At Sammy's Bedside
Title: At Sammy's Bedside
Summary: Written for the Again But With More Colds comment fic meme. A gen story involving Sick Sammy and Vicks, please. So I shoved it into my verse, naturally.
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers, bad language.
Wordcount: 2,330
Author's Note: Sammy-verse, so: Dean's POV, Sam has hideous asthma, and they're awesome at it.
--
"Okay." Dean keeps his grip on Sam's upper arm as he unlocks the door. "Okay. Here we go. Dorm sweet dorm."
It's a suite Sam shares with a few other guys, but they're home right now, because that's where people go for Christmas break.
Except Sam, who always has to be different.
"Couch or bed?" Dean says.
"Bed. Definitely bed."
Dean guides him over to the bed and takes his shoes off. Sam doesn't even protest. He's not really sick anymore, he's just so tired, and the cough's still wiping him out and probably will be for weeks.
"Where are you gonna go?" Sam asks. He lies down and holds his pillow.
"Out for groceries. I'll be back in an hour. Two, maybe."
Sam nods into his pillow.
"I'm guessing you'll be right there."
More nodding. Dean grabs him by his hair and twists his head to the side so he can get some air. Sam swats him away.
"Call if you need anything," Dean says.
Sam's already snoring.
**
It's been ten days since the day after Christmas, Sam's first since leaving home (Sam spent his picking up extra shifts at the University coffee shop while everyone else was home for the holidays, Dean spent his burning the remains of a seven-year-old and toasting Dad with scotch and gone-flat sodas) when Dean got the phone call.
"Where are you?" Sam said. He sounded cold, was he calling Dean from outside?
"Montana."
"Busy?"
"Nah, what's up?"
"I'm in the hospital."
"What? Shit."
"I have pneumonia. I'm on so many drugs right now." He broke off and coughed. "I'm fucking worn out so I'm letting them intubate me. I'm alone and I was wondering if you'd like to come weep by my bedside."
He scrawled a note for dad. "Love to."
"Great. See you soon. I'll be unconscious, probably. See me soon."
**
He doesn't go out for groceries right away, because he didn't really get to look around the dorm before, when he was heading back to crash for a few hours on the couch (never Sam's bed) or taking a quick shower (always Sam's soap, yeah, sue him).
So he takes a minute to look around the tiny living room and kitchen and finds himself utterly depressed by how little Sam there is in this place. He sees bits of three different guys who like movies Sam doesn't and have been to countries Sam hasn't and read books waaay below his kid's interest level, thanks. There aren't even any boat-sized shoes by the doorway. If Sam's key didn't fit in the lock, he'd be worried he brought him to a stranger's dorm by accident.
Sam used to always talk about how he wanted his own room, to decorate and shit, and Dean called him a girl and one time gave him a pack of Magic Markers and pushed his jeans up to his knees and said "You can decorate me," and Sam drew on his legs for a while.
**
It's been nine and a half days sine Dean walked into the ICU and Sam was all covered in shit and holding up a sign that said "LOOK WHO'S CONSCIOUS, BITCH," and all the nurses looked at Dean like he was the devil himself for laughing in the ICU and he really could not have given less of a shit because Sam would have been laughing too if he didn't have that thing down his throat, but he did, so Dean had to fucking do it, okay?
**
He's reading the labels on cans of soup, checking for peanuts even though it's goddamn chicken soup and even though he knows Sam's had this brand before, because you just have to check every time and it only takes ten seconds anyway so it's not a big deal, when he feels something, a noise or something, in the inside of his throat, and he bites down hard on his tongue until he goes away. He's just fucking reading soup, come on.
**
It's been six days since the doctors moved Sam from the ICU to internal medicine and told Dean, while Sammy was sleeping, that they were really proud of him, and Dean said 'thank you' even though Sam fucking hates that ("why are you proud of me? You don't know me. I could be such an asshole, you wouldn't want an asshole to keep breathing, would you?") and honestly he's not a big fan of it either, because he's proud of the kid for real stuff, like for that ghost he wasted all on his own almost ten years ago and no, Dean hasn't forgotten, or that he got a 92 on that Shakespeare paper last month when he was barely breathing well enough to email it to his professor by the time he was done (or the fact that Sam called him after and said he was sad about the other 8 points, who fucking does that). Dean is proud of him for things he gets a choice over. This? This was just instinct. What the fuck else could he do, die? This was a given.
He put his hand in Sam's hair and fucked it up because he couldn't do a damn thing about it, and Dean never really was the weep-by-the-bedside type, really, because he has a little brother who would have used his last dying breaths to laugh his ass off, and his kid looks fucking stupid when he laughs so Dean would't want that face frozen on him for all eternity. Nah, better to just let him sleep. And fuck with his precious hair.
**
It's been twelve years since he and Dad left seven-year-old Sammy alone in the hospital for two days to follow a hunt.
Sammy didn't wake up the whole time, the nurses said, and for the first time, standing in the aisle looking at twenty thousand medicines and having no fucking clue what Sam already has and what won't interact badly with his asthma or the antibiotics or what he might suddenly decide to be allergic to, Dean wonders why he didn't, because if he's learned anything after ten thousand asthma attacks and twenty thousand concussions with this kid, it's that Sammy can make himself wake up.
It's like he knew they wouldn't be there.
It's like he didn't expect them to stay.
He called Dean, he reminds himself. Sam called him and asked him to come. That's important. (Dean came. That isn't important. That's a given. Sam needs givens.)
His phone buzzes that there's a new text. "VAPORUB." Okay.
**
It's been three days since a Get-Well-Soon card came from Dad. Sam smiled at it and wouldn't let Dean read it.
**
He hears the coughing as soon as he unlocks the door, and Sammy is on the couch in front of the TV breathing steam from a big glass bowl, and that is very decidedly not where Dean left him.
For the first time in the whole illness, he looks honestly sick, normal person sick. Red nose, glassy eyes, pink cheeks, the works. Not pinched and blue. Just stuffed up, wrung out, just Sam and that cough.
"C'mon." He cups a hand underneath each of Sam's elbows and hauls him up. Sam follows obediently, snuggling in his scarf and driving coughs into his shoulder. "You want steam?"
Sam nods, heavily.
"Take a shower. Be careful."
He keeps Sam's bedroom door open so he can hear any Sasquatch-sized crashes, but by the time the soup's done Sam's back, pajama pants, t-shirt, socks. They eat soup together.
"How long are you staying?" Sam asks.
"It's a mystery."
Sam makes that face.
"Seriously, I have no fucking clue. Until I have to be somewhere. Until there's someone else to listen in case you hit your head in the shower. Until you're well. I don't know."
"I like the last one."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Stay forever."
Dean could kill this kid, he really could.
**
It's been fifty-eight hours since a doctor came in while they were playing Candy Land (it's Sam's faaaaaaavorite and the kid was sick, whatever) and told them they were lucky. Sam said "I know," and Dean had to excuse himself to laugh in the fucking bathroom because seriously, lucky? You're calling this shit lucky? and Sam texted him "stop crying in the bathroom it's your turn" and he wasn't crying, Jesus, what the fuck, Sam, and he wiped his cheeks and came back and fucking creamed the kid at Candy Land.
**
Sam finishes his soup (atta boy) and lets loose a bunch of heavy wet coughs and Dean says, "Hey, right. Presents. Come on."
His bedroom still smells like Sam's soap (like Sam and Dean) and it's a little hazy from the steam. Sam crawls into bed and grips his pillow and coughs for a long time.
"C'mere." Dean tugs Sam's shirt over his head and plops some Vaporub into Sam's hand (because he's not going to touch Sam's chest without permission, they don't do that, enough people fucking do that, and that part is Sam's). Sam pushes it into his chest, deep, and sighs. Dean likes watching him help himself.
The coughs get softer and wetter and further apart. Sam sniffles and sneezes and reaches for the tissue box with one hand and Dean with the other. He puts Dean's hand on his chest and nods.
Dean rubs the Vaporub in the rest of the way. He doesn't try to imitate the way Sam did it. He's not going to pretend he's Sam's hand. He's a guest here. He knows that. As soon as Sam nods at him that he's good, he takes his hand back, wipes it on his jeans, wraps it around Sam's shoulder.
"Sleep."
He is already, almost. God, he sounds so much better. Dean doesn't think he's ever done Vaporub with the kid before. He must have figured that one out on his own.
For the first time, he gets a good look at Sam's room. And...well, here's his kid. Here are posters of weepy bands God knows why Sammy likes. Here's the one picture they have of he and Sam and Mom and Dad. There are his school books with his stupid girly handwriting in the margins. There's the coat Dad got him for his fifteenth birthday. There's no fucking way it fits. Sam doesn't throw anything away.
There's the wall he clearly tried to paint and got bored halfway, and there's a picture he drew when he was five or six that says "ME + MY FAMILY" (Dad, Dean, Impala) and Jesus Christ, if Dean could have this, he couldn't last one fucking day in Sam's body but if he could, and he could get this Get Out of Jail Free card...he'd paint the rest of this goddamn wall, first of all.
He's sleeping hard now, looks like, and Dean gets up to go but Sam furrows his eyebrows in his sleep, frowns, takes Dean's hand and put sit on his chest.
Dean freezes for a minute, then slowly rubs circles on Sam's chest. Sam gives a sigh with a little wheeze Dean can feel and shit, he's never been allowed to feel it before, and drifts back off. Dean keeps his hand there. He can feel everything like this.
**
It's been five hours since he brought Sam home.
Five hours since Sam bent over and kissed the hood of the Impala on his way to the passenger seat.
Five hours since anything felt okay for the first time in months.
**
It's two hours later when Dean's phone rings and startles Sammy awake and John tells Dean there's a hunt.
Dean leaves the room to listen to Dad tell him about how many people are dying and how Dean can save them. When he comes back, Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him, feet planted on the floor, wheezing.
"Hey, drama queen," Dean says. He sits down beside Sam and puts a hand on his shoulder. "I was just outside."
Sam coughs. "You can't go yet," he says. "I'm not ready."
"Okay. Your fucking chest. Hold on. The Vaporub helped?"
Sam nods but doesn't reach for it, and when Dean holds up the container, he just looks at it. So Dean holds Sam up with one hand, snaked across his back to grip his opposite shoulder, and presses the Vaporub into Sam's chest with his other. It feels rough and he's worried he's hurting the kid, but one circle with the heel of Dean's hand is all it takes for him to relax, to sag a little, to calm down and just let himself cough.
"The hunt's ten miles out of here, you idiot," Dean says. "And I told him no." He hauls Sam back on the bed. "So calm the hell down."
Sam gives him a shaky smile. "Sorry. Thanks, Dean."
"Sleep now. Without panicking, okay?"
Sam sleeps, and Dean borrows his laptop to find out how far away Sacramento really is.
He could probably make it back before Sam wakes up.
As soon as he thinks it, he can taste Sam's fucking chicken soup in the back of his throat, and he shakes his head hard and swallows and goes and lies down on the bed, breathes in soap and Vaporub and kid and twelve dead in the past four months and what the fuck is Dean going to do?
**
It's been twelve years since Dean left Sam.
It hasn't gotten easier.
**
He wakes up to Sammy shaking him. There's a thermometer in his field of vision. 100.8. Dean sits up and shakes his head, trying to clear it. "Your fever's back?"
"Nope," Sammy says. Wheezes. "Lie down. Shirt off." Dean hears him spin the lid on the Vaporub jar.
Dean considers his headache and determines this could be a lot worse. "Don't even have a cough."
"Don't care."
Dean chuckles. "Tomorrow morning 'm gonna buy some paint."