What Sammy Said
Title: What Sammy Said
Summary: An easy hunt for a ghost that targets sick kids gets screwed up by Sam's abusive relationship with his bronchitis. Because it's hard to worry about hypothetical sick kids when your asthmatic kid brother is over there worrying about breathing.
Warnings/Spoilers: It's set in Season 2, so spoilers through there (because why foreshadow when you can FORESHADOW, am I right?) Profanity galore. Gen.
Wordcount: 8,343
Author's Note: To selecasharp, with love. It's another Sam asthma fic! Hooray! Title stolen from Death Cab for Cutie's "What Sarah Said." It make sense in context. I hope. The repetition of the "PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, Dean xs and Sam ys" at the beginnings of a bunch of the parts were intentional and were supposed to be *~interesting~*, but I think they turned out looking like I don't know how to vary my sentence structure. Also I think you're pretty.
ottermusprime did AMAZING fanart for this fic! Come see it HERE.
What Sammy Said
On the way to Delaware, Dean drives and Sam reads.
"All the killings fit the same pattern," Sam says. He has a scarf draped loosely around his neck, and he brings it up every few sentences to rub it against his nose. "Kids go into the hospital, come out full healed, no one can explain it. Then they drop dead eight months to the day and no one knows why."
"And the timeline?"
"Once every twelve years, December third. Forty-six hours away." Sam cranks down his window and hangs his head out while they drive over the bridge. Kid looks like a damn dog with all of that hair (and seriously, cold air on his lungs right now? but it's not like Dean's going to say anything about it, Sam's a big overgrown boy or whatever the fuck).
"I've always liked bridges," Sam says, when he comes back inside, coughing.
"Yeah?" Dean says, and God, it's weird when there are these things about Sam he doesn't know, stupid things like whether he likes vanilla ice cream with or without the specks, or how the fuck many sugars it is he takes in his coffee again, and that the kid likes bridges. Stuff that really doesn't matter, but it seems like something that he should know, after dragging around this enormous, frustrating appendage for twenty-three years.
He knows how Sam looks when he's exhausted though, and what scarf he wears when his asthma's bothering him.
Sam runs the fabric over his mouth.
"Let me know if you get hungry," Dean says.
Sam nods. He's reading again, pulling his lip into his mouth and peeling the skin off with his teeth, winding that scarf around his fingers, every once in a while mouthing a word or two to himself like he used to when he was four and sandwiched between John and Dean on some motel bed and they were cheering whenever Sam read a word on his own like it was a goddamn miracle, and Dean's smiling as he pulls off the bridge.
Because it's been an all right day. The drive from New Jersey to Delaware isn't bad, and it's a degree or two warmer every hundred miles, and they've been caffeinating every hour or so because Sammy's coughing kept them both up all night (it happens, Sam, whatever) but the last diner had ridiculously good coffee, crazy good, he and Sam pausing between sips to go "Seriously, what the fuck?" good, and it's sitting well and the sun's coming down and Sam's sounding a little better, right?
Sam coughs a little, fishes out his inhaler, shakes it.
Dean says, "So what's going to happen to those terminal kids once we salt and burn whoever's behind it?"
At first Dean thinks the silence is meaningful, but no, it's just Sam over there holding his breath to keep the medicine in.
But then Sam lets out the breath and says, “Whomever,” but nothing else, and Dean feels like a Class A asshole, because he's the one always saying if it's supernatural, we kill it and here he is saying hey, so, Sammy, how do you feel about dead kids, by the by?
Sam says, "If it were in their shoes, I wouldn't want three years of false hope."
"You wouldn't know it was false until the last second," Dean says, "you'd be enjoying every damn minute of it up into the end, and that's three years of minutes, man," and seriously, what the hell, Dean.
And Sam looks at him, all startled, and Dean's tongue stutters against the roof of his mouth. Sam says, "Oh, ha. Got it. I was talking about the families. Having to live with that broken promise for the rest of their lives"
"Oh. All right."
"It's got to be easier to be sick and die than to have to watch it," Sam says, and he's looking at Dean and he's probably thinking about the ten minutes last year when Dean's heart was giving out (Dean's memories of the ordeal: Roy had cold hands, Layla's obituary a few months later was shorter than he expected, and Sam cries like a fucking six-year-old and when Dean dies for real it better be fucking quick so he doesn't have to see his kid make that damn face because of him ever, ever again) and look, Dean knows that sucked for Sam, but that's a little selfish even by his standards, because he wasn't the one laid up in that hospital with the ugly nurses and the staccato heartbeat, but isn't that just like Sam to make everything about him (and how the fuck he makes that an endearing quality, Dean will never know) that's what Dean gets for spoiling him rotten twenty years ago, and then Sam's coughing up a lung next to him and ramming his forehead against the window until it stops and Jesus there's nothing Dean hates more than watching this, and he thinks, oh.
Oh.
Sam's choking on his own breath and he thinks Dean has the short end of the stick here, that's what's going on.
**
In the motel room, Dean eats and Sam researches.
“It looks like our ghost is Annabel Marsh,” Sam says. “Died of leukemia when she was twelve years old.”
“That would explain the cycle. Eat something.”
“Exactly. And get this-doctors told her she was in remission, that she didn't need another check-up for eight months. The next morning she was dead.”
Dean takes a swig from his beer bottle. “Damn. Fucking eat something.”
“Mmm.” Sam rubs the scarf against his lips, and Dean watches him shift around in his chair for a minute, then he turns his gaze back to the TV and turns the sound up. As soon as the volume's up, Sam coughs, like he was waiting to do it, and Dean rolls his eyes and goes to take a shower so the kid can maybe hack off some of the stuff rolling around in his lungs in peace.
When he gets out, Sam's asleep on his bed with his fucking shoes still on, and honestly the kid would walk into probably forget to eat and bathe himself (and breathe) without his big brother here to kick him around, and Dean remembers back when he thought that Sam probably wore the same shirt two days in a row and walked into walls because he was busy thinking about lawyer stuff and saving the world or whatever. Lately he's begun to suspect his kid is just fucking dense, because seriously, who passes out face down on on the comforter of some shittyass motel when he's breathing like shit as it is and it's nine fucking thirty?
(He thinks all this after he's watched Sam's back to make sure he's breathing and listened to the quiet wheeze and what the hell why not taken his pulse, so he's not heartless, okay?)
He tugs off Sam's shoes and turns him over on his side so he can unwind the scarf, but Sam mumbles and holds onto it, so Dean lets go. Sam tugs it over his chin and smacks it between his lips.
It's just a blue cotton scarf, nothing special. Sam grabbed it at an army surplus store when he was, what, fourteen, and it was sitting right there and it matched the shirt he was wearing and back then Sam was pretending to give a shit about those things, and there's nothing metaphorically significant about it because yeah, Dean was there, but name ten times before Stanford that Dean wasn't there, and there were no symbolic moments when he or John handed it to Sam with some dramatic flourish at some important time. The only thing special about it is it's been through practically every damn asthma attack since then, because for some reason Sam always grabs for it, always plays with it and shields his throat with it and rubs it against his cheek, and here's a thought Dean never thought he'd have but thank God his breathing was a little off that night Dean went and grabbed him out of Stanford or the thing would have burned up in the fire, and then how the hell would he know when Sam was having a hard time? It's a code, and they don't mind talking about the asthma, but it's easier when Sam can just put the thing around his neck and nod and they can be on their way.
Sam nuzzles the scarf in his sleep and Dean wanders over to Sam's laptop (not for any specific reason, obviously, come on, Sam's still in the room) and sees Sam's left open a page with some scans of some girly handwriting, and he wonders for a minute what Sam's doing uploading his old diaries before he sees the name Annabel and yeah, all right, someone thought to put the ramblings of a sick twelve-year-old on the internet, and now two strangers are going to use it to help track down where she might have been buried, and how the fuck sick is their job sometimes?
He scans the page and sees the line my dad told me I'm not gonna die and what the shit, he opens up another beer.
**
At around one, Dean looks up, finally, from his reading and Sam whimpers in his sleep.
And Dean's shaking his head to try to clear it, because he had no idea when the last time was that he read for four straight fucking hours, and he should have gotten Sam up and made him take some meds and eat some fucking food two hours ago, and instead here he's been sitting reading the journal of some dead chick who can't even spell because every time he thinks he's going to stop there's a line like I don't think dieing's going to be like it is in the movies, I think it's going to be cold and hidiuos and alone and God she wrote this shit when she was eleven years old, and then Sam's shivering on the bed even though Dean put a fucking blanket over him, and now he's whimpering, and he's like sixteen years too old to be having this nightmares, okay?
“Sammy.” He takes off his shoe and chucks it on the bed next to Sam. “You're just dreaming, man.”
Sam blinks awake, picks up the shoe, studies it like it's a rare artifact and seriously, Dean needs to start taking pictures of Sam's goofy as hell facial expressions for the next time someone tries to tell Dean he's the dumb one.
He pulls a brand new face and drops the shoe on the floor. Coughs.
“Take your fucking meds,” Dean says.
“Correct.” Sam searches his pockets, then shakes the inhaler and says, “I'm freezing.”
On the way over to check the thermostat (because it's pretty fucking warm in here to him, but that could just be the alcohol talking) Dean palms Sam's forehead. Great. He gives the kid a swat on the back of the head and says, “No, you're not. Get some sleep.”
**
The fever's still low the next morning, and the cough's still dry, so they look at each other and shrug and say, “Well, it's not pneumonia,” so that means no sitting this one out. Sam's dressed in an extra layer with that scarf wound around his neck when Dean finally looks up the address for Annabel's parents (what, it's not his job, and it's not his fault his kid slept for thirteen hours-it's not anyone's damn fault) and sees they moved out of state three years ago, shit, so their best bet is going to be to visit the hospital and check out the records and make sure there are bones to burn. But that means suits, and suits means no hoodies (and no scarf) and Sam swallows.
“You good?” Dean says.
Sam narrows his eyes. “Of course.”
“All right, all right, just checking.”
Sam makes that face and rolls his eyes and gets out of his comfy clothes. The scarf comes off last.
Sam goes to the bathroom and slicks back his hair like he always does for the suits, and Dean wishes he would do it all the time so he would stop having to stop and shake his damn hair out of his face when they're trying to save people, and Dean uses the opportunity to sit back down at the laptop and read a few more pages of Annabel's journals.
Nobody knows how it feels. Its like everyone else is in one world and I'm in this other one all by myself, just me and being sick and nothing else. I just want somone here with me.
He hears Sammy wheeze and cough something up.
**
Dean noticed a few trips back that Sam, when he's not the one in the bed (in which case he's three feet tall and seven years old, always) is fucking enormous in hospitals. Something about the narrow hallways and the white halls and the sick people everywhere and the fact that no one, right until the very second the kid's stopped breathing, looks as healthy as Sam Winchester makes him loom over everything like a hospital overlord, and doctors are always falling all over themselves to give him information and Dean usually just stands back and watches.
Except today Sam has that low-grade fever and he's a little shaky and Dean is looking into all the hospital rooms like some freak passing a highway accident and he's seeing all these patients all decked out in God knows what and he's never seen a leg brace like that before and his stitches never looked that and Sam's never been hooked up to one of those and maybe that's the machine Annabel called the one that I think will cary my soul away and there are all these people holding all these hands and where-
“Dean?”
Dean jerks his head up. Sam is chewing on his lip.
The doctor crosses her arms.
“Could I see those IDs, actually?” she says, and now they're back on their game, they're not Dean and Sam, Thing 1 and Thing 2, they're officers Daltrey and Townshend from the Dover county police department and they'll have those damn records, thanks.
**
At lunch, Dean drinks three cups of coffee and Sammy throws french fries at his sandwich.
Dean says, “Do you remember that time we left you alone?”
Sam looks up. “What?”
“Nothing,” Dean says, because what's he supposed to do, clarify that he's talking about the time seven-year-old Sam had double pneumonia-which means both fucking lungs, if you didn't know, both fist-sized, seven-year-old damn lungs-and his body had basically bailed on him and Dean wasn't even worried, he seriously wasn't, he worried when Sam got a skinned knee and when he burned his tongue on his pizza but here he was, all three feet of him prone on a hospital bed, and Dean was rolling his eyes at the whole thing because the questions the doctors were asking and the things they were saying might happen had nothing to do with Sam. Because Sam was missing-tooth smiles and temper tantrums over fucking nothing and coughing, coughing all the fucking time which that kid with the tube down his throat sure as hell couldn't do, and Sammy was singing the same lines from the same songs over and over and over again and hanging upside down from Dean's waist and kissing his dad goodnight, he wasn't respirator dependent or reacting to the medication or whatever the hell the doctors were saying today, and anyway whenever Sam did open his eyes he smiled, he fucking smiled at Dean, so whenever the doctors talked about Sam's body and all the crap that was happening to it, Dean didn't care because he knew that the worst that could happen was that broken blue thing in the bed would crack open and his Sam would climb right out. Eleven fucking years old and the second best shot this side of whereverthefuck they were that week, and here Dean was believing his kid was some kind of phoenix.
So yeah, he's obviously not going to tell Sam about that, especially when the part that's on his mind is the part where Rufus and Bobby were getting their asses handed to them by Dean can't even remember what up in North Dakota, and it wasn't a choice because they honestly would have died, and Sam was just lying there anyway, so Dean and John took off for North Dakota and Dean sat in the backseat and wrote notes to give to Sam later and John cleaned up the whole mess and they came home and there was Sam right where they left him. Two days later, two days in the room with no one to hold his hand, and he did okay, so why is Dean thinking about any of this?
Sam says, “Dean, what the hell?”
“Are you going to eat your fucking sandwich?”
Sammy shakes his head, then he rubs his forehead and tugs at his tie and mumbles something about a nebulizer and coughs and coughs and coughs.
**
The fever's up, because being a Winchester is fucking exhilarating.
But it's below 102, barely, which makes it still a bitch fever (barely) so Sam doesn't get out of research duties. He's at the table with the mouthpiece of the nebulizer hanging out of his mouth like a cigar, winding the scarf around his fingers, letting it go, winding it back up.
He's looking at maps of where the cemetery plots are and not obsessively reading a dying girl's journals because he is fucking normal (and if he ever finds out Dean just thought of him as normal he will be gloating until the end of goddamn time, so let's add that to the long of thoughts Dean's had today that he's going to be keeping right tight against his chest there, all right?)
Sam wheezes and coughs and sweats like a son of a bitch and seems completely untroubled by any of it. Dean's flipping through a magazine (just a car magazine, Jesus) on the bed because he did his part of the research while Sam was showering and setting up the nebulizer and bitching about God knows what, sometimes Dean is still amazed by how much his kid talks, and now he's trying to enjoy some downtime and Sammy has to go and wheeze like a fire truck.
“Do you need something?” Dean says, (trying his best to sound) pissed off.
Sam shakes his head (doesn't buy it), doesn't take his eyes off the screen. “Found the plot, I think.” He stifles a cough into his wrist. “Shouldn't be bad.”
“Yeah, you're not coming.”
Sam sneezes.
“You can do that, though. Yeah, stay here and do that. Or better yet, stay here and don't do that and get some sleep.”
“If I got some sleep every time you told me to get some sleep, I'd never wake up.” Then Sam brings his eyebrows together and looks at Dean and goes, “Whoa, whoa, you okay there, tiger?”
“Trying to read here, Sam,” Dean says, and he stares down at his magazine and tells his heart to slow down because Jesus Christ Sammy's right there and he's not only awake, he's shaking his head and snickering at Dean as he goes back to his research, and maybe Dean will forgive him for not having a clue what's going on because he's feverish and oxygen deprived, maybe, or maybe he'll forgive him because it's not as if he has any clue what's going on, either.
Sam sniffles and rubs the scarf against his nose. Dean's going to have to wrestle it away from him to wash because he's so damn disgusting (but he won't have to wrestle it away really because any minute Sam's going to freaking breathe and then he won't need it anymore).
Dean says, “I'm going to ask you to do something and don't give me shit about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam says, mockingly (absently).
“Look up the symptoms for pneumonia.”
Sam rolls his eyes but does it, and he nods a little as he reads through. “We're fine.”
Dean nods.
Sam falls asleep sitting up at the table with the nebulizer still in his mouth, and Dean judges Sammy silently and waits for the treatment to be over and then grabs Sammy by the shoulders and shoves him onto his bed. He glances at the pneumonia symptoms before he closes the laptop.
They're fine. Sam doesn't lie about this shit.
**
In the middle of the night, Dean changes the sheets and Sam sweats.
Sam sits on Dean's bed and wheezes and rocks and coughs and coughs and coughs (hacking, painful, the driest and tightest cough Dean has ever heard) and Dean strips off Sam's sheets. He remembers doing this when Sam was four and wetting the bed (except they were sharing beds, then, and wasn't that a fun time).
Sam rubs his face with both hands. It's not a bitch fever anymore, but they always spike at night. He coughs and lowers his head to his knees.
Dean checks the closet but doesn't find any spare sheets, and it's not like he's going to call down for room service when his brother looks like a TB victim (checked the symptoms for that one too, thanks) and Dean's hair is doing God knows the fuck what (he saw the maid, she was cute, okay?) plus Sam is definitely going to fall asleep, like, now.
“Dean?” Sam says, and he sounds really far away, and that really settles it.
“Yeah.” He walks over and hooks an arm around Sam's shoulders and guides him underneath Dean's covers. Sam curls in on himself and shivers.
Dean climbs onto the bed next to him and looks at Sam's back. All his muscles are clenched up and he's jerking around when he coughs. About as much fun to bunk with as a bedwetting four-year-old, all in all.
Sam wheezes and Dean can hear his teeth clenched and he says “Okay, shhh.” He takes the scarf hanging from the bedpost and wraps it around Sam's hand, because knowing his kid he'd fucking strangle himself with it thrashing around with the fever if Dean let him hook it around his neck.
But Sam cuddles it to his cheek and relaxes, so, good.
Sam sleeps, and Dean takes out the laptop and reads ramblings of a sick (dead, Dean) girl.
**
In the morning, Dean reads the paper and Sam plows through a bowl of oatmeal and bananas like a machine.
“Go Sam go,” he chants for himself, under his breath, grinning, and Dean laughs.
Sam scrapes the bowl clean and lets out all the coughing he's been holding in for the past five minutes. It takes about that long. The fever's down but far from gone, but he's lucid and comfortable enough as long as he's packed in every sweatshirt and blanket in the damn place (and yeah, Dean called down for more blankets and got Sam some touristy 'I'm on a beach in Delaware' sweatshirt from the mini-mart next door).
Sam pulls the scarf up to his nose and coughs into it.
“Germiest fucking thing in the world right up to your mouth,” Dean says, without looking up.
“Yeah, but they're my germs. Near and dear to me. I hold them close like my children.”
It's the worst thing ever to admit, but Sam's kind of awesome when he has a fever.
He sneezes hard and flops down on his back. “I'm tired.”
“You need anything?”
“Nnn.” He shakes his inhaler. Fifth hit this morning. Awesome.
Dean says, “We should suck it up and swing by a clinic later, see if they can give you some of the coedine cough syrup. We're out and it makes you hilarious.”
Sam sucks on the inhaler. “I don't want to.”
"Yeah, sure, I don't care."
Sam says, “Not to be an asshole, but,” (and Dean braces himself for the asshole remark) “this whole mother hen routine isn't exactly you. Is something up?”
It's even worse than Dean was prepared for. He scowls and hunkers down in his newspaper. “Fuck you.”
When Sam starts coughing in earnest a few minutes later, Dean is quiet.
**At two, Dean reads the sentence I'm scared noone will be here when it hapens and Sam throws up from coughing so much.
Dean very decidedly does not hover, but when Sam comes out of the bathroom rubbing his chest and saying, “I think this might be bad,” yeah, he's up and Sam's under his arm and they're headed to the car.
“How far 'way 'sit?” Sammy says, forehead against the window, shivering.
Dean starts the car. “Ten minutes, maybe?”
And Sam looks at him and puppy dogs the crap out of him and says. “Can we go back and get a cold washcloth then?” and why the fuck does he phrase that as a question, is this Jeopardy? of course he can have a freaking washcloth. But then Dean has one of his grand ideas and he steals Sam's scarf (and Sam bitches and whines and clings to it) and runs it inside and brings it back soaking wet (and clean, two birds and all that) and Sam puts it on and cuddles it and holds it against his forehead and he says “thank you thank you thank you thank you” so many times and Christ how high is this damn fever?
**103 and change, it turns out, and it's bronchitis, which Sam's somehow never had before. Essentially, it's this fever, more chest pain than Sammy's used to, and pretty much just like asthma except Sam already has asthma, so this is like Asthma 2: The Reckoning and well isn't that nice.
The good news is he doesn't need antibiotics (good news because there are all of two Sam's exuberant little immune system can handle and every time he takes them Dean's thinking what if he reacts to it this time, there aren't enough tools in the Sammy-arsenal as it is) and the bad news is the treatment for it is all the things they were already doing (rest, inhalers, nebulizer, breathe some steam, it's like they think Sammy's stupid) plus Tylenol if the fever gets too high, and at least they get the badass cough syrup in case he can't sleep, but the doctor goes on and on about the importance of letting himself cough and taking deep breaths and the possibility of it turning into pneumonia like these aren't things they have to keep in mind every time the kid gets a damn cold.
Usually when doctors are talking down to them like this, whether it's Sam laid up or Dean, Sam is rolling his eyes and stealing the doctor's little light to shine into Dean's ear and trying to stick tongue depressors up Dean's nose whenever he gets half a chance, but today he's slumped over, breathing through his mouth, blinking slowly at the floor. But every time Dean speaks Sam looks up with him with this fucking smile, like he'd forgotten Dean was there, but more like he hasn't seen Dean in years and it's such a surprise, and what the fuck is Dean supposed to do with that, seriously? And then the doctor leaves the room and Sam looks around and takes in the white walls and the prescription pad and the exam table and tugs Dean's sleeve and goes, “Hey, Dean, you sick?”
Like, what the fuck, Sammy, but then five minutes later the fever's up half a degree but since when does Sam follow any rules because he's all of a sudden lucid as hell, just headachey and bitchy, shoving off Dean's hands on the way to the car. “I can do it, I can do it,” but he's all stuffed up so it almost sounds like “I can't do it,” and then he braces himself on the hood of the car and coughs for twenty hours and Dean just stands there and waits and watches.
Some woman herding her sick kid in the car gives Dean some look like help him and Dean yells, “He's awesome at coughing, okay? He doesn't need help.”
“Why are you always such a jerk to everyone when I'm sick?” Sam says, and there's that fucking smile again, and Dean puts his hand on Sam's head and pushes him into the car, and Sam giggles-fucking giggles-and says, “Am I under arrest?” and this is really not the time for Dean to be laughing, goddamn Sammy.
**
Back at the motel, Dean reads a few pages of the journal (of course Annabel has to go on about how much her chest hurts, of course) and Sam tells Dean he thinks he's having an asthma attack on top of his asthma attack on top of his asthma attack and those are the last words he gets out for a long time.
Dean sits on his bed and Sam sits on his so that Dean can lean forwards and brace Sam's shoulders, and Sam wheezes and chokes and shakes that inhaler with everything in him, and after a few minutes Dean figures out that with one hand strategically under Sam's throat he can have the other one free to keep the kid's damn hair out of his eyes while he coughs.
“There we go,” Dean says, “Get it out,” but it's a dry cough and nothing's getting out but Sam's air that he's working pretty damn hard for, and it takes so many hits on the inhaler for Sam to even be able to sit up without it hurting so much he can't open his eyes.
“I hate this,” Sammy finally croaks, and Dean swallows and says, “That's 'cause you're normal. You're supposed to hate this.”
**
Three hours later, Dean drinks another cup of coffee and Sam cleans up puke (because Dean did it last time, and he offered to do it again, okay?)
Sam finishes scrubbing and lies down on the floor. “Can I just sleep here?” he says. “Bed's far away.”
And Dean says, “Yeah, sure,” because it would be pretty funny and after the past few hours, he'll take whatever he can get.
Sam sleeps for ten minutes, with his legs tucked underneath him and his arms out on the floor (Dean fucked a yoga instructor one time and he's pretty sure this is called “child's pose” and he's also pretty sure you're not supposed to fucking sleep in it) and then he wakes up with the carpet grain in his cheek and goes “Why am I on the floor?” and Dean's laughing his ass off and Sam's whining Deeeeeeeeeean!
**Sam's sleeping in his bed this time, and Dean's reading maybe dieing alone would be easyer when the kid sits up on the side of the bed and plants his feet on the ground. He sneezes hard and pants and fucking coughs.
“What can I get you, Sammy?” Dean says, and it's not as sappy as it sounds, okay, because he says it all matter-of-fact and he doesn't even put the laptop down.
Sam shakes his head like it weighs a hundred pounds, and he reaches for the tissue box, but it's empty, and Dean gets up to get him some toilet paper (because seriously, tissues? They're men) but then Sam turns the empty tissue box upside down and shakes it, like when he was little and trying to get the prize out of the cereal box except then there was still fucking cereal in there and then it was all over the floor and how the fuck did his kid get into Stanford, seriously, but the tissue box is fucking empty and he keeps shaking it and nothing comes out and God, he's whimpering.
Dean can hear the heat coming off of him from here.
“All right,” Dean says. “Supply run. You coming with?”
Sam coughs into his elbow and looks at him blankly.
“That's a yes. C'mon, Sam.”
**
In the parking lot, Dean says, “What can I get you, Sammy?” again (and okay, maybe it's fucking sappy this time, sue him, his kid's burning up over there) and Sam mumbles something that might be brand names and but sounds like squirrel combo punch banana so okay, Dean will just get tissues and apple juice and some tea bags, how's that? He leaves the keys in the ignition so the heat will stay on, and he doesn't think much of it until he comes back with all his heavy shit (who would have thought a mini-mart sold humidifiers, and in the Winchester world that's a miracle right there) and Sam's scooted over in front of the wheel and put the car in drive.
Dean frowns and knocks on the window, and Sam lights up and rolls it down. “Hey!” he says.
“Hey there, Sammy. So what the fuck are you doing?”
“I was gonna pick you up,” Sam says.
Dean shakes his head slowly.
Sam says, “But I guess you're already here.”
Nods.
Sam thinks for a minute and says, “So we're saving gas, then. Saving the environment!” and Dean takes Sam's face between his hands and smacks one of his cheeks and Sam goes “Owwwwww,” like the little princess he is. He sleeps on Dean's shoulder on the way back.
**
Back at the motel, Dean reads and Sam sweats out his fever and Annabel thinks she might be getting better and Dean thinks he's going to fucking throw up (and it's his turn to clean it up) but he doesn't.
**
Then it's bone-burning time, so he props Sam up in front of the TV and gives him another dose of fucking everything, and Sam says “I'll be fine, stop fussing.” His fever's down, and he's breathing like he has asthma but not like he has asthma times two, so Dean's feeling pretty fine about leaving him.
“What's the drop-deadline?” Sam says, meaning, at what time does he assume Dean's in real trouble and walk or hitchhike or fucking crawl, whatever it takes, to the cemetery to rescue him, screw the fever, screw the wheezing, whatever it goddamn takes, and Dean is glad they figured out this precaution a while ago when Dean was laid up with two broken arms and Sam was handling a salt and burn on his own, because today would not be the day that he'd want to invent a rule that might get Sammy out in the twenty-degree weather with his hundred and one degree body.
“Three,” Dean says.
Sam doesn't look up from the TV. “Two.”
“Two-thirty.”
“If I leave here at two, I'll be there at two-thirty.”
“Leave at two-fucking-thirty.”
Sam shrugs, and Dean knows Sam's going to freak out if he's back much after one, so come on, Annabel, let's not make a big deal out of this, okay?
**
Turns out it's Dean who has to go and make the whole thing dramatic, because of course the part he read where Annabel was still on chemo and she got fucking pneumonia in the hospital is circling through his mind again and again while he's standing over her skeleton and staring down at her chest and wondering what the fuck her lungs looked like.
Sam doesn't answer his phone, which is fine, he's asleep, whatever.
He pours down the salt and the lighter fluid and lights the match, and he thinks goddamn it why did it have to be sick kids?
“I don't...” Dean starts to say, but why, and who's he even talking to? So he mumbles this is your goddamn job, Winchester, come on.
Then Annabel shows up and throws him around a little for good measure, gives him a few kicks in the ribs, but he's too fast for her and he tosses the match and gets to see her flare out, so he knows she's really gone. Flares the fuck out, this girl.
He's walking to the car and rubbing his side when he gets the crazy idea that maybe she was possessing Sam or some shit and he'll be fine now. He tries calling him again and this time he picks up. His voice is even more wrecked than Dean remembered, and there's some kind of noise in the background, probably the TV, that's making it hard to hear him.
“How you feelin'?” he says. “Job's done.”
Sam's quiet for way too long.
“Can you come back?” he says eventually, and that noise in the background is wheezing, Dean, you idiot, and then it's Sam fucking goddamn fuck shit crying.
**
Six minutes later, Dean rushes into the motel room, and where the fuck is his kid.
**
Dean's freaking out in the hallway, calling Sam's cell phone again, when he sees a bit of a comforter sticking out of a doorway from down the hall, and at this point he'll take any lead he can get. He pushes open the door and there's the ice machine and there's Sam asleep with the comforter wrapped around him and his cheek against the metal and his scarf off and just goddamn hanging out on a pile of ice like it has a fever too.
And he probably shouldn't be mad, he should be all concerned and sympathetic and relieved and shit, and he is, really, but God fucking damn it what the fuck, Sammy, what the fuck, who the hell does that, and he's sick and sitting in a freezing cold room and Dean just washed that scarf and here it is lying on the floor, and didn't Sam think it was weird that he wanted both the comforter and a freaking ice tank, didn't something about that strike him as not quite right and hmm maybe I should call my big brother, and if something had happened to Dean, if Annabel had thrown him headfirst into a tombstone the way ghosts seem to always do to his kid brother and what the fuck is with that anyway, if that had happened what the hell would either of them have done then because there's no way Sam was in any state to come get him and all the planning was for shit and how the hell was he supposed to know Sammy would get this bad because he was fine when he left he was really fucking sick and Dean left him.
He kicks the ice machine and Sam jerks awake.
He just sits there and sneezes and doesn't seem real concerned about not knowing where he is.
“Hey,” he says to Dean.
“If I hoist you up on my back, will you fall off?”
“Yep.”
“All right. You're walking, then.” But halfway to the room it becomes clear that's not going to happen, because Sam's swaying and stumbling and mumbling something about witches and Carmen Sandiago and vanilla lattes so Dean hoists him up on his back and just hopes for the best.
Sam holds on like a fucking superhero and doesn't fall off. How the hell can Dean be mad at him after that?
When they're back in the room, Sam looks lost and wheezes out a long breath and cries into Dean's arm, and that's when Dean realizes he forgot the scarf.
He blasts it with the hairdryer for a while before Sam's allowed to have it back. Sam hugs a pillow and cries the whole time about how he thinks Dean has bruises and God Christ can tonight please just end.
**
But it doesn't, it keeps going, and it's rough as hell, because it seems like anything that helps the bronchitis messes with the asthma, and Dean's not normally into being all weepy and self-sacrificing when it comes to Sam's asthma (because he beat that right the fuck out of himself when he was eleven because even then he knew that kind of guilt actually would kill them both) but he can't help wishing he could just do one of them for the night, because two asthma attacks, two brothers, it would just make a lot more sense. Logic, order, sense, it's easier to think about those things than about his little brother who's switching back and forth, he's either lucid but wheezing or breathing a little better but crying about how his socks are hurting his feet when Christ Sammy you haven't been wearing any socks since the first time you cried about how your socks were hurting your feet, okay?
And Dean's rereading the parts of the diary where Annabel had pneumonia, and the fucking case is finished, but it's just not finished for Dean.
Then Sam bucks up and coughs a whole load of crap into his hands (but no blood, no blood) and immediately freaks out and wipes his hands all over the comforter and then winces and curses and coughs more and Dean says, “Whoa, whoa, okay,” and Sam apologizes.
**
Sam throws up and says the sound of his gagging hurts his ears and he was just wondering if maybe Dean could put on some music?
So Dean opens up Sammy's music folder on his laptop. He doesn't know what Sam wants, and he thinks probably Sam's wheezing too hard to really hear anything, so he finds the list of the songs that are most played because he has no idea what Sam listens to, really, because Sam likes to hear it alone, like it's some religious experience.
So Dean plays this song with the most listens and lets his kid rest his head on his knee, and the song's called “What Sarah Said” and it's boring and slow but it seems to calm Sam down a little, and he thinks about that art dealer named Sarah and how he's glad Sam texts her sometimes and maybe they'll swing back around and visit when Sam's feeling better.
Everything's all right for a minute.
Until all the music cuts out and there's this dramatic pause and this singer is like “And I'm thinking of what Sarah said,” and then says, “love is watching someone die” and Dean bites his tongue so hard it throbs and why the fuck is Sammy listening to this shit.
**
At five in the morning, Dean gives Sam a dose of the cough syrup and Sam throws up. He keeps his head hanging in the toilet until Dean comes and hauls it out. He wipes his face with a washcloth before Sam can do it with his goddamn scarf.
“Chest hurts,” Sam says, softly, and Dean says, “Yeah, I know.”
And then he's coughing and wheezing out “stop it, stop it,” and hitting his chest and that's just not okay, so Dean takes both his wrists and holds them hard and doesn't let him move and Sam coughs at the floor and then tugs Dean towards the toilet to throw up again.
And God, he just keeps going. He gets five minutes in-between bouts and every single time he thinks it's over, he takes a hit on the inhaler and nods at Dean and sips some water and it's only seconds before he's launching himself at the toilet again that his face shows any recognition of what the hell is body is doing to him. After four or five rounds of that, though, it gets a hundred times worse because now the nausea's not letting up a damn bit in-between and well that's the last time his kid gets codeine, that's for damn sure, and he's still throwing up and then he's lying on the bathroom floor with his knees up to his chest and coughing with every damn muscle in his body.
And now he's whispering, “I can't do it. I can't do it.”
“Shut up,” Dean says. Gently.
“Just fucking kill me,” Sam mumbles, and Dean yells “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” so loudly Sam actually stops coughing for a minute.
Then he gives this wheezy sigh and closes his eyes and goes to sleep for a little while.
**
At seven in the morning, Dean lets one eye close and leans against the headboard and Sam, nebulizer on (mask this time, because kid can't even figure out what the fuck the mouthpiece is), shivers and scoots in closer.
Dean puts both his arms around him because what the hell, Sam isn't going to remember this anyway. And yeah, he smells disgusting, but in a familiar Sam is sick way, so it's okay.
He takes the end of his kid's scarf and brings it against his own cheek. It's so warm.
“I'm not going to fucking kill you,” Dean says, “and what I'm doing right now isn't harder than being sick, and what you're doing is not harder than dying alone, and I'm not going to kill you.”
The silence is brutal.
Then Sam moves the mask away but not enough, so his voice is still really hard to hear, but it sounds like “You make me feel better,” is what Sammy says.
They fall asleep like that and wake up around noon drenched in the sweat of Sam's broken fever, and whatever, Dean will take it.
**
It takes another day and a half for Sam to be able to say more than a sentence at a time without stopping to pant, and in that time, Dean manages to tear through Annabel's entire journal, because Sam's still sleeping eighty percent of the time and whether he's conscious or not he's coughing so loudly than Dean can't get any sleep himself, but it's whatever.
“What are you doing all the time?” Sam asks while he's brushing his teeth for the first time in like two days, thank fucking God. They're packing up their stuff so they can finally get out of this room and get on the road, but Dean still has Sam's laptop out because he's almost, almost done, the girl's about to write her last entry before she drops dead and she has no fucking clue.
And before he can come up with some excuse for what he's up to, Sam comes up and reads over his shoulder for a second too long.
And he expects Sam to make fun of him or get mad at him or shrug it off, but he doesn't know why he expects that because he knows Sam's a woman, but for some reason he's kind of surprised when Sam really gently closes the laptop and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder and says, “It's over. We're all done, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” Okay. He realizes he really didn't want to know how it ends.
**
In the car, Dean plays with the scarf and Sam drives.
“I've been thinking,” Sam says.
Dean looks up. He was almost fucking asleep, Sam, thanks for that.
“You know that thing about how Dad said you might have to kill me?”
And thanks for that.They almost got through this whole thing with that just hanging around (because it is always hanging around) and never acknowledged it so great, Sam, way to ruin it, and did someone not teach you how to be a Winchester or something?
Dean doesn't say anything.
“Well,” Sammy says. “I've decided it means I'm otherwise invincible.”
Dean blinks and says, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Bear with me here. The reason you'd have to kill me is because I wouldn't drop dead of my own accord, right?”
“Uh...”
“So, accordingly, either you kill me or I don't die. It's like I have superpowers.”
“You do have superpowers...”
“We have zero evidence that I can die. It's never happened before. So.” And that's the point where Dean realizes that Sam is aware that he's full of shit.
“Shut up,” Dean says.
“No, listen. There is zero evidence that I can die if you don't kill me. So I think probably we, uh, we won't have you kill me, cool, so I'll just live forever.”
“Fine by me. Can I sleep?”
“So if I get sick again like that, you don't have to be worried, okay? Now you know I'll be fine.”
Dean opens his eyes again and doesn't say anything.
Because what the fuck do you say to that?
He decides on, “You're such a fucking bitch, I didn't think you were going to die.”
“Yeah, so why were you reading those journals, then?”
They're coming up on the bridge again (Sam's bridge).
“Those had nothing to do with you.”
Sam turns his head and fixes him a look. Dean tugs on the scarf hard enough for Sam to jerk a little, and he shoves Dean off.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Sure.”
“Fine, yeah, they reminded me of you a little.” He pauses. “So you know what that means, right?”
Sam's quiet. “Yeah.”
“It means I think of you as a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Ha, ha.”
“I'm going to sleep.”
“Good,” Sam says, but Dean stays awake until they're off the bridge, because he likes the way Sam's smiling.
And Sam plays the damn song and he smiles all the way through it.
Because Sam can just do that.
When Dean wakes up, the scarf is scrunched under his head for a pillow.
--end--
Summary: An easy hunt for a ghost that targets sick kids gets screwed up by Sam's abusive relationship with his bronchitis. Because it's hard to worry about hypothetical sick kids when your asthmatic kid brother is over there worrying about breathing.
Warnings/Spoilers: It's set in Season 2, so spoilers through there (because why foreshadow when you can FORESHADOW, am I right?) Profanity galore. Gen.
Wordcount: 8,343
Author's Note: To selecasharp, with love. It's another Sam asthma fic! Hooray! Title stolen from Death Cab for Cutie's "What Sarah Said." It make sense in context. I hope. The repetition of the "PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, Dean xs and Sam ys" at the beginnings of a bunch of the parts were intentional and were supposed to be *~interesting~*, but I think they turned out looking like I don't know how to vary my sentence structure. Also I think you're pretty.
ottermusprime did AMAZING fanart for this fic! Come see it HERE.
What Sammy Said
On the way to Delaware, Dean drives and Sam reads.
"All the killings fit the same pattern," Sam says. He has a scarf draped loosely around his neck, and he brings it up every few sentences to rub it against his nose. "Kids go into the hospital, come out full healed, no one can explain it. Then they drop dead eight months to the day and no one knows why."
"And the timeline?"
"Once every twelve years, December third. Forty-six hours away." Sam cranks down his window and hangs his head out while they drive over the bridge. Kid looks like a damn dog with all of that hair (and seriously, cold air on his lungs right now? but it's not like Dean's going to say anything about it, Sam's a big overgrown boy or whatever the fuck).
"I've always liked bridges," Sam says, when he comes back inside, coughing.
"Yeah?" Dean says, and God, it's weird when there are these things about Sam he doesn't know, stupid things like whether he likes vanilla ice cream with or without the specks, or how the fuck many sugars it is he takes in his coffee again, and that the kid likes bridges. Stuff that really doesn't matter, but it seems like something that he should know, after dragging around this enormous, frustrating appendage for twenty-three years.
He knows how Sam looks when he's exhausted though, and what scarf he wears when his asthma's bothering him.
Sam runs the fabric over his mouth.
"Let me know if you get hungry," Dean says.
Sam nods. He's reading again, pulling his lip into his mouth and peeling the skin off with his teeth, winding that scarf around his fingers, every once in a while mouthing a word or two to himself like he used to when he was four and sandwiched between John and Dean on some motel bed and they were cheering whenever Sam read a word on his own like it was a goddamn miracle, and Dean's smiling as he pulls off the bridge.
Because it's been an all right day. The drive from New Jersey to Delaware isn't bad, and it's a degree or two warmer every hundred miles, and they've been caffeinating every hour or so because Sammy's coughing kept them both up all night (it happens, Sam, whatever) but the last diner had ridiculously good coffee, crazy good, he and Sam pausing between sips to go "Seriously, what the fuck?" good, and it's sitting well and the sun's coming down and Sam's sounding a little better, right?
Sam coughs a little, fishes out his inhaler, shakes it.
Dean says, "So what's going to happen to those terminal kids once we salt and burn whoever's behind it?"
At first Dean thinks the silence is meaningful, but no, it's just Sam over there holding his breath to keep the medicine in.
But then Sam lets out the breath and says, “Whomever,” but nothing else, and Dean feels like a Class A asshole, because he's the one always saying if it's supernatural, we kill it and here he is saying hey, so, Sammy, how do you feel about dead kids, by the by?
Sam says, "If it were in their shoes, I wouldn't want three years of false hope."
"You wouldn't know it was false until the last second," Dean says, "you'd be enjoying every damn minute of it up into the end, and that's three years of minutes, man," and seriously, what the hell, Dean.
And Sam looks at him, all startled, and Dean's tongue stutters against the roof of his mouth. Sam says, "Oh, ha. Got it. I was talking about the families. Having to live with that broken promise for the rest of their lives"
"Oh. All right."
"It's got to be easier to be sick and die than to have to watch it," Sam says, and he's looking at Dean and he's probably thinking about the ten minutes last year when Dean's heart was giving out (Dean's memories of the ordeal: Roy had cold hands, Layla's obituary a few months later was shorter than he expected, and Sam cries like a fucking six-year-old and when Dean dies for real it better be fucking quick so he doesn't have to see his kid make that damn face because of him ever, ever again) and look, Dean knows that sucked for Sam, but that's a little selfish even by his standards, because he wasn't the one laid up in that hospital with the ugly nurses and the staccato heartbeat, but isn't that just like Sam to make everything about him (and how the fuck he makes that an endearing quality, Dean will never know) that's what Dean gets for spoiling him rotten twenty years ago, and then Sam's coughing up a lung next to him and ramming his forehead against the window until it stops and Jesus there's nothing Dean hates more than watching this, and he thinks, oh.
Oh.
Sam's choking on his own breath and he thinks Dean has the short end of the stick here, that's what's going on.
**
In the motel room, Dean eats and Sam researches.
“It looks like our ghost is Annabel Marsh,” Sam says. “Died of leukemia when she was twelve years old.”
“That would explain the cycle. Eat something.”
“Exactly. And get this-doctors told her she was in remission, that she didn't need another check-up for eight months. The next morning she was dead.”
Dean takes a swig from his beer bottle. “Damn. Fucking eat something.”
“Mmm.” Sam rubs the scarf against his lips, and Dean watches him shift around in his chair for a minute, then he turns his gaze back to the TV and turns the sound up. As soon as the volume's up, Sam coughs, like he was waiting to do it, and Dean rolls his eyes and goes to take a shower so the kid can maybe hack off some of the stuff rolling around in his lungs in peace.
When he gets out, Sam's asleep on his bed with his fucking shoes still on, and honestly the kid would walk into probably forget to eat and bathe himself (and breathe) without his big brother here to kick him around, and Dean remembers back when he thought that Sam probably wore the same shirt two days in a row and walked into walls because he was busy thinking about lawyer stuff and saving the world or whatever. Lately he's begun to suspect his kid is just fucking dense, because seriously, who passes out face down on on the comforter of some shittyass motel when he's breathing like shit as it is and it's nine fucking thirty?
(He thinks all this after he's watched Sam's back to make sure he's breathing and listened to the quiet wheeze and what the hell why not taken his pulse, so he's not heartless, okay?)
He tugs off Sam's shoes and turns him over on his side so he can unwind the scarf, but Sam mumbles and holds onto it, so Dean lets go. Sam tugs it over his chin and smacks it between his lips.
It's just a blue cotton scarf, nothing special. Sam grabbed it at an army surplus store when he was, what, fourteen, and it was sitting right there and it matched the shirt he was wearing and back then Sam was pretending to give a shit about those things, and there's nothing metaphorically significant about it because yeah, Dean was there, but name ten times before Stanford that Dean wasn't there, and there were no symbolic moments when he or John handed it to Sam with some dramatic flourish at some important time. The only thing special about it is it's been through practically every damn asthma attack since then, because for some reason Sam always grabs for it, always plays with it and shields his throat with it and rubs it against his cheek, and here's a thought Dean never thought he'd have but thank God his breathing was a little off that night Dean went and grabbed him out of Stanford or the thing would have burned up in the fire, and then how the hell would he know when Sam was having a hard time? It's a code, and they don't mind talking about the asthma, but it's easier when Sam can just put the thing around his neck and nod and they can be on their way.
Sam nuzzles the scarf in his sleep and Dean wanders over to Sam's laptop (not for any specific reason, obviously, come on, Sam's still in the room) and sees Sam's left open a page with some scans of some girly handwriting, and he wonders for a minute what Sam's doing uploading his old diaries before he sees the name Annabel and yeah, all right, someone thought to put the ramblings of a sick twelve-year-old on the internet, and now two strangers are going to use it to help track down where she might have been buried, and how the fuck sick is their job sometimes?
He scans the page and sees the line my dad told me I'm not gonna die and what the shit, he opens up another beer.
**
At around one, Dean looks up, finally, from his reading and Sam whimpers in his sleep.
And Dean's shaking his head to try to clear it, because he had no idea when the last time was that he read for four straight fucking hours, and he should have gotten Sam up and made him take some meds and eat some fucking food two hours ago, and instead here he's been sitting reading the journal of some dead chick who can't even spell because every time he thinks he's going to stop there's a line like I don't think dieing's going to be like it is in the movies, I think it's going to be cold and hidiuos and alone and God she wrote this shit when she was eleven years old, and then Sam's shivering on the bed even though Dean put a fucking blanket over him, and now he's whimpering, and he's like sixteen years too old to be having this nightmares, okay?
“Sammy.” He takes off his shoe and chucks it on the bed next to Sam. “You're just dreaming, man.”
Sam blinks awake, picks up the shoe, studies it like it's a rare artifact and seriously, Dean needs to start taking pictures of Sam's goofy as hell facial expressions for the next time someone tries to tell Dean he's the dumb one.
He pulls a brand new face and drops the shoe on the floor. Coughs.
“Take your fucking meds,” Dean says.
“Correct.” Sam searches his pockets, then shakes the inhaler and says, “I'm freezing.”
On the way over to check the thermostat (because it's pretty fucking warm in here to him, but that could just be the alcohol talking) Dean palms Sam's forehead. Great. He gives the kid a swat on the back of the head and says, “No, you're not. Get some sleep.”
**
The fever's still low the next morning, and the cough's still dry, so they look at each other and shrug and say, “Well, it's not pneumonia,” so that means no sitting this one out. Sam's dressed in an extra layer with that scarf wound around his neck when Dean finally looks up the address for Annabel's parents (what, it's not his job, and it's not his fault his kid slept for thirteen hours-it's not anyone's damn fault) and sees they moved out of state three years ago, shit, so their best bet is going to be to visit the hospital and check out the records and make sure there are bones to burn. But that means suits, and suits means no hoodies (and no scarf) and Sam swallows.
“You good?” Dean says.
Sam narrows his eyes. “Of course.”
“All right, all right, just checking.”
Sam makes that face and rolls his eyes and gets out of his comfy clothes. The scarf comes off last.
Sam goes to the bathroom and slicks back his hair like he always does for the suits, and Dean wishes he would do it all the time so he would stop having to stop and shake his damn hair out of his face when they're trying to save people, and Dean uses the opportunity to sit back down at the laptop and read a few more pages of Annabel's journals.
Nobody knows how it feels. Its like everyone else is in one world and I'm in this other one all by myself, just me and being sick and nothing else. I just want somone here with me.
He hears Sammy wheeze and cough something up.
**
Dean noticed a few trips back that Sam, when he's not the one in the bed (in which case he's three feet tall and seven years old, always) is fucking enormous in hospitals. Something about the narrow hallways and the white halls and the sick people everywhere and the fact that no one, right until the very second the kid's stopped breathing, looks as healthy as Sam Winchester makes him loom over everything like a hospital overlord, and doctors are always falling all over themselves to give him information and Dean usually just stands back and watches.
Except today Sam has that low-grade fever and he's a little shaky and Dean is looking into all the hospital rooms like some freak passing a highway accident and he's seeing all these patients all decked out in God knows what and he's never seen a leg brace like that before and his stitches never looked that and Sam's never been hooked up to one of those and maybe that's the machine Annabel called the one that I think will cary my soul away and there are all these people holding all these hands and where-
“Dean?”
Dean jerks his head up. Sam is chewing on his lip.
The doctor crosses her arms.
“Could I see those IDs, actually?” she says, and now they're back on their game, they're not Dean and Sam, Thing 1 and Thing 2, they're officers Daltrey and Townshend from the Dover county police department and they'll have those damn records, thanks.
**
At lunch, Dean drinks three cups of coffee and Sammy throws french fries at his sandwich.
Dean says, “Do you remember that time we left you alone?”
Sam looks up. “What?”
“Nothing,” Dean says, because what's he supposed to do, clarify that he's talking about the time seven-year-old Sam had double pneumonia-which means both fucking lungs, if you didn't know, both fist-sized, seven-year-old damn lungs-and his body had basically bailed on him and Dean wasn't even worried, he seriously wasn't, he worried when Sam got a skinned knee and when he burned his tongue on his pizza but here he was, all three feet of him prone on a hospital bed, and Dean was rolling his eyes at the whole thing because the questions the doctors were asking and the things they were saying might happen had nothing to do with Sam. Because Sam was missing-tooth smiles and temper tantrums over fucking nothing and coughing, coughing all the fucking time which that kid with the tube down his throat sure as hell couldn't do, and Sammy was singing the same lines from the same songs over and over and over again and hanging upside down from Dean's waist and kissing his dad goodnight, he wasn't respirator dependent or reacting to the medication or whatever the hell the doctors were saying today, and anyway whenever Sam did open his eyes he smiled, he fucking smiled at Dean, so whenever the doctors talked about Sam's body and all the crap that was happening to it, Dean didn't care because he knew that the worst that could happen was that broken blue thing in the bed would crack open and his Sam would climb right out. Eleven fucking years old and the second best shot this side of whereverthefuck they were that week, and here Dean was believing his kid was some kind of phoenix.
So yeah, he's obviously not going to tell Sam about that, especially when the part that's on his mind is the part where Rufus and Bobby were getting their asses handed to them by Dean can't even remember what up in North Dakota, and it wasn't a choice because they honestly would have died, and Sam was just lying there anyway, so Dean and John took off for North Dakota and Dean sat in the backseat and wrote notes to give to Sam later and John cleaned up the whole mess and they came home and there was Sam right where they left him. Two days later, two days in the room with no one to hold his hand, and he did okay, so why is Dean thinking about any of this?
Sam says, “Dean, what the hell?”
“Are you going to eat your fucking sandwich?”
Sammy shakes his head, then he rubs his forehead and tugs at his tie and mumbles something about a nebulizer and coughs and coughs and coughs.
**
The fever's up, because being a Winchester is fucking exhilarating.
But it's below 102, barely, which makes it still a bitch fever (barely) so Sam doesn't get out of research duties. He's at the table with the mouthpiece of the nebulizer hanging out of his mouth like a cigar, winding the scarf around his fingers, letting it go, winding it back up.
He's looking at maps of where the cemetery plots are and not obsessively reading a dying girl's journals because he is fucking normal (and if he ever finds out Dean just thought of him as normal he will be gloating until the end of goddamn time, so let's add that to the long of thoughts Dean's had today that he's going to be keeping right tight against his chest there, all right?)
Sam wheezes and coughs and sweats like a son of a bitch and seems completely untroubled by any of it. Dean's flipping through a magazine (just a car magazine, Jesus) on the bed because he did his part of the research while Sam was showering and setting up the nebulizer and bitching about God knows what, sometimes Dean is still amazed by how much his kid talks, and now he's trying to enjoy some downtime and Sammy has to go and wheeze like a fire truck.
“Do you need something?” Dean says, (trying his best to sound) pissed off.
Sam shakes his head (doesn't buy it), doesn't take his eyes off the screen. “Found the plot, I think.” He stifles a cough into his wrist. “Shouldn't be bad.”
“Yeah, you're not coming.”
Sam sneezes.
“You can do that, though. Yeah, stay here and do that. Or better yet, stay here and don't do that and get some sleep.”
“If I got some sleep every time you told me to get some sleep, I'd never wake up.” Then Sam brings his eyebrows together and looks at Dean and goes, “Whoa, whoa, you okay there, tiger?”
“Trying to read here, Sam,” Dean says, and he stares down at his magazine and tells his heart to slow down because Jesus Christ Sammy's right there and he's not only awake, he's shaking his head and snickering at Dean as he goes back to his research, and maybe Dean will forgive him for not having a clue what's going on because he's feverish and oxygen deprived, maybe, or maybe he'll forgive him because it's not as if he has any clue what's going on, either.
Sam sniffles and rubs the scarf against his nose. Dean's going to have to wrestle it away from him to wash because he's so damn disgusting (but he won't have to wrestle it away really because any minute Sam's going to freaking breathe and then he won't need it anymore).
Dean says, “I'm going to ask you to do something and don't give me shit about it.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam says, mockingly (absently).
“Look up the symptoms for pneumonia.”
Sam rolls his eyes but does it, and he nods a little as he reads through. “We're fine.”
Dean nods.
Sam falls asleep sitting up at the table with the nebulizer still in his mouth, and Dean judges Sammy silently and waits for the treatment to be over and then grabs Sammy by the shoulders and shoves him onto his bed. He glances at the pneumonia symptoms before he closes the laptop.
They're fine. Sam doesn't lie about this shit.
**
In the middle of the night, Dean changes the sheets and Sam sweats.
Sam sits on Dean's bed and wheezes and rocks and coughs and coughs and coughs (hacking, painful, the driest and tightest cough Dean has ever heard) and Dean strips off Sam's sheets. He remembers doing this when Sam was four and wetting the bed (except they were sharing beds, then, and wasn't that a fun time).
Sam rubs his face with both hands. It's not a bitch fever anymore, but they always spike at night. He coughs and lowers his head to his knees.
Dean checks the closet but doesn't find any spare sheets, and it's not like he's going to call down for room service when his brother looks like a TB victim (checked the symptoms for that one too, thanks) and Dean's hair is doing God knows the fuck what (he saw the maid, she was cute, okay?) plus Sam is definitely going to fall asleep, like, now.
“Dean?” Sam says, and he sounds really far away, and that really settles it.
“Yeah.” He walks over and hooks an arm around Sam's shoulders and guides him underneath Dean's covers. Sam curls in on himself and shivers.
Dean climbs onto the bed next to him and looks at Sam's back. All his muscles are clenched up and he's jerking around when he coughs. About as much fun to bunk with as a bedwetting four-year-old, all in all.
Sam wheezes and Dean can hear his teeth clenched and he says “Okay, shhh.” He takes the scarf hanging from the bedpost and wraps it around Sam's hand, because knowing his kid he'd fucking strangle himself with it thrashing around with the fever if Dean let him hook it around his neck.
But Sam cuddles it to his cheek and relaxes, so, good.
Sam sleeps, and Dean takes out the laptop and reads ramblings of a sick (dead, Dean) girl.
**
In the morning, Dean reads the paper and Sam plows through a bowl of oatmeal and bananas like a machine.
“Go Sam go,” he chants for himself, under his breath, grinning, and Dean laughs.
Sam scrapes the bowl clean and lets out all the coughing he's been holding in for the past five minutes. It takes about that long. The fever's down but far from gone, but he's lucid and comfortable enough as long as he's packed in every sweatshirt and blanket in the damn place (and yeah, Dean called down for more blankets and got Sam some touristy 'I'm on a beach in Delaware' sweatshirt from the mini-mart next door).
Sam pulls the scarf up to his nose and coughs into it.
“Germiest fucking thing in the world right up to your mouth,” Dean says, without looking up.
“Yeah, but they're my germs. Near and dear to me. I hold them close like my children.”
It's the worst thing ever to admit, but Sam's kind of awesome when he has a fever.
He sneezes hard and flops down on his back. “I'm tired.”
“You need anything?”
“Nnn.” He shakes his inhaler. Fifth hit this morning. Awesome.
Dean says, “We should suck it up and swing by a clinic later, see if they can give you some of the coedine cough syrup. We're out and it makes you hilarious.”
Sam sucks on the inhaler. “I don't want to.”
"Yeah, sure, I don't care."
Sam says, “Not to be an asshole, but,” (and Dean braces himself for the asshole remark) “this whole mother hen routine isn't exactly you. Is something up?”
It's even worse than Dean was prepared for. He scowls and hunkers down in his newspaper. “Fuck you.”
When Sam starts coughing in earnest a few minutes later, Dean is quiet.
**At two, Dean reads the sentence I'm scared noone will be here when it hapens and Sam throws up from coughing so much.
Dean very decidedly does not hover, but when Sam comes out of the bathroom rubbing his chest and saying, “I think this might be bad,” yeah, he's up and Sam's under his arm and they're headed to the car.
“How far 'way 'sit?” Sammy says, forehead against the window, shivering.
Dean starts the car. “Ten minutes, maybe?”
And Sam looks at him and puppy dogs the crap out of him and says. “Can we go back and get a cold washcloth then?” and why the fuck does he phrase that as a question, is this Jeopardy? of course he can have a freaking washcloth. But then Dean has one of his grand ideas and he steals Sam's scarf (and Sam bitches and whines and clings to it) and runs it inside and brings it back soaking wet (and clean, two birds and all that) and Sam puts it on and cuddles it and holds it against his forehead and he says “thank you thank you thank you thank you” so many times and Christ how high is this damn fever?
**103 and change, it turns out, and it's bronchitis, which Sam's somehow never had before. Essentially, it's this fever, more chest pain than Sammy's used to, and pretty much just like asthma except Sam already has asthma, so this is like Asthma 2: The Reckoning and well isn't that nice.
The good news is he doesn't need antibiotics (good news because there are all of two Sam's exuberant little immune system can handle and every time he takes them Dean's thinking what if he reacts to it this time, there aren't enough tools in the Sammy-arsenal as it is) and the bad news is the treatment for it is all the things they were already doing (rest, inhalers, nebulizer, breathe some steam, it's like they think Sammy's stupid) plus Tylenol if the fever gets too high, and at least they get the badass cough syrup in case he can't sleep, but the doctor goes on and on about the importance of letting himself cough and taking deep breaths and the possibility of it turning into pneumonia like these aren't things they have to keep in mind every time the kid gets a damn cold.
Usually when doctors are talking down to them like this, whether it's Sam laid up or Dean, Sam is rolling his eyes and stealing the doctor's little light to shine into Dean's ear and trying to stick tongue depressors up Dean's nose whenever he gets half a chance, but today he's slumped over, breathing through his mouth, blinking slowly at the floor. But every time Dean speaks Sam looks up with him with this fucking smile, like he'd forgotten Dean was there, but more like he hasn't seen Dean in years and it's such a surprise, and what the fuck is Dean supposed to do with that, seriously? And then the doctor leaves the room and Sam looks around and takes in the white walls and the prescription pad and the exam table and tugs Dean's sleeve and goes, “Hey, Dean, you sick?”
Like, what the fuck, Sammy, but then five minutes later the fever's up half a degree but since when does Sam follow any rules because he's all of a sudden lucid as hell, just headachey and bitchy, shoving off Dean's hands on the way to the car. “I can do it, I can do it,” but he's all stuffed up so it almost sounds like “I can't do it,” and then he braces himself on the hood of the car and coughs for twenty hours and Dean just stands there and waits and watches.
Some woman herding her sick kid in the car gives Dean some look like help him and Dean yells, “He's awesome at coughing, okay? He doesn't need help.”
“Why are you always such a jerk to everyone when I'm sick?” Sam says, and there's that fucking smile again, and Dean puts his hand on Sam's head and pushes him into the car, and Sam giggles-fucking giggles-and says, “Am I under arrest?” and this is really not the time for Dean to be laughing, goddamn Sammy.
**
Back at the motel, Dean reads a few pages of the journal (of course Annabel has to go on about how much her chest hurts, of course) and Sam tells Dean he thinks he's having an asthma attack on top of his asthma attack on top of his asthma attack and those are the last words he gets out for a long time.
Dean sits on his bed and Sam sits on his so that Dean can lean forwards and brace Sam's shoulders, and Sam wheezes and chokes and shakes that inhaler with everything in him, and after a few minutes Dean figures out that with one hand strategically under Sam's throat he can have the other one free to keep the kid's damn hair out of his eyes while he coughs.
“There we go,” Dean says, “Get it out,” but it's a dry cough and nothing's getting out but Sam's air that he's working pretty damn hard for, and it takes so many hits on the inhaler for Sam to even be able to sit up without it hurting so much he can't open his eyes.
“I hate this,” Sammy finally croaks, and Dean swallows and says, “That's 'cause you're normal. You're supposed to hate this.”
**
Three hours later, Dean drinks another cup of coffee and Sam cleans up puke (because Dean did it last time, and he offered to do it again, okay?)
Sam finishes scrubbing and lies down on the floor. “Can I just sleep here?” he says. “Bed's far away.”
And Dean says, “Yeah, sure,” because it would be pretty funny and after the past few hours, he'll take whatever he can get.
Sam sleeps for ten minutes, with his legs tucked underneath him and his arms out on the floor (Dean fucked a yoga instructor one time and he's pretty sure this is called “child's pose” and he's also pretty sure you're not supposed to fucking sleep in it) and then he wakes up with the carpet grain in his cheek and goes “Why am I on the floor?” and Dean's laughing his ass off and Sam's whining Deeeeeeeeeean!
**Sam's sleeping in his bed this time, and Dean's reading maybe dieing alone would be easyer when the kid sits up on the side of the bed and plants his feet on the ground. He sneezes hard and pants and fucking coughs.
“What can I get you, Sammy?” Dean says, and it's not as sappy as it sounds, okay, because he says it all matter-of-fact and he doesn't even put the laptop down.
Sam shakes his head like it weighs a hundred pounds, and he reaches for the tissue box, but it's empty, and Dean gets up to get him some toilet paper (because seriously, tissues? They're men) but then Sam turns the empty tissue box upside down and shakes it, like when he was little and trying to get the prize out of the cereal box except then there was still fucking cereal in there and then it was all over the floor and how the fuck did his kid get into Stanford, seriously, but the tissue box is fucking empty and he keeps shaking it and nothing comes out and God, he's whimpering.
Dean can hear the heat coming off of him from here.
“All right,” Dean says. “Supply run. You coming with?”
Sam coughs into his elbow and looks at him blankly.
“That's a yes. C'mon, Sam.”
**
In the parking lot, Dean says, “What can I get you, Sammy?” again (and okay, maybe it's fucking sappy this time, sue him, his kid's burning up over there) and Sam mumbles something that might be brand names and but sounds like squirrel combo punch banana so okay, Dean will just get tissues and apple juice and some tea bags, how's that? He leaves the keys in the ignition so the heat will stay on, and he doesn't think much of it until he comes back with all his heavy shit (who would have thought a mini-mart sold humidifiers, and in the Winchester world that's a miracle right there) and Sam's scooted over in front of the wheel and put the car in drive.
Dean frowns and knocks on the window, and Sam lights up and rolls it down. “Hey!” he says.
“Hey there, Sammy. So what the fuck are you doing?”
“I was gonna pick you up,” Sam says.
Dean shakes his head slowly.
Sam says, “But I guess you're already here.”
Nods.
Sam thinks for a minute and says, “So we're saving gas, then. Saving the environment!” and Dean takes Sam's face between his hands and smacks one of his cheeks and Sam goes “Owwwwww,” like the little princess he is. He sleeps on Dean's shoulder on the way back.
**
Back at the motel, Dean reads and Sam sweats out his fever and Annabel thinks she might be getting better and Dean thinks he's going to fucking throw up (and it's his turn to clean it up) but he doesn't.
**
Then it's bone-burning time, so he props Sam up in front of the TV and gives him another dose of fucking everything, and Sam says “I'll be fine, stop fussing.” His fever's down, and he's breathing like he has asthma but not like he has asthma times two, so Dean's feeling pretty fine about leaving him.
“What's the drop-deadline?” Sam says, meaning, at what time does he assume Dean's in real trouble and walk or hitchhike or fucking crawl, whatever it takes, to the cemetery to rescue him, screw the fever, screw the wheezing, whatever it goddamn takes, and Dean is glad they figured out this precaution a while ago when Dean was laid up with two broken arms and Sam was handling a salt and burn on his own, because today would not be the day that he'd want to invent a rule that might get Sammy out in the twenty-degree weather with his hundred and one degree body.
“Three,” Dean says.
Sam doesn't look up from the TV. “Two.”
“Two-thirty.”
“If I leave here at two, I'll be there at two-thirty.”
“Leave at two-fucking-thirty.”
Sam shrugs, and Dean knows Sam's going to freak out if he's back much after one, so come on, Annabel, let's not make a big deal out of this, okay?
**
Turns out it's Dean who has to go and make the whole thing dramatic, because of course the part he read where Annabel was still on chemo and she got fucking pneumonia in the hospital is circling through his mind again and again while he's standing over her skeleton and staring down at her chest and wondering what the fuck her lungs looked like.
Sam doesn't answer his phone, which is fine, he's asleep, whatever.
He pours down the salt and the lighter fluid and lights the match, and he thinks goddamn it why did it have to be sick kids?
“I don't...” Dean starts to say, but why, and who's he even talking to? So he mumbles this is your goddamn job, Winchester, come on.
Then Annabel shows up and throws him around a little for good measure, gives him a few kicks in the ribs, but he's too fast for her and he tosses the match and gets to see her flare out, so he knows she's really gone. Flares the fuck out, this girl.
He's walking to the car and rubbing his side when he gets the crazy idea that maybe she was possessing Sam or some shit and he'll be fine now. He tries calling him again and this time he picks up. His voice is even more wrecked than Dean remembered, and there's some kind of noise in the background, probably the TV, that's making it hard to hear him.
“How you feelin'?” he says. “Job's done.”
Sam's quiet for way too long.
“Can you come back?” he says eventually, and that noise in the background is wheezing, Dean, you idiot, and then it's Sam fucking goddamn fuck shit crying.
**
Six minutes later, Dean rushes into the motel room, and where the fuck is his kid.
**
Dean's freaking out in the hallway, calling Sam's cell phone again, when he sees a bit of a comforter sticking out of a doorway from down the hall, and at this point he'll take any lead he can get. He pushes open the door and there's the ice machine and there's Sam asleep with the comforter wrapped around him and his cheek against the metal and his scarf off and just goddamn hanging out on a pile of ice like it has a fever too.
And he probably shouldn't be mad, he should be all concerned and sympathetic and relieved and shit, and he is, really, but God fucking damn it what the fuck, Sammy, what the fuck, who the hell does that, and he's sick and sitting in a freezing cold room and Dean just washed that scarf and here it is lying on the floor, and didn't Sam think it was weird that he wanted both the comforter and a freaking ice tank, didn't something about that strike him as not quite right and hmm maybe I should call my big brother, and if something had happened to Dean, if Annabel had thrown him headfirst into a tombstone the way ghosts seem to always do to his kid brother and what the fuck is with that anyway, if that had happened what the hell would either of them have done then because there's no way Sam was in any state to come get him and all the planning was for shit and how the hell was he supposed to know Sammy would get this bad because he was fine when he left he was really fucking sick and Dean left him.
He kicks the ice machine and Sam jerks awake.
He just sits there and sneezes and doesn't seem real concerned about not knowing where he is.
“Hey,” he says to Dean.
“If I hoist you up on my back, will you fall off?”
“Yep.”
“All right. You're walking, then.” But halfway to the room it becomes clear that's not going to happen, because Sam's swaying and stumbling and mumbling something about witches and Carmen Sandiago and vanilla lattes so Dean hoists him up on his back and just hopes for the best.
Sam holds on like a fucking superhero and doesn't fall off. How the hell can Dean be mad at him after that?
When they're back in the room, Sam looks lost and wheezes out a long breath and cries into Dean's arm, and that's when Dean realizes he forgot the scarf.
He blasts it with the hairdryer for a while before Sam's allowed to have it back. Sam hugs a pillow and cries the whole time about how he thinks Dean has bruises and God Christ can tonight please just end.
**
But it doesn't, it keeps going, and it's rough as hell, because it seems like anything that helps the bronchitis messes with the asthma, and Dean's not normally into being all weepy and self-sacrificing when it comes to Sam's asthma (because he beat that right the fuck out of himself when he was eleven because even then he knew that kind of guilt actually would kill them both) but he can't help wishing he could just do one of them for the night, because two asthma attacks, two brothers, it would just make a lot more sense. Logic, order, sense, it's easier to think about those things than about his little brother who's switching back and forth, he's either lucid but wheezing or breathing a little better but crying about how his socks are hurting his feet when Christ Sammy you haven't been wearing any socks since the first time you cried about how your socks were hurting your feet, okay?
And Dean's rereading the parts of the diary where Annabel had pneumonia, and the fucking case is finished, but it's just not finished for Dean.
Then Sam bucks up and coughs a whole load of crap into his hands (but no blood, no blood) and immediately freaks out and wipes his hands all over the comforter and then winces and curses and coughs more and Dean says, “Whoa, whoa, okay,” and Sam apologizes.
**
Sam throws up and says the sound of his gagging hurts his ears and he was just wondering if maybe Dean could put on some music?
So Dean opens up Sammy's music folder on his laptop. He doesn't know what Sam wants, and he thinks probably Sam's wheezing too hard to really hear anything, so he finds the list of the songs that are most played because he has no idea what Sam listens to, really, because Sam likes to hear it alone, like it's some religious experience.
So Dean plays this song with the most listens and lets his kid rest his head on his knee, and the song's called “What Sarah Said” and it's boring and slow but it seems to calm Sam down a little, and he thinks about that art dealer named Sarah and how he's glad Sam texts her sometimes and maybe they'll swing back around and visit when Sam's feeling better.
Everything's all right for a minute.
Until all the music cuts out and there's this dramatic pause and this singer is like “And I'm thinking of what Sarah said,” and then says, “love is watching someone die” and Dean bites his tongue so hard it throbs and why the fuck is Sammy listening to this shit.
**
At five in the morning, Dean gives Sam a dose of the cough syrup and Sam throws up. He keeps his head hanging in the toilet until Dean comes and hauls it out. He wipes his face with a washcloth before Sam can do it with his goddamn scarf.
“Chest hurts,” Sam says, softly, and Dean says, “Yeah, I know.”
And then he's coughing and wheezing out “stop it, stop it,” and hitting his chest and that's just not okay, so Dean takes both his wrists and holds them hard and doesn't let him move and Sam coughs at the floor and then tugs Dean towards the toilet to throw up again.
And God, he just keeps going. He gets five minutes in-between bouts and every single time he thinks it's over, he takes a hit on the inhaler and nods at Dean and sips some water and it's only seconds before he's launching himself at the toilet again that his face shows any recognition of what the hell is body is doing to him. After four or five rounds of that, though, it gets a hundred times worse because now the nausea's not letting up a damn bit in-between and well that's the last time his kid gets codeine, that's for damn sure, and he's still throwing up and then he's lying on the bathroom floor with his knees up to his chest and coughing with every damn muscle in his body.
And now he's whispering, “I can't do it. I can't do it.”
“Shut up,” Dean says. Gently.
“Just fucking kill me,” Sam mumbles, and Dean yells “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” so loudly Sam actually stops coughing for a minute.
Then he gives this wheezy sigh and closes his eyes and goes to sleep for a little while.
**
At seven in the morning, Dean lets one eye close and leans against the headboard and Sam, nebulizer on (mask this time, because kid can't even figure out what the fuck the mouthpiece is), shivers and scoots in closer.
Dean puts both his arms around him because what the hell, Sam isn't going to remember this anyway. And yeah, he smells disgusting, but in a familiar Sam is sick way, so it's okay.
He takes the end of his kid's scarf and brings it against his own cheek. It's so warm.
“I'm not going to fucking kill you,” Dean says, “and what I'm doing right now isn't harder than being sick, and what you're doing is not harder than dying alone, and I'm not going to kill you.”
The silence is brutal.
Then Sam moves the mask away but not enough, so his voice is still really hard to hear, but it sounds like “You make me feel better,” is what Sammy says.
They fall asleep like that and wake up around noon drenched in the sweat of Sam's broken fever, and whatever, Dean will take it.
**
It takes another day and a half for Sam to be able to say more than a sentence at a time without stopping to pant, and in that time, Dean manages to tear through Annabel's entire journal, because Sam's still sleeping eighty percent of the time and whether he's conscious or not he's coughing so loudly than Dean can't get any sleep himself, but it's whatever.
“What are you doing all the time?” Sam asks while he's brushing his teeth for the first time in like two days, thank fucking God. They're packing up their stuff so they can finally get out of this room and get on the road, but Dean still has Sam's laptop out because he's almost, almost done, the girl's about to write her last entry before she drops dead and she has no fucking clue.
And before he can come up with some excuse for what he's up to, Sam comes up and reads over his shoulder for a second too long.
And he expects Sam to make fun of him or get mad at him or shrug it off, but he doesn't know why he expects that because he knows Sam's a woman, but for some reason he's kind of surprised when Sam really gently closes the laptop and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder and says, “It's over. We're all done, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” Okay. He realizes he really didn't want to know how it ends.
**
In the car, Dean plays with the scarf and Sam drives.
“I've been thinking,” Sam says.
Dean looks up. He was almost fucking asleep, Sam, thanks for that.
“You know that thing about how Dad said you might have to kill me?”
And thanks for that.They almost got through this whole thing with that just hanging around (because it is always hanging around) and never acknowledged it so great, Sam, way to ruin it, and did someone not teach you how to be a Winchester or something?
Dean doesn't say anything.
“Well,” Sammy says. “I've decided it means I'm otherwise invincible.”
Dean blinks and says, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Bear with me here. The reason you'd have to kill me is because I wouldn't drop dead of my own accord, right?”
“Uh...”
“So, accordingly, either you kill me or I don't die. It's like I have superpowers.”
“You do have superpowers...”
“We have zero evidence that I can die. It's never happened before. So.” And that's the point where Dean realizes that Sam is aware that he's full of shit.
“Shut up,” Dean says.
“No, listen. There is zero evidence that I can die if you don't kill me. So I think probably we, uh, we won't have you kill me, cool, so I'll just live forever.”
“Fine by me. Can I sleep?”
“So if I get sick again like that, you don't have to be worried, okay? Now you know I'll be fine.”
Dean opens his eyes again and doesn't say anything.
Because what the fuck do you say to that?
He decides on, “You're such a fucking bitch, I didn't think you were going to die.”
“Yeah, so why were you reading those journals, then?”
They're coming up on the bridge again (Sam's bridge).
“Those had nothing to do with you.”
Sam turns his head and fixes him a look. Dean tugs on the scarf hard enough for Sam to jerk a little, and he shoves Dean off.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Sure.”
“Fine, yeah, they reminded me of you a little.” He pauses. “So you know what that means, right?”
Sam's quiet. “Yeah.”
“It means I think of you as a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Ha, ha.”
“I'm going to sleep.”
“Good,” Sam says, but Dean stays awake until they're off the bridge, because he likes the way Sam's smiling.
And Sam plays the damn song and he smiles all the way through it.
Because Sam can just do that.
When Dean wakes up, the scarf is scrunched under his head for a pillow.
--end--