Sleep, for LolaAnn
Title: Sleep
Author: tolakasa
Recipient: LolaAnn
Rating: T (language)
Warnings: None
Betas: firesign10, lissa_ann, koshka_the_cat
Author's Notes: This kind of wandered off from the prompt. I tried to wrestle it into submission. Really I did.
Summary: Sam may not sleep anymore, but tonight, he really needs to make sure Dean does. Post "Weekend at Bobby's."
"I can't believe you sprang for first class," Dean muttered, shoving his bag into the overhead compartment. The layover after the short flight from Edinburgh to Dublin had been long enough that he was finally starting to look less green and more like his usual self, although somewhat miserable in anticipation of the longer flight to come. "Do you know how freakin' much--"
"Business class," Sam corrected, "and it's not like we had to scrimp." Cousin Callie did credit scams and forgeries for the entire Campbell clan, and due to years of practice and actual accounting skills, she was far more skilled at them than Dad or Dean had ever been. Round-trip business class tickets, the rental car, a three-day hotel stay in a place that wasn't a dump, a suitcase full of souvenirs for Ben and Lisa and another full of high-dollar whiskey ostensibly for Bobby, Dean's own sampling tour of every distillery he could find, and food for three days, and they'd still barely made a dent in the available funds.
Dean had insisted they owed Bobby this, and maybe--maybe--he was right, but as cramped as coach was, Sam would be more comfortable folding himself up into a suitcase. And he was still sore from the lamia hunt and squeezing himself into that glorified wind-up toy the Brits called a rental car. He didn't owe Bobby that much, even if Bobby had kept his mouth shut for the past year.
"Whatever," Dean muttered, slamming the compartment shut. He hesitated a second, looking at the seat next to the window. "Maybe I should take--"
"Are you going to be walking around?" Sam asked pointedly.
"Guess not," Dean admitted, a little sheepishly, and slumped into the window seat. There was no point in him even trying to get to the bathrooms. His particular brand of airsickness hit hard and sudden. He'd barely had time to find the barf bags the first round. And when he'd tried to walk around the cabin a bit to settle his stomach, at the suggestion of one of the attendants--
Luckily, the guy Dean had hurled on was a grandfather with a lot of experience with infants. He was way more understanding than a single guy would have been.
Sam, on the other hand, would be getting out of his seat. The two business-class attendants were both women, one very pretty, one very plain, neither wearing a wedding or engagement ring. The plain one had given--and was still giving--him a speculative look that made him think she might have some skills to make up for her lack of beauty. The plain ones did, sometimes. The pretty ones tended to coast on their looks--
"Sam, quit checking out the stews and help me find more barf bags."
Sam heaved a melodramatic sigh, because it was the kind of thing he would've done Before, and his life these days was all about pretending. "Fine." He didn't bother stealing bags from other seats--there wouldn't be enough and he was in no mood to fumble through all the societal niceties. He just went straight to the flight attendants and explained the situation, coming back with a double handful of bags, a promise of quick drink service from Pretty, and a subtle-as-an-anvil question about the Mile High Club from Plain. "Your supplies," he said, dropping them on the tray table Dean was fighting.
"It's not too late for me to use your duffle bag," came the even retort.
"Try it." Sam claimed the aisle seat. At least there was enough room here to stretch out--and Internet access. Once Dean was out, he'd be able to work. If his plan worked and he could research properly, without having to listen to Dean try to puke up his own guts, he might even have a job waiting when they landed.
If this worked.
True to her word, Pretty came over as soon as she could, during a break between directing passengers, and took Dean's drink order--the nature and quantity of which sent her eyebrows into her hairline. However, the warning Sam had given her had been detailed enough that she didn't argue--not about regs, not about one person drinking that much before they got off the ground, not about anything. Undoubtedly, she didn't want to have to be the one helping with cleanup if Dean wasn't safely drunk before take-off.
Dean pulled a spork out of his pocket and began-- "Are you trying to make a shiv out of a spork?"
"Somebody took away my fork" was the irritated response.
So Dean wasn't forgiving him for "misplacing" that fork anytime soon. Just another reason to fly business class. First class got real cutlery, not plastic. Sam still didn't understand what Dean had been preparing for. A fork wasn't going to be any use against a terrorist and even less against a demon. "Where did you get that, anyway?"
"Coffee shop in the terminal. I told you, Sammy, I'm not just going to sit back and wait for something--"
"Nothing is going to happen. Nothing happened on the way over."
"Because I was ready!"
Sam snorted. That sobriety Dean had bragged about to Bobby been entirely accidental. Naturally, Dean had left out a key part of the story--the part where he was only sober because none of that ridiculous amount of alcohol had stayed in his stomach long enough to affect him. It was a miracle Dean's esophagus was still intact.
The thing with the fucking fork, though.... Sam had no explanation for that, other than the thought that his brother was insane. "What good is a--"
"When I'm done with it?"
"Never mind, MacGyver." It had made so much sense to convince Dean to come back on the road with him--before it actually happened. It wasn't that he expected Dean to be logical, but he didn't remember Dean being this illogical. Was he remembering wrong, or had a year in suburbia done that much damage?
"Here you go," Pretty announced, setting four tumblers--plastic, thank God, though there was no guarantee Dean wouldn't try to sharpen one of them or turn it into a cannon--on Dean's tray. Dean flashed her a grin and reached for the first one, which meant he was distracted. Not much, but enough.
The crushed pills dissolved instantly in the second drink in line.
Sam hoped they lived up to their marketing. If they didn't knock Dean out quickly-- Once the vomiting started, there wasn't much that could be done. They'd tried everything on the first flight, even taking suggestions from fellow passengers once the problem became obvious. Nothing worked. Dean couldn't keep medicine down even if he would take it, and he had steadfastly refused to take anything before they were airborne.
Sam had known the flight would be rough--hell, Bobby had known, and probably Crowley too--but he'd expected it to be simply because Dean was scared shitless of flying. It wasn't. Dean could handle fear, even at the level of a phobia. No, that wasn't the biggest problem at all.
Dean Winchester, the man who didn't get sick in cars, on trains, on boats, or on the wildest roller coasters, was highly susceptible to airsickness, especially on long flights. That flight with the plane-crashing demon had either been too short for it to kick in, or the panic attack and demon-wrangling had been enough distraction to keep it at bay. Likewise the brief flight when God snatched them from Lucifer's grasp after Sam let him loose. But the short flights from Dublin to Edinburgh and back again had made Dean seriously green, and the flight from Chicago to Dublin....
If Sam was still capable of sleep, it'd give him nightmares.
So now he was resorting to drastic measures. Sam had double-checked all the reactions before he bought the stuff. Mixing those pills with alcohol wouldn't cause problems, not with Dean's iron liver, it would just make him pass out quicker. And it wasn't like Sam wasn't going to be sitting right here to keep an eye on him.
Okay, he probably wouldn't be sitting right here for the whole flight. There were Plain and Pretty to consider, after all. But he was pretty sure somebody would notice if Dean suddenly had a seizure.
He wasn't doing this for Dean. Undoubtedly, it would be better for Dean if he was snoring rather than hurling, but this was for Sam's own benefit. Callie had warned him that if they didn't stay in Edinburgh for three days, they might trip a terror red flag, which neither one of them could risk. She had passports for "people" who were routine international travelers, but all of them were being used by other family members at the moment, so he and Dean had gotten passports that hadn't gotten farther than Haiti, and that only once, after the earthquake. But three days was long enough for a normal human to at least start to recover from jet lag.
The first flight had been daylight. Normal waking hours. Dean hadn't thought anything of Sam not napping, even though he'd nagged like hell about it between bouts of vomiting--that overgrown sense of take care of Sammy their father had drilled into him. But this flight was overnight, and if Dean didn't take anything to prevent another bout of airsickness, he'd be up all night hurling his guts out. And if he did that, he would definitely notice that Sam wasn't napping, wasn't even drowsy.
So far, Sam had managed to keep his brother from noticing that anything was wrong. A lot of it could be put down to Hell and a year's separation. His memories were clear enough that he could fake the appropriate responses in conversation. His year with the Campbells had made him a much better liar. And as long as he didn't bring girls back to their shared room, Dean didn't seem to care how much sex Sam had, even if he himself seemed to be embracing monogamy these days. But not sleeping? The number one sign of possession, either demonic or angelic? The thing that perpetually reminded Sam that something wasn't quite right?
Dean wasn't an idiot, and he had a knack for piecing puzzles together out of nothing. It made him a good hunter.
It made him a huge danger.
Dean wouldn't hesitate, not for a second, to lock him up in Bobby's panic room until he and Bobby figured out what was going on. Not like he hadn't done it before. Sam didn't sleep, but that didn't mean he couldn't be knocked unconscious. And he might be rusty, but if anybody could sneak up on Sam, it was Dean.
If they'd had more notice, if they'd had more time--but Bobby couldn't keep Crowley's dead kid hanging around forever; sooner or later, word would get back to Crowley. Dean wasn't about to let Sam go alone, and he couldn't leave Sam behind, not when Sam was his only connection to the Campbell resources that enabled them to make the trip in the first place.
Sam had a shitload of contingency plans drawn up in his head, all to keep his brother from finding out anything was wrong, but considering Dean's fear of flying-- He might as well have planned for the resurrection of their parents. It was about as likely. And after three days in Edinburgh--
It wasn't his best plan. Sam was incapable of lying to himself the way he once had. He'd had much better plans. Even the one about letting Lucifer in had been--perhaps not better, but definitely more thought out than this one. But after three days of racking his brain and driving Dean from one whiskey distillery and souvenir shop to another over half of Scotland, it was all he could come up with that might work, given the constraints he was working under.
Besides, it wasn't like Dean and Dad hadn't drugged him plenty of times when he was little, when they needed to talk about things and didn't want him listening in. Sam had been nearly eleven before he realized that, despite Dean's grandiose claims to the contrary, grape Dimetapp did not actually qualify as a dessert.
"This tastes funny," Dean said, glaring briefly at his half-finished second drink--but, Sam noted, that didn't stop him from tossing the rest of it back and starting on the next.
"You didn't learn last time?" Sam asked, because it was the kind of thing he would have said Before.
"I didn't start drinking until we were in the air last time. Maybe this way it'll kick in in time."
"Uh-huh." Sam picked up one of the bags and dropped it on top of the semi-transformed spork. "You'll be needing this. And don't complain to me when your esophagus disintegrates."
Dean just took another drink.
He was out before they got in the air, sharpened spork still clutched in one hand.
***
Midnight, and the plane was finally quiet.
Well, midnight-ish. Flying through multiple time zones was confusing, and the attendants--Sam smirked--had had other things on their minds than adjusting the clocks. He'd been right about Plain.
Boy, had he been right.
Most of the passengers were asleep, of course, except for a couple of Japanese types who were probably still set to their own time zones. Like Sam, though, they were focused on their laptops, lost in their own little worlds.
Samuel--well, Gwen, who had gotten stuck with teaching a very reluctant Samuel about modern technology--had e-mailed him about a possible hunt in Indiana. Not one of the alpha hunts; Samuel was leaning toward "don't trust Dean" this week. Sam was rifling through the coroner's database, trying to find a decent picture of the bite marks to see if they weren't actually from a pissed-off Chihuahua, when Dean woke up.
More accurately, Dean jerked awake in a yelling, flailing fit that sent empty tumblers flying and nearly knocked Sam's laptop off his tray. And since neither one of them had bothered making sure Dean's seat belt was fastened (Sam hadn't thought about it and Dean had muttered something about not tying himself to a flying death-trap before he started drinking), he was half out of his seat before Sam could wrestle him back into it. Not to mention he'd somehow kept hold of the damn spork.
People were waking up all around them anyway, so-- "Dean!" Sam shouted. It wasn't easy with both of them trapped by their tray tables, but Sam managed to get Dean back into his seat--and this time, he got the seat belt fastened. "Dean, it's just a dream, go back--"
"Don't go!"
Sam dodged a possible black eye and another swipe of that spork. This time it connected, raking down his forearm--and Dean didn't react to Sam's hiss of pain, not even a flinch. That was when he realized that Dean didn't see him. His eyes were wide open, but he was someplace else entirely.
Hallucinations had not been on the potential side effects list, dammit.
Before Sam decided that he'd have to knock Dean back out the old-fashioned way, Dean subsided, collapsing back into his seat--back to sleep, like nothing had ever happened.
"Is he okay?" Pretty asked.
"Just a nightmare. Sorry." There were mutters in the cabin. "Sorry," he said, more loudly this time, and there were more mutters, but his fellow travelers wrapped themselves back up in their blankets and tried to go back to sleep. He wondered if he could tie Dean to the seat with a blanket. Maybe if he strapped the seat belt over it?
"Oh, my God--your arm! What--"
Sam looked down. That'll teach me to underestimate Dean's ability to make a weapon out of anything. The gash in his arm was bleeding freely--not badly by his standards, but more than enough to panic a civilian. "Maybe you could bring me a towel?" he suggested--but Plain was already there with towels and the first-aid kit. Smarter than Pretty, too.
Between the three of them--he didn't need the help but he couldn't seem to get them to leave him alone--they got his arm bandaged and the scattered tumblers collected. Sam took a minute to right his laptop and make sure he hadn't lost the wireless or his connection to the coroner's office. Then he looked over at his brother. Dean was still clutching the spork.
Sam reached over and pried it out of Dean's fingers. He almost called Plain over, but then realized that handing the attendant evidence that his brother had made a weapon on board was probably not a good idea, and he shoved it into the seat pocket instead. Then he undid the seat belt, tucked a blanket very tightly around Dean, and buckled the seat belt over it. Hard to flail when you were in a cocoon. At the very least, it should give him a little more warning if Dean woke up--or whatever--again.
Dean shouldn't be waking up. At all. Cas must have forgotten to reset his liver to original tolerances when he did that last full-body healing if it could process that much alcohol and medication this quickly. The last thing Sam needed was to be tethered to a brother who could out-drink an angel.
Just to be on the safe side, he double-checked the interactions again. No, nothing about hallucinations. Or sleepwalking.
Leave it to Dean to be contrary, even when he didn't know he was being drugged.
***
Dean had three more fits, but none were as bad as the first. It was harder to flail when you were wrapped in a blanket and buckled in. Sam still acquired a variety of new bruises, and having to keep an eye on Dean meant no second round with Plain.
And at that, it was still more peaceful than the trip would have been if he hadn't drugged Dean.
Dean woke up--for real this time--as the plane started making its approach. Nice timing, if Sam did say so himself. "Feel better?"
Dean gave him a bleary look. "Huh?"
"You passed out," Sam said evenly, shutting down the laptop. "Didn't even make it off the runway in Dublin."
"I did? Weird." He rubbed his eyes. "I could have sworn I was awake enough that I wouldn't sleep until we got here." He looked out the window and swallowed hard. Sam helpfully handed him a barf bag. "Smartass."
"I'm on my last clean shirt."
Dean muttered something. "What the hell happened to your arm?"
"I was attacked by a paranoid sleepwalker with a sharpened spork."
"Should've left me the fork, man." The seat belt light came on, and Dean's hands clenched on the armrests.
"We're landing. You can make it that long."
Dean nodded, but didn't actually answer. Sam thought he heard a bit of hummed Metallica. Dean was going to be too focused on his misery until the plane landed to be coherent.
Good. That meant he wouldn't stop to think about why he'd slept so much when he'd been perfectly well-rested.
***
To Sam's surprise--and probably to Dean's--Dean actually made it through landing without hurling. Not once. And once safely on the ground, of course, he was back to his normal self--and eager to get the hell off the plane. He barely gave Sam a chance to get his duffle, and practically shoved Sam into the aisle as soon as they got the go-ahead to disembark.
"It's weird, though," Dean said, raising an eyebrow as Plain "accidentally" tripped as they approached the jetway and landed with her hand in Sam's pocket. She gave him a smile as she righted herself. Sam heard the rustling of paper. Another number. Great. He could paper the Smithsonian with these things.
"What is?" Sam asked as Plain moved on, resisting the urge to reach into his pocket and toss it. He even forced a sheepish smile. That was what Dean expected of him.
"The dreams I was having. They weren't nightmares. It was-- I just saw people. Like they were standing right there. I didn't even know I was asleep."
"You thought you saw these people on the plane?"
"Yeah. Every now and then I'd stop and wonder why I wasn't puking, and then they'd tell me it was okay and we'd start talking again."
That definitely sounded more "hallucination" than "dream." Dammit, if that made Dean more suspicious--
"The weird thing was," Dean went on as they emerged into the terminal, "the people I kept thinking I saw--they were all dead. Mom and Dad, Ellen and Jo--even Jess."
It took Sam's brain a second too long for him to process that name and remember the appropriate expression. Dean's eyes narrowed, just a fraction, meaning that he'd caught it and would be adding it to his increasing list of Things wrong with Sam since he came back from Hell. "Jess," Sam finally managed, hoping Dean would assume the flatness of his voice was just old grief.
"Yep. Smurf shirt and all." That was obviously meant to provoke a reaction, but Sam had no idea which one Dean wanted, let alone how to appropriately fake it. "Anyway. They all talked to me, telling me things, except...." He shrugged and hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. "You were there, too."
"With Auntie Em and the flying monkeys?"
"Shut up. It was just-- They'd all talk to me, about all kinds of things, but you--you couldn't. It was like you were walled off from me. You were trying to tell me something, but...." He shook his head. "Hunger must be making me light-headed. Let's go find some food. This is Chicago, right?"
"O'Hare, unless we landed someplace we weren't supposed to and nobody told me." Pretty waved as they passed the airline desk, giving them--okay, Sam--a dazzling smile.
The incredulous expression on Dean's face was almost amusing. "Are you kid--" he began, but then just shook his head again. "Never mind. Death showed me this awesome pizza place. C'mon."
"At six in the morning?"
"Never too early for good pizza. Now, where's baggage claim?" Dean stopped to read the signs, then headed down the terminal.
He'd never once asked if Sam had slept.
Maybe it had worked.