Changing Sammy's Mind
Title: Changing Sammy's Mind
Summary: Four days after Jess's death, Sam's a mess. Just not the way he's supposed to be.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through Season 1 would be good. Usual language warning.
Wordcount: 8,485
Author's Note: Sammyverse--Sam has asthma and the boys are the best of friends. Switchin' things up POV-wise! Next one's going to be fucking happy, I swear.
-
Sam noticed it yesterday.
“You're doing too well,” Dean says now. Four days after the fire.
It takes Sam a minute to gather enough air to respond, which is proof, as far as he's concerned, that he's not doing too well by anyone's standards.
“Can't breathe.”
“I know,” Dean says, and clearly he does, because he's sitting next to Sam right now, driving the heel of his hand between Sam's shoulder blades to help force breaths out of him. “But your head. Where's your head, Sammy?”
“Here.”
“Yeah, how the fuck is it here? Fuck. You really can't breathe.”
Sam shakes his head and coughs. It sounds bad. He hears it and knows that it must be bad.
Dean pushes his hand in harder. “Sorry. That hurts, I know.”
It doesn't.
Nothing hurts. That's what he figured out yesterday, when Dean was frowning and rebandaging Sam's burned hand. Sam keeps opening and closing, making the skin crack and the blisters break. Dean said, “Why are you trying to hurt yourself, here?”
“I'm not. Not at all.”
“Is it helping you focus? Come on, talk to me.”
“I am focused, Dean,” he'd said, because he was. He is. He draws. He coughs. He sleeps. He watches Dean read websites about grief until he gets bored of Dean glancing at him every few sentences and gets him to come over so they can read them together. Dean's been very hesitant to touch him, which frustrates the hell out of Sam.
Sam finds the pictures of loved ones huddling together against a common pain strangely comforting, and he thinks how nice it would be to get to do the things the web pages say. To talk about Jess. To talk about how she died. He'd always thought that he would be hideous at this, like Dad was, burying their mother's name in whiskey bottles and gruff silences and digging it up only for birthdays and guilt trips. But Sam wants to talk. Sam is dying to talk.
Sam just can't breathe.
Dean shuttles him back and forth to the hospital and holds the masks over his face when Sam's too damn tired.
“Why are you so calm?” Dean says, frayed to his core, strung out on not sleeping, brewing Sam his sixth pot of coffee. “How the fuck are you coughing that much, doesn't it hurt?”
Because it doesn't hurt, Sam realized yesterday. Nothing's hurting. Not his hand, not his shit lungs, not his dead girlfriend.
And that's what scares him.
So when he's doing comparatively okay and Dean leaves him to grab some ice, the pain in Sam's chest, starting small and radiating to fill his lungs, soothes him at first. It's normal. It's correct. He can't breathe. It's supposed to hurt.
But it doesn't stop. Soon he feels every muscle in his lungs stretching and snapping, like he's made of rubber bands, and his throat begins stinging with every breath. Breaths that aren't getting any worse; he's completely aware of this, after a lifetime of monitoring his air flow. It hurts like hell, but he's used to pain-before this week, he was used to pain, even if it was never this bad-and it doesn't stop him from getting as much air in and out as he can. And he's wheezing the same as he was before. He's not getting dizzy. He's breathing the same. Maybe a little better.
Definitely a little better, actually. It just hurts now.
And then it hits. He sees her on the ceiling
hair perfect
mouth open
trying to speak?
eye contact
fucking eye contact
nothing smells the same as burning skin
and he winces and curls up and he wants his brother. He's grabbing himself, physically trying to hold himself together, when the door clicks open and there's Dean. The ice bucket rattles for a few paces, then all is silent.
“Sam?”
Sam holds up a hand, trying to signal to Dean that he's okay, because he is. The pain's backing off now, like a wave. Sam, thoughts refocusing, thoughts shrinking back into his head, find this a funny analogy, because the summer after his freshman year, when Dean stole him away to the beach, he remembers lying on his towel and thinking the waves were like breathing, in and out, the roar alarmingly similar to the sounds his chest makes on a bad night.
The sounds his chest is starting to make now.
Because he smells it again. It was gone while Dean was out of the room, but now it's back. Smoke. This faint smell of smoke that won't go away, that's itching his lungs, that shouldn't be around anymore. It's back, and Sam can't breathe.
Dean sits down next to him on the bed. He puts a hand on Sam's back. Things are starting to go gray around the edges, and he feels his lungs tightening right to their tops, but it doesn't hurt.
It doesn't hurt. His mind is here, all clear and focused and completely able to process the fact that Sam can't breathe.
**
Dean noticed it two days ago, because he's not a fucking idiot, and because no matter what music he blasts to try to drown it out when Sam's at school or in the hospital or fucking fine, his ears are permanently tuned to the Sam's Asthma station and that's just life, so when something new and weird is going on in his kid's lungs, yeah, he fucking notices.
The closer he gets to Sam, the worse the kid breathes.
It's as basic and as immensely fucking fucked up as that.
So now Sam's suffocating and clinging to him on the bed and it's the same problem he's had the whole rest of the fucking week, which is how to get Sam to fucking breathe, how to get him to the fucking hospital, when by all logic he shouldn't be fucking touching him.
This isn't some self-loathing bullshit on Dean's part, and it's not even something that's exclusively Dean, it's just that Sam starts hacking and wheezing like a madman when he's too close to anyone, and Dean dragged the doctors to the corner of Sam's room (because he hasn't fucking left the kid alone, hasn't been in a closed door away from him except for that little trip down the hall just now because have you seen the kid, because you wouldn't leave him alone either) and demanded to know what the fuck was up and fuck if the doctors can tell them anything outside of “it's psychological” and wow, really? Fucking astute. Now fix it.
Well, now he's getting another damn chance to have a lovely chat with the doctors about it, because here they go back to the fucking hospital, and whatever this is controlling Sammy, Dean gets the picture, okay? He's fucking wise to the game, and he's going to play along because fuck if he can keep doing this to his brother forever. As soon as they're there, as soon as Sam's pumped full of everything and masked up and breathing, Dean will stay the fuck back and he'll make sure the doctors do too. But he has to get the kid there first, and his only other choice is to call fucking 911 and have paramedics jostling the shit out of him, and if someone gets to hold the kid's hand, that someone's going to be touching the kid anyway, that someone's going to be Dean.
Psychological. But psychological doesn't mean he can talk the kid out of it (something he learned last semester when Sam was a walking talking wheezing panic attack-has he mentioned his kid's allergic to anti-anxiety meds? Sam is trying to fucking kill him) but that also doesn't mean he doesn't fucking try, so he's walking Sam to the car with his arm slung over Dean's shoulders like how they used to move each other when one of them went down hard on a hunt (while John panicked, got the car, cupped the sick one's face in his hand, whispered apologies) and Dean's saying, “Shhh, calm down, lungs, calm down” while he loads Sam into the car.
“Where are we going?” He's oxygen deprived and fucking woozy.
“Back to the mothership.”
“Oh.”
He coughs the entire way to the hospital. Dean isn't fucking exaggerating here: the entire fucking way, the only breaths the ones he can gasp before the next cough hits, never looking up, never opening his eyes. The entire. Fucking. Way.
The hospital knows them now. He waves at the triage nurse, dragging his kid like he's a fucking sack of laundry, and she points them to a gurney. It's fucking weird. Sam's real name, his real medical records. Dean wonders if Sam liked being respectable, if he's going to miss it. They haven't much talked about what's happening after this. Dean has a pretty good idea because Dean knows how their fucking lives work (and that also means he's waiting for that fucking phone call, waiting for John to come and, if not fix this, at least clean this shit up.)
He and another nurse get Sam onto the gurney. He isn't coughing anymore, but he's squirming and wheezing, and Dean puts a hand on his shoulder because he's not going to get far enough away to help Sam breathe anyway, so he might as well go for some contact before the guilt eats him up and he backs the fuck off.
“It's okay,” Dean says. “They're going to help.”
“It's tight. Shit. I think really tight, Dean. My chest.”
“I know. It's bad. They're going to help. They'll give you something for the pain, too.”
“Are they gonna fix it?” He squeezes his eyes really fucking tight. “I think I need someone to fix it this time.”
“Yeah?” Sam's been known to say this. It's not as stupid as it sounds. It means that he can't fucking do this on his own anymore, and he wants them to knock him out and intubate him. Problem is Sam's rocking some pretty serious burns in his throat (Dean had some himself but they healed because Dean's body doesn't hate him, while Sam's are still weeping and sloughing off in blisters) and the doctors have been all worried about irritating and infecting them, not to mention that they think maybe the kid's entire fucking respiratory system might cave in when they finally pull the tube out, not to mention that they fucking did it all anyway a few hours after the fire because seriously you should have seen the kid and Sam was unconscious for a day and a half and cried the whole fucking time, how the fuck is that even possible.
Sam nods tightly.
“Okay. Can you try some other stuff first? See if that helps?” He's getting pushed down a hallway now, so Dean jogs to keep up. He thinks about holding Sam's hand but figures the kid has had enough today.
Another nod.
“You're my favorite,” Dean says.
“I know.”
Dean chuckles, because fuck this kid, and shit it's going to be hard to back away.
**
Dean's pacing next to his bed, and Sam wants to get up. But he's so tired. It's a new kind of tired, like each of his muscles has individually run out of energy.
“I don't feel it,” he says, quietly, because he has to say something. Dean is hurting, and he can't comfort him in any of the usual ways. He can't pour them each a glass of beer and sit down and give him that face that gets him whatever he wants until Dean finally talks. He can't grab Dean's hand and twist it all around until it hurts so Dean can tell himself that Sam isn't holding his damn hand. He can't even hug him because Dean keeps stepping right out of reach just as the pain flares up, and by the time Dean's back, he's wheezing too hard to reach for him.
He can't do much of anything, but he can help Dean take care of him. He can tell Dean what's wrong.
If he can talk.
Dean stops, too far away. “What?”
Sam gestures towards his chest. “I can't feel it. I feel...short of breath and nervous and tight, but it doesn't hurt. It should hurt, right?”
Dean swipes his hand over his face. “Sam. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Okay, now he also feels stupid and badgered and defensive. “I just...I'm not feeling things the way I'm supposed to. This is just me freaking out, right? This will go away?”
It's starting to hurt now. Just a whisper of it. He puts his hand on his chest.
“Shit,” he says.
Dean takes a step towards him and then something in his chest seizes and he's coughing. He's coughing too hard. He needs to control it better than this, but he can't. The cough is having him. He gets a grip on his blanket with both hands and leans over his knees and just tries not to fight it, because it's past that point. He knows that. It's instinct. It's the knowledge that, somewhere, this is hurting him, hurting the throat everyone keeps telling him is messed up, but he isn't feeling it now. He feels a hand on his back, a woman's hand, and she smells like smoke, and then his throat clenches and he's throwing up. Someone gets a basin under his mouth in time. Christ, he hates coughing.
Throwing up doesn't make the cough stop, and he stays where he is while they push medicine into him and soothe him. Dean's saying, “Can you please leave him alone? He just wants you to give him some space.”
They back off but they all keep hovering, and Sam is embarrassed and angry and sick of the damn smoke. He drives a few more coughs into his elbow and realizes he feels a little better.
They give him a towel to wipe his mouth and a little cup of water, and Dean says, “He can't drink right now, Jesus, give him some time.”
“Deancomehere,” Sam says, and Dean doesn't come. Sam looks up and it takes him a minute to find him; he's literally as far away as he could be without leaving the room, pressed against the opposite corner with his hand over his mouth.
Dean makes eye contact.
He doesn't come.
Sam rubs his chest. Sore.
Sore.
Scared.
He wants his brother so bad that it is literally hurting him.
The nurses back off and say a doctor will be here in a minute, and here, sweetie, breathe some oxygen. Sam puts the mask on. The oxygen's cold. Why is it always so cold? It makes his lungs ache.
And Dean, Dean with that hand over his mouth. Sam knows what that means.
Sam mouths, Are you okay?
“Am I okay? Jesus, Sam, breathe.”
Sam nods and concentrates. He's knows how to do this, how to monitor change. It's so much easier than working out why Dean won't come close.
The crap settled in the bottoms of his lungs seems looser-the coughing helped-and he can feel it fluttering when he breathes in, but the tightness isn't getting any better. He works his fingers between his ribs, feeling for retractions, and tries to rub through to the spasming muscles in his lungs. His throat feels uncomfortably tight, like he's having a reaction, and it's making him nervous. He knows that it's just panic. He's panicked enough damn times, and he really should be used to it. But he should also probably be used to not breathing.
“Sam.” Dean sounds so fucking far away. “You doing okay in there?”
Dean talks to him this way, sometimes, like there is a real Sam underneath this body that can feel like wrought iron, and Sam loves it so goddamn much.
He wraps his arms tight around his chest and nods.
“I don't think you're doing okay, Sammy...”
He nods, harder, because Dean needs him to be okay. Dean has put up with this bullshit for the better part of a week, and there's a very short list---blond bedhead, her curves through his ratty t-shirts, stupid jokes, seventy-three inches of legs-of things that Sam wants more than he wants to be a good little brother. He wants it more than breathing. He wants it even more than he wants Dean beside him right the hell now.
And he is so bad at it. He'll be outside himself sometimes, wondering how the hell Dean loves him.
Three years at Stanford, half of them with those seventy-three inches of legs all the fuck around him, and whenever Sam couldn't sleep his heartbeat said DeanDean, DeanDean, DeanDean until he could.
They had a fight a few months ago. Jess was in a play, God, Sam can't remember what now, and Sam missed a few phone calls. Dean freaked out. When Sam finally got in touch with him, Dean was panicking, barking orders, threatening to come to Stanford, and Sam looked around at his wreck of a living room, his looming LSATs, his girlfriend's worried expression when he woke up mid-panic attack calling out for John, of all people, and he couldn't imagine trying to fit Dean into it, when just a few months ago, Dean had pulled him out of a a string of panic attacks and left think he'd fixed Sam. In Sam's mind, Dean's concerned face the last time around morphed into judgment and disappointment and exhaustion and shame.
He moves his arms from his chest to around his stomach and watches Dean. Dean's barely moved. John used to watch Sam like this when he was on a mask. Like he was willing him to be strong, pushing every ounce of himself into Sam. It scared him and made him feel important, and feeling important is maybe the scariest thing Sam has ever known.
Doubly now.
Love me less, he wants to say sometimes. What if something happens to me? Love me less. You have to love me less.
Then he dreams that Dean does and he wakes up shaking and Jess has to hold him.
He holds out his arms like he's a child. He doesn't care. He says, “Dean, please.”
Dean shakes his head. “You get sick.”
Sam puts his hands in his hair and pulls it, hard.
“Stop, Sammy.”
He's just holding himself in every possible way.
“It hurts,” he says.
Dean shakes his head a little. “I thought you said...”
But it does. It hurts. It's building up fast. It's sharp and hot when he breathes in, like he's still in that apartment, and then he breathes out and it aches, crushes him, and it's all just excruciatingly slow. He's air-trapping; he can't get the old, shitty, useless air out of the bottoms of his lungs before he has to breathe in again, and there's less and less space with each breath. He really doesn't want that tube down his throat, but God, this is scaring the shit out of him, and it's scaring the shit out of Dean, and it hurts and Jesus he wants Dean. He wants Jess
off the ceiling
back in bed
safe
Jess
“I'm going to bring our own fucking nebulizer next time, I swear to fucking God,” Dean growls, and right then a doctor and nurse come in with one. Sometimes things work out. Dean never believes they will, so Sam always has to, and it gets so exhausting.
Sam wheezes out a long breath. His chest feels like it's packed in ice.
The doctor gives him the mouthpiece of the nebulizer and the nurse takes Sam's blood pressure. The doctor looks at her tightening the velcro strap on the cuff and says, “Lost some weight, Sam?”
Sam lets out a breath and takes the mouthpiece out. He should be feeling a little better. He isn't. “It's been hard to eat.” Everything feels very distant. Everything smells like smoke.
“Could you not make him talk right now?” Dean says. “He's upset.”
The doctor ignores him and keeps looking at Sam.
“You're too close to him,” Dean says. “He doesn't want to talk to you when you're that close, could he be any more fucking obvious?” and despite everything Dean's making Sam smile, because he's leaning against that wall all pissed off, throwing out commentary like this whole hospital scene is something from a lame movie.
He forces himself back to earth to makes a face at Dean. He winks at him, and Dean rolls his eyes and mouths, I hate you and Sam feels safe.
The doctor says, “It's important to keep your strength up. Your body's working hard, and you need to be taking in more calories to compensate for that until we get you back on track.”
Dean says, “And when that blessed fucking day occurs, we'll have a fucking feast to celebrate. Until then, you chew me out about bullshit like his weight, not him, all right?”
The doctor finally looks at Dean and Sam almost laughs because, ha, don't mess with Dean. He's so going down. But it hurts just to think about laughing. He leans forwards to lower his forehead towards his knees.
He can't breathe and he hurts. He wishes the doctor would back off.
“Sam's an adult,” the doctor says. “We'll talk to him.”
“His favorite game is Candy Land, I think he might be still fucking growing, and he's freaking oxygen deprived and grieving so hard God knows how he's sitting here in front of us right now and not off drowning in vodka and his own fucking sobs, all right? He has a few other damn things on his mind right now, so you're going to to talk to me about the shit that doesn't matter and talk to him about how you're going to get him fucking breathing, okay?”
God, Sam's brother, Sam's brother.
Sam wraps his arms around his legs and watches him, and Dean says, “Sam, why are you fucking smiling? You're so fucking bad at this.”
Sam sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and just watches Dean some more.
But then the pain sears hot and new and he tries to cry out but it's just a wheeze, it's all just more fucking wheezing, but his time he looks up at Dean and Dean hesitates but, he comes to him. Sam doesn't know where the fuck the doctor and nurse are and what they're doing to him and he doesn't care. He holds onto Dean and coughs and coughs. Why the hell does Dean still smell like smoke?
“You got to stop, Sam, you got to stop, I'm making you sick.” But it doesn't hurt. His breathing's worse, but when Dean's touching him, when Dean's close, it doesn't hurt.
**
So, all right, when Dean's close by, Sammy can't breathe but also doesn't hurt, and when Dean's far away, it hurts but he can breathe. Seriously, what the fuck, San's lungs (Sam's head) why are you doing this to them? Dean's tired. He's tired for Sam.
Dean places a hand on each of Sam's temples. “Ugh. Be normal.”
“Right?”
He fucks with Sam's hair before he takes a few steps back, halfway between there and not there. He says, “Honestly? Worst big brother ever, but I'd rather stay close. We can handle the asthma. We're fucking awesome at that. The pain thing...I mean, dude, your body is fucked up right now. You've got a lot of fucking pain to play with and I'd rather you didn't play with it.”
Sam nods sadly.
“The burns in your throat and shit...fuck, how did you even survive when I was getting ice? The doctors have been hounding me about this for ages, you know? How much pain you're supposed to be in. I just went on about how fucking strong you are or some shit. Ugh, you had me painting you like some fucking saint, screw you.”
“It was bad,” Sam says. “But I don't think it was any worse than right now, with you across the room, and...we've done that, right? That distance?”
“In the motel? I guess.”
“So there's no formula,” Sam is quiet. Sam is breathing like shit. “We can't track it.”
Dean can live with that, but the thing is that Sam sort of can't and Dean knows that. Sam needs order. And he's pretty quiet about how badly he needs it, but that doesn't have anything to do with the degree to which he fucking freaks out when he can't put things in their little boxes, and God, Sam, you're such a sad kid sometimes, and he would have been an awesome fucking lawyer in a different life (different body, different brother).
“Not feeling anything, though,” Dean says. “That's dangerous.”
Sam sucks on the nebulizer, shrugs.
“You could fall and fucking break yourself and not know.”
“Not gonna be breathing well enough to be doing shit that would make me break myself. Can I sleep, Dean?”
“No, you're not breathing.”
“Yeah I am.” Sam throws himself back against his pillows all fucking dramatically and does an excellent job of proving his health by coughing for two minutes, and Dean can't do shit to help him.
Sam wheezes. “This sucks.”
“No shit. You okay?”
He nods.
“You keep fucking saying that...I don't even know why I ask.”
“Can you come closer?”
Dean shakes his head.
“It hurts. Please.”
Dean hesitates. “Just...give it a minute, okay? Try to calm down?” And he hates himself, because Sam fucking hates being told to calm down, but his kid's a champ and closes his eyes and concentrates.
“Can you talk to me?” Sam says, after a minute.
“Yeah.”
“Just anything. Just...remind me that you're there.” He sucks in a breath. “I think it hurts more the more I want you, Dean.”
Well isn't that just fucking spectacular.
“Ugh.” Dean pulls the chair out and sits eight feet back from Sam. “You don't want me. I'll just make fun of you for your hair, plus I haven't showered in like a day and a half because I've been too nervous to leave your wheezy ass alone and because I figured out that you're going to bitch about how I smell like smoke even if I bathe myself in bleach. So I'm gross. And you probably think I smell like smoke. Yeah, you'd rather I stay back here.”
Sam shakes his head, but he's starting to relax a little.
“Besides. I'm still here.”
Sam nods and coughs, but it's not that frantic fucking coughing he's doing when Dean has his hands on him. But then he gives his eyes a quick swipe and Dean says, “Hey. You okay?”
He hasn't been crying much. A little, every once in a while, enough to rule out that the solution to all of this is for Sam to just sit down and have a good cry and talk about his feelings, but less than Dean expected from his little girl of a brother.
“Sorry,” Sam says.
“You bug the shit out of me when you apologize. You know that. And you're not exactly in any state to fight me, princess.”
Sam nuzzles his pillow, nods.
“I'll get them to let you go home soon,” Dean says. “Now that we...now that we know what's up, there's not much they can do here that we can't back at the motel.”
“Easier to breathe without all the people,” he says.
“Yeah. They freak you out?”
He nods a little. “It's like you. But not as bad.”
“It's...not as bad.”
Sam closes his eyes. “The breathing thing.”
“I know.”
“They get too close, it's hard to breathe. Everyone smells like smoke. But...”
“But not as hard as when it's me. Shit, Sammy.”
Sam buries his face in his pillow, mumbles, “Don't make the rules,” coughs.
“We'll, um...” Shit. Because seriously, what the fuck are they going to do? Even when Dean's across the room, even if he were in fucking Montreal, it's not like Sam's breathes like a fucking healthy person, and add that to the pain and the kid needs help, and Dean was perfectly willing to put all of his shit on hold for as long as Sammy fucking needed and play doctor, okay, but let's not pretend that this isn't hard, that he isn't itching to track down the fucking thing that's now broken everyone in his fucking family and that he doesn't want to have the longest, angriest conversation with his father that ever fucking was, and that he doesn't just want to get out there and save someone or kill something, so let's not act like this is easy, and now Sam needs help he can't give him, and even after this is all over, when the injuries have healed, Sam's still going to be a fucking intense asthmatic who needs help sometimes, and, what, Dean's supposed to walk away? Let people who will hurt him a little less than he would put their hands all over his kid while he hangs back like some fucking distant father? Dean doesn't know how else to put this: no.
“We'll fix this,” he says. “But first priority is getting you well. And no one ever gets well in a fucking hospital.”
Sam plays with the sheet. “Nobody ever.”
“You doing okay?”
“I'm fine. You don't have to ask every minute.”
“You're not looking at me.”
“You're too far away.”
Dean sighs. “Don't pout, okay?”
“I just want you,” Sam says. “It's just...as basic and as immensely fucking fucked up as that.”
Dean runs his hands down his face, because Jesus, Sam. Just...Christ.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I know the feeling.”
Sam looks up at him.
“Forget it.” Dean walks by the foot of the bed, and he takes Sam's chart off and smacks his feet with it. “Let me get you out of here. You're staying in the backseat for the ride back.”
**
Sam's in the backseat and he's not doing great.
He wasn't this clingy before he knew what was going on, but now that his body's telling him that he can't be close to Dean, he wants it more than anything. He wonders about this sometimes. He wonders if he would love air as much as he does now if it weren't a struggle for him to get it. If normal people get so excited about rushing wind in convertibles or shower steam that settles in all the right places. On his happier days, he thinks he would be sorry to lose that enthusiasm.
He would not be sorry to lose this, because it makes him uncomfortable to be this reliant on Dean, and because it means he would get his brother. He could be as reliant on Dean as he damn well pleased.
Sam tries not to think about it, and it's a stupid statement, anyway, coming from someone with a chronic illness, but sometimes Sam hates his body.
Except...this is in his head.
Sometimes Sam hates his head is not exactly a new observation, but usually Jess holds his hand through it.
He just whimpered, didn't he? Jesus.
“Sam?” Dean says, really cautiously. “You doing okay back there?”
“Yeah. My throat really hurts. When I talk.”
“So don't.”
“Or breathe.”
“Oh.”
Dean hesitates, then reaches a hand back to Sam. Sam grabs it like he's drowning, and then his lungs fill up like he is. He coughs and his throat doesn't hurt. He thinks about Jess holding him and feels warm and soft and calm. It doesn't make him whimper. It's just a pretty, sad thought. It doesn't hurt.
“Sam.” Dean slips his hand out of Sam's and tangles it in his hair instead. “Okay. You're okay.”
“Smell like smoke,” Sam says, quietly.
“No. I don't.”
Sam closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the back of the passenger seat. “I want to get better.”
“Oh, fuck kid, I know. We'll get you there. I'm going to call Bobby when we get back and see if he's ever heard of this shit. Just...you know, maybe whatever...maybe it left something behind, I don't know. Fuck, maybe this happened to Dad, we wouldn't remember. Fuck, listen to you. You all right? Sam, fucking say something.”
Sam tries but he's just coughing, like it's all he remembers how to do. This is bad, his brain says, calmly, rationally. This is probably hurting your throat.
Dean takes his hand away and pain sears through him. He cries out with new air.
**
Sam fucking clings the whole phone call, which means he's an oxygen-deprived goddamn zombie by the time Dean's hung up with Bobby (who says he has no fucking clue and has never heard of this, why the fuck does Dean even fucking bother interacting with people who aren't Sam, seriously, he always ends up pissed off and needs someone to take it out on and that person is always fucking Sam) he's a fucking mess, oxygen mask on and still fucking purple, this perfectly fucking rational voice whenever he can get words out telling Dean his chest is pretty tight, no fucking shit, Sammy.
He rubs his palm across Sam's shoulders. “Okay. You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. But you need to breathe to sleep.”
Sam shakes his head.
“I've known you for twenty-two years, and I'm pretty sure you do, kiddo. Remember that time in Denver when you tried to prove me wrong on that one? Not your best.”
“It's going to hurt too much.”
“I'm going to medicate the shit out of you. And I'm going to be right there.” He points to a chair in the corner. “Right there. The whole fucking time. Creepily fucking watching you sleep like I did when you were a fucking toddler.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you asking if I watched you sleep when you were a fucking toddler? Usually Dad, but yeah, you'd stop breathing the second you weren't the center of someone's attention, you little shit.”
Sam smiles at him.
“I'm going to hug you. Don't stop breathing.” He puts his arms around Sam all fucking carefully because the last thing he wants to do is squeeze one of his fucking fragile muscles into spasming all over the fucking place. Sam pushes his face into his chest, just fuck this kid.
“All right. Hold on. Don't fucking miss me because I'm coming right back, okay?”
“Okay,” Sam says, and he must do a pretty good job because Dean watches him and doesn't see any wincing or shaking.
“Should I send you a postcard?” he says.
Sam nods.
“Dear Sammy. The bathroom's lovely this time of year. Wish you were here. Dean. P.S., looking good in that mask.”
Sam flicks him off.
Dean gives him eight different things and a glass of water and Sam takes them all. He doesn't complain about his throat. It's got to hurt. It's supposed to hurt.
And now they have a fucking plan but Dean doesn't want to move. He's pushing the kid's head around like he's one of those toys that bobs around in the back of fucking minivans, and Sam's letting him because Sam puts up with way too fucking much.
Sam takes off the mask eventually and says, “Staying close doesn't mean you have...” he stops and pants. “...to fucking manhandle me.”
“You're making me fucking touch you, I get to do it however the fuck I want.” He pinches Sam's cheek. “Plus this is all we're getting for a few hours, so I have to drain myself of whatever affection I have buried for you somewhere in my heartless heart. You'll deal.”
Sam nods.
“You always deal,” Dean says, quietly.
“Hey. Don't get weepy.”
“Screw you. Screw you screw you screw you.” Because his fucking kid is sick and now Dean has to sit in the corner and watch like it's fucking nothing, and why isn't Sam falling apart about this.
Sam reaches a hand up to rub Dean's back and Dean hears his lungs clamp down hard, and if that isn't the fucking last straw Dean doesn't know what is.
“Okay. Sleep. Those pills are going to knock you the fuck out any minute.” He walks away, backwards, facing Sam, and sits down in the corner. “I'm right here. Don't freak out.”
Sam mouths okay and keeps watching him. A minute later, he takes the oxygen mask off, and Dean raises his eyebrows but Sam says, “I'm breathing, 'sokay.”
Dean tries to be boring so Sammy will fall asleep, but Sam's starting to hurt, he can tell, and trying to distract himself from it by giving Dean sleepy smiles and signing dirty things with the bits of sign language John taught them and Dean's laughing, and now's really not the fucking time to be laughing, except that it's calming Sam down, and Sam's breathing better, and honestly, as shitty as this is, there is a bit of it that's funny, sitting across the room from his fucking wreck of a brother and acting like they're fucking miles from each other, as if two weeks ago there weren't a thousand miles between them, and now ten feet is too much, and shit, he thought Sam had lost this. He thought Sam didn't feel that tug, that something that's supposed to be attached to me is missing that's been eating Dean for the better part of three years, except really all it takes is one fucking look at this kid, and goddamn does Dean want to go back to the night Sammy left and John was talking about how selfish Sam was, the night John says those fucking words-Sam doesn't love you as much as you love him-that have clawed at Dean ever since, Dean wants to go back and kick John in the fucking face, kick himself in the fucking face, and say of course Sammy does, it just doesn't fucking kill him to love that hard (and that's because of you, Dean, that's because you spoiled the kid into thinking this can be easy).
In conclusion, fucking Sam.
He's falling asleep now. Dean leans his elbow on the windowsill and rests his head in his hand and wishes for a nap or a cigarette or for Sam not to cry.
He's not crying. He's curling and uncurling in his sleep, around his stomach and his chest, with one hand creeping up to his throat every once in a while. But it's not excruciating, so the pills must be helping. He kind of looks like he has the flu, when he squirms around dramatically like he's on his deathbed (and this is after Dean pumps him full of antivirals so he's not on his deathbed).
But then Sam's mumbling, kicking his feet, and Jess's name slips out.
Dean listens. He's holding his fucking breath.
“Shoulda...” Sam's whimpering. “Done something. C'mback. PleaseJess. Can't breathe please come, please come.”
Dean rubs his palm over his mouth.
This is new. Sam hasn't been doing this.
He probably should have been.
Sam wraps his arms around his chest and curls up, and now he's crying, not hard, but like there's something broken in him, and shit, it's been ages since Sam's cried like this. Dean's seen a dozen times, easy, Sam crying because he just doesn't fucking feel well, and he knows how to deal with that and how to pretend it didn't happen after, and he also knows that when it shows up Sam's in serious fucking trouble, but the kid's fucking breathing right now and there's no fucking universe in which he shouldn't be crying except this is the only fucking scenario he can fucking think of in which Dean wouldn't be fixing it, helping Sam, rubbing his kid's fucking back, and just...shit.
This is new.
Sam hasn't been doing this.
Sam probably should have been.
“M'sorry,” Sam cries. “M'sorry, come back, come back. OhmyGod please. OhmyGod.”
Shit.
So it's not just fucking physical pain that Dean's blocking, then.
Well. Shit.
Not exactly Saint Fucking Dean to a grieving kid, is he?
**
Sam always thought blinding pain was just something people said, but he wakes up to nothing but burning (burning) hot whiteness and a throat that feels like he's been drinking battery acid. He barely gasps in a few breaths before he hears footsteps crossing the room, fast, and there's something cool and wet on his forehead.
“You're okay.” It's Dean, close, not touching him. “I shouldn't have let you sleep that long. Sorry.”
Sam tries blinking again and now the room comes into focus, slowly, as the pain backs off. It's dark, and Dean looks so tired.
“Okay if I go sit on the other bed?” Dean says.
Sam closes his eyes and shakes his head. No. It just fucking isn't.
“Okay.” Dean sits on the floor beside Sam's bed. He's facing away from him, but he reaches his hand back on the bed and lets Sam play with his fingers. They're quiet for a while while Sam tries to get his breathing back on track. He looks around for his inhaler and doesn't see it.
“You didn't tell me the whole story,” Dean says.
“What?”
“You start freaking out about Jess and stuff when I'm not there? That's part of the pain thing?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, because he doesn't get what the big deal is. Nothing feels like a big deal. Except it's kind of hard to breathe, and he'd sort of like his inhaler.
“Well, what the fuck, Sam? Why won't you do that with me? You think it's easier for me to sit across the fucking room and watch you do it? I'm holding your hand like a fucking nurse, can't you fucking use that?”
“Jesus, stop yelling. I just woke up.”
“You should be yelling! You should be screaming and breaking down and not in your fucking sleep, Sam, here. With me. I'm fucking in a fucking motel room doing nothing but trying to help you through this, Jesus, Sammy! I'm putting every single fucking thing in the world on hold, never mind saving people, never mind finding Dad-”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says. He can't breathe.
“Don't apologize, Jesus.”
“Then...thank you?” Can't breathe.
“Don't thank me, I'm not fucking helping!” Dean kicks the bed and Sam jumps and then Dean's pacing and Sam's coughing and everything hurts and he can't breathe and everything is wrong.
He gets out of bed and Dean says, “Where the fuck are you going?”
“Find my fucking inhaler...”
Dean rubs his forehead. “It's in the bathroom, I think.”
It is, by the sink, lined up with the dozen other things Sam's taking. He takes a hit from it and leans over with his elbows on the counter. In the mirror, he sees Dean lingering by the doorway.
“I can't breathe,” Sam says.
“Why?” Dean pushes his forehead against the door frame. “Why the fuck not?”
“You smell like smoke...”
“No I don't, Sam, I've taken fifteen hundred fucking showers because you keep thinking I smell like smoke, and I'm wearing brand new fucking clothes, I don't fucking smell like smoke.”
“I'm scaring you.”
“Of course you're fucking scaring me, what the fuck do you think this is?”
“Stop yelling at me. I can't breathe.”
“I'll stop yelling when you fucking start yelling, how about that?”
Sam sits down on the floor and holds his head. “I don't want to yell.”
“I'll give you fucking oxygen so you can, okay?”
“It's not that. It's...”
“Talk to me, Sam!”
And then it all flares up; every bit of pain from every single bit of Sam's body soars to his head and out of his mouth. “Because I don't know what fucking things I'm going to say, and I'm going to scare the shit out of you, I'm going to fucking break all the fuck everywhere and you're going to freak out and there's going to be nothing you can do. So yeah, maybe my body figured out a few fucking days before I did that it's easier just to fucking suffocate than to have enough air to cry at you about this because you can talk me through a fucking asthma attack and give me eighty hundred fucking meds but something is really fucked up inside of me and my fucking girlfriend is dead and I hate everything and you can't fix this.”
Dean doesn't say anything, and Sam waits for him to yell back, or hit something, or stomp out the door. He's ready for Dean to make his big scene.
But Dean just waits a few seconds and then drops down to a crouch next to him.
He says, really gently, “Give me some fucking credit, okay?” His hand goes to Sam's back and rubs between his shoulder blades. “I've been through a lot of shit with you, Sammy.”
“Not this.”
“Yeah.” Then he does something funny; he takes the tips of Sam's sleeves between his fingers and plays with them, watching his hands and not Sam. “You hate everything, huh? You...going to hurt yourself or something?”
Sam shakes his head hard.
“Okay. If you start to feel...I know you. You err towards the crazy sometimes. I'm here.”
“I'm not going to.”
“All right. Good. Okay. We're going to fucking do this, then.” He moves around so he's next to Sam, sitting against the bathtub, and slowly puts his arms around Sam. Something inside Sam tightens and pulls immediately, like someone's stitching up his lungs.
“No,” Dean says. “Breathe.”
“I can't.”
“Yes. Breathe. Let go.”
“I can't.”
“Let go, Sam. I have you.”
But he can't. Sam isn't made to let go. This isn't who he is. This isn't what he does. Sam is supposed to be in control. Sam had everything planned out.
He wants to be a picture on a web page. He wants to think clearly and have calm discussions about how he misses Jess and...
her eyes
eye contact
smoke
his chest
“You're fine,” Dean says. “It's okay. I've got you.”
in his eyes
her eyes
trying to tell him something
should have warned her
shouldn't have known
“Let go,” Dean says.
“It hurts.”
“I think it's supposed to, Sam.”
And it's the stupidest thing that gets to him.
That play. The one Jess was in. When he and Dean fought. It was And Then There Were None. He remembers now. Jess played Ethel Rogers. She dies pretty early. Maybe that's a metaphor. An allegory?
Sam came to see her every damn night, but after the first few times he started leaving after her character died, because he didn't care anymore. Without her, he didn't care.
That's not a metaphor. It's not an allegory. It's not anything.
Sam still cares so damn much.
And that does it. He's unglued, he's unstitched, he's done and he's undone. Everything will always be undone for Sam now.
**
Dean feels it happen, feels his kid go limp all the way down to his lungs, and then he's just crying, crying in a way he fucking couldn't if his throat hurt all that much so see, Dean's still helping, okay?
He's crying words that fuck if Dean can understand because he's crying them staggered and snotty into Dean's hoodie, and this is okay. This is how it's supposed to fucking be. He holds Sam by his head and his waist, and shit, he hasn't been allowed to hold Sam like this in a fucking long time. (Ever?)
He stays where he is and rubs Sam's back and pretends he's a fucking tissue when Sam coughs into him, whatever, and Sam digs his fingers into Dean's back and all of this is scaring the fucking shit out of Dean but it feels right, too, like when Sam's really sick and finally throws up and he's all upset and doesn't feel well and Dean's acting sympathetic but thinking no, it's good, get it out of you. Get this fucking shit out of his brother.
“Proud of you,” Dean says. He always ends up spilling this sappy shit when Sam cries. “You're perfect, you wheezy fucking control freak. You grieve like a superhero.” He give Sam another minute and then says, “Like a superhero with asthma, hold on.” He pulls away from Sam just enough to reach up to the sink and grab his inhaler, and Sam wipes his cheeks off, hard, with his hands.
Dean shakes the inhaler for him and presses it into his hand. “We can do this whenever, you know? This isn't like a one-time-only breakdown. You have at least twenty chick moments saved up at least. Next time we can do each others' nails and prank call boys.”
Sam lets out his breath with a very small, slightly hysterical laugh.
“You good for now?” Dean says.
Sam blows his nose and nods. God, he's a fucking mess. He has one of those faces where he cries and you see it on him for the next day and a half.
“How's the breathing?”
“It's happening.”
“I'll take it.”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says.
“What? Shut up. I'll hit you.”
Sam plays with Dean's shoe. “For saying I hate everything.”
Oh.
“I don't hate everything,” Sam says. “I like being your kid.”
“You're a fucking asshole, you know that?”
Sam smiles at him. It's small and real.
Fucking Sam.
Summary: Four days after Jess's death, Sam's a mess. Just not the way he's supposed to be.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through Season 1 would be good. Usual language warning.
Wordcount: 8,485
Author's Note: Sammyverse--Sam has asthma and the boys are the best of friends. Switchin' things up POV-wise! Next one's going to be fucking happy, I swear.
-
Sam noticed it yesterday.
“You're doing too well,” Dean says now. Four days after the fire.
It takes Sam a minute to gather enough air to respond, which is proof, as far as he's concerned, that he's not doing too well by anyone's standards.
“Can't breathe.”
“I know,” Dean says, and clearly he does, because he's sitting next to Sam right now, driving the heel of his hand between Sam's shoulder blades to help force breaths out of him. “But your head. Where's your head, Sammy?”
“Here.”
“Yeah, how the fuck is it here? Fuck. You really can't breathe.”
Sam shakes his head and coughs. It sounds bad. He hears it and knows that it must be bad.
Dean pushes his hand in harder. “Sorry. That hurts, I know.”
It doesn't.
Nothing hurts. That's what he figured out yesterday, when Dean was frowning and rebandaging Sam's burned hand. Sam keeps opening and closing, making the skin crack and the blisters break. Dean said, “Why are you trying to hurt yourself, here?”
“I'm not. Not at all.”
“Is it helping you focus? Come on, talk to me.”
“I am focused, Dean,” he'd said, because he was. He is. He draws. He coughs. He sleeps. He watches Dean read websites about grief until he gets bored of Dean glancing at him every few sentences and gets him to come over so they can read them together. Dean's been very hesitant to touch him, which frustrates the hell out of Sam.
Sam finds the pictures of loved ones huddling together against a common pain strangely comforting, and he thinks how nice it would be to get to do the things the web pages say. To talk about Jess. To talk about how she died. He'd always thought that he would be hideous at this, like Dad was, burying their mother's name in whiskey bottles and gruff silences and digging it up only for birthdays and guilt trips. But Sam wants to talk. Sam is dying to talk.
Sam just can't breathe.
Dean shuttles him back and forth to the hospital and holds the masks over his face when Sam's too damn tired.
“Why are you so calm?” Dean says, frayed to his core, strung out on not sleeping, brewing Sam his sixth pot of coffee. “How the fuck are you coughing that much, doesn't it hurt?”
Because it doesn't hurt, Sam realized yesterday. Nothing's hurting. Not his hand, not his shit lungs, not his dead girlfriend.
And that's what scares him.
So when he's doing comparatively okay and Dean leaves him to grab some ice, the pain in Sam's chest, starting small and radiating to fill his lungs, soothes him at first. It's normal. It's correct. He can't breathe. It's supposed to hurt.
But it doesn't stop. Soon he feels every muscle in his lungs stretching and snapping, like he's made of rubber bands, and his throat begins stinging with every breath. Breaths that aren't getting any worse; he's completely aware of this, after a lifetime of monitoring his air flow. It hurts like hell, but he's used to pain-before this week, he was used to pain, even if it was never this bad-and it doesn't stop him from getting as much air in and out as he can. And he's wheezing the same as he was before. He's not getting dizzy. He's breathing the same. Maybe a little better.
Definitely a little better, actually. It just hurts now.
And then it hits. He sees her on the ceiling
hair perfect
mouth open
trying to speak?
eye contact
fucking eye contact
nothing smells the same as burning skin
and he winces and curls up and he wants his brother. He's grabbing himself, physically trying to hold himself together, when the door clicks open and there's Dean. The ice bucket rattles for a few paces, then all is silent.
“Sam?”
Sam holds up a hand, trying to signal to Dean that he's okay, because he is. The pain's backing off now, like a wave. Sam, thoughts refocusing, thoughts shrinking back into his head, find this a funny analogy, because the summer after his freshman year, when Dean stole him away to the beach, he remembers lying on his towel and thinking the waves were like breathing, in and out, the roar alarmingly similar to the sounds his chest makes on a bad night.
The sounds his chest is starting to make now.
Because he smells it again. It was gone while Dean was out of the room, but now it's back. Smoke. This faint smell of smoke that won't go away, that's itching his lungs, that shouldn't be around anymore. It's back, and Sam can't breathe.
Dean sits down next to him on the bed. He puts a hand on Sam's back. Things are starting to go gray around the edges, and he feels his lungs tightening right to their tops, but it doesn't hurt.
It doesn't hurt. His mind is here, all clear and focused and completely able to process the fact that Sam can't breathe.
**
Dean noticed it two days ago, because he's not a fucking idiot, and because no matter what music he blasts to try to drown it out when Sam's at school or in the hospital or fucking fine, his ears are permanently tuned to the Sam's Asthma station and that's just life, so when something new and weird is going on in his kid's lungs, yeah, he fucking notices.
The closer he gets to Sam, the worse the kid breathes.
It's as basic and as immensely fucking fucked up as that.
So now Sam's suffocating and clinging to him on the bed and it's the same problem he's had the whole rest of the fucking week, which is how to get Sam to fucking breathe, how to get him to the fucking hospital, when by all logic he shouldn't be fucking touching him.
This isn't some self-loathing bullshit on Dean's part, and it's not even something that's exclusively Dean, it's just that Sam starts hacking and wheezing like a madman when he's too close to anyone, and Dean dragged the doctors to the corner of Sam's room (because he hasn't fucking left the kid alone, hasn't been in a closed door away from him except for that little trip down the hall just now because have you seen the kid, because you wouldn't leave him alone either) and demanded to know what the fuck was up and fuck if the doctors can tell them anything outside of “it's psychological” and wow, really? Fucking astute. Now fix it.
Well, now he's getting another damn chance to have a lovely chat with the doctors about it, because here they go back to the fucking hospital, and whatever this is controlling Sammy, Dean gets the picture, okay? He's fucking wise to the game, and he's going to play along because fuck if he can keep doing this to his brother forever. As soon as they're there, as soon as Sam's pumped full of everything and masked up and breathing, Dean will stay the fuck back and he'll make sure the doctors do too. But he has to get the kid there first, and his only other choice is to call fucking 911 and have paramedics jostling the shit out of him, and if someone gets to hold the kid's hand, that someone's going to be touching the kid anyway, that someone's going to be Dean.
Psychological. But psychological doesn't mean he can talk the kid out of it (something he learned last semester when Sam was a walking talking wheezing panic attack-has he mentioned his kid's allergic to anti-anxiety meds? Sam is trying to fucking kill him) but that also doesn't mean he doesn't fucking try, so he's walking Sam to the car with his arm slung over Dean's shoulders like how they used to move each other when one of them went down hard on a hunt (while John panicked, got the car, cupped the sick one's face in his hand, whispered apologies) and Dean's saying, “Shhh, calm down, lungs, calm down” while he loads Sam into the car.
“Where are we going?” He's oxygen deprived and fucking woozy.
“Back to the mothership.”
“Oh.”
He coughs the entire way to the hospital. Dean isn't fucking exaggerating here: the entire fucking way, the only breaths the ones he can gasp before the next cough hits, never looking up, never opening his eyes. The entire. Fucking. Way.
The hospital knows them now. He waves at the triage nurse, dragging his kid like he's a fucking sack of laundry, and she points them to a gurney. It's fucking weird. Sam's real name, his real medical records. Dean wonders if Sam liked being respectable, if he's going to miss it. They haven't much talked about what's happening after this. Dean has a pretty good idea because Dean knows how their fucking lives work (and that also means he's waiting for that fucking phone call, waiting for John to come and, if not fix this, at least clean this shit up.)
He and another nurse get Sam onto the gurney. He isn't coughing anymore, but he's squirming and wheezing, and Dean puts a hand on his shoulder because he's not going to get far enough away to help Sam breathe anyway, so he might as well go for some contact before the guilt eats him up and he backs the fuck off.
“It's okay,” Dean says. “They're going to help.”
“It's tight. Shit. I think really tight, Dean. My chest.”
“I know. It's bad. They're going to help. They'll give you something for the pain, too.”
“Are they gonna fix it?” He squeezes his eyes really fucking tight. “I think I need someone to fix it this time.”
“Yeah?” Sam's been known to say this. It's not as stupid as it sounds. It means that he can't fucking do this on his own anymore, and he wants them to knock him out and intubate him. Problem is Sam's rocking some pretty serious burns in his throat (Dean had some himself but they healed because Dean's body doesn't hate him, while Sam's are still weeping and sloughing off in blisters) and the doctors have been all worried about irritating and infecting them, not to mention that they think maybe the kid's entire fucking respiratory system might cave in when they finally pull the tube out, not to mention that they fucking did it all anyway a few hours after the fire because seriously you should have seen the kid and Sam was unconscious for a day and a half and cried the whole fucking time, how the fuck is that even possible.
Sam nods tightly.
“Okay. Can you try some other stuff first? See if that helps?” He's getting pushed down a hallway now, so Dean jogs to keep up. He thinks about holding Sam's hand but figures the kid has had enough today.
Another nod.
“You're my favorite,” Dean says.
“I know.”
Dean chuckles, because fuck this kid, and shit it's going to be hard to back away.
**
Dean's pacing next to his bed, and Sam wants to get up. But he's so tired. It's a new kind of tired, like each of his muscles has individually run out of energy.
“I don't feel it,” he says, quietly, because he has to say something. Dean is hurting, and he can't comfort him in any of the usual ways. He can't pour them each a glass of beer and sit down and give him that face that gets him whatever he wants until Dean finally talks. He can't grab Dean's hand and twist it all around until it hurts so Dean can tell himself that Sam isn't holding his damn hand. He can't even hug him because Dean keeps stepping right out of reach just as the pain flares up, and by the time Dean's back, he's wheezing too hard to reach for him.
He can't do much of anything, but he can help Dean take care of him. He can tell Dean what's wrong.
If he can talk.
Dean stops, too far away. “What?”
Sam gestures towards his chest. “I can't feel it. I feel...short of breath and nervous and tight, but it doesn't hurt. It should hurt, right?”
Dean swipes his hand over his face. “Sam. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Okay, now he also feels stupid and badgered and defensive. “I just...I'm not feeling things the way I'm supposed to. This is just me freaking out, right? This will go away?”
It's starting to hurt now. Just a whisper of it. He puts his hand on his chest.
“Shit,” he says.
Dean takes a step towards him and then something in his chest seizes and he's coughing. He's coughing too hard. He needs to control it better than this, but he can't. The cough is having him. He gets a grip on his blanket with both hands and leans over his knees and just tries not to fight it, because it's past that point. He knows that. It's instinct. It's the knowledge that, somewhere, this is hurting him, hurting the throat everyone keeps telling him is messed up, but he isn't feeling it now. He feels a hand on his back, a woman's hand, and she smells like smoke, and then his throat clenches and he's throwing up. Someone gets a basin under his mouth in time. Christ, he hates coughing.
Throwing up doesn't make the cough stop, and he stays where he is while they push medicine into him and soothe him. Dean's saying, “Can you please leave him alone? He just wants you to give him some space.”
They back off but they all keep hovering, and Sam is embarrassed and angry and sick of the damn smoke. He drives a few more coughs into his elbow and realizes he feels a little better.
They give him a towel to wipe his mouth and a little cup of water, and Dean says, “He can't drink right now, Jesus, give him some time.”
“Deancomehere,” Sam says, and Dean doesn't come. Sam looks up and it takes him a minute to find him; he's literally as far away as he could be without leaving the room, pressed against the opposite corner with his hand over his mouth.
Dean makes eye contact.
He doesn't come.
Sam rubs his chest. Sore.
Sore.
Scared.
He wants his brother so bad that it is literally hurting him.
The nurses back off and say a doctor will be here in a minute, and here, sweetie, breathe some oxygen. Sam puts the mask on. The oxygen's cold. Why is it always so cold? It makes his lungs ache.
And Dean, Dean with that hand over his mouth. Sam knows what that means.
Sam mouths, Are you okay?
“Am I okay? Jesus, Sam, breathe.”
Sam nods and concentrates. He's knows how to do this, how to monitor change. It's so much easier than working out why Dean won't come close.
The crap settled in the bottoms of his lungs seems looser-the coughing helped-and he can feel it fluttering when he breathes in, but the tightness isn't getting any better. He works his fingers between his ribs, feeling for retractions, and tries to rub through to the spasming muscles in his lungs. His throat feels uncomfortably tight, like he's having a reaction, and it's making him nervous. He knows that it's just panic. He's panicked enough damn times, and he really should be used to it. But he should also probably be used to not breathing.
“Sam.” Dean sounds so fucking far away. “You doing okay in there?”
Dean talks to him this way, sometimes, like there is a real Sam underneath this body that can feel like wrought iron, and Sam loves it so goddamn much.
He wraps his arms tight around his chest and nods.
“I don't think you're doing okay, Sammy...”
He nods, harder, because Dean needs him to be okay. Dean has put up with this bullshit for the better part of a week, and there's a very short list---blond bedhead, her curves through his ratty t-shirts, stupid jokes, seventy-three inches of legs-of things that Sam wants more than he wants to be a good little brother. He wants it more than breathing. He wants it even more than he wants Dean beside him right the hell now.
And he is so bad at it. He'll be outside himself sometimes, wondering how the hell Dean loves him.
Three years at Stanford, half of them with those seventy-three inches of legs all the fuck around him, and whenever Sam couldn't sleep his heartbeat said DeanDean, DeanDean, DeanDean until he could.
They had a fight a few months ago. Jess was in a play, God, Sam can't remember what now, and Sam missed a few phone calls. Dean freaked out. When Sam finally got in touch with him, Dean was panicking, barking orders, threatening to come to Stanford, and Sam looked around at his wreck of a living room, his looming LSATs, his girlfriend's worried expression when he woke up mid-panic attack calling out for John, of all people, and he couldn't imagine trying to fit Dean into it, when just a few months ago, Dean had pulled him out of a a string of panic attacks and left think he'd fixed Sam. In Sam's mind, Dean's concerned face the last time around morphed into judgment and disappointment and exhaustion and shame.
He moves his arms from his chest to around his stomach and watches Dean. Dean's barely moved. John used to watch Sam like this when he was on a mask. Like he was willing him to be strong, pushing every ounce of himself into Sam. It scared him and made him feel important, and feeling important is maybe the scariest thing Sam has ever known.
Doubly now.
Love me less, he wants to say sometimes. What if something happens to me? Love me less. You have to love me less.
Then he dreams that Dean does and he wakes up shaking and Jess has to hold him.
He holds out his arms like he's a child. He doesn't care. He says, “Dean, please.”
Dean shakes his head. “You get sick.”
Sam puts his hands in his hair and pulls it, hard.
“Stop, Sammy.”
He's just holding himself in every possible way.
“It hurts,” he says.
Dean shakes his head a little. “I thought you said...”
But it does. It hurts. It's building up fast. It's sharp and hot when he breathes in, like he's still in that apartment, and then he breathes out and it aches, crushes him, and it's all just excruciatingly slow. He's air-trapping; he can't get the old, shitty, useless air out of the bottoms of his lungs before he has to breathe in again, and there's less and less space with each breath. He really doesn't want that tube down his throat, but God, this is scaring the shit out of him, and it's scaring the shit out of Dean, and it hurts and Jesus he wants Dean. He wants Jess
off the ceiling
back in bed
safe
Jess
“I'm going to bring our own fucking nebulizer next time, I swear to fucking God,” Dean growls, and right then a doctor and nurse come in with one. Sometimes things work out. Dean never believes they will, so Sam always has to, and it gets so exhausting.
Sam wheezes out a long breath. His chest feels like it's packed in ice.
The doctor gives him the mouthpiece of the nebulizer and the nurse takes Sam's blood pressure. The doctor looks at her tightening the velcro strap on the cuff and says, “Lost some weight, Sam?”
Sam lets out a breath and takes the mouthpiece out. He should be feeling a little better. He isn't. “It's been hard to eat.” Everything feels very distant. Everything smells like smoke.
“Could you not make him talk right now?” Dean says. “He's upset.”
The doctor ignores him and keeps looking at Sam.
“You're too close to him,” Dean says. “He doesn't want to talk to you when you're that close, could he be any more fucking obvious?” and despite everything Dean's making Sam smile, because he's leaning against that wall all pissed off, throwing out commentary like this whole hospital scene is something from a lame movie.
He forces himself back to earth to makes a face at Dean. He winks at him, and Dean rolls his eyes and mouths, I hate you and Sam feels safe.
The doctor says, “It's important to keep your strength up. Your body's working hard, and you need to be taking in more calories to compensate for that until we get you back on track.”
Dean says, “And when that blessed fucking day occurs, we'll have a fucking feast to celebrate. Until then, you chew me out about bullshit like his weight, not him, all right?”
The doctor finally looks at Dean and Sam almost laughs because, ha, don't mess with Dean. He's so going down. But it hurts just to think about laughing. He leans forwards to lower his forehead towards his knees.
He can't breathe and he hurts. He wishes the doctor would back off.
“Sam's an adult,” the doctor says. “We'll talk to him.”
“His favorite game is Candy Land, I think he might be still fucking growing, and he's freaking oxygen deprived and grieving so hard God knows how he's sitting here in front of us right now and not off drowning in vodka and his own fucking sobs, all right? He has a few other damn things on his mind right now, so you're going to to talk to me about the shit that doesn't matter and talk to him about how you're going to get him fucking breathing, okay?”
God, Sam's brother, Sam's brother.
Sam wraps his arms around his legs and watches him, and Dean says, “Sam, why are you fucking smiling? You're so fucking bad at this.”
Sam sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and just watches Dean some more.
But then the pain sears hot and new and he tries to cry out but it's just a wheeze, it's all just more fucking wheezing, but his time he looks up at Dean and Dean hesitates but, he comes to him. Sam doesn't know where the fuck the doctor and nurse are and what they're doing to him and he doesn't care. He holds onto Dean and coughs and coughs. Why the hell does Dean still smell like smoke?
“You got to stop, Sam, you got to stop, I'm making you sick.” But it doesn't hurt. His breathing's worse, but when Dean's touching him, when Dean's close, it doesn't hurt.
**
So, all right, when Dean's close by, Sammy can't breathe but also doesn't hurt, and when Dean's far away, it hurts but he can breathe. Seriously, what the fuck, San's lungs (Sam's head) why are you doing this to them? Dean's tired. He's tired for Sam.
Dean places a hand on each of Sam's temples. “Ugh. Be normal.”
“Right?”
He fucks with Sam's hair before he takes a few steps back, halfway between there and not there. He says, “Honestly? Worst big brother ever, but I'd rather stay close. We can handle the asthma. We're fucking awesome at that. The pain thing...I mean, dude, your body is fucked up right now. You've got a lot of fucking pain to play with and I'd rather you didn't play with it.”
Sam nods sadly.
“The burns in your throat and shit...fuck, how did you even survive when I was getting ice? The doctors have been hounding me about this for ages, you know? How much pain you're supposed to be in. I just went on about how fucking strong you are or some shit. Ugh, you had me painting you like some fucking saint, screw you.”
“It was bad,” Sam says. “But I don't think it was any worse than right now, with you across the room, and...we've done that, right? That distance?”
“In the motel? I guess.”
“So there's no formula,” Sam is quiet. Sam is breathing like shit. “We can't track it.”
Dean can live with that, but the thing is that Sam sort of can't and Dean knows that. Sam needs order. And he's pretty quiet about how badly he needs it, but that doesn't have anything to do with the degree to which he fucking freaks out when he can't put things in their little boxes, and God, Sam, you're such a sad kid sometimes, and he would have been an awesome fucking lawyer in a different life (different body, different brother).
“Not feeling anything, though,” Dean says. “That's dangerous.”
Sam sucks on the nebulizer, shrugs.
“You could fall and fucking break yourself and not know.”
“Not gonna be breathing well enough to be doing shit that would make me break myself. Can I sleep, Dean?”
“No, you're not breathing.”
“Yeah I am.” Sam throws himself back against his pillows all fucking dramatically and does an excellent job of proving his health by coughing for two minutes, and Dean can't do shit to help him.
Sam wheezes. “This sucks.”
“No shit. You okay?”
He nods.
“You keep fucking saying that...I don't even know why I ask.”
“Can you come closer?”
Dean shakes his head.
“It hurts. Please.”
Dean hesitates. “Just...give it a minute, okay? Try to calm down?” And he hates himself, because Sam fucking hates being told to calm down, but his kid's a champ and closes his eyes and concentrates.
“Can you talk to me?” Sam says, after a minute.
“Yeah.”
“Just anything. Just...remind me that you're there.” He sucks in a breath. “I think it hurts more the more I want you, Dean.”
Well isn't that just fucking spectacular.
“Ugh.” Dean pulls the chair out and sits eight feet back from Sam. “You don't want me. I'll just make fun of you for your hair, plus I haven't showered in like a day and a half because I've been too nervous to leave your wheezy ass alone and because I figured out that you're going to bitch about how I smell like smoke even if I bathe myself in bleach. So I'm gross. And you probably think I smell like smoke. Yeah, you'd rather I stay back here.”
Sam shakes his head, but he's starting to relax a little.
“Besides. I'm still here.”
Sam nods and coughs, but it's not that frantic fucking coughing he's doing when Dean has his hands on him. But then he gives his eyes a quick swipe and Dean says, “Hey. You okay?”
He hasn't been crying much. A little, every once in a while, enough to rule out that the solution to all of this is for Sam to just sit down and have a good cry and talk about his feelings, but less than Dean expected from his little girl of a brother.
“Sorry,” Sam says.
“You bug the shit out of me when you apologize. You know that. And you're not exactly in any state to fight me, princess.”
Sam nuzzles his pillow, nods.
“I'll get them to let you go home soon,” Dean says. “Now that we...now that we know what's up, there's not much they can do here that we can't back at the motel.”
“Easier to breathe without all the people,” he says.
“Yeah. They freak you out?”
He nods a little. “It's like you. But not as bad.”
“It's...not as bad.”
Sam closes his eyes. “The breathing thing.”
“I know.”
“They get too close, it's hard to breathe. Everyone smells like smoke. But...”
“But not as hard as when it's me. Shit, Sammy.”
Sam buries his face in his pillow, mumbles, “Don't make the rules,” coughs.
“We'll, um...” Shit. Because seriously, what the fuck are they going to do? Even when Dean's across the room, even if he were in fucking Montreal, it's not like Sam's breathes like a fucking healthy person, and add that to the pain and the kid needs help, and Dean was perfectly willing to put all of his shit on hold for as long as Sammy fucking needed and play doctor, okay, but let's not pretend that this isn't hard, that he isn't itching to track down the fucking thing that's now broken everyone in his fucking family and that he doesn't want to have the longest, angriest conversation with his father that ever fucking was, and that he doesn't just want to get out there and save someone or kill something, so let's not act like this is easy, and now Sam needs help he can't give him, and even after this is all over, when the injuries have healed, Sam's still going to be a fucking intense asthmatic who needs help sometimes, and, what, Dean's supposed to walk away? Let people who will hurt him a little less than he would put their hands all over his kid while he hangs back like some fucking distant father? Dean doesn't know how else to put this: no.
“We'll fix this,” he says. “But first priority is getting you well. And no one ever gets well in a fucking hospital.”
Sam plays with the sheet. “Nobody ever.”
“You doing okay?”
“I'm fine. You don't have to ask every minute.”
“You're not looking at me.”
“You're too far away.”
Dean sighs. “Don't pout, okay?”
“I just want you,” Sam says. “It's just...as basic and as immensely fucking fucked up as that.”
Dean runs his hands down his face, because Jesus, Sam. Just...Christ.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “I know the feeling.”
Sam looks up at him.
“Forget it.” Dean walks by the foot of the bed, and he takes Sam's chart off and smacks his feet with it. “Let me get you out of here. You're staying in the backseat for the ride back.”
**
Sam's in the backseat and he's not doing great.
He wasn't this clingy before he knew what was going on, but now that his body's telling him that he can't be close to Dean, he wants it more than anything. He wonders about this sometimes. He wonders if he would love air as much as he does now if it weren't a struggle for him to get it. If normal people get so excited about rushing wind in convertibles or shower steam that settles in all the right places. On his happier days, he thinks he would be sorry to lose that enthusiasm.
He would not be sorry to lose this, because it makes him uncomfortable to be this reliant on Dean, and because it means he would get his brother. He could be as reliant on Dean as he damn well pleased.
Sam tries not to think about it, and it's a stupid statement, anyway, coming from someone with a chronic illness, but sometimes Sam hates his body.
Except...this is in his head.
Sometimes Sam hates his head is not exactly a new observation, but usually Jess holds his hand through it.
He just whimpered, didn't he? Jesus.
“Sam?” Dean says, really cautiously. “You doing okay back there?”
“Yeah. My throat really hurts. When I talk.”
“So don't.”
“Or breathe.”
“Oh.”
Dean hesitates, then reaches a hand back to Sam. Sam grabs it like he's drowning, and then his lungs fill up like he is. He coughs and his throat doesn't hurt. He thinks about Jess holding him and feels warm and soft and calm. It doesn't make him whimper. It's just a pretty, sad thought. It doesn't hurt.
“Sam.” Dean slips his hand out of Sam's and tangles it in his hair instead. “Okay. You're okay.”
“Smell like smoke,” Sam says, quietly.
“No. I don't.”
Sam closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the back of the passenger seat. “I want to get better.”
“Oh, fuck kid, I know. We'll get you there. I'm going to call Bobby when we get back and see if he's ever heard of this shit. Just...you know, maybe whatever...maybe it left something behind, I don't know. Fuck, maybe this happened to Dad, we wouldn't remember. Fuck, listen to you. You all right? Sam, fucking say something.”
Sam tries but he's just coughing, like it's all he remembers how to do. This is bad, his brain says, calmly, rationally. This is probably hurting your throat.
Dean takes his hand away and pain sears through him. He cries out with new air.
**
Sam fucking clings the whole phone call, which means he's an oxygen-deprived goddamn zombie by the time Dean's hung up with Bobby (who says he has no fucking clue and has never heard of this, why the fuck does Dean even fucking bother interacting with people who aren't Sam, seriously, he always ends up pissed off and needs someone to take it out on and that person is always fucking Sam) he's a fucking mess, oxygen mask on and still fucking purple, this perfectly fucking rational voice whenever he can get words out telling Dean his chest is pretty tight, no fucking shit, Sammy.
He rubs his palm across Sam's shoulders. “Okay. You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. But you need to breathe to sleep.”
Sam shakes his head.
“I've known you for twenty-two years, and I'm pretty sure you do, kiddo. Remember that time in Denver when you tried to prove me wrong on that one? Not your best.”
“It's going to hurt too much.”
“I'm going to medicate the shit out of you. And I'm going to be right there.” He points to a chair in the corner. “Right there. The whole fucking time. Creepily fucking watching you sleep like I did when you were a fucking toddler.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you asking if I watched you sleep when you were a fucking toddler? Usually Dad, but yeah, you'd stop breathing the second you weren't the center of someone's attention, you little shit.”
Sam smiles at him.
“I'm going to hug you. Don't stop breathing.” He puts his arms around Sam all fucking carefully because the last thing he wants to do is squeeze one of his fucking fragile muscles into spasming all over the fucking place. Sam pushes his face into his chest, just fuck this kid.
“All right. Hold on. Don't fucking miss me because I'm coming right back, okay?”
“Okay,” Sam says, and he must do a pretty good job because Dean watches him and doesn't see any wincing or shaking.
“Should I send you a postcard?” he says.
Sam nods.
“Dear Sammy. The bathroom's lovely this time of year. Wish you were here. Dean. P.S., looking good in that mask.”
Sam flicks him off.
Dean gives him eight different things and a glass of water and Sam takes them all. He doesn't complain about his throat. It's got to hurt. It's supposed to hurt.
And now they have a fucking plan but Dean doesn't want to move. He's pushing the kid's head around like he's one of those toys that bobs around in the back of fucking minivans, and Sam's letting him because Sam puts up with way too fucking much.
Sam takes off the mask eventually and says, “Staying close doesn't mean you have...” he stops and pants. “...to fucking manhandle me.”
“You're making me fucking touch you, I get to do it however the fuck I want.” He pinches Sam's cheek. “Plus this is all we're getting for a few hours, so I have to drain myself of whatever affection I have buried for you somewhere in my heartless heart. You'll deal.”
Sam nods.
“You always deal,” Dean says, quietly.
“Hey. Don't get weepy.”
“Screw you. Screw you screw you screw you.” Because his fucking kid is sick and now Dean has to sit in the corner and watch like it's fucking nothing, and why isn't Sam falling apart about this.
Sam reaches a hand up to rub Dean's back and Dean hears his lungs clamp down hard, and if that isn't the fucking last straw Dean doesn't know what is.
“Okay. Sleep. Those pills are going to knock you the fuck out any minute.” He walks away, backwards, facing Sam, and sits down in the corner. “I'm right here. Don't freak out.”
Sam mouths okay and keeps watching him. A minute later, he takes the oxygen mask off, and Dean raises his eyebrows but Sam says, “I'm breathing, 'sokay.”
Dean tries to be boring so Sammy will fall asleep, but Sam's starting to hurt, he can tell, and trying to distract himself from it by giving Dean sleepy smiles and signing dirty things with the bits of sign language John taught them and Dean's laughing, and now's really not the fucking time to be laughing, except that it's calming Sam down, and Sam's breathing better, and honestly, as shitty as this is, there is a bit of it that's funny, sitting across the room from his fucking wreck of a brother and acting like they're fucking miles from each other, as if two weeks ago there weren't a thousand miles between them, and now ten feet is too much, and shit, he thought Sam had lost this. He thought Sam didn't feel that tug, that something that's supposed to be attached to me is missing that's been eating Dean for the better part of three years, except really all it takes is one fucking look at this kid, and goddamn does Dean want to go back to the night Sammy left and John was talking about how selfish Sam was, the night John says those fucking words-Sam doesn't love you as much as you love him-that have clawed at Dean ever since, Dean wants to go back and kick John in the fucking face, kick himself in the fucking face, and say of course Sammy does, it just doesn't fucking kill him to love that hard (and that's because of you, Dean, that's because you spoiled the kid into thinking this can be easy).
In conclusion, fucking Sam.
He's falling asleep now. Dean leans his elbow on the windowsill and rests his head in his hand and wishes for a nap or a cigarette or for Sam not to cry.
He's not crying. He's curling and uncurling in his sleep, around his stomach and his chest, with one hand creeping up to his throat every once in a while. But it's not excruciating, so the pills must be helping. He kind of looks like he has the flu, when he squirms around dramatically like he's on his deathbed (and this is after Dean pumps him full of antivirals so he's not on his deathbed).
But then Sam's mumbling, kicking his feet, and Jess's name slips out.
Dean listens. He's holding his fucking breath.
“Shoulda...” Sam's whimpering. “Done something. C'mback. PleaseJess. Can't breathe please come, please come.”
Dean rubs his palm over his mouth.
This is new. Sam hasn't been doing this.
He probably should have been.
Sam wraps his arms around his chest and curls up, and now he's crying, not hard, but like there's something broken in him, and shit, it's been ages since Sam's cried like this. Dean's seen a dozen times, easy, Sam crying because he just doesn't fucking feel well, and he knows how to deal with that and how to pretend it didn't happen after, and he also knows that when it shows up Sam's in serious fucking trouble, but the kid's fucking breathing right now and there's no fucking universe in which he shouldn't be crying except this is the only fucking scenario he can fucking think of in which Dean wouldn't be fixing it, helping Sam, rubbing his kid's fucking back, and just...shit.
This is new.
Sam hasn't been doing this.
Sam probably should have been.
“M'sorry,” Sam cries. “M'sorry, come back, come back. OhmyGod please. OhmyGod.”
Shit.
So it's not just fucking physical pain that Dean's blocking, then.
Well. Shit.
Not exactly Saint Fucking Dean to a grieving kid, is he?
**
Sam always thought blinding pain was just something people said, but he wakes up to nothing but burning (burning) hot whiteness and a throat that feels like he's been drinking battery acid. He barely gasps in a few breaths before he hears footsteps crossing the room, fast, and there's something cool and wet on his forehead.
“You're okay.” It's Dean, close, not touching him. “I shouldn't have let you sleep that long. Sorry.”
Sam tries blinking again and now the room comes into focus, slowly, as the pain backs off. It's dark, and Dean looks so tired.
“Okay if I go sit on the other bed?” Dean says.
Sam closes his eyes and shakes his head. No. It just fucking isn't.
“Okay.” Dean sits on the floor beside Sam's bed. He's facing away from him, but he reaches his hand back on the bed and lets Sam play with his fingers. They're quiet for a while while Sam tries to get his breathing back on track. He looks around for his inhaler and doesn't see it.
“You didn't tell me the whole story,” Dean says.
“What?”
“You start freaking out about Jess and stuff when I'm not there? That's part of the pain thing?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, because he doesn't get what the big deal is. Nothing feels like a big deal. Except it's kind of hard to breathe, and he'd sort of like his inhaler.
“Well, what the fuck, Sam? Why won't you do that with me? You think it's easier for me to sit across the fucking room and watch you do it? I'm holding your hand like a fucking nurse, can't you fucking use that?”
“Jesus, stop yelling. I just woke up.”
“You should be yelling! You should be screaming and breaking down and not in your fucking sleep, Sam, here. With me. I'm fucking in a fucking motel room doing nothing but trying to help you through this, Jesus, Sammy! I'm putting every single fucking thing in the world on hold, never mind saving people, never mind finding Dad-”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says. He can't breathe.
“Don't apologize, Jesus.”
“Then...thank you?” Can't breathe.
“Don't thank me, I'm not fucking helping!” Dean kicks the bed and Sam jumps and then Dean's pacing and Sam's coughing and everything hurts and he can't breathe and everything is wrong.
He gets out of bed and Dean says, “Where the fuck are you going?”
“Find my fucking inhaler...”
Dean rubs his forehead. “It's in the bathroom, I think.”
It is, by the sink, lined up with the dozen other things Sam's taking. He takes a hit from it and leans over with his elbows on the counter. In the mirror, he sees Dean lingering by the doorway.
“I can't breathe,” Sam says.
“Why?” Dean pushes his forehead against the door frame. “Why the fuck not?”
“You smell like smoke...”
“No I don't, Sam, I've taken fifteen hundred fucking showers because you keep thinking I smell like smoke, and I'm wearing brand new fucking clothes, I don't fucking smell like smoke.”
“I'm scaring you.”
“Of course you're fucking scaring me, what the fuck do you think this is?”
“Stop yelling at me. I can't breathe.”
“I'll stop yelling when you fucking start yelling, how about that?”
Sam sits down on the floor and holds his head. “I don't want to yell.”
“I'll give you fucking oxygen so you can, okay?”
“It's not that. It's...”
“Talk to me, Sam!”
And then it all flares up; every bit of pain from every single bit of Sam's body soars to his head and out of his mouth. “Because I don't know what fucking things I'm going to say, and I'm going to scare the shit out of you, I'm going to fucking break all the fuck everywhere and you're going to freak out and there's going to be nothing you can do. So yeah, maybe my body figured out a few fucking days before I did that it's easier just to fucking suffocate than to have enough air to cry at you about this because you can talk me through a fucking asthma attack and give me eighty hundred fucking meds but something is really fucked up inside of me and my fucking girlfriend is dead and I hate everything and you can't fix this.”
Dean doesn't say anything, and Sam waits for him to yell back, or hit something, or stomp out the door. He's ready for Dean to make his big scene.
But Dean just waits a few seconds and then drops down to a crouch next to him.
He says, really gently, “Give me some fucking credit, okay?” His hand goes to Sam's back and rubs between his shoulder blades. “I've been through a lot of shit with you, Sammy.”
“Not this.”
“Yeah.” Then he does something funny; he takes the tips of Sam's sleeves between his fingers and plays with them, watching his hands and not Sam. “You hate everything, huh? You...going to hurt yourself or something?”
Sam shakes his head hard.
“Okay. If you start to feel...I know you. You err towards the crazy sometimes. I'm here.”
“I'm not going to.”
“All right. Good. Okay. We're going to fucking do this, then.” He moves around so he's next to Sam, sitting against the bathtub, and slowly puts his arms around Sam. Something inside Sam tightens and pulls immediately, like someone's stitching up his lungs.
“No,” Dean says. “Breathe.”
“I can't.”
“Yes. Breathe. Let go.”
“I can't.”
“Let go, Sam. I have you.”
But he can't. Sam isn't made to let go. This isn't who he is. This isn't what he does. Sam is supposed to be in control. Sam had everything planned out.
He wants to be a picture on a web page. He wants to think clearly and have calm discussions about how he misses Jess and...
her eyes
eye contact
smoke
his chest
“You're fine,” Dean says. “It's okay. I've got you.”
in his eyes
her eyes
trying to tell him something
should have warned her
shouldn't have known
“Let go,” Dean says.
“It hurts.”
“I think it's supposed to, Sam.”
And it's the stupidest thing that gets to him.
That play. The one Jess was in. When he and Dean fought. It was And Then There Were None. He remembers now. Jess played Ethel Rogers. She dies pretty early. Maybe that's a metaphor. An allegory?
Sam came to see her every damn night, but after the first few times he started leaving after her character died, because he didn't care anymore. Without her, he didn't care.
That's not a metaphor. It's not an allegory. It's not anything.
Sam still cares so damn much.
And that does it. He's unglued, he's unstitched, he's done and he's undone. Everything will always be undone for Sam now.
**
Dean feels it happen, feels his kid go limp all the way down to his lungs, and then he's just crying, crying in a way he fucking couldn't if his throat hurt all that much so see, Dean's still helping, okay?
He's crying words that fuck if Dean can understand because he's crying them staggered and snotty into Dean's hoodie, and this is okay. This is how it's supposed to fucking be. He holds Sam by his head and his waist, and shit, he hasn't been allowed to hold Sam like this in a fucking long time. (Ever?)
He stays where he is and rubs Sam's back and pretends he's a fucking tissue when Sam coughs into him, whatever, and Sam digs his fingers into Dean's back and all of this is scaring the fucking shit out of Dean but it feels right, too, like when Sam's really sick and finally throws up and he's all upset and doesn't feel well and Dean's acting sympathetic but thinking no, it's good, get it out of you. Get this fucking shit out of his brother.
“Proud of you,” Dean says. He always ends up spilling this sappy shit when Sam cries. “You're perfect, you wheezy fucking control freak. You grieve like a superhero.” He give Sam another minute and then says, “Like a superhero with asthma, hold on.” He pulls away from Sam just enough to reach up to the sink and grab his inhaler, and Sam wipes his cheeks off, hard, with his hands.
Dean shakes the inhaler for him and presses it into his hand. “We can do this whenever, you know? This isn't like a one-time-only breakdown. You have at least twenty chick moments saved up at least. Next time we can do each others' nails and prank call boys.”
Sam lets out his breath with a very small, slightly hysterical laugh.
“You good for now?” Dean says.
Sam blows his nose and nods. God, he's a fucking mess. He has one of those faces where he cries and you see it on him for the next day and a half.
“How's the breathing?”
“It's happening.”
“I'll take it.”
“I'm sorry,” Sam says.
“What? Shut up. I'll hit you.”
Sam plays with Dean's shoe. “For saying I hate everything.”
Oh.
“I don't hate everything,” Sam says. “I like being your kid.”
“You're a fucking asshole, you know that?”
Sam smiles at him. It's small and real.
Fucking Sam.