SPN Fic: Smoke Drifting By - Chapter 3
See masterpost for summary and further information.
Ch apter 3
Despite Dean’s concerns, it worked. They developed a routine. Figured out how to move and in what order to do things to meet the least difficulties. Sam learned the layout of the house, and as he got stronger he even managed to move about on his own - slowly at first, and only for a few meters at a time, but with increasing ease. Only for getting from bed to wheelchair and vice versa he needed Dean’s help. And to go to the toilet, but if he had complains about the small bathroom, he never voiced them.
Dean had planned to take him out for trips through the country - Sam had been locked in long enough, he’d decided. But Sam hadn’t looked all that happy about the prospect. He didn’t even like looking out of the window, and in the end Dean let it go. Sam had been right, after all: He wasn’t Dean’s charity project and if he didn’t want to go, Dean couldn’t force him.
Not as long as he didn’t have to slightest idea what the world looked like for Sam.
The nurse that checked on Sam, changed his bandages and made sure he was clean and not starving came every day at first, then every other day, and eventually only twice a week. Dean supposed that meant the hospital was beginning to trust that he wouldn’t kill the boy, though he had to admit they were struggling with the not starving thing. But at least he and Sam were struggling together. Sam tried his best to eat, and while there wasn’t much he would even look at they managed to put together a diet that would keep him alive even after he was no longer fed intravenously.
After a couple of days he even learned how to keep things down. Most of it, anyway.
Getting new supplies was a problem, though, and another thing Dean had failed to really consider beforehand. For himself he could always order take out, but for Sam it had to be fresh rabbit food. Here Neighbor Alice came into play again. She brought some food for them back from her shopping trips, and she even dropped by the hospital to get Sam’s meds. Dean owed her an eternity of lawn moving once Sam was gone again.
Considering what an enormous inconvenience having Sam in his life meant, it was amazing how much Dean didn’t want to think about him being gone.
He also didn’t want to think about what Sam would do once he was alone again. The idea of him alone in some shut room, closed off from the world and struggling with his own mind was fundamentally depressing. For all the things Dean was doing wrong, he liked to imagine that Sam was better off by far when he was with him.
But Sam kept mentioning the things Dean might do when he was gone, and Dean didn’t know if this was Sam not wanting to be a bother of if it was Sam genuinely wanting to leave.
Perhaps it was Sam realizing that Dean got a hard on every time he saw him naked, in which case Dean couldn’t even blame him.
So far it seemed to have escaped Sam’s notice, though - and he didn’t seem to think anything about the fact that Dean generally took a shower right after him either.
-
Things got a little bit easier when Sam started with his physical therapy. Dean took him to the hospital first once in four days, then once in three, and got to go shopping while some guy he didn’t know worked on getting Sam’s body back in working order. Once again Alice came in handy because she let him take the van she never used anyway which had enough room for the wheelchair. The hour in which Dean did not have to watch over someone who couldn’t leave the house offered him a chance to do everything that couldn’t be done from home and he thought it was quite a relief until he picked Sam up after the first session and noticed how distraught he looked. There were tears in his eyes and Dean was ready to storm in there and kill someone. Sam, however, seemed to sense his mood and guess his thoughts. He put a hand on Dean’s arm and said, “It just hurt a lot.”
And yeah, it probably did, But Sam never had a problem with pain before. It made him cry on times, but it never made him look so vulnerable.
It made sense, though. Sam wasn’t happy around people, he didn’t like the attention of strangers, and a long hour with someone he didn’t know focused only on him was probably hard to bear. The pain might have been the only thing that kept him from losing it.
Dean hoped it would get better with time, once Sam got used to it. Maybe it did. Maybe Sam just got better at hiding his distress.
His casts came off during the second week he spent with Dean, but he was still wearing braches. A half- leg brace on the bad leg and a full-leg brace on the really bad leg, one of those things that made him look like he had a robotic limb, which Dean had to admit looked pretty cool. Getting it on and off was less cool, especially since it hurt Sam every time. A lot. And yeah, so he wanted it that way, but Dean couldn’t ignore the way all color left his face when Dean fiddled with his leg, how he broke into sweat and his harsh, ragged breathing. Dean didn’t know how much longer he could stand this, loved the kid too fucking much to stand hurting him like that.
This was something he very determinedly did not think about.
The smaller cast on Sam’s other leg needed a few days longer to come off. The leg had been broken in two places: a clean break in his thigh that had been fixed with nails and a shattered ankle that would approximately never heal. Not completely. Just like the other leg as a whole.
Sometimes Dean wondered if he could have spared him this if he had been a little faster the day of the fire. It was a sure sign that he needed to meet with Bob again, because Bob usually set his head right if he was thinking like that.
While Sam was more than okay with the pain, Dean could see that his general helplessness was wearing on him. He felt useless and a bother. Not that he ever said anything but Dean could tell from the way he turned quieter the more time passed, and from the simple fact that more than once he nearly pissed himself because he waited until it was almost too late with letting Dean know that he would like to use the bathroom, like, now, thank you very much.
“I’m not even good company,” Dean heard him mutter once and just wanted to hug him. (He didn’t.)
He did his best to keep Sam entertained - and found that his housemate didn’t even know the most popular tv shows. They actually had a good time sitting in front of the screen, watching movies late into the night, and the fact that Sam had no memories older than a year and used to live without a tv gave Dean a convenient excuse to re-watch some of his favorite movies. Especially the westerns. And bad horror movies.
“This is bullshit, of course,” Dean said one night after the vampire had just been staked. “Vampires need to be beheaded to stay dead.” Wherever that came from, because in the movie, the staking worked just fine. But Sam nodded, as if what Dean had said made perfect sense.
Most days Sam watched sitting in his wheelchair, which he claimed was comfortable enough. Sometimes, though, Dean could talk him into letting himself be moved to the couch and more than once he would fall asleep there, his head sinking onto Dean’s shoulder. He never seemed to have any nightmares when that happened.
It gave Dean the idea of sharing the bed with Sam, since being held seemed to help him. But given the fact that they were, in the end, virtual strangers, as well as his secret and more than inappropriate attraction to the boy, he never proposed it.
He could well imagine how that would go.
Sam began moving around more. His rips healed and he gained enough strength to move the wheelchair on his own, though it exhausted him and often he would get stuck and need several attempts to go around corners. Dean could tell it frustrated him, but he knew better that to step in and help.
In an obvious attempt to earn his stay, he took up cooking when Dean wasn’t looking, and cleaning wherever he could reach. He even went so far as to make a steak for Dean though he once admitted that the smell of roasted meat made him sick. He was very pale when Dean caught him and looked quite relieved when his host grabbed the handles of the chair and pushed him outside in some sort of angry concern.
“What the heck are you doing?” Dean had been upstairs, taking a nap when he felt he must be oppressing Sam with this presence. And Sam’s doctor would have told him that was stupid, that he couldn’t leave someone with a mind as fragile as Sam’s unobserved, but that doctor was an idiot who had no idea. Hadn’t seen how well Sam was doing. No panic attacks, no checking out, so maybe all he had needed was to get away from the damn hospital and all the people telling him he was crazy. Maybe he just needed someone to fucking be there for him and give a fuck.
Maybe he needed to have his head set right. “You think I want you to fucking work for me, moron? That I’m kicking you out if you don’t? What kind of person do you take me for?”
“I take you for someone who went through a lot of trouble to take in someone he didn’t even know and is getting nothing out of it but more trouble,” Sam said unhappily. “And I know you don’t want anything in return, but I don’t get why.”
“I happen to like you, and I don’t want you to go through this alone,” Dean just said, since he didn’t have a good answer for that question. Not even to himself. Okay, so he was kind of attracted to this boy - well, man, really - but he had been attracted to other people before without reshaping his entire life for them. Even if he was infatuated with Sam, that wouldn’t explain it.
“So this is some kind of pity trip, then?” Sam sounded bitter, as if he had expected something else - or he had expected just that but didn’t want to have it confirmed.
Dean shook his head. “Hell, no! I don’t pity you, dumbass. If anything, I admire you.”
“Admire.” Sam said the word like it tasted badly. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not. Really, you gotta believe me.” Dean had never thought about this, but he found he meant every word he said. “Life has dealt you a shitty deck, there’s no denying it. And yet, you manage. Somehow.”
“Manage?” Now there was something hysterical creeping into Sam’s voice. “Manage? I’ve locked myself into an apartment for the better part of a year! I was scared of my neighbors, my physical therapist frightens me and my doctor wants to have me committed. Not to mention that I lost my memory and never even tried to get it back. Does that sound like I’m managing?”
“It sounds like you’re doing the best you can. Not everyone would do that. But you’re here. You made it this far, and you keep going. You found a way to tell what’s real, and God knows I hate it, but it works. You’re fun to be around once you manage to relax, you sit through all the awful movies I throw at you and you made me a fucking steak because you’re a fucking moron.”
Sam stared at him, opened his mouth and closed it again. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he finally mumbled.
“No, it doesn’t,” Dean agreed and leaned in to kiss him.
Sam’s lips were soft beneath his, slightly parted, just waiting to be claimed. Dean kissed him gently and almost chastely and Sam didn’t react, didn’t react at all for what felt like a minute. Then his lips moved, but to kiss him back or to protest Dean would never know since that was the moment when his brain started working again and he pulled back with a gasp, shocked about himself.
“I’m sorry,” he hurried to say. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I… I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Then why did you?” Sam whispered, just as shocked as Dean, and Dean thought about how this had to look to him. Dean, taking in this stranger who did not know what he got out if it. And then kissing him, right in a discussion about Sam doing something in return. If Dean ever had done something stupid, this was it.
“I just want to help you.” It was, perhaps, the most honest thing Dean had ever said. But what did it matter when he said it in such a phenomenally bad moment? “I can’t even tell you why. I just want to see you get better. I fucking care!”
“But why?”
“”Sometimes people just do,”
Sam shook his head, looking at Dean with tears in his eyes. The poor kid looked so lost, it broke Dean’s heart.
He’d done this.
“You’re wasting your time,” Sam whispered.
“No. I mean.” Dean ran a hand through his hair, wondering how he could possibly fix this. “I know you don’t… You just came here because you had no other choice, I get that. And I’m not expecting anything from you and I really, really shouldn’t have kissed you. Don’t even think you’re that attractive, bitch.” His attempt on humor was the wrong way to go, he realized when Sam flinched. Great. “Well, the offer is still standing. You can stay until you’ve gotten better. I want you to stay, but if you want to leave, I understand.”
Dean really, really didn’t want him to leave.
“I’m not getting better,” Sam whispered. “That’s where your time is wasted.”
“Bullshit. You’ve done so well since coming here.”
“It’s so much worse than you think.”
“That what it seems like right now, but think back to how things were when you were in the hospital. They had you tied to the fucking bed every other day. And now you’re happily rolling around bitching about my choice of tv shows because you don’t appreciate art.”
“Dr. Sexy isn’t art,” Sam muttered, with the barest hint of a smile on his face. It wasn’t an honest one, but it was an offer Dean was all too willing to take.
“Sure is. You just don’t appreciate it.”
Sam smiled a little stronger now, but it looked pained. “There is a man standing behind you, He’s just slit your throat and I keep wondering how you can talk with so much blood gushing out of you.”
Well. There was a mood killer right there.
Dean instinctively raised his hand to this throat and looked around but of course there was no one there. Before him, Sam was digging his fingers into his arm and looked like he was about to cry.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sammy.” Dean took hold of his hand and gently removed it from his arms. “It’ll get better, okay? Everything will be fine.”
Sam sobbed. Once. Then he wiped his face, pulled himself together and said, “I nearly puked making you a steak, so you’d better go eat it or I’ll get really pissed.”
Dean didn’t feel like eating, but he knew this was an offer he had to take. “If you let me fix you something afterwards,” he bribed. “I promise it won’t be roofied.” He had to make fun of his mistake so Sam wouldn’t take it too seriously and run.
Sam rolled his eyes. He grabbed Dean’s shirt, pulled him down and pressed a kiss to his lips that took Dean entirely by surprise and kept him from reacting in any way.
“Now we’re even,” Sam said when he let go. “Stop worrying about it. And go eat your dinner, jerk.”
-
One day, Sam told Dean that he was on order to join him for one of his physical therapy sessions because there were certain exercises Sam was supposed to do at home and he needed help for that. So Dean came along, quite ready to meet the guy who almost made Sammy cry the first few days and found him to be a rather nice middle-aged woman who was stern but never unfriendly and explained everything in great detail.
For all her kindness, Dean could tell that her exercises took a lot out of Sam, even though almost everything happened with him sitting down. Dean had expected Sam to learn walking again here, but the therapist, Ellie, explained to him that Sam’s legs weren’t up for that yet. They also weren’t the only thing they were working on.
What amazed Dean was how calm Sam was through everything. He even smiled at her and joked around in that subdued way of his. Ellie told Dean that Sam had been nothing but friendly and determined since the beginning. “He never complains,” she said after the session. “I know it’s hard, and it’s painful, but he just takes it. I think he really wants out of that chair as soon as possible.”
Dean wasn’t convinced of that motivation. He knew Sam was frustrated with his own limitations sometimes, but so far he had never struggled with his fate. At least not where Dean could see it.
What bothered him more was the shadow that fell over Ellie’s face when she spoke the words.
“What’s the prospect on that?” he asked.
“It’s impossible to tell at this point,” she said regretfully. “But he will never walk normally again. And for long distances he’ll always need the chair.”
Dean closed his eyes. “That’s for sure?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
“No.”
She send him a sympathetic look and left to greet her next patient. Dean waited in the hall until Sam came rolling out of the dressing room. He still needed help with getting changed but there were nurses here for that.
“What’s wrong?” he asked on the drive back, obviously picking up on Dean’s mood.
“Dean glared at him. “So, you’ll never get rid of that chair, huh?”
Sam’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. That.”
“That. When did you plan on telling me that? I have been waiting for news on that for weeks. I was about to call your doc and tear him a new one for needing so damn long for making a simple diagnosis.”
“For one, it’s not that simple. I might have another surgery or two that can still fix things some.”
“Ellie said that you never again walking like before is a given.”
“Well. But it’s not your problem.”
Dean glared at the road, his hands tight around the wheel.
“Dean,” Sam put a hand to his arm, for perhaps the first time ever initiating contact. “It’ really isn’t your problem. You have no obligations to me. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“So what - you plan on going through that on your own?”
“No. I was planning on rolling through it on my own.”
And there they said only Dean had a knack for using humor in all the wrong moments. “Not goddamn funny.”
“I can’t impost that on you. You’ve done enough. I’m getting stronger and as soon as I can change my pants on my own, I’ll be gone.”
“Because you want to leave? Or because you think you should?”
“What does it matter?”
“What if I don’t want you to go?”
There, he said it. And maybe that was a mistake but Sam said the kiss didn’t matter so Dean was going to take him up on that and just says it as it was.
Sam looked at him with an unreadable expression. Dean should probably park the car before he drove them into something, but he’d always been better at having conversations like this on the road. (Or so he felt. Not that he knew for sure.)
“This is your life, Dean. Don’t you want it back? You think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been limited to me for almost a month now? No work, no friends coming over, not even your family calling. You need to take better care of yourself.”
“I don’t have family. My friends aren’t that close. And work was something I threw myself into because I didn’t have anything else. You asked what I’m getting out of this. Well, this is it. Company. Someone I care about. Something to fill my fucking life. Do you think just because I can walk and don’t hallucinate my life is perfect? It’s just imperfect in a more boring way.”
Sam didn’t say anything in return. He just withdrew his hand and was silent for the rest of the way home. Just great. What the heck was Dean supposed to do with that?
-
At some point Sam had removed the bandages around his burned arms for his shower and told Dean not to put on new ones. Whether he no longer needed them or just was fed up with the hassle Dean couldn’t tell but he let that one go without a fight as long as Sam allowed him to apply his salve to the burns regularly. The bandages were a pain anyway; always getting dirty or wet.
Though he remained painfully thin, Sam build up some muscle in his arms and learned to do a lot of things by himself. Dean’s toilet remained an obstacle he couldn’t overcome due to the lack of space, but the one at the hospital he managed on his own by the time Dean’s vacation was almost over. Just getting dressed was still a problem. His legs were stiff, not yet healed and further hindered by the stabilizing braches. And Sam did not yet have enough mobility in the rest of his body to put on pants, or socks, or shoes.
Or so Dean thought. One morning he came into Sam’s room and found him sitting in his wheelchair fully dressed. He was pale and covered in sweat but also sort of glowing, like a damn kid hitting the target at the shooting rage full on for the first time. Dean felt like someone had pulled out the ground beneath his feet.
The nurse came once a week now, and she didn’t stay long anymore. Dean and Sam got it. And Sam’s doctor during his regular check ups was quite impressed as well, though Dean could never tell if that was because of Sam’s progress, because Dean had somehow managed not to kill him yet or because Sam wasn’t a screaming and thrashing bucket of crazy. Either way, he was talking about another surgery next month, one that should hopefully give Sam back some more use of his legs.
Sam would be in hospital for at least a week for that. And afterwards…
Afterwards, Dean didn’t know if he was coming back. And the thought that he might not scared him to death.
Maybe he should get a roommate, he sometimes thought. Get out more. This clinginess, it couldn’t be normal.
But he didn’t want anyone. He wanted Sam. Sam who showered himself now that he was strong enough and Dean’s erection had accidentally brushed against him more than once. Sam who was doing his best to need him less and less. Sam who was already leaving him.
He sounded like a girl even in his own mind. This wasn’t his wife walking out. This was just Sam, getting out of his life. (And he’d thought they were over that.)
Sam was getting quieter and quieter the better his health became. Now he knew that Dean needed him too, he probably had a hard time figuring out how to break the news to him. Well, good. If he was going to leave Dean behind, at least he should suffer a little for it.
He felt ashamed as soon as he thought it, but he thought it anyway. Then he felt even worse about himself.
After his month was over, Dean got back to work. He only worked half a day at first. For weeks he had been able to forget and ignore what Sam told him about things being worse with him than Dean knew, but suddenly it was all he could think about. For one month, Dean had hardly ever been far from Sam, and if he was, Sam was at the hospital, surrounded by people who knew him and his troubles. Now he was alone. What if he had an episode and did something stupid? Dean thought about calling Alice but Sam hardly knew her, preferring to keep out of sight whenever she came over to deliver their groceries, and Dean, in turn, had never invited her into the house.
So he got home after just a couple of hours, much to the relief of his co-workers who had missed him for a month only to get him back cranky and distracted. Jim told him to stop being an ass and Dean did so by going home and checking if Sam was alive.
Sam was lying curled up on his bed. He jumped when Dean came in, stared at him for a long moment before deciding he was real. Dean wondered if he had ever not been since Sam moved in here.
He held his right hand up towards Dean’s face in greeting. “What do you see?” he whispered.
The question didn’t even make sense. “Your hand?” Dean tried, confused.
“Oh. Good.” Some of the tension left Sam’s body and he withdrew his hand and closed his eyes. Almost a minute passed before he opened them again. “You’re back early.”
“The others kicked me out. Apparently I’m an ass.”
“You are.” But Sam smiles and Dean was willing to take a few insults for that.
“How are you doing?”
“Good. I tried to make dinner. But I couldn’t. Then I slept until now.”
Dean tried to follow that. It was obviously a lie - Sam looked dead tired, and not in the way someone did who had just woken up. “We’ll order take-out.”
So they did. They spent the rest of the day huddled on the couch, with Sam pressed against Dean as if the thought of being separated from him again scared him, and Dean thought, ‘How do you ever hope to go on without me?’
But the next day, Sam insisted on Dean leaving again. They got into a fight over it with Dean only giving in when Sam threatened to call a taxi and move into a hotel right now if Dean didn’t go to work. By then, Dean knew him well enough - Sam was stubborn even more than he was fragile. He would do it.
So he accepted a compromise with himself and decided to work a half-day again. Sam had his number. If it got bad, he was to call him. Dean made him promise and threatened to quit his job and lock Sam in so he couldn’t leave if he didn’t call and Dean came home to find him crumbling again.
“Don’t you think you should accept his words when he says he’s fine?” Bob said when Dean called him from the station that day. They hadn’t talked in two weeks and not seen each other since Sam had moved in. “Give him some space. It’s no surprise he wants to leave if you keep smothering him like that.”
“Can’t trust him,” Dean growled, full of frustrated worry. “Little bitch keeps lying to me.”
But he came home and Sam was fine. Sam had coffee ready and was in the process of nibbling his way through a fruit salad while watching a re-run of The Good Wife on tv.
Dean made a show of pulling a face at it. “Seriously, Sam?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You watch Dr. Sexy.”
“Dr. Sexy is art.”
“No, Dean. The Mona Lisa is art. Dr. Sexy is embarrassing.”
It felt so natural, so good to act this way with Sam that all the tension that had driven Dean home early fell away and was replaced by the best mood he had in ages. He got a cup of coffee and got Sam from the wheelchair to the couch. Sam could do that himself now, but usually he didn’t bother. This time he had no choice. Dean pulled him close and teased him about his choice of shows and told himself that his hard on sprang from his thoughts of banging the show’s hot investigator.
-
Dean went to work normally again after that, relying on Sam to tell him If he needed anything. When his cell rang on Thursday, Dean was ready to ignore the call about a flooded basement they just received and rush home, but all Sam wanted was for Dean to bring pick up a pack of razor blades on the way home.
He was fine. He barely even twitched anymore and hardly looked into the corners or behind him in search of something Dean couldn’t ever hope to see or understand. He did, however, develop a low-grade fever that had the hospital postpone his surgery for another week.
“I walked today,” he said on Monday when Dean picked him up from physical therapy. He was almost beaming, even though he was still covered in sweat and looking like he might drop dead in a second. “All of two steps. Ellie wouldn’t let me go any further, but I could have.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Dean pressed a kiss to Sam’s forehead and neither of them thought anything of it.
-
On Friday, Dean realized that something was wrong with Sam.
There was the fever. It wasn’t bad and Sam didn’t let him stay home because of it, but it wouldn’t go away. There was Sam’s good mood that bordered on giddiness one times and seemed a little odd after weeks of nightmares and nervous breaks every other day. At first Dean put it down to Sam making progress in general and feeling safe in their house, but it came too sudden to feel natural. And then there was the fact that Sam didn’t need his help to shower anymore.
That shouldn’t seem weird. After all, Sam had been completely dependent on him for so long it was hardly surprising that he relished in any independence he could get, even if he had to climb into the bathtub with the wheelchair basically standing in the corridor. But it was still very hard for him and took ages, and Dean was willing to help. So far Sam had never minded, even after had Dean kissed him. So it seemed suspicions - if only because Dean was a paranoid bastard. (He’d learned from the best.)
So two days before his weekend off he said, “You’ve been awfully cheerful lately.”
Sam pulled a face. “You’re never satisfied, are you?”
“You’ve also been going through razor blades awfully fast.”
Now Sam blanched and Dean’s insides clenched. Jackpot.
“I’m a hairy guy,” Sam said lamely.
“No, you’re not. You were unconscious for days and barely developed stubble.”
“So what are you implying here?”
“Take off your shirt.”
Of course, Sam didn’t. He took hold of his wheels and moved to turn on the spot. Damn, he’d gotten good at that. But Dean would be damned if he let him get away like that. He just grabbed the chair and held it back, and then he lifted Sam out of it and carried him through the door into his own bedroom. Dumped him onto the bed while Sam was struggling and telling him to let him the Hell go.
“Stop it! You’re hurting yourself,” Dean snapped.
“You’re hurting me!” Sam snapped back. “Don’t touch me. Go the fuck away!”
Dean didn’t listen. Sam had given up the right to be listened to when he decided to lie to Dean. (He’d known this would happen, he’d fucking known it!) Instead, Dean tore at his clothes, already dreading what he would find below.
“No!” Sam screamed. He sounded panicked. Had he really thought Dean wouldn’t find out? That he would be surprised by what he’d find?
Sam kicked Dean. It took him by surprise, so much he stumbled backwards even thought there was hardly any strength in it and probably hurt Sam worse than it hurt Dean. But he no longer struggled just to get away, he fought to hurt, consciously attacking Dean. And that went too far. Dean only wanted to help. “You little bitch,” he growled, throwing himself back at Sam and holding him down. “Hold still!”
“No!” Sam screamed again. “No, please don’t! Please, Lucifer, let me go! Not like this, not him!”
The words pushed Dean back more effectively than the kick had done. But Sam kept struggling even after Dean had let him go. His back arched and his legs kicked at nothing.
It took Dean far too long to realize he was seizing.
NEXT
Ch apter 3
Despite Dean’s concerns, it worked. They developed a routine. Figured out how to move and in what order to do things to meet the least difficulties. Sam learned the layout of the house, and as he got stronger he even managed to move about on his own - slowly at first, and only for a few meters at a time, but with increasing ease. Only for getting from bed to wheelchair and vice versa he needed Dean’s help. And to go to the toilet, but if he had complains about the small bathroom, he never voiced them.
Dean had planned to take him out for trips through the country - Sam had been locked in long enough, he’d decided. But Sam hadn’t looked all that happy about the prospect. He didn’t even like looking out of the window, and in the end Dean let it go. Sam had been right, after all: He wasn’t Dean’s charity project and if he didn’t want to go, Dean couldn’t force him.
Not as long as he didn’t have to slightest idea what the world looked like for Sam.
The nurse that checked on Sam, changed his bandages and made sure he was clean and not starving came every day at first, then every other day, and eventually only twice a week. Dean supposed that meant the hospital was beginning to trust that he wouldn’t kill the boy, though he had to admit they were struggling with the not starving thing. But at least he and Sam were struggling together. Sam tried his best to eat, and while there wasn’t much he would even look at they managed to put together a diet that would keep him alive even after he was no longer fed intravenously.
After a couple of days he even learned how to keep things down. Most of it, anyway.
Getting new supplies was a problem, though, and another thing Dean had failed to really consider beforehand. For himself he could always order take out, but for Sam it had to be fresh rabbit food. Here Neighbor Alice came into play again. She brought some food for them back from her shopping trips, and she even dropped by the hospital to get Sam’s meds. Dean owed her an eternity of lawn moving once Sam was gone again.
Considering what an enormous inconvenience having Sam in his life meant, it was amazing how much Dean didn’t want to think about him being gone.
He also didn’t want to think about what Sam would do once he was alone again. The idea of him alone in some shut room, closed off from the world and struggling with his own mind was fundamentally depressing. For all the things Dean was doing wrong, he liked to imagine that Sam was better off by far when he was with him.
But Sam kept mentioning the things Dean might do when he was gone, and Dean didn’t know if this was Sam not wanting to be a bother of if it was Sam genuinely wanting to leave.
Perhaps it was Sam realizing that Dean got a hard on every time he saw him naked, in which case Dean couldn’t even blame him.
So far it seemed to have escaped Sam’s notice, though - and he didn’t seem to think anything about the fact that Dean generally took a shower right after him either.
-
Things got a little bit easier when Sam started with his physical therapy. Dean took him to the hospital first once in four days, then once in three, and got to go shopping while some guy he didn’t know worked on getting Sam’s body back in working order. Once again Alice came in handy because she let him take the van she never used anyway which had enough room for the wheelchair. The hour in which Dean did not have to watch over someone who couldn’t leave the house offered him a chance to do everything that couldn’t be done from home and he thought it was quite a relief until he picked Sam up after the first session and noticed how distraught he looked. There were tears in his eyes and Dean was ready to storm in there and kill someone. Sam, however, seemed to sense his mood and guess his thoughts. He put a hand on Dean’s arm and said, “It just hurt a lot.”
And yeah, it probably did, But Sam never had a problem with pain before. It made him cry on times, but it never made him look so vulnerable.
It made sense, though. Sam wasn’t happy around people, he didn’t like the attention of strangers, and a long hour with someone he didn’t know focused only on him was probably hard to bear. The pain might have been the only thing that kept him from losing it.
Dean hoped it would get better with time, once Sam got used to it. Maybe it did. Maybe Sam just got better at hiding his distress.
His casts came off during the second week he spent with Dean, but he was still wearing braches. A half- leg brace on the bad leg and a full-leg brace on the really bad leg, one of those things that made him look like he had a robotic limb, which Dean had to admit looked pretty cool. Getting it on and off was less cool, especially since it hurt Sam every time. A lot. And yeah, so he wanted it that way, but Dean couldn’t ignore the way all color left his face when Dean fiddled with his leg, how he broke into sweat and his harsh, ragged breathing. Dean didn’t know how much longer he could stand this, loved the kid too fucking much to stand hurting him like that.
This was something he very determinedly did not think about.
The smaller cast on Sam’s other leg needed a few days longer to come off. The leg had been broken in two places: a clean break in his thigh that had been fixed with nails and a shattered ankle that would approximately never heal. Not completely. Just like the other leg as a whole.
Sometimes Dean wondered if he could have spared him this if he had been a little faster the day of the fire. It was a sure sign that he needed to meet with Bob again, because Bob usually set his head right if he was thinking like that.
While Sam was more than okay with the pain, Dean could see that his general helplessness was wearing on him. He felt useless and a bother. Not that he ever said anything but Dean could tell from the way he turned quieter the more time passed, and from the simple fact that more than once he nearly pissed himself because he waited until it was almost too late with letting Dean know that he would like to use the bathroom, like, now, thank you very much.
“I’m not even good company,” Dean heard him mutter once and just wanted to hug him. (He didn’t.)
He did his best to keep Sam entertained - and found that his housemate didn’t even know the most popular tv shows. They actually had a good time sitting in front of the screen, watching movies late into the night, and the fact that Sam had no memories older than a year and used to live without a tv gave Dean a convenient excuse to re-watch some of his favorite movies. Especially the westerns. And bad horror movies.
“This is bullshit, of course,” Dean said one night after the vampire had just been staked. “Vampires need to be beheaded to stay dead.” Wherever that came from, because in the movie, the staking worked just fine. But Sam nodded, as if what Dean had said made perfect sense.
Most days Sam watched sitting in his wheelchair, which he claimed was comfortable enough. Sometimes, though, Dean could talk him into letting himself be moved to the couch and more than once he would fall asleep there, his head sinking onto Dean’s shoulder. He never seemed to have any nightmares when that happened.
It gave Dean the idea of sharing the bed with Sam, since being held seemed to help him. But given the fact that they were, in the end, virtual strangers, as well as his secret and more than inappropriate attraction to the boy, he never proposed it.
He could well imagine how that would go.
Sam began moving around more. His rips healed and he gained enough strength to move the wheelchair on his own, though it exhausted him and often he would get stuck and need several attempts to go around corners. Dean could tell it frustrated him, but he knew better that to step in and help.
In an obvious attempt to earn his stay, he took up cooking when Dean wasn’t looking, and cleaning wherever he could reach. He even went so far as to make a steak for Dean though he once admitted that the smell of roasted meat made him sick. He was very pale when Dean caught him and looked quite relieved when his host grabbed the handles of the chair and pushed him outside in some sort of angry concern.
“What the heck are you doing?” Dean had been upstairs, taking a nap when he felt he must be oppressing Sam with this presence. And Sam’s doctor would have told him that was stupid, that he couldn’t leave someone with a mind as fragile as Sam’s unobserved, but that doctor was an idiot who had no idea. Hadn’t seen how well Sam was doing. No panic attacks, no checking out, so maybe all he had needed was to get away from the damn hospital and all the people telling him he was crazy. Maybe he just needed someone to fucking be there for him and give a fuck.
Maybe he needed to have his head set right. “You think I want you to fucking work for me, moron? That I’m kicking you out if you don’t? What kind of person do you take me for?”
“I take you for someone who went through a lot of trouble to take in someone he didn’t even know and is getting nothing out of it but more trouble,” Sam said unhappily. “And I know you don’t want anything in return, but I don’t get why.”
“I happen to like you, and I don’t want you to go through this alone,” Dean just said, since he didn’t have a good answer for that question. Not even to himself. Okay, so he was kind of attracted to this boy - well, man, really - but he had been attracted to other people before without reshaping his entire life for them. Even if he was infatuated with Sam, that wouldn’t explain it.
“So this is some kind of pity trip, then?” Sam sounded bitter, as if he had expected something else - or he had expected just that but didn’t want to have it confirmed.
Dean shook his head. “Hell, no! I don’t pity you, dumbass. If anything, I admire you.”
“Admire.” Sam said the word like it tasted badly. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not. Really, you gotta believe me.” Dean had never thought about this, but he found he meant every word he said. “Life has dealt you a shitty deck, there’s no denying it. And yet, you manage. Somehow.”
“Manage?” Now there was something hysterical creeping into Sam’s voice. “Manage? I’ve locked myself into an apartment for the better part of a year! I was scared of my neighbors, my physical therapist frightens me and my doctor wants to have me committed. Not to mention that I lost my memory and never even tried to get it back. Does that sound like I’m managing?”
“It sounds like you’re doing the best you can. Not everyone would do that. But you’re here. You made it this far, and you keep going. You found a way to tell what’s real, and God knows I hate it, but it works. You’re fun to be around once you manage to relax, you sit through all the awful movies I throw at you and you made me a fucking steak because you’re a fucking moron.”
Sam stared at him, opened his mouth and closed it again. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he finally mumbled.
“No, it doesn’t,” Dean agreed and leaned in to kiss him.
Sam’s lips were soft beneath his, slightly parted, just waiting to be claimed. Dean kissed him gently and almost chastely and Sam didn’t react, didn’t react at all for what felt like a minute. Then his lips moved, but to kiss him back or to protest Dean would never know since that was the moment when his brain started working again and he pulled back with a gasp, shocked about himself.
“I’m sorry,” he hurried to say. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I… I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Then why did you?” Sam whispered, just as shocked as Dean, and Dean thought about how this had to look to him. Dean, taking in this stranger who did not know what he got out if it. And then kissing him, right in a discussion about Sam doing something in return. If Dean ever had done something stupid, this was it.
“I just want to help you.” It was, perhaps, the most honest thing Dean had ever said. But what did it matter when he said it in such a phenomenally bad moment? “I can’t even tell you why. I just want to see you get better. I fucking care!”
“But why?”
“”Sometimes people just do,”
Sam shook his head, looking at Dean with tears in his eyes. The poor kid looked so lost, it broke Dean’s heart.
He’d done this.
“You’re wasting your time,” Sam whispered.
“No. I mean.” Dean ran a hand through his hair, wondering how he could possibly fix this. “I know you don’t… You just came here because you had no other choice, I get that. And I’m not expecting anything from you and I really, really shouldn’t have kissed you. Don’t even think you’re that attractive, bitch.” His attempt on humor was the wrong way to go, he realized when Sam flinched. Great. “Well, the offer is still standing. You can stay until you’ve gotten better. I want you to stay, but if you want to leave, I understand.”
Dean really, really didn’t want him to leave.
“I’m not getting better,” Sam whispered. “That’s where your time is wasted.”
“Bullshit. You’ve done so well since coming here.”
“It’s so much worse than you think.”
“That what it seems like right now, but think back to how things were when you were in the hospital. They had you tied to the fucking bed every other day. And now you’re happily rolling around bitching about my choice of tv shows because you don’t appreciate art.”
“Dr. Sexy isn’t art,” Sam muttered, with the barest hint of a smile on his face. It wasn’t an honest one, but it was an offer Dean was all too willing to take.
“Sure is. You just don’t appreciate it.”
Sam smiled a little stronger now, but it looked pained. “There is a man standing behind you, He’s just slit your throat and I keep wondering how you can talk with so much blood gushing out of you.”
Well. There was a mood killer right there.
Dean instinctively raised his hand to this throat and looked around but of course there was no one there. Before him, Sam was digging his fingers into his arm and looked like he was about to cry.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sammy.” Dean took hold of his hand and gently removed it from his arms. “It’ll get better, okay? Everything will be fine.”
Sam sobbed. Once. Then he wiped his face, pulled himself together and said, “I nearly puked making you a steak, so you’d better go eat it or I’ll get really pissed.”
Dean didn’t feel like eating, but he knew this was an offer he had to take. “If you let me fix you something afterwards,” he bribed. “I promise it won’t be roofied.” He had to make fun of his mistake so Sam wouldn’t take it too seriously and run.
Sam rolled his eyes. He grabbed Dean’s shirt, pulled him down and pressed a kiss to his lips that took Dean entirely by surprise and kept him from reacting in any way.
“Now we’re even,” Sam said when he let go. “Stop worrying about it. And go eat your dinner, jerk.”
-
One day, Sam told Dean that he was on order to join him for one of his physical therapy sessions because there were certain exercises Sam was supposed to do at home and he needed help for that. So Dean came along, quite ready to meet the guy who almost made Sammy cry the first few days and found him to be a rather nice middle-aged woman who was stern but never unfriendly and explained everything in great detail.
For all her kindness, Dean could tell that her exercises took a lot out of Sam, even though almost everything happened with him sitting down. Dean had expected Sam to learn walking again here, but the therapist, Ellie, explained to him that Sam’s legs weren’t up for that yet. They also weren’t the only thing they were working on.
What amazed Dean was how calm Sam was through everything. He even smiled at her and joked around in that subdued way of his. Ellie told Dean that Sam had been nothing but friendly and determined since the beginning. “He never complains,” she said after the session. “I know it’s hard, and it’s painful, but he just takes it. I think he really wants out of that chair as soon as possible.”
Dean wasn’t convinced of that motivation. He knew Sam was frustrated with his own limitations sometimes, but so far he had never struggled with his fate. At least not where Dean could see it.
What bothered him more was the shadow that fell over Ellie’s face when she spoke the words.
“What’s the prospect on that?” he asked.
“It’s impossible to tell at this point,” she said regretfully. “But he will never walk normally again. And for long distances he’ll always need the chair.”
Dean closed his eyes. “That’s for sure?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
“No.”
She send him a sympathetic look and left to greet her next patient. Dean waited in the hall until Sam came rolling out of the dressing room. He still needed help with getting changed but there were nurses here for that.
“What’s wrong?” he asked on the drive back, obviously picking up on Dean’s mood.
“Dean glared at him. “So, you’ll never get rid of that chair, huh?”
Sam’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. That.”
“That. When did you plan on telling me that? I have been waiting for news on that for weeks. I was about to call your doc and tear him a new one for needing so damn long for making a simple diagnosis.”
“For one, it’s not that simple. I might have another surgery or two that can still fix things some.”
“Ellie said that you never again walking like before is a given.”
“Well. But it’s not your problem.”
Dean glared at the road, his hands tight around the wheel.
“Dean,” Sam put a hand to his arm, for perhaps the first time ever initiating contact. “It’ really isn’t your problem. You have no obligations to me. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“So what - you plan on going through that on your own?”
“No. I was planning on rolling through it on my own.”
And there they said only Dean had a knack for using humor in all the wrong moments. “Not goddamn funny.”
“I can’t impost that on you. You’ve done enough. I’m getting stronger and as soon as I can change my pants on my own, I’ll be gone.”
“Because you want to leave? Or because you think you should?”
“What does it matter?”
“What if I don’t want you to go?”
There, he said it. And maybe that was a mistake but Sam said the kiss didn’t matter so Dean was going to take him up on that and just says it as it was.
Sam looked at him with an unreadable expression. Dean should probably park the car before he drove them into something, but he’d always been better at having conversations like this on the road. (Or so he felt. Not that he knew for sure.)
“This is your life, Dean. Don’t you want it back? You think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been limited to me for almost a month now? No work, no friends coming over, not even your family calling. You need to take better care of yourself.”
“I don’t have family. My friends aren’t that close. And work was something I threw myself into because I didn’t have anything else. You asked what I’m getting out of this. Well, this is it. Company. Someone I care about. Something to fill my fucking life. Do you think just because I can walk and don’t hallucinate my life is perfect? It’s just imperfect in a more boring way.”
Sam didn’t say anything in return. He just withdrew his hand and was silent for the rest of the way home. Just great. What the heck was Dean supposed to do with that?
-
At some point Sam had removed the bandages around his burned arms for his shower and told Dean not to put on new ones. Whether he no longer needed them or just was fed up with the hassle Dean couldn’t tell but he let that one go without a fight as long as Sam allowed him to apply his salve to the burns regularly. The bandages were a pain anyway; always getting dirty or wet.
Though he remained painfully thin, Sam build up some muscle in his arms and learned to do a lot of things by himself. Dean’s toilet remained an obstacle he couldn’t overcome due to the lack of space, but the one at the hospital he managed on his own by the time Dean’s vacation was almost over. Just getting dressed was still a problem. His legs were stiff, not yet healed and further hindered by the stabilizing braches. And Sam did not yet have enough mobility in the rest of his body to put on pants, or socks, or shoes.
Or so Dean thought. One morning he came into Sam’s room and found him sitting in his wheelchair fully dressed. He was pale and covered in sweat but also sort of glowing, like a damn kid hitting the target at the shooting rage full on for the first time. Dean felt like someone had pulled out the ground beneath his feet.
The nurse came once a week now, and she didn’t stay long anymore. Dean and Sam got it. And Sam’s doctor during his regular check ups was quite impressed as well, though Dean could never tell if that was because of Sam’s progress, because Dean had somehow managed not to kill him yet or because Sam wasn’t a screaming and thrashing bucket of crazy. Either way, he was talking about another surgery next month, one that should hopefully give Sam back some more use of his legs.
Sam would be in hospital for at least a week for that. And afterwards…
Afterwards, Dean didn’t know if he was coming back. And the thought that he might not scared him to death.
Maybe he should get a roommate, he sometimes thought. Get out more. This clinginess, it couldn’t be normal.
But he didn’t want anyone. He wanted Sam. Sam who showered himself now that he was strong enough and Dean’s erection had accidentally brushed against him more than once. Sam who was doing his best to need him less and less. Sam who was already leaving him.
He sounded like a girl even in his own mind. This wasn’t his wife walking out. This was just Sam, getting out of his life. (And he’d thought they were over that.)
Sam was getting quieter and quieter the better his health became. Now he knew that Dean needed him too, he probably had a hard time figuring out how to break the news to him. Well, good. If he was going to leave Dean behind, at least he should suffer a little for it.
He felt ashamed as soon as he thought it, but he thought it anyway. Then he felt even worse about himself.
After his month was over, Dean got back to work. He only worked half a day at first. For weeks he had been able to forget and ignore what Sam told him about things being worse with him than Dean knew, but suddenly it was all he could think about. For one month, Dean had hardly ever been far from Sam, and if he was, Sam was at the hospital, surrounded by people who knew him and his troubles. Now he was alone. What if he had an episode and did something stupid? Dean thought about calling Alice but Sam hardly knew her, preferring to keep out of sight whenever she came over to deliver their groceries, and Dean, in turn, had never invited her into the house.
So he got home after just a couple of hours, much to the relief of his co-workers who had missed him for a month only to get him back cranky and distracted. Jim told him to stop being an ass and Dean did so by going home and checking if Sam was alive.
Sam was lying curled up on his bed. He jumped when Dean came in, stared at him for a long moment before deciding he was real. Dean wondered if he had ever not been since Sam moved in here.
He held his right hand up towards Dean’s face in greeting. “What do you see?” he whispered.
The question didn’t even make sense. “Your hand?” Dean tried, confused.
“Oh. Good.” Some of the tension left Sam’s body and he withdrew his hand and closed his eyes. Almost a minute passed before he opened them again. “You’re back early.”
“The others kicked me out. Apparently I’m an ass.”
“You are.” But Sam smiles and Dean was willing to take a few insults for that.
“How are you doing?”
“Good. I tried to make dinner. But I couldn’t. Then I slept until now.”
Dean tried to follow that. It was obviously a lie - Sam looked dead tired, and not in the way someone did who had just woken up. “We’ll order take-out.”
So they did. They spent the rest of the day huddled on the couch, with Sam pressed against Dean as if the thought of being separated from him again scared him, and Dean thought, ‘How do you ever hope to go on without me?’
But the next day, Sam insisted on Dean leaving again. They got into a fight over it with Dean only giving in when Sam threatened to call a taxi and move into a hotel right now if Dean didn’t go to work. By then, Dean knew him well enough - Sam was stubborn even more than he was fragile. He would do it.
So he accepted a compromise with himself and decided to work a half-day again. Sam had his number. If it got bad, he was to call him. Dean made him promise and threatened to quit his job and lock Sam in so he couldn’t leave if he didn’t call and Dean came home to find him crumbling again.
“Don’t you think you should accept his words when he says he’s fine?” Bob said when Dean called him from the station that day. They hadn’t talked in two weeks and not seen each other since Sam had moved in. “Give him some space. It’s no surprise he wants to leave if you keep smothering him like that.”
“Can’t trust him,” Dean growled, full of frustrated worry. “Little bitch keeps lying to me.”
But he came home and Sam was fine. Sam had coffee ready and was in the process of nibbling his way through a fruit salad while watching a re-run of The Good Wife on tv.
Dean made a show of pulling a face at it. “Seriously, Sam?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You watch Dr. Sexy.”
“Dr. Sexy is art.”
“No, Dean. The Mona Lisa is art. Dr. Sexy is embarrassing.”
It felt so natural, so good to act this way with Sam that all the tension that had driven Dean home early fell away and was replaced by the best mood he had in ages. He got a cup of coffee and got Sam from the wheelchair to the couch. Sam could do that himself now, but usually he didn’t bother. This time he had no choice. Dean pulled him close and teased him about his choice of shows and told himself that his hard on sprang from his thoughts of banging the show’s hot investigator.
-
Dean went to work normally again after that, relying on Sam to tell him If he needed anything. When his cell rang on Thursday, Dean was ready to ignore the call about a flooded basement they just received and rush home, but all Sam wanted was for Dean to bring pick up a pack of razor blades on the way home.
He was fine. He barely even twitched anymore and hardly looked into the corners or behind him in search of something Dean couldn’t ever hope to see or understand. He did, however, develop a low-grade fever that had the hospital postpone his surgery for another week.
“I walked today,” he said on Monday when Dean picked him up from physical therapy. He was almost beaming, even though he was still covered in sweat and looking like he might drop dead in a second. “All of two steps. Ellie wouldn’t let me go any further, but I could have.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Dean pressed a kiss to Sam’s forehead and neither of them thought anything of it.
-
On Friday, Dean realized that something was wrong with Sam.
There was the fever. It wasn’t bad and Sam didn’t let him stay home because of it, but it wouldn’t go away. There was Sam’s good mood that bordered on giddiness one times and seemed a little odd after weeks of nightmares and nervous breaks every other day. At first Dean put it down to Sam making progress in general and feeling safe in their house, but it came too sudden to feel natural. And then there was the fact that Sam didn’t need his help to shower anymore.
That shouldn’t seem weird. After all, Sam had been completely dependent on him for so long it was hardly surprising that he relished in any independence he could get, even if he had to climb into the bathtub with the wheelchair basically standing in the corridor. But it was still very hard for him and took ages, and Dean was willing to help. So far Sam had never minded, even after had Dean kissed him. So it seemed suspicions - if only because Dean was a paranoid bastard. (He’d learned from the best.)
So two days before his weekend off he said, “You’ve been awfully cheerful lately.”
Sam pulled a face. “You’re never satisfied, are you?”
“You’ve also been going through razor blades awfully fast.”
Now Sam blanched and Dean’s insides clenched. Jackpot.
“I’m a hairy guy,” Sam said lamely.
“No, you’re not. You were unconscious for days and barely developed stubble.”
“So what are you implying here?”
“Take off your shirt.”
Of course, Sam didn’t. He took hold of his wheels and moved to turn on the spot. Damn, he’d gotten good at that. But Dean would be damned if he let him get away like that. He just grabbed the chair and held it back, and then he lifted Sam out of it and carried him through the door into his own bedroom. Dumped him onto the bed while Sam was struggling and telling him to let him the Hell go.
“Stop it! You’re hurting yourself,” Dean snapped.
“You’re hurting me!” Sam snapped back. “Don’t touch me. Go the fuck away!”
Dean didn’t listen. Sam had given up the right to be listened to when he decided to lie to Dean. (He’d known this would happen, he’d fucking known it!) Instead, Dean tore at his clothes, already dreading what he would find below.
“No!” Sam screamed. He sounded panicked. Had he really thought Dean wouldn’t find out? That he would be surprised by what he’d find?
Sam kicked Dean. It took him by surprise, so much he stumbled backwards even thought there was hardly any strength in it and probably hurt Sam worse than it hurt Dean. But he no longer struggled just to get away, he fought to hurt, consciously attacking Dean. And that went too far. Dean only wanted to help. “You little bitch,” he growled, throwing himself back at Sam and holding him down. “Hold still!”
“No!” Sam screamed again. “No, please don’t! Please, Lucifer, let me go! Not like this, not him!”
The words pushed Dean back more effectively than the kick had done. But Sam kept struggling even after Dean had let him go. His back arched and his legs kicked at nothing.
It took Dean far too long to realize he was seizing.
NEXT