12
Garth calls with a hunt. Dean hangs up on him.
Cas doesn’t show up. Dean doesn’t give a fuck.
Dean plays Parcheesi with his brother and brings him the books he asks for so he won’t have to get out of bed, and they pretend - they pretend so hard - that everything is fine.
***
One night, Sam’s fever spikes. He tosses in his sleep, 102, 103 and climbing, and his chest rattles when he breathes. Dean catches himself trying to breathe silently, like that makes any difference. Like he and Sam are going to average out, somehow, and he can cure his brother (or god, just make it hurt a little less) with his own health.
That goes to hell when he wanders into the bathroom and sees the flecks of blood on the floor surrounding the toilet.
Sam.
The washcloth is dry and so is the soap, so yeah, Sammy wasn’t taking a shower for twenty minutes in here, and Dean has a pretty good idea of what he was doing.
God, what else isn’t Sam telling him.
He goes to his knees and scrubs the porcelain because old habits die hard, because if he can get rid of this then maybe everything will be okay and they can go on pretending it isn’t happening.
***
He’s torching when Dean gets back to him, shooting up towards 105 and shaking so hard the damn lamp on the table by the bed is rattling.
Dean has a moment of fucking hating himself because he’s glad for this fever (for something he knows how to fix.
He wrestles Sam out of his shirt and sits him up, scooting behind him to support his weight. Sam’s head lolls into Dean’s neck.
“C’mon, Sammy.”
No answer. He’s fucking out.
“Wake up, buddy, come on.” He’s not really expecting anything, not with the fever this high. Sam’ll wake up when he damn well wants to. Dean presses washcloths to his pulse points and Sam doesn’t cry out or twitch away. He doesn’t fucking react at all. Shit. Shit.
He gets ice from the machine, but the cubes are too big, so he squeezes each one in his hand until it’s melted down small enough to slip between Sam’s lips.
“You don’t get to do this now, Sammy,” he whispers. “You don’t get to leave yet.”
And oh holy shit, he just acknowledged it. And even though Sam isn’t really present, didn’t hear it, it feels like an omen and he knows that whatever happens now will be because he let it happen, he let it in, he let it get his brother, and he cries so hard it feels like he’ll never breathe again.
***
Sam’s fever breaks suddenly at nine in the morning.
He doesn’t wake up.
But as he’s coming down, sweating and gasping, he breaks into a coughing fit against Dean’s sleeve.
The coughs sound more like sobs (maybe they are) and leave him trembling in his sleep, fingers clutched around the cuff of Dean’s jeans
When he wakes up a few hours later, tired but otherwise fine (he’s fine), Dean brings him a mug of tea. Sam thanks him hoarsely.
“Don’t talk.” Fuck, his voice.
Sam nods, then frowns. “Dean - you hurt?”
“What?”
Sam gestures to his bloody sleeve.
Dean covers it with his hand, but it’s too late, and Sam meets his eyes and he knows they’re thinking the same thing.