A Close Relationship with Carpet Fibres
A Close Relationship with Carpet Fibres
Summary: Sam wakes up on the floor. Epilepsy 'verse.
A/N: This is kind of different from what I usually write because I'm going to leave it In Progress and add to it when I get ideas. I have a few installments already mostly finished so those will be posted fairly quickly, after that we'll just have to see what my muse does. These are basically snapshots of life right after seizures.
XXX
12
Sam wakes up on the floor.
For an eternity, nothing makes sense, all context stripped from the world. He can't remember where he is, why he aches so much, or why he's lying on his side getting closely acquainted with rough beige carpet fibres. It smells like cigarette ash and dust, which makes him want to sneeze, which feels like a terrible idea right now.
“Here he comes,” says a voice over his head.
'Here who comes?' Sam wonders, and then the voice is matched to a face as his eyes manage to move away from the scruffy carpet and everything tumbles into place the moment he recognises Dean.
He senses Dad behind him but his big brother fills his line of sight. Dean is lying on his side, head propped up on an arm bent at the elbow, fingers spread between strands of short dark blond hair. They're on the floor of a motel room. Of course.
“Thirty seconds exactly,” Dean announces. “Not bad, kiddo.”
Sam scrunches up his face to show his displeasure at the childish nickname, not ready to try to form words. It's not like Dean's that much older than him, and anyway, twelve years and eight months makes Sam practically a teenager.
Dean laughs a little and reads Sam's mind in the way only Dean can. “Sorry,” he says, sounding anything but. “Do you prefer brat?”
Sam hopes he's scowling. It's a little hard to tell in the afterglow of a big seizure but he thinks he manages it because Dean's face breaks into a grin and he reaches out the hand not supporting his head to ruffle Sam's hair a little, gentle, teasing and comforting all at once. “Okay, okay, I know you prefer princess.”
The lights in the room still don't look quite right, fractal-ling in odd directions, but it's getting easier to focus now and his limbs have started to remember that they're attached to him, which always helps him feel a little less out there. He attempts a word.
“Jerk.” It comes out only slightly slurred. Good enough. Dean understands and pretends to be mortally wounded by the jibe, flopping back on the floor theatrically with a hand pressed over his heart.
“Stop teasing your brother,” Dad's deep voice rumbles, just out of Sam's field of vision, like he doesn't understand how much Dean's antics help
“Sorry, Sammy,” Dean says, once again completely unconvincingly. His eyes are still sparkling cheekily and he's grinning, not even bothering to try faking contrition, and Sam is grateful for his brother's rare disobedience because he needs this. It doesn't matter that he's done this hundreds of times before because every time is like the first time and waking up with a head full of nothing is scary. He needs Dean to be an idiot and act like everything is normal so he can remember that this is normal for him. He thinks his seizures scare Dean sometimes as well, even though his brother never says so out loud, and somehow this seems to help them both.
“Bed or couch, Sam?” Dad asks, sooner than Sam would prefer. He sees Dean frown disapprovingly at their father over his head. He wants to say floor because moving seems impossibly hard even though he knows he'll barely have to do anything other than let his family manhandle him.
“Bed,” he decides, and he was right, the sudden movement as Dad lifts him up into his arms makes him dizzy in a ground-dropping-out-from-under-him kind of way but he doesn't need to cling. It's not as if Dad's going to drop him.
Chapter Two