(no subject)
Title: The Restless Heart (The Promised Sam)
Summary: Jess was looking for Dean. She got John instead.
Wordcount: 1,850
Author's Note: Sammyverse and it can also be Jess-lives! I like it as that. So weird that I never put this little guy up, ummm someone let me know if I actually did and I'm crazy, okay? You know how I love a good Stanford John-POV and look, I can beat up Dean too! Title is from "Read my Mind" by The Killers.
John's pouring the last bit of whiskey over his newly-stitched calf when Dean's phone rings. The boy himself is hidden under a pillow, sleeping off a dislocated shoulder and a concussion, and he doesn't even flinch. John knows how to knock a kid out when he needs it.
The phone's far enough away that John would have to limp to it, and it's only vibrating, isn't playing the ringtone of that raspy, stab-through-the-heart voice laughing, "Dean, pick up your fucking phone!" and no one but Sam has any fucking business calling Dean at two in the morning anyway, and if it isn't Sam, John really doesn't give a shit. They've done enough today.
And then his phone rings on the night table.
He picks it up--it's a number he doesn't recognize, from an area code he doesn't either. He clears his throat, drags a hand across his eyes, and snaps it open. "Hello?"
There's a pause. "Um. Mr. Winchester?" Unfamiliar, female, young. Scared.
"Who is this?"
"Jess. Jessica Moore."
John knows that name. Fuck.
Sam's Jessica.
Shit.
His brain is zipping through everything he knows about her--Sam's year, Chemistry major, together for seven months, serious, Dean's probably fucking met her but hell if John's sure of how often he sneaks off to Stanford--and none of it's making him feel any damn better about her calling him at two in the morning.
And then he hears that cough in the background. That cough. The one that would make him sit up straight in bed and drag his asthmatic little boy to the bathroom and run the shower hot and rub his back and kiss his forehead and beg him to not fucking die before the clinics opened.
What the fuck Sam is doing halfway across the country from him John still doesn't get.
He pushes his hand into his forehead. "Is he all right?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to reach Dean?"
"Dean's not here. I am. Tell me what's wrong."
"He. Um. Fever's high, but it's his breathing that's scary. I don't know."
"All right. He has asthma--"
"I know he has asthma!" she snaps, and John almost, almost smiles a little.
"Let me talk to him," he says.
"No."
Smile's gone. "Excuse me?"
"He's on the nebulizer, and fuck if I'm letting him off it right now. He's a mess, but he wouldn't let me take him to the ER until I talked to Dean. Where's Dean?"
She reminds him of someone. "Asleep."
"Wake him up!"
"Let me talk to Sam."
"Sam can't talk."
"I didn't say let Sam talk to me, I said let me talk to Sam."
He hears her say something quietly to Sam, then there's footsteps and the coughing fades out. She's taking him away from Sam. Damn it. Damn it.
"Look," she says. "He's really freaked out. He dreamed something happened to Dean, I don't know, but he woke up hot as hell and wheezing like...like I've never fucking heard, and I'm trying to keep him calm and Dean was going to fucking help me with that, and if you won't wake him up, then you better do it instead, all right?"
Jesus Christ, John just figured out who she reminds him of.
John forces himself to sound calm. "I'm sure it's wheezing I've fucking heard. I'll calm him down."
"Just...tell him Dean's okay. Dean's okay, right?"
"He's fine. I'll tell him."
"I'll put him on."
It's a little hard to hear over the nebulizer, but John could pick out Sam's breathing in a fucking crowd, so this is child's play. And isn't exactly like the kid's quiet right now.
He's breathing fast and hard, but his chest is congested and he's having trouble getting air out. He has a special shaky way of breathing that only comes out when he has a fever. It isn't good.
"Hey, Sammy."
Sam tries to to talk and ends up coughing, and he hears Jess in the background soothing him.
Does she know the right way to rub his back?
"Don't talk, okay? It's all right. It's just Dad."
Fuck does he want to hear Sam's voice right now.
He wouldn't sound like the fucking ringtone, that's for damn sure, and that's why John doesn't have a Sammy-voiced ringtone, because he only gets calls from Sam when he can't goddamn breathe.
He'd get Sam wheezing as a ringtone if it wouldn't just make him fucking bawl.
He's wheezing now, low and ugly and so vocalized that John keeps thinking he's starting to speak.
"Oh, God, kiddo." He pinches his nose. "You fucking sick thing. You need to let Jess take you to the hospital, okay? You're not breathing well enough on your own."
"Dean," Sam says, and in the background Jess says, "Sam shhhh."
She should be calling him Sammy. He's sick. Why isn't she calling him Sammy?
"I know, baby," John says. "He's fine. You had a bad dream, yeah?"
"Uh-huh."
John hears rustling, Jess saying, "No no no," Sam saying, "I have to talk" and Sam has to talk when he's sick.
"Sammy, give Jess the phone."
"No."
"Sam."
Jess. "The agreement was the neb stayed on."
"He's panicking and he needs to tell us why or he's not going to calm down."
"He has a fever of a hundred and fucking four thousand--"
"Jess. You have a car?"
"Yeah."
"Go get it."
"What? I'm not fucking leaving him."
"The alternative is you're bringing him with you down to the parking lot, is that right?"
"Fuck."
"Take his phone with you. If he needs help, I'll call it and I know you'll run like hell to get back. Just let me talk to him."
"If you let him die--"
"I know."
"If you let him fucking suffer--"
"I know, Jess."
(Nineteen goddamn years dragging the kid who can barely breathe in his dorm room from hunt to hunt and putting him to bed in dirty motel rooms and stitching him up in the back of the car but no, of course, he'd never let Sam suffer, and what he wouldn't fucking give to erase himself from Sam's life.)
She talks quietly to Sam, and then there's wheezing and a door closing, and John says, "All right, Sammy. Let's talk."
"Where's Dean?"
"All right. Calm down. Deep breaths, okay? Slow them down. Do threes and fives."
But Sam doesn't do threes and fives. Sam cries. "Skinwalker?"
John could slap Dean right now, concussion or no concussion. It's a rule: do not divulge details to Sam. Do not tell Sam about hunts until after they're finished.
Because Sam has nightmares.
"Skinwalker's over and done," John says. "We finished it tonight. Family's fine, I'm fine, and Dean is fine."
"Dreamed he...got hurt." Sam coughs hard. "Shoulder. Head."
To put it plainly: fuck demons, get the fuck out of his baby.
John was not meant to have a sick kid, that part's well-established, but he definitely wasn't meant to have a psychic one (and he definitely wasn't meant to have one halfway across the fucking country, no, he's not getting over that.)
"I popped his shoulder right back in," John says. "And he's got a bit of a concussion, but he's all right."
"Uh-uh. I need him."
"He's sleeping it off. I gave him the good stuff. He's just fine, Sammy. Can we talk about you? How high's the fever?"
"O-one oh..." He stops to breathe. "Three."
"So probably not pneumonia. Okay." It's so fucking hard to tell sometimes, because a cold and a bad asthma attack will have Sam breathing just as badly as he does when his lungs are actually filling with fluid. Sam can make anything terrifying.
Even a dislocated shoulder and a light concussion.
"Y-you okay?" Sam says.
"Just fine. Cut on my leg all sewn up."
"How many?"
Stitches. "Twenty-six." You can't lie to Sam when he's sick. You just can't.
Sam groans.
"Sam. You fucking worrier you. We're fine."
"He died." Sam coughs hard. "Monster dragged him...shoulder, hit his head, died."
"Just a dream. He's here."
"Need to talk to him." His breathing's getting worse.
"Sam. Inhaler."
"Let me...please."
John waits to hear the hiss of Sam's inhaler before he limps to Dean's bed and gives the small of his back a rub (shaking his shoulder is out of the question right now). "Dean. Hey. Sorry, sport, I need you for a sec."
Sam lifts his head slightly, hand all over his face. "Mmm? Ugh."
John checks the bandage on his head. "Say hi to your brother."
Dean focuses on the phone on the night table. "What?"
"He's a little worried about you. Sound healthy."
Dean holds his hand out and yawns into the phone. "Hey, Sam." He frowns immediately and glares at John. "How sick are you?"
John cannot fucking win with these two.
**
Dean talks to Sam, trying not to slur his words and encouraging him through deep breaths and hits on his inhaler, until Jess gets back, which means the next time John talks to anyone (because hell if Dean is talked to him the whole time he was awake; he sat against his headboard and sent John angry look after angry look for not waking him up the second he found out Sam was sick) is three hours later, when Dean's finally asleep again and he's nursing his third cup of coffee.
"Hi, Mr. Winchester. It's me. Sorry for being short with you earlier."
"How is he?"
"Doing better. They think bronchitis and they said it's probably viral but they're putting him on antibiotics anyway because...you know. Sam. They don't want to take chances."
"Good."
"His breathing's still pretty shitty but they're monitoring it, and he's on 50% oxygen so he feels better, you know?"
"I do."
"Dean's okay, right? Sam said he got to talk to him."
"He's fine."
"And...you're all right?"
"Fine." He pauses. "How about you?"
"Oh. You know. Fine."
"You did good, Jess."
"He was really brave. He works so damn hard."
"I know."
She clears her throat. "Um, if you want to come visit...I don't know where you are, but he's going to be here most of tomorrow at least. He's room 218 at the University Hospital, okay?"
He grabs some motel stationery and writes it down just...just to write it down. "All right. Thanks, Jess."
"Uh-huh. I'll, uh, send your love."
"Yes. Do. Thanks."
"He misses you."
Tonight--and this is not a sentiment John takes lightly--he does not, physically does not, know how to miss someone this much.
He cries over that one for a while.
Fuck demons, why can't he be psychic, why can't he see around Sam.
**
Dean wakes up two hours later and doesn't wince at the light and gives no sign of a sway when he walks to and from the bathroom.
"Shoulder good?"
Dean rolls it a little. "Yeah." He looks down. "Thanks."
John rips off the piece of stationery and holds it out to him.
Dean frowns. "What's this?"
"Your kid's room number. I'll see you in a few days."
Summary: Jess was looking for Dean. She got John instead.
Wordcount: 1,850
Author's Note: Sammyverse and it can also be Jess-lives! I like it as that. So weird that I never put this little guy up, ummm someone let me know if I actually did and I'm crazy, okay? You know how I love a good Stanford John-POV and look, I can beat up Dean too! Title is from "Read my Mind" by The Killers.
John's pouring the last bit of whiskey over his newly-stitched calf when Dean's phone rings. The boy himself is hidden under a pillow, sleeping off a dislocated shoulder and a concussion, and he doesn't even flinch. John knows how to knock a kid out when he needs it.
The phone's far enough away that John would have to limp to it, and it's only vibrating, isn't playing the ringtone of that raspy, stab-through-the-heart voice laughing, "Dean, pick up your fucking phone!" and no one but Sam has any fucking business calling Dean at two in the morning anyway, and if it isn't Sam, John really doesn't give a shit. They've done enough today.
And then his phone rings on the night table.
He picks it up--it's a number he doesn't recognize, from an area code he doesn't either. He clears his throat, drags a hand across his eyes, and snaps it open. "Hello?"
There's a pause. "Um. Mr. Winchester?" Unfamiliar, female, young. Scared.
"Who is this?"
"Jess. Jessica Moore."
John knows that name. Fuck.
Sam's Jessica.
Shit.
His brain is zipping through everything he knows about her--Sam's year, Chemistry major, together for seven months, serious, Dean's probably fucking met her but hell if John's sure of how often he sneaks off to Stanford--and none of it's making him feel any damn better about her calling him at two in the morning.
And then he hears that cough in the background. That cough. The one that would make him sit up straight in bed and drag his asthmatic little boy to the bathroom and run the shower hot and rub his back and kiss his forehead and beg him to not fucking die before the clinics opened.
What the fuck Sam is doing halfway across the country from him John still doesn't get.
He pushes his hand into his forehead. "Is he all right?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to reach Dean?"
"Dean's not here. I am. Tell me what's wrong."
"He. Um. Fever's high, but it's his breathing that's scary. I don't know."
"All right. He has asthma--"
"I know he has asthma!" she snaps, and John almost, almost smiles a little.
"Let me talk to him," he says.
"No."
Smile's gone. "Excuse me?"
"He's on the nebulizer, and fuck if I'm letting him off it right now. He's a mess, but he wouldn't let me take him to the ER until I talked to Dean. Where's Dean?"
She reminds him of someone. "Asleep."
"Wake him up!"
"Let me talk to Sam."
"Sam can't talk."
"I didn't say let Sam talk to me, I said let me talk to Sam."
He hears her say something quietly to Sam, then there's footsteps and the coughing fades out. She's taking him away from Sam. Damn it. Damn it.
"Look," she says. "He's really freaked out. He dreamed something happened to Dean, I don't know, but he woke up hot as hell and wheezing like...like I've never fucking heard, and I'm trying to keep him calm and Dean was going to fucking help me with that, and if you won't wake him up, then you better do it instead, all right?"
Jesus Christ, John just figured out who she reminds him of.
John forces himself to sound calm. "I'm sure it's wheezing I've fucking heard. I'll calm him down."
"Just...tell him Dean's okay. Dean's okay, right?"
"He's fine. I'll tell him."
"I'll put him on."
It's a little hard to hear over the nebulizer, but John could pick out Sam's breathing in a fucking crowd, so this is child's play. And isn't exactly like the kid's quiet right now.
He's breathing fast and hard, but his chest is congested and he's having trouble getting air out. He has a special shaky way of breathing that only comes out when he has a fever. It isn't good.
"Hey, Sammy."
Sam tries to to talk and ends up coughing, and he hears Jess in the background soothing him.
Does she know the right way to rub his back?
"Don't talk, okay? It's all right. It's just Dad."
Fuck does he want to hear Sam's voice right now.
He wouldn't sound like the fucking ringtone, that's for damn sure, and that's why John doesn't have a Sammy-voiced ringtone, because he only gets calls from Sam when he can't goddamn breathe.
He'd get Sam wheezing as a ringtone if it wouldn't just make him fucking bawl.
He's wheezing now, low and ugly and so vocalized that John keeps thinking he's starting to speak.
"Oh, God, kiddo." He pinches his nose. "You fucking sick thing. You need to let Jess take you to the hospital, okay? You're not breathing well enough on your own."
"Dean," Sam says, and in the background Jess says, "Sam shhhh."
She should be calling him Sammy. He's sick. Why isn't she calling him Sammy?
"I know, baby," John says. "He's fine. You had a bad dream, yeah?"
"Uh-huh."
John hears rustling, Jess saying, "No no no," Sam saying, "I have to talk" and Sam has to talk when he's sick.
"Sammy, give Jess the phone."
"No."
"Sam."
Jess. "The agreement was the neb stayed on."
"He's panicking and he needs to tell us why or he's not going to calm down."
"He has a fever of a hundred and fucking four thousand--"
"Jess. You have a car?"
"Yeah."
"Go get it."
"What? I'm not fucking leaving him."
"The alternative is you're bringing him with you down to the parking lot, is that right?"
"Fuck."
"Take his phone with you. If he needs help, I'll call it and I know you'll run like hell to get back. Just let me talk to him."
"If you let him die--"
"I know."
"If you let him fucking suffer--"
"I know, Jess."
(Nineteen goddamn years dragging the kid who can barely breathe in his dorm room from hunt to hunt and putting him to bed in dirty motel rooms and stitching him up in the back of the car but no, of course, he'd never let Sam suffer, and what he wouldn't fucking give to erase himself from Sam's life.)
She talks quietly to Sam, and then there's wheezing and a door closing, and John says, "All right, Sammy. Let's talk."
"Where's Dean?"
"All right. Calm down. Deep breaths, okay? Slow them down. Do threes and fives."
But Sam doesn't do threes and fives. Sam cries. "Skinwalker?"
John could slap Dean right now, concussion or no concussion. It's a rule: do not divulge details to Sam. Do not tell Sam about hunts until after they're finished.
Because Sam has nightmares.
"Skinwalker's over and done," John says. "We finished it tonight. Family's fine, I'm fine, and Dean is fine."
"Dreamed he...got hurt." Sam coughs hard. "Shoulder. Head."
To put it plainly: fuck demons, get the fuck out of his baby.
John was not meant to have a sick kid, that part's well-established, but he definitely wasn't meant to have a psychic one (and he definitely wasn't meant to have one halfway across the fucking country, no, he's not getting over that.)
"I popped his shoulder right back in," John says. "And he's got a bit of a concussion, but he's all right."
"Uh-uh. I need him."
"He's sleeping it off. I gave him the good stuff. He's just fine, Sammy. Can we talk about you? How high's the fever?"
"O-one oh..." He stops to breathe. "Three."
"So probably not pneumonia. Okay." It's so fucking hard to tell sometimes, because a cold and a bad asthma attack will have Sam breathing just as badly as he does when his lungs are actually filling with fluid. Sam can make anything terrifying.
Even a dislocated shoulder and a light concussion.
"Y-you okay?" Sam says.
"Just fine. Cut on my leg all sewn up."
"How many?"
Stitches. "Twenty-six." You can't lie to Sam when he's sick. You just can't.
Sam groans.
"Sam. You fucking worrier you. We're fine."
"He died." Sam coughs hard. "Monster dragged him...shoulder, hit his head, died."
"Just a dream. He's here."
"Need to talk to him." His breathing's getting worse.
"Sam. Inhaler."
"Let me...please."
John waits to hear the hiss of Sam's inhaler before he limps to Dean's bed and gives the small of his back a rub (shaking his shoulder is out of the question right now). "Dean. Hey. Sorry, sport, I need you for a sec."
Sam lifts his head slightly, hand all over his face. "Mmm? Ugh."
John checks the bandage on his head. "Say hi to your brother."
Dean focuses on the phone on the night table. "What?"
"He's a little worried about you. Sound healthy."
Dean holds his hand out and yawns into the phone. "Hey, Sam." He frowns immediately and glares at John. "How sick are you?"
John cannot fucking win with these two.
**
Dean talks to Sam, trying not to slur his words and encouraging him through deep breaths and hits on his inhaler, until Jess gets back, which means the next time John talks to anyone (because hell if Dean is talked to him the whole time he was awake; he sat against his headboard and sent John angry look after angry look for not waking him up the second he found out Sam was sick) is three hours later, when Dean's finally asleep again and he's nursing his third cup of coffee.
"Hi, Mr. Winchester. It's me. Sorry for being short with you earlier."
"How is he?"
"Doing better. They think bronchitis and they said it's probably viral but they're putting him on antibiotics anyway because...you know. Sam. They don't want to take chances."
"Good."
"His breathing's still pretty shitty but they're monitoring it, and he's on 50% oxygen so he feels better, you know?"
"I do."
"Dean's okay, right? Sam said he got to talk to him."
"He's fine."
"And...you're all right?"
"Fine." He pauses. "How about you?"
"Oh. You know. Fine."
"You did good, Jess."
"He was really brave. He works so damn hard."
"I know."
She clears her throat. "Um, if you want to come visit...I don't know where you are, but he's going to be here most of tomorrow at least. He's room 218 at the University Hospital, okay?"
He grabs some motel stationery and writes it down just...just to write it down. "All right. Thanks, Jess."
"Uh-huh. I'll, uh, send your love."
"Yes. Do. Thanks."
"He misses you."
Tonight--and this is not a sentiment John takes lightly--he does not, physically does not, know how to miss someone this much.
He cries over that one for a while.
Fuck demons, why can't he be psychic, why can't he see around Sam.
**
Dean wakes up two hours later and doesn't wince at the light and gives no sign of a sway when he walks to and from the bathroom.
"Shoulder good?"
Dean rolls it a little. "Yeah." He looks down. "Thanks."
John rips off the piece of stationery and holds it out to him.
Dean frowns. "What's this?"
"Your kid's room number. I'll see you in a few days."