What I Did for Love

[heartverse]

Title: What I Did for Love 
Author shangrilada  (Kira)
Summary: Christa is getting pretty attached to Sam, her affectionate trauma patient, and maybe also to that charming, broken asshole of a brother.
Word Count: 8,605
Rating: PG-13, maybe? Just language really.
Warnings/Spoilers: rape talk, language extremely un-explicit sex mentions
Author's Note: Originally posted as "What I Did for Sam" on my journal. This is very shortly after Lost. This is very shortly before heart failure, if you're curious. You'll find out more about that soon.


It's not particularly rare for Christa to make a house call. She has patients who are new enough that they don't get out of bed. She has ones afraid to leave the house, ones who sit wracked in corners, ones who miss appointments who she checks on because she's so damn worried. In the case of Sam Winchester, she has a kid who's been through a fuck of a lot more than most of hers (and she knows, she knows not to categorize them that way, she knows that sometimes her patients having the worst times are the ones who have been through the least intense traumas, she knows from heaps too much of personal experience that rape isn't something you can define and isolate and quantify) who has his usual share of good and bad days and is hideously sick to boot, plus he lives alone with just his (high-functioning, at least) alcoholic brother and most of the times he's alone all day. Sometimes this friend of theirs stops in, but he's busy, and sometimes Sam cries in their sessions that he's loveable and scary and intense and beautiful and he needs him to go away.

And sometimes Sam calls--calls first--and says so calmly that he's freaking out and his brother was called in early and he doesn't think that he can take the bus in to see her. That he agrees immediately when she offers to bring him is proof that she needs to come to him.

Unfortunately, she's booked solid and her only time she can make the trip out to Brush Creek is around three, which explains why she's zipping her four-year-old daughter into her coat and preparing to bring her to a trauma patient's house. She's pretty much the worst mother in existence, but she's only had Kylie for a year and half, since her sister and brother-in-law died and left her this broken, beautiful little kid, and it's way past the time that she's allowed to admit to anyone that she doesn't know what the fuck to do but sometimes she doesn't know what the fuck to do. She was never planning to have a family, and twenty-nine years of guys who pin her against walls and push her down stairs has been enough to convince her that she's married to her job instead.

The truth is, Christa spends all day hearing rape survivors cry on her couch and tell the same brutal stories that are never really the same, and then she helps them and the come in smiling these shaky smiles and telling her more and trust her and she can help, and the truth is that she really, really loves her job.

This is something she knows how to do.

She slips Kylie's neck warmer over her head. Kylie sputters just to be a brat and then smiles at her.

"Want to go see Sam?" Christa says. "We can make him soup."

Kylie's never met Sam, but she likes him because he brings her presents and gives them to Christa. Fantastic age-appropriate stuff, toy ponies and sour candy and plastic tiaras, how the fuck is he so much better at this than Christa is? She gets Kylie books for two-year-olds and books for six-year-olds and sometimes cries in the aisle at Barnes and Noble.

"Can I give Sammy a pony to play with?" she says.

"Uh-huh. Choose one."

They're all ones that Sam got her. She chooses Spitfire. Not her favorite, but close.

"Good choice."

"Piggy-back."

"Of course."

Kylie locks her arms around Christa's neck and kisses the back of her head.

"Remember," she tells Kylie, holding her hand so she doesn't slip up the walk to the Winchesters' front door. "Sam is very sick, okay?"

"Everybody's sick, mommy."

"Sam's a little different. He has trouble breathing."

"Like this?" Kylie says, and pants a little.

"A little. And he's pretty scared today so give him some space, okay?" She doesn't even know how Sam does with kids. Fuck.

"You said I could play ponies."

"I know. We're just going to see if he's in a pony-place."

"Pony place," Kylie repeats quietly, and Christa holds her up so that she can ring the doorbell. No answer, but she tries the door and it's unlocked.

"Sam? It's Christa. Here to check on you, okay?"

She's been here before, when Sam was too sick to make it into the office or when his brother Dean called, wrecked, drunk, and crying, "I can't get through to him, he's not listening, I need help." She knows that the small noises she hears--wheezing, snuffling, whimpering--are coming from the living room where he sleeps when he's too tired to make it upstairs.

She turns to set her bag on the floor and when she looks up Kylie's made this beeline for the bed. Damn it, kid.

Sam's just this lump under the covers, but he peeks his head out to look at her.

She says, "Hi, Sammy, I'm Kylie and I'm four and you gave me this pony and do you want to read my sheep book?"

Christa resists the urge to pick her up and set her down somewhere else like a misbehaving kitten, because Sam is sitting up, rubbing red eyes, sniffling a little with not-quite-dry tears. But he gives Kylie this heartbreaking little smile.

"Hi, Kylie. I'm Sammy. I have no idea how old I am. I would love to read your sheep book."

**

"What's hard today?" Christa says, once Kylie's tucked in asleep against Sam's side. She's not worried about that. Sam's always been one of ones who responds very well to touch.

And honestly? This is the most social she's ever seen Kylie, who she got as a fractured, near-wild almost-three year old who hid under the kitchen table and snarled at her whenever she got too close.

Kylie's doing so much better.

Christ loves er job.

Sam leans into her hand when she touches her fingers to his neck to read his pulse. "Dean's schedule's changing. It's not his fault. But he's pulling all these extra shifts and eating this bar food and I don't know..."

"Deep breath."

He's whistling, but he manages it.

"Pale. Have you eaten today?"

He shakes his head. "It grinds me down."

"I know. Fever?"

He shakes his head.

"Why does it grind you down?"

"Because my feet won't stay on the floor if I eat. God, I'm fucking crazy. I don't know." He glances at Kylie. "Sorry."

"'Fucking''s fine. The only words that are bad words are words that make other people feel bad. Aah."

He opens his mouth. "Aah. That's a good rule."

"Consequence of a therapist mother, everything becomes a lesson. How's cognitive stuff today? Think you could do the alphabet backwards for me?"

He shakes his head sadly. "It's too red and everything's the same shape today."

"It's a lot today."

"I don't know what's going. The weight of everything is on me and crushing my shoulders down to my waist."

"I need you to focus on what's around you, okay?" It's a bad day. When he talks about it all calmly like this, when he's not screaming and crying, it's a bad day. "Let's see. We've got a comforter bunched up at your feet. The clock on the wall says three-twenty-four."

He rubs his forehead. "When's it a three?" He likes when things are multiples of three.

"Three-twenty-seven is a three."

He shakes his head hard. "No sevens."

"Three-thirty."

"Yes. Okay."

"And after that three-thirty-three, that'll be nice, huh?"

"Yes."

"One of your sweatshirt cuffs is higher, do you want them the same?"

He nods hard and starts to cry.

"Here we go, buddy, all even. All right." She's familiar with him, the 'buddy's, the 'honey's every once in a while. It's not something she should do, probably, but Christa's had her own practice for a while now and part of what she loves about that is it makes it more her damn business when it comes deciding what patient needs what. Sam needs the affection, the endearment, or he feels like it might not be safe here. Delivering this is no problem, but it does make her feel attached to him in a way she maybe shouldn't.

Then again, her daughter's crushed up against him, so she should maybe just embrace that all normalcy is out the window when it comes to Sam.

She rubs his back while he cries and wheezes. It's not panic-crying, just that miserable, choked sobbing bout how fucking sad the world is. She can't fix this. He doesn't want her to.

"It's tough today," she says.

He just wants that.

"It's hard not even Dean around, isn't it?"

Another hard nod. "I don't think he wants to come home. I think he wishes I'd sink in and disappear."

"Remember when you were kids and Dean put you on his back and carried you over that creek?"

"Y-yeah."

"He'd never let you sink in."

"What if he forgets I'm here? I forget I'm here."

"Do you want to put up reminders? I have sticky notes."

"Yes. Okay. Yes."

"Here." She digs them out of her bag. "Write your name on as many as you want and I'll put them up for you. Want an Ativan."

"Uh-huh." He gets to work, carefully writing his name on some and scribbling it in cursive on the others. He writes CHRISTA and KYLIE on big letters on two.

"How about we keep two saved right here for when Dean and Cas come?" she says.

"They're not going to come."

"I'll put them right here, and when they're back we can write their names and put them wherever you want."

"On their foreheads. I'm crazy, they have to let me."

"See, good for you, taking advantage."

He smiles. "We?"

"Yeah, I'm not leaving you until someone gets home. Not with that wheeze."

"I like my wheeze."

"Me too, buddy."

**

Dean comes home around eight, smelling like whiskey and cigarettes and Christa shakes away dirty memories she doesn't want to have. She's been here for four and a half hours away, flitting around the kitchen making the safe recipes Dean keeps pinned to the refrigerator, as if otherwise he'd forget them.

The sad thing is that he probably actually would.

He takes off his smoke-heavy jacket before he goes in to see Sam and gives Christa a quick smile and a squeeze on her elbow, a whispered "Thank you," before he disappears to the living room. He's back a few minutes later. He gives one of Kylie's twists (Christa promised she'd twist them out today, make them look like hers) a tug on the way by. Normally Christa's very defensive about Kylie's hair--she's a black girl, she's not a fucking sideshow, take your hands somewhere else, bitch at the grocery store, Christa got enough of that shit when she was a kid and her wilted mother was too exhausted, filled up with real problems to care--but it's different with Dean. It just is, in a way she can't explain and that shouldn't exist.

Fucking Dean, smelling like cigarettes and booze and now a bit like sick sweat from the bed next door.

"Hey, Squirt," he says.

She grows and smiles. "My name isn't Squirt. It's Kylie."

"Hey, Christa."

"Hi. Okay, this is chicken soup, here, and there's some toast."

Dean frowns. "Is he running a fever? That's sick food."

"No, but I can't get him to eat anything and this seemed easy."

Dean nods a little. "I don't know when he last ate."

"Seriously?" It comes out more confrontational than she meant but less confrontational than she wanted. This stupid enormous kid is an uncomfortably (comfortably) large part of her world now.

Kylie holds up the picture she's drawing and says, "Mommy, can I put it on the fridge?"

"Ask Dean."

"Whaaat? Of course." Dean takes it from her and pins it on the fridge with a poison control--a few weeks ago Sam took a huge swallow of dish soap, because the kid has a hard time time with what will keep him clean, and Dean freaked out and now that magnet lives there--and says, "There, Pumpkin. How's that?" He's only met Kylie a few times, when he's come by the office unannounced to try to dry up. Christa does what she can, but she's not that kind of doctor and Dean isn't her patient, but she's not really about to tell him off when her baby is there wondering if the guy in the leather jacket is here to bring another present from Sam.

"My name isn't Pumpkin," she says. "It's Squirt."

"Sorry, squirt." He sits down at the table next to her.

"You smell like medicine," she says.

Christa says, "He had some extra Ativan today."

"Shit. Bad day?"

"On the bad side of an okay day. The breathing's bad. What do you mean about him eating?"

"Yeah, I know. Cas is babying him about it, telling him he doesn't have to if it's going to scare him too much, and isn't that the shit on a shit sundae."

"How long?"

"Tonight will be two days, I guess."

"Well. That's not fun."

"Soup's a good idea. Something easy. Toast he's going to talk about how it's scrubbing him."

"I know." She knows her fucking patients. "But he's been scratching himself silly in there and I figured better to let the food do it."

"How have you been?" he says, and she shakes her head because that's really not important and it's not professional and because Dean doesn't need to hear all the shit going on with her anyway. Especially not in front of Kylie.

"How's the drinking going?"

"The drinking is going fantastic. It's the not-drinking that's the bitch."

"We don't say bitch," Christa says, nodding towards Kylie. "'Bitch' is a word that hurts people."

"I shouldn't say it anyway where he can hear."

"Mmmhmm."

"Fuck. I've got to stop pulling these double shifts."

"Where's Cas to watch him?"

Dean waves the question away. "Busy 's all."

"I can keep coming in in the evenings," she says.

He looks at her. "No, I can't...I can't pay you for that."

"You pay me to take care of him and this is part of taking care of him."

"You saved that kid's life. You know that, right?"

"Get him to eat, Dean."

"I'm forcing that soup down his throat tonight."

"Want to try Wellbutrin again?"

He shakes his head. "Not feeling not-drinking right now. Last thing he needs is withdrawal."

"Convenient excuse."

"I'm full of 'em."

"I meant for him."

"Oh. Yeah, he liked that. Helped him stay asleep." He also got hives from it, which is why they took him off it in the first place. Meds with Sam are always a balancing act.

"He can keep Spitfire," Kylie says.

"Aw, honey, you don't have to do that."

"I don't mind." She says that now. It's her most adult sentence. "We're coming back tomorrow, right? 'cause you said."

"Yeah, we are." She looks at Dean to confirm. "We are?"

He rubs the stubble on his chin. "Yeah. I gotta go sit with him while I'm here."

"Dean?"

He stops at the kitchen door, looks back in on her.

"You didn't work a double shift today, did you?"

He breathes out, shakes his head. God, he's so fucking drunk.

She says, softly, "Do you want to try Wellbutrin again?"

"Worrier." He comes back, squeezes her wrist. "I'm fine."

She keeps looking at that wrist after he's gone. His hands are big and he's strong.

She realizes that he could easily hurt her.

But he doesn't.

Christa has feelings about that.

She's packing up Kylie to go (before Kylie was her baby, she never would have guessed that kids come with so much stuff) when Castiel comes in, a blur of coat and tie and self-righteousness. He growls out a 'hello' to Christa on his way to the trash can, where he dumps the bowl of soup. She guesses they probably can't use the garbage disposal on the sink when Sam's around. One time someone vacuumed in the office next to hers while she had Sam, and she ended up leaving and taking him on a walk to the coffee shop where Dean worked at the time, just to wave at him through the window, then back. They talked the whole way to and from. That was a good day.

This, especially without soup, now, is definitely, definitely not.

"He was supposed to eat that," Christa says.

"He doesn't want it."

"It's been two days, Cas."

"It's been forty-six hours and thirty-one minutes. I know these things."

"Don't get grouchy with me. I'm trying to help." It's her Mom voice, not her therapist voice. Sometimes they overlap.

"Sorry."

"Why are you throwing the soup away?" Aaaand that would be her therapist voice.

"He doesn't want to eat."

"I know, but--"

"No. There's no but. If he doesn't want to eat, we're not going to make him."

"Rather that than a feeding tube in the hospital."

Cas leans against the counter and crosses his arms. "That won't happen."

"Really."

"No one is taking him. If he wants hospital he'll ask."

"So you'll have him starve here."

He slams his had down on the counter. "Enough."

Kylie jumps, so no, that's not okay.

Dean comes in before she can, gives Cas a rough nudge on his collarbone. "What the fuck is wrong with you? He's in there crying now."

"No..."

"Are you yelling at Christa? You don't fucking yell at Christa."

"It's okay," she says.

"Sam yells at Christa," Cas says, but softly, like he's ashamed and grasping at anything. She isn't angry with him.

"She's Sam's therapist, he's allowed to yell at her. Like...I'm allowed to yell at you."

Christa raises an eyebrow, but Cas just nods and starts making tea.

"He won't drink it," Dean says.

"He likes the smell."

Christa opens her mouth to say something, and before any words come out, they're both turned to her, waiting.

Desperate.

"I want to see you both in tomorrow," she says.

Cas shakes his head immediately. "That's not possible."

Dean explains. "If we're both with you, who's with Sam?"

"He was alone all day today," Christa says.

Kylie perks up. "I'll watch him!"

Christa says, "No, honey, you have school," while Dean comes around to her side of the table and gives her a hug that lifts her an inch of two above the ground. She giggles.

"Tomorrow," Christa says. "What time do you get off?"

Dean rubs the back of his neck. "Seven."

"All right, what time do you actually get off?"

He groans. "Damn it, woman. Five-thirty."

"Six good for you, Cas?"

He glances back to the bedroom. "Sam really can't come?"

"Sam really can't come."

"I'll stay with him," Kylie says.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

The both nod, looking simultaneously like the want to hug her and kill her. She's used to it.

Dean gives her a kiss on the cheek while she's leaving, friendly, social, he's not her patient, it's fine. He picks Kylie up and helps her choose a snack from the fridge.

Christa sits on the foot of Sam's bed and give his knee a little shake. "Okay, sweetie, I'm leaving."

"Can you stay?"

"Cas and Dean are both home now! Spoiled."

He smiles at her. "You're prettier than they are."

"Now, now. Flattery will get you no extra drugs."

"Damn."

"C'mere." She hugs him. "You shouldn't even be on what you are if you're not eating, they're gonna hurt your stomach."

"No. My drugs."

"Have something, okay? How about a banana?"

He groans, flops down, pushes his head into his pillow. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Yeah, for now, but unless you eat, soon this is going to be all we talk about."

Kylie hops in to say goodbye, and Sam sits back up to haul her onto the bed and give her a tight squeeze. "Bye, beautiful," he says. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yes," Kylie says. "That is a good idea, Sammy."

"She's good," Sam says, quietly, to Christa. "She's real."

"She really really is."

"Sammy, you should have some crackers," Kylie says. "When I'm sick Mommy gives me crackers." It grabs at Christa, how quickly Kylie adopted 'Mommy' for her, as if she'd been hers all the time. She doesn't know how much Kylie remembers. She's like Sam in that respect.

Maybe in other respects, too. There's only so much trauma a person can take before every coping mechanism becomes desperate affection, closeness, safety. Dean and Cas act like it's a triumph, a sign of a strength in Sam, that he still wants to be touched, when really he's the newborn baby he needs skin-to-skin contact. It doesn't matter, really. The treatment is the same.

He hugs Christa around the waist, still sitting up in bed, as she's leaving. "Bye. Love you."

"See ya, kiddo. I'll be back tomorrow after I knock some sense into those caregivers of yours."

"They love me."

"They absolutely do."

"They yell at each other and shake on the inside."

"I know. I'm going to try to fix that."

"Okay can you because Castiel burns hot and Dean burs cold and I melt and come back together and I don't know if all the pieces every time are me."

"I know. It's hard when they can't agree, right?"

He nods, taking these desperate little gasps, and she presses his inhaler in his hand. He nods.

"You call me if that gets bad, she says.

He takes a hit on the inhaler, puts it back down. "You're not that kind of doctor."

"Yeah, well, neither's Dean, and he gets by."

Sam smiles.

"Sleep well, sweetie. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Love you."

It's medicine. It's true. "Love you too, buddy."

**

Cas is on-the-nose on time for the appointment and Dean is twenty minutes late. She's not surprised, until the lack of alcohol on his breath and the shaky hands when he sits down make her suspect that he spent those extra minutes at a bedside rather than a bar. The thing is that he's a fantastic brother, but the thing is that he's an alcoholic.

But he's not her patient.

Cas and Dean half-glare, half-affectionately touch knees from their ends of the couch. If Christa didn't know better...well, if Christa hadn't seen the way Cas looks at Sam compared to the way he looks at Dean, she might suspect something. As it is, she's something in Cas's eyes (and fuck, a little in Dean's side, but Christa's not going to wade there and they both seem happy so who is she to judge) that is only there for Sam.

"So how's he doing?" she says.

Cas perks up immediately. "This morning he was running a very low fever but I think it's gone now."

"It is," Dean said. "98.4."

"That's a little below normal," Cas says. "But Sam says that's okay and it doesn't mean he needs blankets. I don't know."

"Has he eaten?" Christa says.

Cas looks at Dean, who ducks and shakes his head. "I tried oatmeal this morning and he just played with it and cried."

"We're nearing...something," she says, because fuck if she knows what to do exactly in this scenario. She's had her fair share of eating-disordered clients, enough to know that Sam doesn't have those motivations (he's too bed-ridden to care about being skinny and too eager and desperate to give up power that he couldn't possibly be grasping at it) so this is new in some respects. It also occurred to her last night that trying to hospitalize him for this would be a nightmare with his allergies. She's pretty sure Cas and Dean bringing him meals, like they do when he's there for asthma attacks and flu bouts, won't really cut it when the problem is that he isn't eating.

"I think he's got a cold," Dean said. "I took him to the library on Tuesday and ever since he's been sniffly."

Cas turns to him, eyebrows together. "Why was he at the library?"

"Uh, to pick out a book?"

"There's dust at the library."

"Cas, calm your fucking tits, okay?"

"I have no idea what that means."

"It's this sexist way of saying to calm down," Christa says, eyebrow up, and Dean raises his hands in defeat.

"I think it's proof I spend too much time fucking around online on days I stay home with Sam."

Cas says, "If you stay home with him you're supposed to concentrate on him."

"Yeah, at least I'm around when I'm supposed to be. Where were on Monday?"

"You know very well where I was on Monday."

"Yeah, yeah." They don't elaborate. She won't push here.

Instead she says, "Dean. How did the library go?"

"It was great, actually. I called ahead and made sure that librarian who makes him cry for some reason we can't fucking figure out wasn't there. He picked out a few books about the space program and the life cycle of some animals I'd never fucking heard of and some of those trashy paperback mysteries he loves so much. They all made sense with what he's interested in and then he's been reading them steadily. It was good, except that he caught himself a cold, looks like."

Cas says, "Or he's having an allergic reaction to the books."

"What the fuck, Cas, he's not allergic to books. You think my dad wouldn't have noticed--"

Daddy issues. Those are cliche and big here.

Cas says, "I read a BLOG post"--he says the word like it's in another language and he expects Dean to be impressed "--about allergens riding on a book from one person to another."

Dean says, "So I guess I'm not allowed to let him touch envelopes or packaged food, either."

"No. You're not."

"You don't do this shit day-by-day, Cas. You come in a few hours a week with these rules that aren't fucking sustainable and guess who's holding him at night when his stomach's cramping up and he's crying that he was poisoned when really it's that no one's fucking forced him to eat."

Christa says, "So what's stopping you from forcing it, Dean? When Cas isn't around."

"I don't know. He'd...fuck if I know. Smite me."

Cas gives a small smile and knocks his knee against Dean's. "I would never smite you."

Dean says, "I think he sets me up at this villain so much that like...he thinks I'm automatically the opposite of him. I don't want to force Sam either, y'know? I'm not really saying 'whatever it takes' but it fucking sounds like I am because..."

"Because that's what you are," Cas says.

"No, Cas, I'm team keep-our-kid-alive and unfortunately that's shitty and awful but we'll fix him either. Or dump him on Christa. That's what she's here for."

"We are not dumping Sam."

"Jesus, can you stop? it's a figure of fucking speech."

"You're a figure of fucking speech."

Christa says, "Why is there this desperate need to prove who loves Sam more? It's very obvious he wants both of you."

Dean says, "Because he's my damn kid."

Cas frowns at him.

"Other people screw up with Sam," Dean says. He's shaking hard now, looking around the room like he thinks she keeps scotch in her office. "I don't screw up with him."

Cas says, "What did you eat today?"

"Jesus, Cas. Fuck off."

"Did you need to wash your hands before you see him?"

"Of course I did."

"No. Did you need to."

Christa is very interested in the answer, for reasons she can't quite suss out (she figures other people out more easily than she does herself).

Dean sighs. "Yeah. I needed to."

"So you're might screw up with him."

"Fuck, Cas." He runs his hand through his hair. Shakes. "I can't be perfect all the time. I try, I'm shitty, I know, and I need to get out of here because I need a fucking drink."

She checks her watch. "All right. I can let you go."

Dean says, "You didn't even do anything. Not that I'm complaining."

She says, "Like you two would have aired that out without me. I have a magic couch."

Cas looks at it suspiciously.

"Same time Friday?" she says.

They both shrug.

**

Kylie begs her way along, so she and Christa come by a few hours after she meets with Dean and Cas. Once again, the door is unlocked, but this time Sam is up a little, doing yoga on the floor in front of his bed. "C'mere, Kylie," he says, and he teaches her to do a downward-facing dog.

Christa says, "And how are you, kiddo?"

"I'm pretty sure there are spiders in my bed," he says, but he says it in that voice that makes it clear that he knows there aren't spiders in his bed, he just can't seem to get his brain to believe that there aren't spiders in his bed. She taught him this.

"Come on." She gives him a quick rub up and down his spine while he stretches. "Let's sit on it together."

Kylie leaps up onto the foot of the bed and Sam flinches and says, "No, no--"

"Oh," Kylie says, climbs down. "Scared you?"

"It's all right, sweetie," Christa tells her, but Kylie's tugging Sam's hand gently to the bed.

"You first?" she says.

Sam shakes his head and sinks down to the floor.

Christa says, "Okay, Ky. Do you want to go to the kitchen and get us some water?"

"Okay!"

Christa sits down next to Sam and says, "Let's name five things you're touching right now."

"Spider."

"Nope. Stay with me, Sam. Five things."

"Carpet. Um. Nightstand." He taps his foot against it.

"Good."

"Shirt. Shoe."

She looks down. "No, your shoes are over there in the corner and you're not touching mine."

"Oh..."

"Come on, I didn't point that out to be mean. I want you to focus. What are you touching?"

"Heart," he says, laying his hand over his chest.

"Good."

"You." He grabs her wrist now.

"Say my name."

"Um..."

When Sam hesitates like this, when he trails off and waits for someone else to complete his thought, Cas and Dean jump on it, filling in his blanks, at the very least prompting him to keep talking. Christa doesn't do that. He can struggle his way through a sentence without her. Or a name.

He grapples for a minute, then says, "Christa."

"Look at you! Great job."

"Thank you."

"One more."

"Spider."

"Deep breath. No spiders. Try again."

He takes a deep breath and lets it out like a leaky balloon. He tilts his head back until it taps the bedpost. "Bed."

"With no spiders."

"No spiders."

"Come on, up we go." She helps him up and back onto the bed, because that wheeze is getting bad and she needs to fix this. She checks the nightstand, but his inhaler isn't where it should be.

"Where's your inhaler?"

"Threw it away because fuck that."

She opens the nightstand drawer. "Nope. Right here."

He grabs it immediately and takes it. Today is confusing for him.

"Dean's here," he says, abruptly.

"Don't think so."

"Yes. Just 'cause I'm crazy doesn't mean I'm never right. He's in the kitchen."

Kylie has been in there for a while. "Sit tight. I'll be back. Think you could eat something?"

"No, it wouldn't get to my stomach, it would sit under my skin and swell up."

"We're going to eat something later, sweetie. Start thinking about what sounds doable."

He covers his face with his hands and does a few shaky breaths.

"I know. It's okay. I'll be right back."

She goes into the kitchen and huh, yeah, there's Dean, doing a maze with Kylie. He smells so strongly of whiskey that Christa's afraid her four-year-old will get a contact drunk.

"Kylie. Bring that water into Sam. Don't touch him right now, okay?"

"Okay!" She smiles at Dean and then runs off.

Dean looks up blearily. "Touch isn't good?"

"I don't know. Easier not to risk it. You okay?"

He nods, slumps back in his chair.

"If I'd known you were going to be here, might have saved myself the trip," she says, which is bullshit, but something in her gets a rush from telling Dean off. She gets him a glass of water and sets it down in front of him. "Drink."

"You're beautiful when you're bitching about my brother."

"Don't say bitching with my kid within hearing distance, come on."

"I forgot," he says. "You're saint Christa, off to save the world."

"Don't be a dick."

"Oh, so that we can say."

"That I can say. Dick. Drink your water."

He stretches and says, "You know, if you want to talk dick..."

"I am so incredibly not going to sleep with you."

He drinks. "Why is that, though? I know you like me. I'm drunk enough to admit I like you."

"Yeah, when are you ever not drunk enough to admit that you like me? You tell me even when you're sober."

"I am never sober," he says, quietly.

She kisses the top of his head, then spins away and takes out some pots or...something. Anything. "I don't sleep with anyone anymore," she says.

"Too busy?"

"Too ashamed to let my daughter see another guy treat me like shit."

"I guess I'm not your ideal candidate, then."

"Yeah, a drunk a foot taller than me isn't exactly the knight in shining armor or whatever the fuck."

"Ha, I am six-one. You are so not five-one."

"Okay, fourteen inches, shut up."

He says, "You know I'd never hurt you."

You hurt me just watching you, ut she doesn't say that.

"How's Sammy?" he says.

"Bet he'd be better if you'd go sit with him."

"I knew you were coming, okay?"

She opens the fridge. "Pineapple slices?"

"Yeah. Not allergic. He likes them."

She roots through, frowns, takes out a package. "Dean?"

"Mmm?"

"This cheesecake has an S on it."

"So?"

"So it's fucking cheesecake, Dean."

He gets up and takes the package. "Let me see that," he says, all gentle. He reads the ingredients like he's still expecting there to not be milk.

"You're drunk," she says.

He nods, sinks his head down more than fourteen inches to rest his forehead on her shoulder.

"Okay," she says, putting her arms around him, carefully. "Okay. We're all right. Let's go through the fridge and find anything else that's labeled wrong?" she says. She kisses Dean's cheek and rubs his back and just then gets a pretty good idea of why Sam isn't eating.

**

Dean brings a shaky, pale Sam to his appointment the next day. Christa isn't sure how it's possible on a guy Sam's size, but the weight loss is visible at this point, leaving his watch loose on his wrist and his pants--no belt, must be a bad day--slumping low on his hips like a teenager. Dean always senses whether Sam needs him to stay in the appointments with him, and Christa lets him, even though she likes sessions better when it's just her and Sam and he's not shifting his eyes constantly to his brother and backing off on the details so he doesn't scare him. When it's just them, Sam will tell Christa about the smell of it, the tearing of his skin, the ice cold, but it makes Dean cry so Dean doesn't have to hear it. Christa can take it. That's what she's here for. And she really fucking loves her job.

Today Dean stays long enough to take a blanket out from under his arm and drape it over Sam's shoulders. Sam's stuffy-nosed, breathing through his mouth, clearly run the fuck down.

Dean hands Christa a bottle of Dayquil. "He needs a dose in fifteen minutes."

"Okay."

"Love you, Simba," Dean says, with a hand briefly on Sam's forehead and then the back of his neck. That's a lot, from Dean. That's really a lot.

When he's gone, Christa moves from her chair to the couch next to Sam. He sighs and leans against her shoulder. He's wheezing thick but quiet.

"You okay?" she says, softly. It's a good opening question for Sam because he doesn't lie.

And today he shakes his head, bent over, groggy. "Have a cold."

"Immune system's probably shot."

He nods and accepts the tissues she gives him. He presses them against his nose and snuffles for a while before he speaks.

"Hungry," he says, quietly.

"Why won't you eat, Sammy?"

He doesn't say anything.

"Tell me what happened."

He shrugs one shoulder. "On Sunday Dean gave me this pasta for dinner and I had this ridiculous reaction, it was so stupid, and then he looks at the package and it fucking SAID it was processed with stuff with nuts--peanut sauce or something, I guess, but you'd have to be fucking stupid..."

She doesn't finish his sentence for him.

He does it himself. "Drunk," he says. "You'd have to be stupid or drunk to give that to me."

"This is a wake-up call, huh?"

"I guess."

"For me too, y'know?"

He wraps his arms around his stomach. "I didn't know it was this bad. Not paying a lot of attention."

"I think you're pretty excused from that, sweetie. You've got a lot on your mind."

"The reaction was so shitty. He had to do the epipen, it sucked. I slept for like forty hours after and I was so itchy I could barely fucking breathe."

"God, that fucking sucks." Her brother's allergic to peantus, and she has much too vivid memories of him on her lap on the way to the hospital, whispering at him to breathe, while her little (dead) sister crowing that she didn't underSTAND, why was Matt sick when Christa wasn't?

"I'm guessing Cas doesn't know about this," she says.

"Nnn."

"Did Dean tell you not to tell him?"

Sam shakes his head. "He wouldn't ever tell me what not to tell anyone. I think he thought I told you."

"Why didn't you?"

Sam shrugs, but he knows. "I didn't want anyone to be mad at him."

"You just were't going to eat anymore."

Sam sighs. "I'm dying anyway. Might as well let him drink at my fucking funeral."

"There's that angsty boy I love so much."

He smiles a little, ducks his head. "I'm really not worth fighting over," he says. "I wish they'd stop."

"So ideally, what happens now?"

"i don't ever eat again and no more reactions ever."

"Except not eating isn't going to fix you."

"Like I said. Dying anyway."

"And it's not going to fix your brother."

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. "I know."

"So you know what needs to happen."

"I'm too sick, I can't..."

"I know. Hey, I know." She hugs him. "You get Dayquil now."

"Yaaayquil."

"And you get help. Okay?"

He nods.

"All right, take this, then go get him, and you sit down and leaf through some magazines, okay? Tell him we need to talk."

**

She doesn't even have to say anything. He comes in with his head down low, like a kid called to the principal's office. He rubs his hand over his mouth and doesn't look at her.

She wasn't going to yell at him.

"Okay," she says. "So the thing you were hoping most wouldn't happen happened. You were drunk, you messed up, he got hurt."

"It was so bad, Jesus. If it were me I wouldn't fucking eat either."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you'd tell me to get clean."

"Dean..."

"Look, I know, okay?"

"No, you don't know. I'm not going to tell you that. I can't tell you that. You're not my patient."

"Yeah."

"But you're Sam's guardian and Sam is my patient and he's hurting, and it is my job to--"

"Chew me the fuck out?"

"Is that what I'm doing? Come on, give me the benefit of the doubt here."

"Sorry."

"It's my job to make sure Sam has the most helpful environment I can. And I can't be with him twenty-four hours a day."

"As much as you'd like to."

"Yeah, guilty. I like the kid, is that a problem?"

"I think this counts as chewing me out."

"Shut the fuck up, Dean, I'm talking."

He smiles.

"I can't be there twenty-four hours a day, so you need to be picking up where I leave off. I can't tell you not to screw up, I can't tell you not to drink, I can't even tell you not to give him goddamn allergic reactions, but I can tell you that he needs a safe environment or he's going to go right back to spiraling inside his thoughts and think he's back there getting raped again, and I can tell you that's what going to hurt him the most is feeling like he can't talk to you about it. So if you fuck up with him, you do not back way from it and put your hands up and try to act like it didn't fucking happen and then hand him over to me without giving me a damn clue, do you understand? You're his brother, nobody loves him the way you do, don't you dare make him doubt that. You are his foundation and he's building on you so you can fuck up all you want, but you need to be there for him after, do I make myself clear?"

"Chewed and swallowed."

"Yeah, well. You okay?"

He shrugs a shoulder.

"I like you, Dean. You know?"

"Enough to let me take you out for dinner?"

"God, you're so fucked up. You ruin everything."

"I wouldn't even drink. You could order wine and I would touch it."

"And horses will sprout wings and soar through the sky!"

"...Seriously, horses?"

"I was trying to avoid cliche and instead came out sounding fucking stupid."

"I just like you, Christa. Please. You tell me I'm shit and I still like you. So just...please."

She looks down. "Come on. Don't do the earnest thing. Aren't we playing around, here?"

"I don't know anymore."

She feels an in here. "So what are you doing with Sam, then?"

He fills it in for her, pushing his palms into his eyes and sighing. "I don't know anymore."

"We really can start from the ground up, here."

He looks up. "We can?"

"Yeah. We can take a new approach."

"He could take that?"

"He can't take seeing the kind of support you've been giving him since he got back slowly crumbling down. Maybe he needs a home nurse. Maybe Cas needs to commit to be around more often if he's going to start laying down laws. Maybe we need to work on simple biological stuff first, regulating his sleep cycle, getting these fevers down..."

"Getting him to eat."

"I'm saying that you need to be a partner with me on this in deciding where we're going to put our energy into him right now. Because what we're doing right now, you, me, and Cas, this isn't working. He's getting pushed on all these different pressure points and it's no fucking wonder he's getting sick."

"Okay, what do you mean, though."

"I'm getting him to talk about what happened to him, you're not letting him talk about anything, Cas is letting him get away with talking or not talking whether or not he feels like it and we both know Sam's not the best judge right now of what he can and cannot do. We're all screwing him up in these cute little ways, and if we band together at least we can figure out what part of this is getting to him and focus on keeping the damage as minimal as possible. But that means that when I send him home for the night, you need to be on our side for what we talked about so you're able to support him."

"Rather than being passed-out drunk."

"Well, it would be a start."

"Go out to dinner with me."

"Are you going to tell Cas about the reaction?"

"You're going to make me, aren't you?"

"I'm going to strongly advise it."

He breathes out. "Okay. I'll call him. He'll get here soon."

**

"You did fucking what?"

Dean actually flinches. "Jesus, Cas."

"I leave you alone with him for two fucking days and you feed him fucking milk? What is the matter with you, you stupid boy!"

Dean looks at him hard, now. "Cas. Shut the fuck up, all right?"

"You hurt him!"

"Yeah, well, I'm not really the first of the two of us, am I?"

Christa stands up before Cas can hit him and grabs onto his elbow. "Okay, no no no, we do not fucking punch people in therapy, my damn three-year-olds don't even get away with that."

Cas breathes out like a bull, but he does let his arm relax and go down.

"We know you love him," Christa says. "Okay, Cas? We see it. We really do."

Dean doesn't say anything. He's looking down, fists clenched, and she knows just then that she isn't the only one wondering...how Cas loves him.

Maybe Dean's trying to figure it out too.

Maybe Cas is.

Cas says, "No, it's not that, it's just..I worry about him," he says to Dean quietly, enunciating. "I have to go away for the day and I just worry about him, and I don't know how to...I've never done this--"

And then Dean turns on him and says, "What the fuck do you mean you've never done this, once upon a time you used to FUCKING WORRY ABOUT ME!"

There's quiet for a minute, just them staring at each other.

"See, this?" Christa says. "This is good."

Cas turns to her, then, angry, starting towards her, and says, "How the fuck can you say--" and Christa is actually, acutely scared, motherfuck, and Cas is two steps away from her and Dean grabs him.

He says, "Don't you fucking dare."

Cas pulls away from him and says, "She doesn't understand him--"

And that's when Dean throws the first punch.

**

She doesn't know if she's supposed to go over that night. In the fucking wreckage of their last appointment, in which she comforted a gaspy, anxious Sam in the waiting room while Dean and Cas snarled at each other about who got to bring him home, she didn't really get a handle on who, if anyone, was going to end up staying with Sam that night. Because for all the fucking fighting over him, the kid spends too much time alone, and they can talk around it all they want but the truth is, the blatant, goddamn truth of it is that Sam just needs people, and he needs them around and loud and loving and present or he doesn't know where the fuck he is and it takes Sam all of a couple of hours alone to forget that anyone ever cared about him.

Christa sees these things. This is her job.

And Christa sees her lonely little girl crying softly in the car on the way home from preschool.

Christa loves her job.

**

"Can I show Sammy my oil pastels?" Kylie asks. She's perked up considerably since she realized Christa wasn't driving them straight home.

"Uh-huh, if he's feeling up to it."

"Too sick for oil pastels!?"

"You never know."

"You never know," Kylie sings to herself, hopping from foot to foot on the sidewalk. "I fucking love Sam."

"You know what? I fucking love Sam too."

The door isn't unlocked this time, and this scares the shit out of Christa because she's envisioning Sam locked in there with no one, but before she can panic the lock clicks and Cas opens the door. Kylie ducks behind her legs and hides her face in the crook of her knee. She doesn't do well with strangers yet.

Cas has his eyes on the floor, but he speaks deliberately. "I am so sorry about today."

"Heat of the moment. I get it."

"That's no excuse."

"What happens in therapy is shit that's not allowed to happen anywhere outside of therapy. It's okay."

Cas knots a little and drops down to a squat. "Is this Kylie?"

"Uh-huh. You want to say hi, Kylie?"

"Who is it?" Kylie says, her voice very small.

"This is Cas. He loves Sammy too."

"I do," Cas says. "Very much. Take my hand, want to visit him?"

"I have oil pastels," Kylie says.

"I have no idea what those are. But I bet Sam loves them."

"Like we love him."

"Yes." Cas waits for Christa's approval, then Kylie's, before he picks her up. "Sam is very good at that. Let's go see him."

**

Sam's doing okay. He's shaky and teary and a little feverish, but his breathing's better and he's staying calm braced between Kylie and Cas, breathing from the mouthpiece of his nebulizer and helping Kylie color in a unicorn. So she feels like, maybe, she can ask.

She decides to direct it to Cas, quietly, while Sam is tracing Kylie's hand on a new piece of paper and telling her that her hand is the exact perfect size. "Where's Dean?"

He makes eye contact. "He's in his room. I'm going to check on him soon."

"Should I check on him?"

He seems genuinely torn on this, like he's studying the two possibilities, then says, "Maybe."

"I'm going up." Christa doesn't really do maybes.

"Good," Cas decides. "Yes, that's good." He tucks his lips against Sam's temple.

**

It's pretty obvious what's going on as soon as she's upstairs. Dean is wracked and shivering on the floor of his bedroom (she's never been up here before, somehow she's surprised by how sparse and normal it is considering the unnormalness and definitely un-fucking-sparseness of Dean Winchester, pouring out worry and leather and cigarette smoke and love and whiskey. Or not).

She helps him take sips from a cup of water. "You should really be doing this at a hospital," she says. "This can be dangerous. Seizures." She puts his hand on her knee to take his pulse.

"Don't need a hospital. Have you." He waits for her to finish with his pulse before he lies down beside where she's sitting and rests his forehead against her boot.

"You're fucking stupid."

"Mmmhmm."

"And this is amazing."

He looks up at her, shivering, smiling. "Does that mean you'll go out for dinner with me?"

"God, fuck you. Yes, you asshole, I'll go out to dinner with you."

**

They go out the next week, once Dean's off the floor and Sam's fever's broken. Cas babysits Kylie for the night and Sam, when they're leaving, is curled up on the couch with her and a tub of popcorn and Mary Poppins, which Kylie has no idea was Christa's sister's favorite movie.

She's smiling at Sam like she can't believe she got so lucky.

Christa doesn't order wine. Neither does Dean.

So she takes him back to her place and fucks the shit out of him. For positive reinforcement.

And then they go back to Dean's house where Cas, Sam, and Kylie are all asleep in front of the TV, tangled up in each other, and she watches Dean drink from a bottle of water and she thinks yes, yes.

She loves her job.

But she can also love this.