's okay,” she says. “Almost there.”
The inhaler isn't helping.
Dean sits on the bed and jiggles his knees.
“He's fine,” she says, once Sam's in a hot shower to loosen the rest of it out. “You should have told me you were out.”
Dean shrugs.
She watches him. “Unless you wanted him to run out.”
“Stop.”
“You know how important this is, don't you? Do I need to go over it again? Killing Lilith? Stopping the apocalypse? That whole shabang?”
“Shut up, Ruby.” Because what is he supposed to say? I still haven't decided if I love or hate demon blood and I still haven't decided what the fuck to do about it, and I can't talk about it with Sam because he gets upset and I can't talk about it with fucking anyone because no one fucking gets what it's like to listen to the kid gasp for breath for twenty-five years and it never gets easier for either of them and he's seeing a flicker behind Sam's eyes that didn't used to be there and what the fuck is this going to do longterm, it's not like there's a WebMD page for it, okay, but there's a fucking WebMD page for asthma that says Sam shouldn't have to be this sick and Dean always wanted to fucking punch things when he read it because seriously, tell them a fucking medicine that Sam hasn't tried and now all of a sudden there's something that actually fucking helps and he's letting Sam run out and kicking himself for letting Sam run out and the angels won't even tell him what they fucking want and here he is chatting to his brother's demon girlfriendwhateverthefuck and when the fuck did everything get so fucking gray?
“Not putting anything into him that wasn't already there,” she says. “Who knows if he would have fucking survived this long without the bit of demon blood in him that was already there?”
“Talking about that doesn't make me feel any fucking better.”
She laughs. “You love that bit in him. You always have.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
She shrugs, smiling.
“No, don't fucking do that. What the fuck does that mean?”
“How did that crossroads demon taste?”
“What?”
“How do you think I taste?”
“I-”
“That time your brother was witch-roofied.” She's too close. She's right in his damn air. “Every time you've shared a bottle with him. How does your brother taste?”
Shit.
“It's addictive, you know?” Ruby says. “You taste Sam, you want more. No wonder his pretty little Stanford girlfriend liked him so much.”
“Shut up.”
“Got high off his kisses.” Ruby takes a step closer. “He'd taste even better now. Truth is, drinking this shit makes your brother easier to love. You going to fight with that?”
“You should go.”
She looks at Dean for too long.
“Yeah,” she says. “I probably should.”
But she doesn't, because then Sam gets out of the shower and gets dressed while they talk about fucking Samhain, and look, there's one surefire way to kill this bastard and they all know it.
Ruby bloodlets until she's dizzy.
**
So this will work. This makes sense. They keep Sam on his baseline, and they dose the fuck out of him when they have a bad guy to kill. It's fine. It's what Sam wants. He's smiling and babbling about how he gets to be helpful and save the damn day and this is what he always wanted. Sam didn't want to be the wheezy kid who gets captured every damn hunt.
And fuck, Dean's tired. Fuck, Dean wouldn't mind being rescued for once.
Ruby leaves, and Sam sits on the bed and sips and wipes red from his mouth and Dean tries not to throw up.
**
Sam's antsy in the car, breathing well but hard, clenching and unclenching fists, and Dean can't stop glancing at him.
“You okay?”
“I'm awesome.” Sam shoots Dean a big smile. “I'm awesome.”
“Yeah.”
“We're about to stop a demon from destroying the fucking world, Dean. I'm fucking fantastic. God, I feel good, listen to how much fucking air I'm moving here.”
“You can do this, yeah? This Samhain thing? If you want to just try the knife-”
“He's got to be too strong for the knife, you know that. And you have to get close enough and overpower him and...this is easy, Dean. I slam him against a wall, I yank him out, we head home. You want pie on the way home? I want pie. I want fucking pecan pie. Not having allergies is the best.”
“Calm down, all right?”
Sam sits on his hands and looks out the window, toggling his knees up and down.
“Sam.”
“What?” he snaps.
“Jesus. I just want you to calm down. We're hunting, not going to Disneyland.”
“What the hell's your problem?”
“You're freaking me out. I've never...seen you on this much, okay?”
Sam crosses his arms. “You're inventing issues where there aren't any. I'm not high, I'm amped up enough to go kill this bastard, and isn't that the fucking point?”
“The point of what?”
“This.”
“Demon blood?”
“Yeah.”
“No. You're on this because it helps you breathe and that's the only fucking reason. You're not a weapon.”
“Then explain tonight.”
Dean can't.
Dean can't explain anything anymore.
“We don't know what I am,” Sam says. “The angels won't tell us shit. At least Ruby's clear cut. At least she's telling us how to kill Lilith. And that's all that we know that we want. Right?”
“I don't know. Yeah.”
“So we don't know what I am and we don't know what you are but we know what this guy is and how to kill it, and we know we're making me stronger, and since I'm on our side, explain to me how me strong is a bad thing?”
Sam's talking too fast and thinking too fast and Dean just can't keep up. So he shakes his head, closes his eyes at the next light, listens to Sam breathe.
Sam turns the music up and fidgets and hums along.
**
Dean cuts off heads, flames bodies, stabs hearts. Sam holds out his hand and curls it into a fist and sucks out one of the baddest sons of bitches they've ever fought.
And Dean watches his little brother shake and wince and swallow his way through an exorcism. He breathes out in hard, wheezy gasps, presses one hand to his forehead, grabs at something invisible with the other. Blood fucking pours from his nose.
And Dean just stands there and watches.
**
“There we go.” He's under Sam's arm, holding him up. “There we are. Got it. You're okay. You did it, Sam. You did it.”
In the car, Sam pinches a load of tissues over his nose and leans forwards and stays so fucking still while Dean drives and Dean says, “Sam, talk to me, okay?”
“Woozy.”
“Yeah?” He rubs his hand back and forth across Sam's shoulders. “You did a great job. Great fucking job.”
“Woozy.”
“Oh, Sam.”
A few minutes later, he tries taking the tissues off, and he keeps fucking bleeding.
“This is a lot of blood,” he says, softly.
“Shit.”
“I don't think it's all mine.”
“What?”
Sam wipes some blood from underneath his nose. Tastes it. Whimpers. “This isn't mine. This is Ruby's.”
“Okay. It's okay.”
“We have to save it.” He looks up at Dean, eyes huge, nose bleeding all the fucking place. “We have to save it, I need, I need it,” and then he's gray and rigid and puking onto the highway shoulder.
**
So the next morning Dean gives Sam the same damn amount of blood he usually gets and it does nothing.
Because Dean is the fucking idiot who doesn't understand how addiction works, okay, fine, Bobby was right, fine, shut up.
He can't just give Sam extra when he fucking feels like it and expect Sam's body to get that it's a one-time deal.
It doesn't fucking work like that, but fuck if Dean's giving Sam an armful of blood every goddamn day. Fuck if he's calling Ruby right now.
He keeps Sam on this low dose and Sam doesn't get much better. They hole up in a hotel and wait it out, and Sam spends a week puking and wheezing and shaking, and Dean locks the flask up in the safe and blocks Ruby's number from their phones. Sam knows, obviously, and doesn't try to stop him.
“I think I want off this shit,” Sam says, curled up with a blanket and a fever at the foot of the bed.
“Thank God.”
“But I've got to breathe. I've got to fucking breathe, Dean.”
Dean steadily weans him almost all the way off. They spend the evenings with the nebulizer and shitty movies and bottles of juice, and by some fucking blessing angels and demons leave them alone for a little while. It's like the world is waiting for Sam to get better.
But Sam doesn't.
Sam is gray and shaky and miserable and Sam can't breathe.
And Jesus fucking Christ Dean had gotten used to it, it's been forty and a half goddamn years since he heard Sam struggling like this. He goes on a convenience store run, and when he gets back Sam is packing, pulling at the skin at the base of his neck, trying to get a good breath in, and he wheezes so badly that night when they're watching TV that Dean actually shuts it off and just listens to Sam instead because that shit deserves some fucking attention, and Sam whispers that he's sorry and hides his face in his hand.
“Do you think he'd fake it?” Bobby says, over the phone.
“What?”
“I'd think at this point the boy could fake an asthma attack. If he wants more blood-”
“Fuck. You.”
“Dean. You know I love Sam.”
That's what Bobby always says right before he says something shitty about Sam, is the thing.
Bobby says, “I've dealt with addicts. They do ugly things. It doesn't mean they're ugly people.”
“He's not an addict. He's Sam.”
And the truth is, fuck, is he Sam.
Is this damn, pale, withdrawing little thing Sam.
Fuck, is he so much Sammer than he has been in a while.
And Dean hadn't noticed, because Dean hadn't seen him in forty fucking years so excuse him if he wasn't as familiar with the kid's every damn aspect as he used to be, but now Sam, tired and shaky on the bed, is clingy and soft-smiley and gentle in a way bloodSammy hasn't always been. He's just fucking present, shit, he's watching Dean like he's the only damn thing in the world, and he leans into Dean and rests his forehead against Dean's chin, that poor hot little forehead, and wheezes that he's happy.
“You are?”
“I hate that shit,” Sam whispers. “I hate it so fucking much.”
“They why did you do it, Sam?”
“I needed to be in control. I needed to be big. Now you're here.” He stays right where he is. “And you're strong and you're doing okay and I can take care of you on my own again. I don't need drugs to do it.”
Fuck.
Just. Fuck.
“Sam,” Dean whispers, and Sam just breathes out.
But a few minutes later he's a little teary, murmuring, “Wish I could breathe, wish I could breathe,” and Dean closes his eyes and does what he fucking never fucking allows himself to do because he would go fucking crazy, but now there are angels and now there is apparently God so trade our lungs, trade them, let me do his for a while, let him just breathe, this isn't fair, this isn't fair, I want to do it for a little while so why won't you fucking let me?
“Shut up,” Sam says.
“What?”
“Don't you dare.”
Fucking psychic kids.
**
Sam's half-asleep, just wheezing and shuffling around, when Dean hears that flap of wings and “Hello, Dean.”
“Hey, Cas.”
“We need to talk.”
Dean goes to the bathroom to rinse out the nebulizer. “Little busy.”
“I'll wait,” Cas says, and he stands there and watches Dean rinse the cup out, and as soon as Dean shuts off the faucet, he says, “We need to talk.”
“Christ, Cas.” He leads him back into the bedroom and starts setting the nebulizer back up. “Now's not a good time.”
He keeps expect Cas to fucking notice Sam all bunched-up on the bed, but so far nothing. So far Cas is just looking at him.
“What's the matter?” Cas says. “Are you hurt?” He looks at the nebulizer. “What is this machine?”
“Helps Sam breathe.”
Cas finally looks at the bed and says, “Hello, Sam.”
Sam clears his throat. “Hey.”
Cas turns back to Dean and says, “We need to talk,” and Dean thinks his head might explode.
“Cas,” he says. “Sam's asthma's bad, okay? I'm not going to do anything until he's feeling better.”
Cas pulls a chair up by the bed and touches Sam's chest and Sam flinches and Dean says, “Whoa whoa whoa, his back, okay?” Sam rubs his chest where Cas's hand was, frowning.
“I was seeing if I could be of any help,” Cas says.
“Can you?”
“No. Why don't you like your chest touched?” Cas says.
Dean isn't sure if anyone's ever asked before. They just accepted it. That's the kind of boundary Sam fucking gets to set, you know?
But then Sam says, “I don't like pressure on it,” and Dean actually feels fucking dizzy, because Jesus, he didn't know that was it. He didn't know that the reason Sam doesn't like fucking fingers fucking brushing his chest is that it's too heavy over his lungs, and just fuck, fuck everything in the whole fucking world, fuck demons who wanted Sam to drink blood, fuck all of this.
“It's just...I need to control it,” Sam says. “What touches it. What messes with me.”
Cas isn't paying attention. “We can talk while Sam breathes, Dean.”
“Cas. The issue isn't talking. It's that you're going to say some shit about how you have work for me, and I'm not doing any fucking work right now.”
“This is important.”
“Cas, damn it.”
Sam wheezes and sits up a little. “Go talk, okay? It's fine. Just...not here.”
Cas says, “What's the matter?”
“We're stressing him out,” Dean says. He tosses Sam the mouthpiece. “He doesn't like an audience when he's not breathing, imagine that.”
“Sam is breathing,” Cas says.
Sam traces the edge of the mouthpiece.
“All right,” Dean says. “Yeah. Come on. We need to talk.” He gives Sam's cheek a rough pat on his way out the door.
**
“All right,” Dean says. “All right. You. Listen. What he's doing in there is miserable. He has lungs that are swelling shut and filling with all sorts of junk and then getting the shit squeezed out of them, because one of the above isn't e-fucking-nough for them. It's been twenty-five years and it doesn't get less scary for him, which means he doesn't stop getting his fucking hand held, all right?”
“Dean.”
“It's like this.” He slams Cas up against the wall, hands around his ribcage, and squeezes. “It's like fucking this. But twenty hundred times worse and all the time. And right now it's even worse than usual because he's detoxing like you guys fucking told him to. So I'm not doing any more of God's fucking work right now, all right?”
“This is uncomfortable.”
Dean releases him and takes a few steps back, makes fists, lets them go.
“If Sam not drinking demon blood means you can't work, perhaps he should get back on it.”
“What?”
“We need you, Dean.”
“You made this whole big fucking deal about Sam getting clean. About him not using his damn powers.”
“You're more important than Sam, Dean. How many times do we have to tell you that?”
“A lot. A fucking lot. We're weaning him off the blood. He's almost clean. He'll even out and be fine, and then I'll look into whatever the fuck you want me to look into. All right?”
“It's a town where people aren't dying.”
Okay, that's pretty fucking cool.
“When Sam's better,” Dean says.
“Leave him here, then.”
“What?”
“I will look in on him.”
“That's real nice of you, Cas, but it's also complete bullshit.”
“Dean. If Sam is holding you back like this, we have a problem.”
“And what do you plan to do about that fucking problem, then?”
“Me? Nothing. My superiors? They will do whatever it takes to get you up and running, Dean. And they don't like Sam.”
(How the fuck do people not like Sam? Seriously.)
Dean runs his hand down his face. “What town?”
“Greybull, Wyoming.”
“Great.”
“Dean.”
Dean looks up.
Cas says. “I'm sorry. That Sam has asthma. It must be very hard for you to watch.”
Then he leaves, and Dean punches a wall.
**
Their miracle of the year is that Sam's feeling a little better come morning. The demon blood-weaning side effects are mostly gone, and when he takes his dose in the morning it actually seems to help his breathing a little, for the first time since they've been working him down. He still sounds like he's in middle of a bad attack, but he doesn't sound like he's dying.
Still, he doesn't sound like he's in any state for an eight hour car ride, but apparently if they don't do it Sammy's angel food, so all right then.
“Remember when we hunted monsters?” Sam says, and Dean laughs a little.
**
They haven't been alone together for this long for a very long time. There have been demon girls and angel boys and assholes ordering them around. It's like when they were fucking kids and John was afraid to leave them alone for more than a few hours (John was afraid of Sam, of what Sam would do, John would never fucking ever imagine his boy drinking demon blood) but now they're alone, just him and Sammy and their car, and Jesus, everything is okay for a little while.
So maybe that's why Dean gets all fucking sappy and says, “You amaze me, you know?”
Sam looks at him.
“I was trying to describe it to Cas. This shit that you have to go through. And you just...you just fucking deal with it.”
“It's just my life, Dean.”
“Yeah, except you whine about other stuff in your just-your-life all the fucking time.”
“I whine about asthma, too.”
“Not as much as you could.”
“It's boring.”
“It's not boring.” As long as Sam needs help, it's not fucking boring.
“It's just shit I have to deal with. You have to deal with being short.”
“Fuck off.”
“So it's like the same thing, really.”
“You are so full of shit.”
“It would be really cool if we had some kind of animal sidekick. If I didn't have allergies, obviously. I think that would be cool.”
“The fuck?”
“I've just been thinking about that.”
“Allergies shitty?”
Sam shrugs.
“What kind of animal?”
“Dog's too obvious. Llama.”
“Blowfish.”
“Cricket.”
“Sea turtle. Are you even allergic to any of these things?”
Sam laughs. “Probably.”
“I'm tiring out. You think you could drive for a while?”
“Yeah. You need to sleep.”
“Hard when you have a growly monster truck for a roommate. It's okay.” He pauses for a second, then says, “I'm sorry about Cas.”
“Where the fuck'd that come from?”
“I've been holding onto it. Waiting for a good time. But now apparently I'm about to go to sleep, so...”
“It's fine.”
“He doesn't get it, you know?”
“I know that. It's fine.” Sam coughs and rubs his scarf against his mouth, then says, “If we had that sidekick animal, we'd maybe want to stop hunting. Give it a real home, you know?”
Dean glances at him. “What are you saying, here?”
“Nothing.”
“We can't stop now.”
“I don't want to stop now. I want Lilith's head mounted on my damn wall. It's just...” He pushes his palm into his chest. “You're always talking about how tired you are, you know?”
“I know you're tired.”
“I'm not. I just...the blood gave me a fucking body that wasn't tired, either.”
“So now what are you saying?”
“I don't know, Dean.” He hitches his feet up on the dashboard. “Just...what are we doing here? I was getting ready to kill Lilith. If Ruby finds out I stopped...”
“Yeah, well, fuck Ruby.”
“Somehow I don't think that'll solve my problems this time.”
“Then clearly you're no fucking good.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You're doing this for you, Sam. Getting off of this shit. It was doing you more harm than good.”
“And it was going to stop the fucking apocalypse.”
“Sam...”
Sam looks up at him.
“Just...” Dean stops, shrugs. “Just that the angels are making this big fucking deal about how stopping this shit is my job, not yours. This blood thing...this is what the demons want you to do. We know that. This is what Azazel wanted, and why the fuck would Azazel want you to have a tool to stop the apocalypse? It doesn't make sense.”
“It also doesn't make sense that the angels keep telling you this is your cosmic duty or whatever the fuck and then not ever giving you any fucking clue how to do it. Or even what they want you to do.”
“I know.”
“I bet you're allowed to have a weapon, Dean.”
“What?”
“I'm just saying,” Sam says, and yeah, Dean gets exactly what he's saying.
“You're not a fucking weapon,” Dean says. “Stop it.”
“Then what the hell am I? You don't think I'm the sidekick and I'm definitely not the damn hero, the angels have made that pretty fucking clear. How the hell do I even fit into this? Does anyone even want me?”
“Don't make me answer that, bitch.”
“I mean on this cosmic fucking scale we're now playing on. What's my fucking purpose? Fuck. Jesus, you know what I am?”
“You're Sam.”
“I'm a liability. I'm a fucking liability.” He wheezes out and slouches down in his seat. “I'm here to slow you down. Angels want you to kill Lilith and save the world, so the demons threw you six and a half feet of wheezy speedbump. Jesus.”
“That isn't what this is.”
“I can't even fucking breathe. Explain to me how exactly I'm not slowing you down, here.”
“You can't slow me down because they haven't fucking told me what I'm supposed to be doing.” Dean flicks his turn signal. “Cas is sending us on this fucking I don't know what hunt, and I have no clue if this is a seal or if this is a diversion or if this is a fucking trap, and all I want to do is hole up somewhere with you and get you better.”
“And that's not killing Lilith. Defense fucking rests.” Sam crosses his arms, and Dean pulls over so they can switch seats and doesn't say anything.
**
Sam's hands, Sam's fingernails, digging into his arms, ripping him up in ribbons, laughing without a wheeze, that taste, burning the soles of his feet and shoving his hands, his fingernails, down Dean's throat--
“Dean. Hey.”
They're not moving.
Dean sits up, cold and dizzy, in the passenger seat, and Sam gathers him up.
“You can tell me,” Sam says. He rubs up and down Dean's back, hard. “You can tell me.”
No, he can't.
**
They stop for lunch, and it's sunny as all hell so they eat sandwiches on the roof of the car with their faces pointed up to the sky. Dean takes Sam's sleeve, by his elbow, and pinches it between his fingers.
The truth is, he still can't fucking believe it sometimes. That he's out of Hell, and that his little brother did it, and that Sam is really that fucking strong (the truth is that Dean always told everyone-John, Sammy, himself-that Sam was strong and he never knew if it was true and he would look at Sam hacking his lungs up over a dusty motel room and wonder how the fuck this kid was going to survive in a world full of this horrible bullshit they shoot in the face everyday) and that everything is as okay as it is, and then Sam looks at him and smiles and how the fuck is Dean supposed to not believe it, how the fuck is Dean supposed to believe that any sort of cosmic plan exists that doesn't hinge itself on that fucking smile?
“Christ, you love me a lot,” Sam says. He takes a rough bite of his sandwich.
“What? Shut up.”
Sam nods, and says with his mouth full, “I'm a psychic, trust me. I can tell.”
“I do not.”
“Mmm.”
“I don't even a little.”
“You're fucking crazy about me. It's really obvious. I'm embarrassed for you.”
“Yeah, 'cause it's not mutual.”
Sam shakes his head sadly. “Not even a little.”
“You're pretty lukewarm towards me, all and all.”
“Take you or leave you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Trade sandwiches with me, I don't like mine,” Sam says, and does without waiting for Dean's answer (which would have been no), the little shit, and Dean traps him in a headlock, and Sam sneezes on him, because welcome to the bullshit that is Sam Winchester, and Dean shoves him so hard he falls off the car. Sam laughs and coughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.
**
Ten minutes later he's in hives from Dean's sandwich because they were fucking happy for a second there and you can't have that, right? He takes Benadryl and sleeps with his head on Dean's shoulder so Dean can hear him breathe and Dean does not not not not not drive them off a fucking bridge (Sam was happy goddamn it goddamn fuck everything if he were on the blood he would be fine.).
**
Dean drops grocery bags full of the world's safest goddamn food on top of Sam's books. “So?”
Sam doesn't look up from his laptop. “Definitely weird. These people should not be surviving. And the chances that all these people have made deals, assuming there even is a crossroads demon prowling around?”
“Not huge.”
“Not huge. And we have no reason to believe there is, besides a bunch of hearts that should not still be beating.”
“How long's it been since anyone died?”
“Uh...nine days, at least.” Sam tears into the grocery bags. “What'd you get me?”
“Junk. You're too skinny.”
“Yes, Jewish Mother.”
“Who was the last person who died?”
Sam shrugs and rips a Fruit Roll-Up open with his teeth.
“Seems like an important thing to fucking check,” Dean mumbles, and he yanks Sam's laptop away from the kid and starts scrolling through obits. “Okay, Cole Griffith. Twelve years old. Ten days ago. Looks like he's our last.”
Sam scoots closer. “How'd he die?”
Dean scans the paragraph until his heart stops. “Um.” He moves to close the laptop and Sam stops him.
“What?”
“Eat. We'll talk about this later.”
“The fuck we will.” Sam grabs his laptop and pulls it towards him. He reads, frowning hard, then stops and lets a breath out.
“Yeah,” Dean says, softly.
Cole Griffith died suddenly from an asthma attack, and fuck Cas for sending them here.
**
“You are a goddamn son of a bitch, you know that?” Dean shoves his hands in his hair. “I trusted you. I fucking trusted you.”
Cas says, “No one means you or Sam any harm.”
“You dragged us away from his fucking sick bed to come talk to a kid who died of an asthma attack? In what fucking world does that not cause Sam harm?”
Sam sits on the foot of the bed and grabs breaths as he looks between the two of them. “Guys. Please.”
“I had orders,” Cas says.
“Yeah, well, I fucking order you to stop fucking with Sammy.”
Cas is all up in his face. “Dean, you're allowed to be angry. And I'll stand here and listen to it. And I'll apologize for days if this ends up hurting Sam. But don't you dare tell yourself that you have the right to give me orders. I answer to one entity and one entity alone, and he isn't anyone's damn peer, do I make myself plain?”
Dean's so angry he can't fucking see, but then there's a hand on his chest, shoving him back, and wheezy breathing in his ear.
“Stop,” Sam says. “Stop, you guys.”
“They're fucking using you,” Dean says.
Sam says, “No, Dean, they don't give a shit about me, they're using you. They're fucking with me to piss you off or trying to get you to have some sort of weepy moment over my mortality, I don't fucking know. But stop defending my fucking honor, all right? This isn't about me.”
“I don't care.”
“All right, fine. If we're doing the Dean-equals-Sam route, I can't fucking breathe, so you can't fucking yell at people, all right?
“Cas isn't people.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“He's a traitorous fucking son of a bitch.”
And then Cas says, “How many battles did you let a sick Sam fight because your father told you to?” and that's just about fucking it, and he doesn't know the fuck Sam manages to stop him before he slams his fist into Cas's mouth, but somehow he does.
“Stop,” Sam says, and stupid fucking horrible Dean thinks that if Sam were on the blood, he'd be beating Cas senseless right now.
If Sam were on the blood, they wouldn't fucking be here.
Shit.
“Is that what this is about?” Dean says.
Cas doesn't say anything.
Sam says, “What?”
Dean says, “Are you trying to break him, or are you trying to break him?”
Sam says, “Dean, what are you talking about?”
“I'm asking whether the angels want you to be a crying little bitch in a corner, having your moment over your mortality, or if they want you freaking out and relapsing. Do you want him back on the blood?”
Cas doesn't say anything.
“Motherfucker! What's the endgame here, Cas?”
“I don't know.”
And then Sam proves he doesn't need to breathe to yell at people. “This is my body, tell me the fucking endgame!”
“I don't know, Sam. I wasn't told. I was told to get you and Dean here.”
“You said I could come alone,” Dean says.
Cas looks at him like he's an idiot. “I knew you wouldn't leave Sam.”
Sam says, “Well, I'm here, and I'm not going to cry in a corner and I'm not going to drink any fucking demon blood. Go away so I can breathe.” He goes to the bathroom and slams the door like a fucking fourteen-year-old, but whatever, Dean's still impressed.
“You,” Dean says. “You need to go.”
“I was just-”
“Yeah, well, you just chose the wrong side. Your side will break before ours does. Get the hell out of here, Cas. We'll talk after you apologize to Sam.”
**
“You want to talk?”
Sam tosses back pills. “No. I want to get this case done and I want to get the fuck out of here.”
“You got it.”
**
The long and short of it is that he and Sam make like ghosts and stop a seal from being broken and are fucking superheros, and somewhere in there Cole fucking Griffith finds time to put his fucking ghost hand on Sammy's ghost chest and say that he never, ever, sounded that bad.
“You must have it so bad,” Cole said.
So that's awesome.
Now it's all over and they're in the car and Sam is just so, so quiet. He's even fucking breathing quiet, too shallow and pissed to make much noise.
They get back to the room and Sam goes straight for his bag and digs his scarf out and curls up with it on his bed, and ugh, shit, Sammy.
“Okay. Scoot over.” He sits down next to Sam, leaning up against the headboard. Sam makes room but stays on his side, balled up, facing away from him.
Dean rubs slow circles on Sam's back and waits for him to open up, but he doesn't. He relaxes under Dean's hand and breathes a little better, and pulls his scarf up over his face, but he doesn't talk, and fuck, Sam, Dean knows you, and you kind of need to talk right now, okay? (Dean kind of needs you to talk right now, don't be a ghost anymore, okay, Sammy?)
This is how it's been since Sam was this little damn kid, because Dean and John, they'd be perfectly happy to box everything up forever and ever, to communicate through quick glances and clinking bottles, but Sam fucking has to talk. Sam needs hands on his back when he can't breathe and someone to sit and listen while he wheezes out what's getting to him. If Sam lets stuff build up, he gets upset and panicky and fucking breathless, so when Sam gets quiet, Dean gets scared.
Sam's trained him pretty well at this point, you know?
“We always knew this was on the table,” Dean says. “Nothing's changed.”
“You don't get it.”
“Hey. Don't do that shit. Not with me.”
“It's true.” Sam sits up, presses his back against the headboard, coughs into his scarf. “It doesn't matter that I...I had to fucking see it, and then I got to be a ghost and not have to fucking breathe for three hours, and...”
“Shit. I didn't-”
“Yeah. You didn't even notice you weren't breathing, but we weren't, y'know? For hours. We were just there. And nothing hurt, and...I didn't even have fucking blood cravings.”
“So, what, you're thinking maybe you'll just die? That that'll be easier?”
“No, shut up, okay? I'm just...it was just a fuck lot like actually being on the blood. Not having to wheeze between every few words. Not being this fucking hungry.”
“You were hungry for it. You were just getting it. You'd start to come down and you'd be fucking miserable.”
“If the angels-”
“Sam. If the angels and demons both want you to do something sketchy, isn't that the most blatant fucking clue in the world that it's really really fucking sketchy? Since when is anyone looking out for our best interests but us?”
“Maybe I'm their weapon.”
“Sam. Stop.”
“Maybe I'm your weapon, Dean.”
“Then why'd they try to get you to stop drinking it at first? Not a very good sword of the gods if you're not on the blood. You're just kind of Sam.” He plays with Sam's hair. Sam.
“Maybe they'd rather I weren't your weapon, and they were trying to get you to do something else? Maybe they wanted you to have some weapon that wasn't...some rogue half-demon-”
“Whoa. Hey. No.”
“--boy about to go dark side? But now they're thinking I'm all you'll use? I don't know, Dean. I'm so fucking tired.”
“I know.”
“I just...” He lifts his hands. Drops them. “I was strong.”
“Hey. You're strong.”
“No, but. Really.”
“Hey. Name one other person with lungs like yours who can do the shit you do.”
“Yeah, except the apocalypse doesn't really have a paralympics option, Dean. I'm in this with the big boys.”
“You're saying this like it's a new thing. You haven't exactly had trouble keeping up with the pack, here, you know? Remember how Lilith couldn't fucking kill you? Remember killing Gordon with fucking razor wire? Remember fucking surviving twenty hundred Tuesdays? That was all you, Sam. Not blood. You.”
“Those were the minor leagues, you know that.”
“Just...stop, okay?”
“I was healthy.”
“You were a fucking addict, and you were miserable, and you weren't you, Sammy.”
Sam looks up at him.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “You were...harsh. You made jokes too fast and you never stopped and fucking thought about things. You were loud and so fucking angry, and you scared the shit out of me. And then you'd look at me with that smile just e-fucking-nough to make me believe that you were okay, and then you'd sit shaking at the foot of the bed for a few hours before it was time to get another hit.”
Sam pulls his feet up into his hands, just holds them.
“Look,” Dean says. “I just want you safe. You know that.”
Sam nods.
“So if you really can't take feeling like this-” he puts his hand on Sam's back “--we'll figure something out, okay? Look for drug trials, find another fucking healer. I'm not going to let you be miserable forever. I promise.”
This is the part where Sam is supposed to say you've let me be miserable for twenty-five years, why would you stop now?
But no, fucking Sam leans his head against Dean's shoulder and says, “Okay.”
“You feeling shitty?”
“ A little.”
“This room doesn't have a fucking coffee pot. I'm blaming the angels. You'll be all right if I make a caffeine run?”
“Yeah.”
“Get on your laptop, look for signs. Make yourself useful.” He gives Sam's cheek a pat.
Sam pulls away, makes a face. Smiles.
Dean says, “If you decide you're sick of breathing, give me a call.”
“Yeah, and you'll do what?” But he says it all gentle. Playful.
“I'll do like I did when you were a toddler.” He grabs Sam behind the knees and hauls him up and holds him upside-down. Sam's head knocks against the floor, and he laughs so hard he coughs.
“You did not do this when I was a toddler.”
“Yeah, I did. And then I'd hit you against shit to get the congestion loose.”
“That didn't happen! Let me go, Dean!”
“See, you wouldn't remember, because I was, you know, ramming your head into shit. Here, I'll show you.”
Sam struggles and laughs and coughs and laughs even more, and Dean knocks him against the dresser for a little while for good measure before he dumps Sam back on the bed. He tugs on the scarf and wraps it again around Sam's neck.
“Gonna fucking strangle yourself with this thing.”
Sam's looking at him with this fucking fondness, Jesus, Dean could almost drown in it. He bugs Sam's face with the fringe of his scarf and chuckles when he sneezes. “I'll be back in a minute.”
“Okay.” Sam wraps his arms around his knees and smiles at him. “I'll be here.”