For Your Own Good 7/8
For Your Own Good
Summary: “Don't worry, Dean. I'll be a good little soldier and do everything Dad says. Promise.” Sam doesn't know how right he is.
Sam is sixteen. Dean is twenty.
Chapter Seven
Getting out of bed in the morning is impossible.
The pain behind Sam's eyes blurs his vision. It pulses angrily, thumping against his skull, and does its best to claw its way out through his eye sockets. His joints feel like they're made of rusty metal. Sam curls up into a ball and coughs until his lungs are raw and his chest is aching. Dean wakes up and rolls out of bed to bring Sam water and Tylenol, saying something about getting 'something for that cough'. Sam isn't really listening. His head hurts too much to think.
Luckily, John never bothered to include an order to attend school - why would he? John doesn't care about whether he goes to school. It's probably only a matter of time before he forces Sam to drop out altogether - so nothing prevents Sam from rolling over and pulling the blankets over his head. He breathes the humid recycled air and falls asleep.
XXX
An insistent tugging in Sam's bones drags him back to the waking world.
He surfaces unwillingly, clutching at the last dregs of sleep, but the pull is unignorable and the heat beneath the blankets has become unbearable. Sam claws his way free, gasping for fresh air. He's feverishly clammy. Suffocatingly hot. Sweat clings to his skin and dampens what's left of his hair, making him feel uncomfortably sticky and gross.
The alarm clock on the night-stand reads three forty-eight. Normally, Sam would have started his training by now. He's running late, burning daylight. He should get moving.
Sam closes his eyes and tries to will away his ever-present headache. He feels worse than yesterday.
Finally, he can't ignore the draw of the spell any longer. Sam heaves himself out of bed and staggers to the bathroom on watery legs, one hand on the wall to hold himself steady. He rinses off quickly, without giving the shower time to warm up, and stumbles back to his room to dress.
Dean appears in the doorway just as Sam is shoving his feet into his shoes.
“What are you doing?”
Sam has no idea why Dean sounds so incredulous. “Going for a run.”
“Don't be dumb. You're obviously sick.”
Instead of arguing, Sam coughs into his elbow and focuses on tying his laces. They're being difficult, slipping through his fingers. By the time he has them knotted, Dean has left the doorway and is standing in front of him like a solid wall; arms folded, feet planted.
“Go back to sleep, Sam,” he says firmly.
“Move,” Sam complains. He tries to stand up but Dean grabs his shoulders and forces him to sit back down, pressing him back onto the bed with embarrassing ease. John would be ashamed.
“You're sick,” Dean says. As if that matters.
Sam shakes his head. The room carries on shaking for a moment too long. He grips the mattress and waits for it to stop. “I have to go.”
“No, you don't,” Dean insists. “Missing one day of training isn't going to kill you.”
Sam isn't so sure about that. The longer Dean stands in his way, the harder it's getting for him to breathe. He has to go, before he's crushed by the invisible weight coiled around his chest, cinching tighter with every passing second.
“Move,” Sam demands, starting to panic. He smacks Dean's hands off of his shoulders and pushes himself back to his feet. Fending off his brother's attempts at grabbing him, Sam dodges to one side, hoping to skirt around Dean and make for the door. He almost manages it, despite the way his vision is splitting in two, but then Dean latches on to his arm.
Sam spins around and punches his brother in the face.
Dean reels. He stumbles backwards, letting go of Sam's arm, and his hands fly to his face. His eyes are wide, more stunned than wounded, Sam thinks, though he feels the force behind his blow. His knuckles sting. He has grown stronger over these last few months. More accurate and powerful. Just like John wanted. Dean will have a bruise.
Sam wishes he could stop to apologize but Dean is already shaking off the shock. He can't risk his brother trying to hold him back again. His feet are moving, out of the bedroom, out of the motel.
Dean yells his name but Sam is already gone.
XXX
Dean has his cellphone pressed to his ear when Sam returns, pacing the length of the motel room. His voice is low and hurried. Urgent. He seems to wilt when he lays eyes on Sam, sagging with relief - did he think Sam wasn't coming back? Sam had thought about running away, ages ago, but John must have seen the look in his eyes because he had quickly shot down that idea - but his face is still pinched and panicked.
“You have to make him stop,” Dean implores whoever's on the phone.
Sam closes the door behind him, breathing hard and struggling to stay upright. He leans against it for a moment, back pressed against the wood, head tipped back, allowing himself a few self-indulgent seconds of rest, before he refocuses and gets back on task.
Pushing away from the door, Sam lurches across the room, towards the duffel bag that sits against the far wall. There's a collection of knives that John needs him to clean. Weapons maintenance is important, John is always telling him that. Sam needs to take it seriously. John will inspect the knives when he returns and if they aren't up to his standards Sam will be ordered to do it again or to complete some other task to make up for his failure. Maybe John will come up with a creative new way to punish him. He needs to get it right the first time. He needs to focus, just a little longer. Once he's finished, he can go back to bed. He can go to sleep. He just needs to do this one last thing.
Sam blinks away the encroaching darkness. He needs to do this.
“Sam?”
Dean is at his side, out of swinging distance this time. His phone is still clenched in his hand. When did he get there? Sam didn't hear his approach. He should be more vigilant.
What was he doing?
Knives. He needs to clean the knives.
Sam is turning back to the duffel bag but Dean holds out the phone.“It's Dad. He wants to talk to you.”
Oh. Fresh orders from out of town. That doesn't happen often. What does John want him to do now?
Sam takes the phone and presses it to his ear. John's voice is tinny and metallic as it passes through the phone lines. Sam sways as he listens, swallowing down a flurry of coughs.
“Sam?” John is asking. “Sam, are you there? Dean says you're sick. Is that right? Or is he just trying to get you out of training? Tell the truth.”
“I think I'm sick,” Sam says. The phone is growing heavier and heavier, like it's filling up with words. If John keeps talking Sam is going to drop it. He needs to clean the knives.
Sam reaches for the duffel bag.
John heaves a frustrated sigh in his ear. “Take a break,” he commands. “Do you hear me, Sam? Take a break. No training until you're well.”
Sam stops, mid-reach. His hand hovers over the bag.
“Yes, sir.”
He stands there, struck still by indecision. He doesn't know what he is supposed to do with himself, without a task laid out before him. He feels suddenly bereft. Deprived of purpose. Should he go to bed now? How does he take a break? What is he supposed to do?
The phone is taken from Sam's hand.
“I knew it. I knew it.” Dean is yelling - he sounds really mad - but Sam doesn't know whether his brother is speaking to him or to John. Has he done something wrong?
The spinning of the earth beneath his feet is making him dizzy. Sam blinks again but the darkness doesn't recede. It spreads, creeping across the room. It wants to sweep him away.
Sam sinks to his knees. Hands grab him when he pitches sideways and he doesn't remember hitting the floor.
XXX
Something cold is moving over Sam's skin.
It sweeps across his forehead and smooths back his hair. Whispers down the side of his face and dabs at his throat.
Sam's hand twitches towards the thing interrupting his sleep, scrunching up his face in annoyance.
The cold thing disappears.
“Sammy? You awake?”
Sam slides back towards oblivion, ignoring his brother's voice. He's almost there, almost cradled by the dark nothingness of sleep, when the cold thing returns, resting against his forehead.
“Stoppit,” he complains.
“Sorry, Sammy, gotta cool your eggs before they scramble.”
The sound Sam makes in reply isn't really a word. It's more of a noise of confusion that ends in a question mark.
Dean rephrases. “Your temperature's still pretty high.”
Sam peels his eyelids open. Early morning sunlight is sneaking in between half-drawn curtains and Dean is sitting at his bedside, on a chair he must have dragged in from the kitchen. There's a wash cloth in his hand and exhaustion in his sagging shoulders.. A bruise has blossomed on his jaw. Sam frowns at it and a misty memory emerges.
“Was that me?” he asks. He casts his mind back but his memories are fever-fogged and vague. Dean was in his way. Sam had needed to make him move. He remembers going for a run that was more of a stumble and then John speaking in his ear. Dean was yelling into a phone.
“Don't worry about it.” Dean shrugs it off. He sets the wash cloth aside and gets to his feet. “One sec.”
Dean returns with a glass of water and two small white pills. “Take these,” he says. He doesn't wait for Sam's assent before sliding an arm beneath Sam's shoulders and helping him to sit up, and Sam doesn't bother to ask what the pills are before taking them. The glass of water shakes in his hands. Dean takes it back and puts it down beside the wash cloth.
Sam sinks back down on the pillows.
“I'm sorry,” he says, frowning again at the bloom of purple on his brother's face.
“It's fine.” Dean waves away the apology. “It wasn't your fault.”
This is confusing because Sam is pretty sure it was his fault. There's an ache in his knuckles where they remember making contact with Dean's jaw.
“Dad's on his way back,” Dean says.
That seems fast. John only just left. Is the hunt finished so soon? “Already?”
Dean's jaw works. “I told him that if he doesn't get back here and fix what he's done to you, I'd hunt him down and drag him back.”
Sam's breath catches in his throat, which sends him into a fit of coughing. Dean helps him to sit up a little, propping the pillows up behind him
“Dad didn't do anything,” Sam says, once he can breathe again.
“Did he tell you to say that?” Dean's hands clench into fists in his lap.
“No,” Sam denies. A flutter of hope beats its wings in his chest. “He didn't tell me to say anything.”
The breath Dean drags in is full of anger but he exhales, tight and controlled, and a moment later his voice is soft. “It's okay. I know you're lying, and I know you're not doing it on purpose.”
Dean leans back and retrieves a book that has been discarded on his bed. It's the same one Sam remembers seeing him reading a few days ago. One of John's old leather tomes. Dean flips it open to a page he has marked with a torn scrap of paper and sets the open book down in Sam's lap.
“Look familiar?”
There's a list of ingredients and a long incantation, foreign words written in old swirling ink, but what catches Sam's attention is the illustration. A blank-faced figure stands inside a circle, a smokey snake-like creature twisted around its torso. Sam traces a finger along the coils.
“No,” he says.
Dean's nostrils flare. He takes the book back and tosses it onto his bed.
“Well, I think it does,” he declares. “I think Dad did something monumentally stupid and fucked up and you can't talk about it. I think he did it ages ago, right under my nose.”
Sam's heart is pounding with excitement now, but his head is shaking back and forth on the pillow.
“No.” John's words tumble from his mouth. “Dad didn't do anything. I just want to do better. I want to be better. A real Winchester.”
Dean looks so incredibly angry and so incredibly sad at the same time. His eyes are damp but there's fire in them. He takes Sam's hand and rubs his thumb across Sam's knuckles.
“You don't need to be better, Sammy. You've always been a real Winchester.”
To Be Continued...
A/N: Reviews get to give Dean a high five for finally figuring it out!