Together We'll Ring in the New Sam (PART 2)
Title: Together We'll Ring in the New Sam (PART 2)
Summary And yeah. He's Sam. But he's an addict. So the usual rules don't apply. It's the second (and final) part of the season 4 fic.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 4, please.
Wordcount: 9,980
Author's Note: Sammyverse--Sam has asthma and the boys are best buddies forever and they talk to each other and stuff. Title is from Motion City Soundtrack's "Together We'll Ring in the New Year," one of my favorite songs ever. First half is HERE.
--
Dean opens the door, coffee in hand, feeling all positive and okay about the universe, and Sam's exactly where he's supposed to be, but he's not alone, and, you know what? Fuck the universe.
“Jesus, Ruby,” Dean says. “Been a while.”
“Yeah, well, you two were hard to find.”
“Wasn't an accident.”
“Sorry, Dean,” Sam says.
“It's fine.” Dean hands him his cup. “Drink. Breathe.”
“Et cetera,” Sam says.
“Yeah.”
Ruby says, “Don't apologize to your fucking prison guard that you got a visitor without his permission. How often does his little angel boyfriend drop by when it's a bad time for you?”
“Hilarious. He's not my fucking boyfriend.”
Ruby says, “Aw, did you break up?”
“They didn't break up,” Sam says. “They had a fight.”
Dean studies Sam while he sips from his coffee cup. He seems like the same wrung-out, wheezy mess he has been for the past few days. So that's good. (How the fuck is that good?)
“Relax,” Ruby says. “I didn't fucking drug him. He said no. You think I'm going to tie him down and forcefeed him?”
“If it gets you what you need, yeah.”
“Jesus, Dean, he could be filled to the brim with the shit, but if he doesn't want to use his powers he's not going to use his powers. I sat here and told him what a fucking mistake he's making and he had too much trouble breathing to argue so he sat there and shook his head and looked morose and then you fucking walked in. Sound accurate, Sam?”
“I can breathe,” Sam says.
Dean look at Ruby. “I want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, and I want to talk to you, but I don't know what the hell has you thinking Sam's okay to be left alone right now. You fucking went out for coffee?”
Dean bites back a lot of fucking things (this kid is my kid, this kid is my kid) and starts setting up the nebulizer. “He's fine.”
“He's not fucking fine. Don't pull that shit with me. I'm not some stranger.”
“Then stop fucking acting like one! How the fuck stupid do you have to be not to know that you don't fucking insult Sam's breathing in front of Sam?”
Sam wheezes out a breath, tugging on his chest.
Dean runs his hand down his face and says, “I'm sorry,” to Sam.
“It's fine.”
Sam doesn't want to be upset.
Dean tosses him the mouthpiece of the nebulizer. “You're fine. We'll be back in a minute. Text if you need help.”
Sam puts the mouthpiece between his teeth. “Don't kill her.”
**
Dean lets the door slam behind him. “Name one fucking reason why I shouldn't.”
“Jesus, Dean, I'm your brother's fucking friend. I didn't give him blood tonight, I haven't given him blood anytime he didn't want it, and, oh yeah, I'm your only fucking shot at killing Lilith.” She pulls her hair back in her hand. “I'm on Sam's side here, all right? I want him to do what he wants. And he wants to breathe and he wants to help you kill Lilith, and how is either of those a bad thing for you?”
“This isn't about me.”
“Oh, bullshit it isn't, why do you think he got on the blood in the first place?”
“Because you talked him into it.”
“Try again. He fucking begged me.”
“So he could fucking breathe.”
She laughs. “You think he gave a shit about whether or not he was breathing?”
“He promised me he'd do whatever it took to keep breathing. He promised. Sam doesn't fucking break promises.”
“He promised he'd keep breathing on his own until you got out, you fucking idiot! The goal wasn't to keep him breathing as long as possible, it was to fucking shorten the amount of time he had to breathe. He was hanging on for dear fucking life, Dean. Do you have any idea the state he was in when I found him? How fucking hard he was trying not to just give the fuck up? He drank like a fucking...like you, he took hunts that by all rights he shouldn't have survived, he wasn't sleeping, he wasn't eating. He was hanging on by a fucking thread. He had the most tenuous grasp on life I've never fucking seen, and you think that didn't falter once or twice?”
“Shut up.”
“You left him, Dean.”
“I did it to save him. He's grateful-”
“Bullshit.”
“He tells me after every fucking nightmare how grateful-”
“He's lying! What you did was selfish and disgusting. You dragged him out of wherever the fuck he was, and God knows it was probably somewhere nice, back into this shitty fucking reality and made him take on Azazel with a hole in his back and the same fucked-up lungs he got to leave behind, and then you told him by the way, you get another year of this barely-tolerable life before I leave you alone to fight this war you shouldn't have had to face in the first place. And you're telling yourself that you did it for him? You want to know what he did for you, Dean? You want to know selfless? He called up the fucking crossroads demon and begged to switch places with you. He didn't ask for a year, he didn't ask for goddamn anything, he tried to switch with you. And you think it was hard for you to breathe in hell? You think they tortured you? Christ, tie Sam up without meds for six hours and he's in agony, can you fucking imagine what they could do to an asthmatic who can't die?”
“Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”
“And the crossroads demon told him no. He told him he was on his way out anyway, that they didn't any use in hell for someone that weak, and that he and his shitty lungs could wait their goddamn turn and they would see him in a few months, because after the things he'd done, after letting his brother die for him and fucking me once or twice, he was a dirty disgusting whore of a sick boy and fuck if the angels would let him anywhere near heaven, and fuck if the demons would let him get anywhere near you once they booted him down to hell. He let Sam get down in the dust and beg and he laughed at him and kicked him and Sam got up and slit his throat and came to me and begged for a way to get you out. So don't you dare pretend that you know what Sam wants.”
What's fucking hilarious is that Dean feels like he can't breathe.
**
“What's going to happen to us when we die, d'you think?” Dean says, because he can't goddamn help himself. He's lying next to Sam with his hand on his back, just feeling him breathe.
“We'll go somewhere nice.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, Dean.” He rolls over and faces him. “We're good, deep down. You weren't supposed to be in Hell, you know? You did it for me. You saved me.”
He really does seem grateful, is the thing.
“You don't worry?” Dean says.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean buries his face under Sam's arm. “Don't lie to me.”
He listens to Sam's lungs stutter a little.
“I worry about everything, Dean,” he says, quietly. “You know me.”
“I'm so sorry, Sam.”
“What?”
“For everything.” He looks up. “I'm not going to leave you, okay?”
“Okay.”
He takes Sam's face in his hands and looks at him, at this goddamn stupid fucking kid.
“What's wrong?” Sam says.
“I'm just breathing you in, kind of.”
“Okay.” Sam tucks his head under Dean's chin. “Okay. Do that.”
**
He falls asleep in Sam's bed and wakes up four hours later sweating and shaking harder than he can ever remember because Jesus Christ Alastair eye droppers and tongs and pulled teeth and there's Sam. Okay. There's Sam. He's lying behind Dean, hands underneath Dean's arms and pressed to his chest, thumbs rubbing circles on Dean's side. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. You're all right. Just a dream. You're here, you're back, we're both okay.”
He's wheezing so, so badly.
And Dean clings to it with both hands, because Sam, the Sam in his head in Hell, he was always okay. Dean breathed in smoke and dirt and rotten bodies and imagined Sam and his whisper-wheeze smiling off somewhere, and no one could fucking take that from him. And now Sam is gripping him so hard and wheezing like he's dying and Dean will fucking take it.
Still, he says, “You need help.”
“I can wait a minute. It's fine.”
Dean pushes his face into his pillow. “Fuck. Sam.”
“It's okay. You're so safe.”
“The things I did...peeled eyes like grapes, Sam, stripped fingers down to fucking tiny bones, bird bones. Sam.”
Sam waits, and Dean thinks he's scared him, he's said too much, Samdoesn'tlovehimanymore, and then he realizes Sam just doesn't want to interrupt him.
“Not gonna talk any more tonight,” Dean says. “So you can.”
Some nights he talks for an hour and Sam nods and tucks his chin on his knees and listens like he isn't scared.
But he can't tonight. He can't do that to Sam right now, and he can't think about this any more. Not tonight.
“Okay.” Both Sam's hands are on his back. “You've been so brave. I don't know how you walk around with this.”
“It was selfish. It really fucking was. Right? I didn't fucking mean it to be, man.”
“What?”
“Leaving you alone.”
“No, Dean. It was...Jesus. You saved my life. You knew I'd get you out of it. I mean, fuck, Dean, it was the only...chance we had to...be together again.”
Fuck, he sounds bad. Dean pushes himself up. “You need help.”
“Shit. Yeah. Please? I did...inhaler. Three hits.”
“Seriously? Fuck.” Dean scrambles to his feet and hits the light, gets a look at him. He's not as bad as Dean had feared-still has his color, isn't going blue, doesn't look too lightheaded-but shit, that wheeze, and he's wincing when he breathes in. His lungs sound clear enough, but he's tight as all hell.
This happens when he's anxious. “You okay?” Dean says, all soft.
Sam knows what he's asking and nods and lifts his chin to get more air.
“We're getting you on a neb, now,” Dean says. “And if that doesn't help, ER. Okay?”
“Okay.”
And then there's a flap of wings, a flap of four fucking wings, and Dean thinks he might lose it completely. It's fucking Uriel again, and Cas, he's sure, but he doesn't see him-until he looks over at the bed and there he is, sitting next to Sam, putting a hand on his back.
He says, “Hello, Dean,” and rubs Sam's back, lowers his voice and says, “Is this all right?”
Sam nods.
Uriel says, “Castiel, don't get your hands dirty,” and Dean's about to fucking lose it but Sam barks, “Shut the...fuck up,” before he can, and shit, no one can get to Sam like an angel. (Dean really doesn't want to think about the implications of that, all right?)
“Leave,” Dean says. “Please. Come back in the morning.”
Uriel says, “You're needed, Dean.”
“I'm about to take him to the hospital. We're not doing this now.”
Sam starts coughing, hard, and he's not exaggerating this time. Cas frowns and presses his hand into his back, his other hand gripping Sam's shoulder to stabilize him. “Am I doing this correctly?” he asks Dean.
“Yeah. Please leave. Sammy. Hey. It's okay.”
Cas says, “I'm sorry, Dean.”
Uriel gives him a look. “Don't apologize to him.”
“We can get Sam to a hospital before we take you-”
“Take me? No.”
Uriel says, “We raised you out of hell for-”
“You didn't raise me! Sam did! Jesus fucking Christ!”
Uriel says, “I can still cast you back down,” and Sam's out of bed, hands in fists, wheezing too hard to stand up straight, and fuck, fuck, this isn't okay. Dean grabs him by the shoulders and guides him back to the bed.
“You. Sit.” He runs his hand roughly through Sam's hair. “Sit. I mean it.”
And then he kneels in front of Sam and Sam watches him and they silently count out breaths together because fuck if Sam is willing to do the nebulizer with them here, if he's going to let himself be even more vulnerable, Dean gets that, but shit, the kid can't breathe, and Uriel goes on and on about these angels being shanked, and how they're going to take Dean and shove him in a room with Alastair and sometimes Dean can't believe the shit the world manages to come up with and fuck, this is going to kill Dean, but right in this goddamn moment it is going to kill Sam.
“You're the best torturer we have,” Uriel says, and what a fucking thing to say when Dean has both hands gripping the hell out of Sam's knees.
“You can't have him,” Sam says. “You can't make him do this. Cas. Please.”
Cas hesitates and says, “Sam, if there were any other-”
“I've had enough of this,” Uriel says, and then he cuts between Dean and Sam and touches his fingers to Dean's forehead and everything goes white.
And he's gone.
**
So he's in some building, staring at Alastair through a window, and his brain can't fucking take hearing Sam wheezing like that one second and then hearing nothing, so, sorry, no.
So he says it, “No, no no no no no” because God fucking damn it he can't imagine anything worse than this, short of being back in the fucking pit, because Jesus Christ Sam is alone and twenty minutes, maybe half an hour away from dying if he doesn't get help, and Dean's who the fuck knows where and Alastair and the stuff on that table and Sam and he makes some noise in the back of his throat that isn't fucking enough, and Cas's hand is on his shoulder, get off, get off.
“I'm sorry,” Cas says. And he sounds like he means it. Shit.
“Bring me back. Right now. Put me back.”
Cas breathes out. “I'm so sorry.”
“I need to go back to Sam.”
Uriel says, “This isn't a favor, Winchester. No one's asking your opinion.”
“I'm not going in there.”
“We have ways of making you.”
Dean feels like a fucking three year old, pissed that his mom's making him eat his carrots, or he would if he weren't so fucking freaked out, if his two worst goddamn nightmares AlastairSammysuffocating weren't playing out at the same fucking time and he presses his hand against the window to hold himself up and says, “Cas, can you just check on Sam?”
“Yes.”
Uriel holds up his hand and says, “Let me.”
“No,” Dean says.
Uriel says, “I think it's time you figured out that what Sam wants isn't the center of this damn plot, boy,” and then he's fucking gone, and Dean thinks his head's going to explode, and Cas says, “Here, here, sit down,” and guides him to some bench, Dean doesn't fucking know.
“What the hell?” Dean says. “Since when is Uriel in charge of you?”
“My loyalty to heaven has been questioned.”
Dean looks up.
Cas isn't looking at him.
“I'm sorry,” Cas says. “For sending you to the boy who died that way.”
“Asthma. Say it out loud, okay?”
“Asthma.” The word sounds funny from him. It's always sounded funny from anyone but Sam, John, Jess. “I'm sorry. For what that must have done to Sam.”
“It didn't do anything. He's fine. He's going to be fine.”
Cas swallows and tilts his head back for a second, then says, “Dean, the angels-”
And then Uriel's back, Uriel isn't supposed to be back, Uriel is supposed to be saying snarky shit to Sam and then beaming him to a goddamn hospital. Uriel isn't supposed to be here and he definitely isn't supposed to be here fucking with Sam, who looks worse, sweaty and pale, hunched over holding his ribcage.
Dean's under his arm to hold him up before he's even fully processed that Sam's here and what the fuck that means. He sits Sam down and looks up at Uriel. “You son of a bitch. What is he doing here?”
“You asked that he be checked on.”
“Sammy. Hey. You okay?”
Sam nods and takes a smoggy breath in.
Dean turns to Cas. “You've got to get him out of here.”
Cas locks eyes with Uriel and says, “Yes.”
“No,” Sam says.
Dean stares at him. “What?”
“I'm not...leaving you here.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Sam looks up at him. “This is going to break you.”
“All the more reason you don't get to fucking see it.”
“No. If something's going to...hurt you...I get to...fucking see it.”
“No.”
Sam glares at him, hard, and with that fucking wheeze it would be kind of funny except it's so so so so fucking not.
Uriel says, “The sooner you get the job done, the sooner you can get Sam to a hospital.”
“Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Get him out of here. Cas. Come on. Please.”
Sam looks at Cas and says. “Don't you dare.”
Cas looks at all three of them, lowers his voice, says, “I'm sorry, Dean.”
“No. Fuck. Come on. Sammy, come on.”
Sam looks at Alastair, and at that point Dean knows he's fucked, because shit, if this were Sam? If Sam were about to go in there against someone who'd tortured him? Dean wouldn't be an inch further away than he had to be, not a fucking chance.
But Dean would also breathe, and that just isn't an option for Sam right now.
And then Uriel says, “I'm getting tired of this,” and snaps his fingers, and Sam gives this breathless yelp and he's cradling his wrist in his hand. It's bent hideously to the side.
“What the fuck?” Dean yells.
Uriel crosses his arm. “Next it'll be his leg.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“When this is over, I'll fix him.”
Sam squeezes his eyes shut and exhales in this desperate fucking wheeze, and Dean says, “You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what the fuck you're doing.”
Cas sits down and talks quietly to Sam. He's soothing him, and Dean just doesn't know what the fuck to do with that.
Sam looks up at him, his pupils shot. He's shaking.
“Fuck,” Dean says. “Fuck. I'll do it.”
**
It isn't hard, once he starts. It never is.
He just becomes this thing, this machine, and he thinks that having Sam watch him will make it impossible, but it doesn't. He just doesn't look at Sam, doesn't think about him gasping in there with his swollen wrist, and it's easier to block him out than it ever, ever has been.
Because he isn't Dean. He definitely isn't anyone's brother. He is syringes of holy water, salt rubs, cheese graters. He's live wires, razor blades, flails. He is the parts of movies where he used to cover Sam's eyes.
He's the monster in the back of the closet.
**
“Your father used to cry for Sam,” Alastair says. “Never for you.”
Demons lie. It's fine.
“You broke the first seal, Dean. You started the apocalpyse. All of this is on you, and you can't stop it. You don't know how.”
Demons lie. It's fine.
“I have a whole team of demons coming to get me. You and your precious little angels don't stand a chance.”
It's fine.
It's fine.
“Poor little Sammy. Can't defend himself so well right now, can he?”
Five minutes later, Dean hears scuffling, hears Cas say something about demons, and he spins around to the window and the angels are worried and Sam is gone and there's a laugh, high and cold and horrible, over Dean's shoulder, and he turns just in time to see Alastair wrench free.
**
No.
This can't be real.
Dean refuses for this to be real.
No.
Alastair, pressed against Dean, forcing his head against the wall, knife underneath his chin, fist driving into his stomach, no, this wasn't supposed to happen agan not fucking ever ever ever again, Sam got him out, Sam got him out--
“Hey!” It's Cas, jamming Ruby's knife into Alastair's back-the knife was already bloody, there were already demons, Alastair didn't lie-and Alastair winces and stumbles but he's not going to die, wouldn't kill Samhain, won't kill Lilith, won't kill Alastair-and Dean makes eye contact with Cas. “Where's Sam?”
“Dean, Sam is-” dead, Sam's dead, but then Alastair straightens and snickers and tugs out the knife and lunges at Dean and then there's another voice, louderdeeperstronger-“Hey!” and Alastair goes flying.
And there he is. Hand out, eyes narrowed, broken wrist hanging at his side. Blood all around his mouth, no, Sammy, no.
Breathing.
Squeezing his hand into a fist and making Alastair moan.
“You okay, Dean?” He doesn't look away from Alastair.
“Sam.” It feels like enough of an answer.
“Hang tight.” His lips twist into a smile. “It's my turn now.”
**
Alastair doesn't know who's killing the angels, but Dean knows Sam doesn't give a shit, knows because he knows his brother, and knows because Sam's smiling while he pumps his fist and watches Alastair choke on nothing.
Uriel and Cas are back, just fucking staring, and Dean's still on the floor dizzy as all hell.
Sam clenches his fist and smiles until blood drips out of his nose and the light goes out of Alastair's white eyes.
He killed him.
He fucking killed him. Didn't exorcise him, didn't disable him, fucking killed him.
Sam can kill demons.
And then Sam turns around and jerks his hand and all of a sudden Uriel's on his knees, and Sam says, “You hurt my brother one too many times, dick,” and Sam can kill more than just demons.
Sam can kill angels.
Sam can kill anything.
Sam is smiling with bloody teeth and he is the scariest thing in the room.
He says, “Dean and I are leaving, now, Cas” and Cas covers his mouth with his hand as they go, like he wants to say something but can't, just can't, and Sam doesn't stick around to make him.
And Dean isn't going to argue with Sam. Not right now.
He doesn't want to lose to Sam right now.
**
Sam drives one-handed, even though he says his wrist doesn't hurt, and he glances over at Dean every so often and whispers “Shhhh,” at red lights, runs his hand up and down Dean's arm.
Dean shudders and closes his eyes and throws up on the side of the road.
**
“Cas is fucked now,” Dean says. “Cas is...whatever the angel term is for fucked.”
“What?”
“He was already in trouble for being friends with us. And now Uriel's dead. And you, and...”
Sam says, “Alastair would have killed you.”
“How much did you drink?”
“I'm not fucking apologizing for what I did, Jesus. How are you feeling?”
“You're going to crash when this is out of you. You're not going to be able to breathe.” How is Dean feeling? He's feeling like he's losing his fucking kid.
“It's fine.”
“This isn't...fuck, Sam. You were almost off it. You were practically off of this shit. And now...” He shakes his head. “We're going back to the motel. We're cleaning you up. We're loading you up on meds and you're sleeping.”
“I'm fucking fine. Let me take care of you.”
“No.”
“You're acting like I'm some rogue fucking child! Exactly how the fuck were we going to get out of there in one piece if I didn't do what I did? Jesus fuck, Dean, I didn't go looking for them, okay? The demons fucking broke in, I had the knife, I couldn't fucking breathe, and you were turning into fucking roboDean in there-”
“Shut up.”
“I'm not a fucking junkie! The blood was there, I made a logical decision, and I did it to help you! I've done fucking all of this to help you, Dean, Jesus.”
Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We're cleaning you up,” he says. “We're loading you up on meds and you're sleeping.”
Sam hits the steering wheel and whispers, “Fine.”
**
By the time Sam gets out of the shower, he's in no state to argue. He's gone gray, and he's twitchy and upset, starting to wheeze again, and fuck, but he looks young, shivering and coughing in his sweatsuit, his hair damp and fucked up.
“Did I scare you?” he says, looking up at Dean, and for the first time, Dean thinks who did you drink? What demon is inside of you?
He tucks this hot, shaky kid under his arm and doesn't say anything. “We're done with this shit,” he says. “Right? We're done?”
Sam hesitates. “Okay.”
Dean lies down with him and rubs his back while his asthma kicks into gear, and he tells Sam bullshit stories about retiring to a house in the mountains and finding a pet Sam isn't allergic to and making pancakes on Sundays and how fucking safe they'll be and when he wakes up Sam is gone.
He's in the bathroom, taking fucking gulps of blood from Ruby's flask, when the fuck did Sam fill that, did Dean really think they were playing fucking Canasta the whole time he was out getting coffee and Dean kind of loses it.
He forces Sam to the floor and yanks his head over the toilet and shoves his fingers down Sam's throat until he throws up, and Sam struggles at first, fighting, but then he gives in and and lets Dean rub his back because what the fuck else is Dean supposed to do, Sam is vomiting blood.
He's done this before, years and years and years ago, helping a miserable fucking Sam throw up at the beginning of an allergic reaction, holding washcloths to his cheeks and blowing on his forehead and promising him it would be okay.
Sam spits and laughs. Low. Cold. “It doesn't matter. It's in me. It's in me and you can't get it out.”
Dean pushes him away and washes his hands.
Sam watches from the floor. “What, is that it? No self-righteous speech?”
“You're an asshole when you're on this shit.”
“No, I'm just not your poor delicate little Sammy you love so fucking much.”
“Shut up, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head and hauls himself to his feet, rinses his mouth out. Christ, his wrist looks horrible. Dean should have brought him to the ER. What the fuck was he thinking? (Sam has blood around his mouth. Sam cannot be seen. Sam is his dirty secret.)
“I was crashing,” Sam said. “I needed it. It's not a big deal.”
“If it talks like an addict-”
“Yeah, fuck you, you smoke fucking cigarettes with an asthmatic little brother, Saint Dean. I drink this shit to help you.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
Sam storms into the bedroom, and Dean follows, because fuck if Sam's getting out of this room. But he doesn't try to leave. He stands over by the table and fucking vibrates.
“You would have died today,” Sam says. “Thank you would be nice.”
“This shit is going to kill you.”
“Yeah well, take a fucking number, demon blood.”
“Stop.”
“You needed me,” Sam says. “Why can't you ever just fucking admit that you need me?”
“I need you, you son of a bitch! I need you. I need my fucking little brother after a fucking nightmare, and I need that goddamn smile of yours to remind me why the fuck I give a shit about any of this fucked up world I'm supposed to be saving, and I need your stupid goddamn jokes and your shitty fucking breathing in the next bed-”
“Well that's spectacular, thank you.”
“--and your fucking heart, okay? I do not need this juiced up asshole who thinks he's a fucking superhero because he can stomach a few mouthfuls of bitch blood.”
“You need more than a shoulder to cry on right now, okay? You're hurt. You were in Hell, for me. You need help, Dean, goddamn it! Someone to goddamn defend you.”
“So you're doing it to help me? You're doing it to breathe? You're doing it to kill Lilith? That's a fuckload of excuses you have there.”
“Reasons, Dean. They're called reasons.”
Dean backs him against a wall (Sam could probably kill him with a fucking glare if he wanted). “You know what I think? I think you like feeling big. I think a lifetime of being sick has finally caught up with you, and now you like how power feels. I think you like killing things."
Sam stares at him, opens his mouth a little.
“What?” Sam says.
“And that's okay.” Dean holds Sam's head still with his hands. “Listen to me. I just tortured someone for an hour and a half, Sam, fuck if I'm throwing stones. But it's my fucking job to make sure the dark parts of you don't take over, and you are fucked in the head if you think I've ever stopped worrying about that.”
“What?” Sam says, again, and he's shaking.
“No. Listen to what I'm saying. I love the motherfucking shit out of you and I am not letting you turn into a fucking...No. This does not happen on my watch. We're done with this crap and we're done now, because I don't care how fucking beat down I am, I don't care if Alastair had ripped me limb from limb to limb, I am still you big brother and that means that before you do something stupid, before you turn yourself into a goddamn monster, you still say Dean, may I.”
And Sam punches him across the face.
**
Dean punches back, and he's not sure if it's just on fucking instinct or if he was looking for an excuse to hit this asshole version of his brother, and he's going to say it's the first one, okay, because as a rule he does not fucking hit Sam, it's different when they're sparring, when Sam's ready for it, when he knows that Sam's okay, but if he's thrown off by listening to Sam breathe like a regular human and by the fucking blow to the face he's fucking excused for punching Sam so hard he goes flying back into the fucking wall, right?
Let's not talk about whether Sam could take Dean in a fight on a normal day (kid can't breathe, seriously, how the fuck is he that fucking strong) but he definitely has an edge when he's juiced up. Sam's on top of him, driving punches into his jaw.
But Dean has a fucking gun with a fucking handle, and he knows the spot on Sam's head that always, always fucking knocks the kid unconscious when he's smacked, so sorry Sam, one-two-you're out. He pushes this massive fucking body off of him and stands up, wipes the blood off his nose, then the blood off of Sam's.
“Road trip, buddy,” he says.
**
Sam wakes up a few minutes later, and Dean's bound his hands and feet (that poor fucking wrist, fucking seriously, Dean splinted it but shit it's got to hurt) and prepared himself for a struggle, but Sam doesn't fight. He opens his eyes and looks at Dean and croaks, “Hey.”
He's wheezing a little, and that's how Dean knows he's coming down, and doesn't that fucking suck.
“Hey,” Dean says.
Sam reaches up and touches Dean's face, carefully. “Hurt you.”
“Didn't even break my nose. You hit like a girl.”
Sam nods a little and leans his head against the window.
“How's your head?”
“Mmm.”
“Oh, I know, kid.”
“You're not mad?”
Of course he is. Of course he fucking is. But what's the point in talking about it? His kid was a violent drugged-out asshole. His kid is sick and he's going to get well.
His kid saved his damn life.
Dean reaches over and runs a thumb over Sam's temple. “You breathing?”
Sam takes a test breath in and lets it out. “Yeah. I'm sorry, Dean.”
“It's all right.”
Sam tries to move his hands to his head and gasps in, and now he's really wheezing, and Dean says, “Hey, hey, I know.” He wants to pull over, he really fucking does, but he doesn't trust Sam not to bolt. So he lets off the gas just a little, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pill he's pre-stashed. “Breathing enough to swallow?”
“Yeah.” Sam looks up as Dean drops the pill into his hand. “Whassit?”
“Percocet. It'll help.”
Sam swallows it, and then he starts in on, “I'm sorry, Dean, I'm sorry,” and fuck, the kid always gets all squishy after a head injury.
“It's okay, Sammy. Everything's going to be okay.”
“I'm never going to do it again.”
“I know. It's okay.”
He wheezes hard and says, “Having trouble, can we pull over?”
And he does sound like he's having trouble. And he does sound like he's sorry. He really, really does. And he's sitting there shaking around that broken wrist and looking so scared and hurt and just like regular, normal, Sammish fucking Sam.
And yeah. He's Sam.
But he's an addict.
So the usual rules don't apply.
“I can't pull over, Sammy. I'm so sorry.”
**
Sam's shaking by the time they get to Bobby's.
“Here,” Dean says. “Here, we're going to take care of you.”
“I'm okay. Don't need taking care of. Dean.” The wrist is fucking killing him. But how the hell is he supposed to take Sam to a hospital right now? He's buzzed and jonesing and no, it's not safe. It's just not fucking safe. It's just a broken wrist. They've weathered out worse.
He keeps a hand on the collar of Sam's jacket as he brings him to Bobby's door, which proves useful when he tries to run a few steps before they reach it, come on, Sam, your fucking hands are still bound.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” he says. “We're okay, buddy.” He puts his arm around Sam's shoulders, locks him dead still. “We're all right.”
Bobby answers the door and looks from Dean, to Sam, back to Dean again. “We have a problem here?”
“Yeah.”
Sam does this whimperflinchwheeze thing and Dean grips him tight.
“You're going to lock us up,” Dean says.
So that's how Dean and Sam end up in the panic room with one bed, one bucket, one duffel bag, and one heavy, bolted door, because Dean doesn't trust Sam not to run and he doesn't trust himself not to cave.
Sam paces and holds his wrist and whispers, “No no no,” for a while before Dean finally gets him to settle on the bed. Sam presses a hand to his cheek and says, “What's in the bag?”
“What's in the box?” Dean fucking forces himself to joke, and Sam gives him this weak smile.
“Every asthma supply we own,” Dean says. “Besides...you know.”
Sam nods a little.
“Okay. Come here.” He guides Sam's head to his shoulder and wraps the blanket around him. “You're going to feel better, kiddo. I promise.”
“I'm not,” Sam whispers. “You're going to feel better.” And then he has his forehead against Dean's neck, and Christ, he's hot, is he sick? And he's crying. Shit. Shit, he can't fucking take when Sam cries.
He holds him and rubs his back through muscle spasms and Sam whisper-begs to be let out and for Dean to feel better.
**
They didn't do cold turkey before, and Sam wasn't fucking on this much before (he drank a demon or two dry back at the warehouse, Dean knows that, Dean isn't fucking stupid) so he's prepared for this to be bad. He knows what they're dealing with.
So it's going to be harder. That's fine.
It's fine.
Sam shakes like all hell and throws up until he has nothing left, so Dean kneels by the bed and helps him through bottles of water. He should have brought more. Fuck. He's going to dehydrate.
“Shit,” Sam gasps. “Shit, shit.”
“It's okay. Breathe.”
“No.” He pushes his face into his pillow. “No no no, Dean. Help. Please. Please.”
“It's okay, Sammy. Come here.” Sam's sweating through his shirt anyway, so Dean strips it off and wastes some water on it, folds it up and lays it on the back of Sam's neck. “There. That's better, huh?”
“No.”
“Okay. What can I do?”
“Hold me down.”
“Shit. Really?” It's just too fucking easy.
But Sam's writing, whispering, “Hold me hold me hold me” so yeah, Dean's up on this tiny as hell bed, wrapping an arm around Sam's waist and holding him.
He stays like that until Sam starts seizing.
**
It's not their first seizure.
Sam used to get them, when he was a tiny fucking kid. Dean barely remembers the first one, just remembers John scared out of his fucking mind and Sam wheezy and off-balance for days. The doctors said it happens sometimes to kids who run high fevers and that they're harmless and will probably help bring the fevers down, and unless he had one when he wasn't fucking feverish, it wasn't anything to worry about, and Sam never did.
And now he's hot as all fucking hell but Dean's thinking this is a different kind of seizure, because little-kid Sam never looked like it hurt, and Dean knows what Sam fucking looks like when he's hurt, okay, and he doesn't think that it's his wrist or the head Dean fucking bashed in, he thinks this is detox and he thinks it fucking sucks, and he remembers reading somewhere that some drugs fucking kill you when you're coming off of them, he knows alcohol, okay, and he knows withdrawal can fucking kill you and what the fuck is this shit in his brother, how the fuck is he supposed to know how to deal with this?
And then there's the whole thing with his kid having the worst lungs this side of any-thefuck-where, yeah, that's kind of a fucking concern.
He didn't want to do it cold turkey, he didn't want to do it this way, but he didn't bring the fucking flask.
So he just kneels onto the floor next to the bed and holds Sam still enough so he doesn't fall off but not so much that he hurts himself flailing against Dean, he knows the rules, and it takes fucking minutes before Sam stops.
He gets Sam on his side in time for him to choke up bloody water, and he doesn't open his eyes, just shakes and gasps and grits his teeth through these fucking endless shudders. If Dean hadn't just seen him have a fucking seizure, he might think that this was one. He's shaking that fucking hard.
“Sam. You with me?”
“Yeah. I-” and then he's coughing, and Dean would bet fucking anything that was the beginnings of “I can't breathe,” so he hits the power on the nebulizer and hands Sam the mouthpiece.
“When you're ready,” Dean says. “I gotcha. It's okay.”
“Help.”
“Sam. Fuck.”
“Help me. Help me. Please.” And then he moves, jostles his wrist, and screams his way into another seizure.
**
“How's it going in there?” Bobby's framed in the tiny window, craning his neck around Dean to see Sam. “Shit.”
“It's not his blood, it's just...what he's bringing up.” Dean runs his hand down his face. “He's been out for a while.”
“He's crying,” Bobby says, softly.
“Yeah. He's been doing that for a while, too. Can you get more water?”
“Of course. You doing all right in there, Dean?”
“I'm fine.”
Bobby gives him a look.
“Jesus, Bobby, look at him, how do you think I am? What do you want me to say?”
Bobby breathes out. “What can I bring you?”
Demon blood. “Water. Some washcloths. A clean bucket.”
“Can't get you a bucket.”
“What?”
“I'm not opening this door, kid.”
“Come on, he can't go anywhere right now.”
“He's not the one I'm worried about leaving,” Bobby says, and Dean works his whole face to look confused and not at all like he'd considering it. (To get his brother what he needs. To get away. To find wherever the fuck he lost Sam along the way.)
**
Sam's doing a little better, which seems fucking ridiculous to think when he's so pale he's green and fighting for breath with every fucking muscle, but he's sitting up, lucid enough despite what feels like an impossible fever, watching Dean with eyes that always look blue when he's sick.
Dean cups Sam's chin and pushes his hair back. “How you doing in there?”
Sam shakes his head. He has a cup of water, and he's shaking hard and spilling it everywhere. Dean covers Sam's hand with his and helps guide it to his mouth.
“Let me see that wrist.”
“No.”
“C'mon. It's okay.”
It isn't, it's a fucking mess, swollen so hard it looks puffy, the only part of Sam besides his blood-tinged lips that isn't one inhuman color. Dean grazes it with his fingers, and Sam flinches and retches into his bucket.
“It's okay, Sam.”
“You've got to get me out of here,” Sam says. “You've got to. This is going to fucking kill me.”
“Shhhh. Please.”
“I can't fucking breathe. How could you fucking do this to me?”
“Whoa. Stop.”
“Fuck you.” Sam lies down and pushes his face into the bed as hard as he can, and Sam, you can't fucking breathe. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you, I thought you gave a shit, I'm gonna die.”
Dean just bites his tongue and pets Sam's hair and sure enough ten minutes later Sam's crying how sorry he is and whispering, “If I die, I love you so fucking much, okay?” and then he's seizing and Dean's beating at the door and begging Bobby to let him out.
Bobby doesn't answer.
“Cas!” Dean closes his eyes. “Damn it, Cas, please! Somebody fucking help!”
Sam's going blue, fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“I made a fucking mistake, somebody fucking help!”
**
He's coming around now.
Dean pats his cheek over and over. “Hey, Sammy. Hey, Simba. Hey, Sam Sam Sammy.”
He sneezes, which is so fucking Sam that Dean wants to cry.
Except he's already fucking crying, so whatever.
“There's my boy. There he is. How's it going, short stack, can you open your eyes?”
Sam sucks a breath in and nods but doesn't open them, and Dean pets his hair for a while and says, “Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm going to take care of you.”
Five minutes later, Sam still hasn't opened his eyes, and Dean touches his forehead but actually has to fucking draw his hand back because Sam is so hot, shit, and he whimpers when Dean touches him, anyway, and fuck, fucking whimpering, Sam should not be allowed to make that fucking noise, he just shouldn't be.
“Hey, buddy.” Dean reaches his hand around and rubs Sam's back, so gently. He's fucking covered in goosebumps, shivering so hard the bed is shaking, and he's holding the mattress and gasping with his eyes squeezed shut and shit, shit, Dean has never seen him this goddamn sick. “Sammy. You in there?”
“Don't.”
Dean takes his hand away. “Okay.”
But Sam starts crying, then and he doesn't have the fucking air, so Dean says, “Okay okay,” and puts his hand back and says, “Look, buddy, we've got to sit up.” He sits cross-legged on top of Sam's pillow and hauls him up gently so he's leaning against him. “I'm sorry. You're not fucking breathing, we've got to sit up. Come here.” He leans Sam forwards and rubs up and down his back. Christ, his fever's so high. His blood is probably fucking boiling.
“Sam. How you doin' in there?”
Sam's teeth chatter and he pushes his forehead into Dean's neck and it hurts him Sam is so hot but what the fuck is Dean going to do, stop him?
And then Sam says, “I want to hold you when it happens,” and Dean thinks the bottom just fell out of his stomach.
“Oh, fuck. Sam. Sam.” Because now Dean's mind is there, right back in that room, Sam and his high fever and the hellhounds gunning for him in three two one, and if Dean's feeling nostalgia for the night that he died, what the the fuck does that tell him about their lives (it doesn't tell him fucking anything that doesn't make him pull Sam closer and hug the shit out of him, he can tell you that goddamn much).
“Go away,” he whispers, hitting the air. “Don't hurt him. Don't hurt m'Dean,” and Dean holds Sam's head and whispers in his ear to shut up, that he needs to shut up, Sammy please.
But Sam doesn't shut up. He hallucinates John and Jess and Mary and writhes on the bed, slipping out of Dean's arms all the fucking time, and his breathing is tanking, fuck, when was the last time Sam had a decent fucking day as an asthmatic that wasn't thanks to this shit he's been drinking? It's been years. If it were Dean, he'd drink cut fucking glass if it would let him take a deep breath.
(And he's not going to fucking think about what he would drink if it would help him take care of Sam, about what fucking lengths he would have gone to if Sam were in Hell and Jesus fucking Christ if Sam were having nightmares like he is, and just, fuck, Dean already wants to be the fucking wall between Sam and the world, and Sam just wanted to be strong. Sam just wanted to be the hero.)
(But God fucking damn it, Sam, you were stupid. Going to the fucking crossroads demon and trying to switch places, what the fuck did he think Dean would do the second he was yanked up? He'd trade the fuck back, Sam, because that's how this shit works, and why the fuck doesn't Sam see how goddamn important he is?)
It's just that there's a really short list of things Dean wouldn't do to make Sam okay to live without him. (He can't live without Sam. He doesn't care. He doesn't ever fucking want to. Eating his gun the day Sam's lungs crap out, that was always the damn plan.)
(Sam doesn't get to do that shit.)
(Sam is strong.)
(Sam is a hero.)
Dean is so, so, so fucking sorry.
**
He gets worse, shaking with fever and coughing up blood (it's got to be his own at this point, it's in his fucking lungs) and he's too hoarse to speak. He has seizures so violent they move the bed, his wrist is purple and black, and he can't breathe. He just can't fucking breathe.
Dean finally fucking gets Bobby to the door and he says, “Let us out. Now.”
It's hurting Bobby not to, Dean can fucking see that, but it doesn't change the fact that Bobby says, “What can you do for him out here, Dean?”
“I can call a fucking ambulance-”
“And tell them what? That's not what you'd do and we both know it.”
Dean pushes his forehead against the door. “There's a flask in my car. If there's any left in it...or just fucking find a demon and kill him, I don't fucking care. We've got to give him some.”
Bobby says, “He survives this, and it's over.”
“He has to fucking survive this, then!”
“We don't have a damn choice, Dean. He's not Sam as long as he's on this ship.”
Dean breathes out, presses a hand to his forehead.
“Listen, son,” Bobby says. “I'm going to make a run out to this friend of Rufus's, about an hour out. He has some experience with poisonings and such, maybe he'll have something that can help.”
“He's allergic to everything. We can't just stuff herbs in him.”
“I'm just going to explore some options. Anything that sounds like it might help get him through this. Something that will help him. Okay?”
Dean nods, eyes closed.
“You have your phone?” Bobby says.
“Yeah.”
“If he...you know. If you need to get him help. You call me, we'll get him upstairs before any damn paramedics get here.”
“Yeah.”
“You're doing a good job, Dean.”
Bobby leaves, and Dean takes several heavy steps backwards until the bed hits him in the back of the knees and he sits down. Sam's awake, eyes glassy and unfocused, but Dean can tell that he sees him.
“Hey,” Dean says. “You're losing a sock, there.”
Sam looks down, where his sock his hanging halfway off his left foot, so pathetic and shitty and so fucking fixable.
Dean tugs it back on, rubs his hand up and down Sam's calf. “There you go.”
Sam smiles at him.
**
He's taking four breaths a minute.
They're slow but short, because they're so fucking shallow, and Dean's just sitting on the floor by the head of the bed so that his eyes are level with Sam's, and he's holding eye contact and not fucking breaking it.
He's about a foot away from Sam's face, and the heat is like burning bones.
But still, he reaches a hand around and rests his fingers on the back of Sam's neck, brushes his thumb over the top of the spine, and then Sam grabs his wrist and puts Dean's hand on his chest, and Dean's heart practically fucking stops and that's when he knows they're really in trouble. Because fuck if Sam ever, ever lets him do what.
Sam still doesn't have a shirt on, so Dean's been forced to watch every damn muscle in him fight for air for hours, now, but feeling it, this is entirely fucking new. There's fluid in his lungs, absolutely, and it's bad. He's getting retractions between his ribs so much that Dean's fingers feel suctioned in. They're stuttered and uneven, because Sam can't breathe at all reliably right now.
Dean puts his other hand, hesitantly, on Sam's chest. Sam doesn't stop him.
Sam can't care anymore.
Dean runs his hands up and down Sam's sides and tries to fucking reconcile the dry fever of Sam's skin with his blue damn lips and Sam tries to cough but can't and he jostles his wrist and squeezes tears out of his eyes like even crying fucking hurts and then he's seizing, he's seizing, and Dean yells for Ruby so loudly that it scrapes up the back of his throat.
**
“I've been looking for you for hours.” She's outside the door, digging around in her bag. “What the fuck is this place?”
He watches her through the window. “Demon-proof.”
“No shit. What have you done to him?”
“I don't want to talk about it. Cut your fucking arm.”
“Hopefully we can even get him into fighting shape.” She pulls a knife out of her bag. “Look what you've fucking done to him.”
“He doesn't need fighting shape. He needs to breathe. Come on, Ruby.”
And she pauses, fucking pauses, and stares at Dean in disbelief, and awesome, Ruby, you just fucking do that while Sam cries his way through post-seizure back there, just fucking do that.
She says, “You don't know?”
“What?”
“Why do you think your boyfriend hasn't come to help you? They've got him, Dean. Lilith has Castiel, and she's breaking the last seal tonight.”
“I can't deal with this tonight. It just...it can't fucking be tonight.”
“Oh, good, I'll just go tell the apocalypse that.”
“I don't know what to do! The angels were supposed to tell me!”
Ruby stares at him. Slowly raises one eyebrow.
“You're supposed to stop Lilith,” Ruby says. “And you're asking me how? You know how.”
“I'm supposed to stop her. Me. Not Sam. This has nothing to do with Sam.”
“You think you're expected to go in there empty-handed? You get a weapon, Dean.”
Dean pushes his palm into his eye.
“No little knife or gun is going to take out Lilith,” Ruby says. “I only know one thing that can. I only know this one fucking thing, and either you load your weapon or your weapon fucking dies, so which do you think is the right choice here?”
Dean thinks there isn't a right fucking choice here, that's what he thinks, okay?
He closes his eyes and behind him, Sam's breathing stutters a-fucking-gain. Christ, he's still working. He's still trying.
So no, Dean's not going to give up.
That's not how this is going to go down.
He goes to Sam's pile of discarded plastic cups and grabs a handful, stuffs them through the window. “Start filling.”
**
Sam looks up as he comes to the bed, mouths, Hey.
He clears his throat. Hard. Again. And again. Okay. “Hey, Sammy. Gonna sit you up, okay?”
Sam shakes his head and winces.
“C'mere. It's okay.” He puts his arm around his rag doll of a brother and leans him into Dean's side. Sam is cuddly and sick and so fucking Sam, latching onto the hem of Dean's shirt and shoving his face into Dean like he's trying to burrow into his ribcage.
He's always been like this, ever since he was a toddler.
His Sam.
Dean takes a deep breath and puts a cup of blood in Sam's hands. Sam stares.
And then he shakes his fucking head and gives the cup back, and something in Dean's chest shatters.
“Come on.” Dean rubs up and down his back. “We have to go get Lilith, okay? We have to get you well.”
Sam is so fucking feverish and so goddamn confused and this is the worst thing Dean has ever, ever done.
And he lifts the cup to Sam's lips and says, “Here we go, okay?” and tips the rim down. The blood is thick, thicker than human, and it hesitates before it falls into Sam's mouth.
Sam drinks.
**
It takes three swallows before Sam's holding the cup on his own, and by the time he's drained it, he's wiping sweat off his forehead and panting through a breaking fever. “Shit,” he whispers, and sticks out a shaking hand for the next cup. Dean hands it over, and Sam knocks it back in one hit, like a shot. “More.”
“Yeah. Hold on.” He goes to the window to grab another cup from Ruby.
“How's he doing?” she says. She sounds a little lightheaded.
“Breathing.” He turns back around, and Sam is out of bed, pacing, holding that wrist like it isn't goddamn killing him. “Sam. You all right?”
“More. Dean?”
“Yeah.” He hands Sam two more cups and takes a few steps back, and his head flashes to Sam at Stanford, at a party or two with Dean, a beer can in each hand, a shit-eating grin on his face, Jess hanging onto his waist, and he looks at his kid dripping sweat and gulping down blood and...Christ, five years ago. It's only been five fucking years.
“I'm so sorry, Sam.”
Sam doesn't hear him. Sam is drinking.
**
In the car, Sam sucks down the rest of what was in the flask and Ruby takes out a plastic bottle full of someone she drained on the way over and Sam drinks it down like he's dying for it, and he sits in the passenger seat and quivers and laughs and tilts his head back at the roof.
“You sure she's going to be here?” Dean says.
“Tracked your little angel buddy. They've definitely brought him here.”
“We're ending this tonight,” Sam says. “I can't fucking believe this. It's all going to be over. You're a motherfucking hero, Dean.” He smiles at him, and Dean wishes he could drive with his eyes closed. “And I'm helping,” Sam says. “I'm fucking helpful.” He growls and looks out the window and laughs and laughs and laughs.
**
In this horrible shitfest of a day, in the ridiculous, enormous number of pictures of Sam that Dean knows his brain will twist into tortured nightmares for the rest of his life, in the sheer amounts of crap Dean will be sorting through forever and ever, trying to piece his kid back together, there's this one moment that stands out. There's this one fucking bit of it all that Dean would pick out, hands-down, as the one he will never forget.
And it's Sam's eyes, while his hand is still out, while Lilith is cooling on the floor, while Cas is banging on the door and shouting, while blood is dripping from his nose, when he looks at Ruby laughing and realizes, half a second before Dean does, what the hell they've just done.
Which means that there's half of a second in which Dean's kid sees the world ending and Dean doesn't.
There's a half a second of horror and terror and pain that Dean doesn't know.
There's a half-second movie that will repeat itself forever in Dean's mind about the time he used his kid as a weapon and lost.
--
Summary And yeah. He's Sam. But he's an addict. So the usual rules don't apply. It's the second (and final) part of the season 4 fic.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 4, please.
Wordcount: 9,980
Author's Note: Sammyverse--Sam has asthma and the boys are best buddies forever and they talk to each other and stuff. Title is from Motion City Soundtrack's "Together We'll Ring in the New Year," one of my favorite songs ever. First half is HERE.
--
Dean opens the door, coffee in hand, feeling all positive and okay about the universe, and Sam's exactly where he's supposed to be, but he's not alone, and, you know what? Fuck the universe.
“Jesus, Ruby,” Dean says. “Been a while.”
“Yeah, well, you two were hard to find.”
“Wasn't an accident.”
“Sorry, Dean,” Sam says.
“It's fine.” Dean hands him his cup. “Drink. Breathe.”
“Et cetera,” Sam says.
“Yeah.”
Ruby says, “Don't apologize to your fucking prison guard that you got a visitor without his permission. How often does his little angel boyfriend drop by when it's a bad time for you?”
“Hilarious. He's not my fucking boyfriend.”
Ruby says, “Aw, did you break up?”
“They didn't break up,” Sam says. “They had a fight.”
Dean studies Sam while he sips from his coffee cup. He seems like the same wrung-out, wheezy mess he has been for the past few days. So that's good. (How the fuck is that good?)
“Relax,” Ruby says. “I didn't fucking drug him. He said no. You think I'm going to tie him down and forcefeed him?”
“If it gets you what you need, yeah.”
“Jesus, Dean, he could be filled to the brim with the shit, but if he doesn't want to use his powers he's not going to use his powers. I sat here and told him what a fucking mistake he's making and he had too much trouble breathing to argue so he sat there and shook his head and looked morose and then you fucking walked in. Sound accurate, Sam?”
“I can breathe,” Sam says.
Dean look at Ruby. “I want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, and I want to talk to you, but I don't know what the hell has you thinking Sam's okay to be left alone right now. You fucking went out for coffee?”
Dean bites back a lot of fucking things (this kid is my kid, this kid is my kid) and starts setting up the nebulizer. “He's fine.”
“He's not fucking fine. Don't pull that shit with me. I'm not some stranger.”
“Then stop fucking acting like one! How the fuck stupid do you have to be not to know that you don't fucking insult Sam's breathing in front of Sam?”
Sam wheezes out a breath, tugging on his chest.
Dean runs his hand down his face and says, “I'm sorry,” to Sam.
“It's fine.”
Sam doesn't want to be upset.
Dean tosses him the mouthpiece of the nebulizer. “You're fine. We'll be back in a minute. Text if you need help.”
Sam puts the mouthpiece between his teeth. “Don't kill her.”
**
Dean lets the door slam behind him. “Name one fucking reason why I shouldn't.”
“Jesus, Dean, I'm your brother's fucking friend. I didn't give him blood tonight, I haven't given him blood anytime he didn't want it, and, oh yeah, I'm your only fucking shot at killing Lilith.” She pulls her hair back in her hand. “I'm on Sam's side here, all right? I want him to do what he wants. And he wants to breathe and he wants to help you kill Lilith, and how is either of those a bad thing for you?”
“This isn't about me.”
“Oh, bullshit it isn't, why do you think he got on the blood in the first place?”
“Because you talked him into it.”
“Try again. He fucking begged me.”
“So he could fucking breathe.”
She laughs. “You think he gave a shit about whether or not he was breathing?”
“He promised me he'd do whatever it took to keep breathing. He promised. Sam doesn't fucking break promises.”
“He promised he'd keep breathing on his own until you got out, you fucking idiot! The goal wasn't to keep him breathing as long as possible, it was to fucking shorten the amount of time he had to breathe. He was hanging on for dear fucking life, Dean. Do you have any idea the state he was in when I found him? How fucking hard he was trying not to just give the fuck up? He drank like a fucking...like you, he took hunts that by all rights he shouldn't have survived, he wasn't sleeping, he wasn't eating. He was hanging on by a fucking thread. He had the most tenuous grasp on life I've never fucking seen, and you think that didn't falter once or twice?”
“Shut up.”
“You left him, Dean.”
“I did it to save him. He's grateful-”
“Bullshit.”
“He tells me after every fucking nightmare how grateful-”
“He's lying! What you did was selfish and disgusting. You dragged him out of wherever the fuck he was, and God knows it was probably somewhere nice, back into this shitty fucking reality and made him take on Azazel with a hole in his back and the same fucked-up lungs he got to leave behind, and then you told him by the way, you get another year of this barely-tolerable life before I leave you alone to fight this war you shouldn't have had to face in the first place. And you're telling yourself that you did it for him? You want to know what he did for you, Dean? You want to know selfless? He called up the fucking crossroads demon and begged to switch places with you. He didn't ask for a year, he didn't ask for goddamn anything, he tried to switch with you. And you think it was hard for you to breathe in hell? You think they tortured you? Christ, tie Sam up without meds for six hours and he's in agony, can you fucking imagine what they could do to an asthmatic who can't die?”
“Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”
“And the crossroads demon told him no. He told him he was on his way out anyway, that they didn't any use in hell for someone that weak, and that he and his shitty lungs could wait their goddamn turn and they would see him in a few months, because after the things he'd done, after letting his brother die for him and fucking me once or twice, he was a dirty disgusting whore of a sick boy and fuck if the angels would let him anywhere near heaven, and fuck if the demons would let him get anywhere near you once they booted him down to hell. He let Sam get down in the dust and beg and he laughed at him and kicked him and Sam got up and slit his throat and came to me and begged for a way to get you out. So don't you dare pretend that you know what Sam wants.”
What's fucking hilarious is that Dean feels like he can't breathe.
**
“What's going to happen to us when we die, d'you think?” Dean says, because he can't goddamn help himself. He's lying next to Sam with his hand on his back, just feeling him breathe.
“We'll go somewhere nice.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, Dean.” He rolls over and faces him. “We're good, deep down. You weren't supposed to be in Hell, you know? You did it for me. You saved me.”
He really does seem grateful, is the thing.
“You don't worry?” Dean says.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean buries his face under Sam's arm. “Don't lie to me.”
He listens to Sam's lungs stutter a little.
“I worry about everything, Dean,” he says, quietly. “You know me.”
“I'm so sorry, Sam.”
“What?”
“For everything.” He looks up. “I'm not going to leave you, okay?”
“Okay.”
He takes Sam's face in his hands and looks at him, at this goddamn stupid fucking kid.
“What's wrong?” Sam says.
“I'm just breathing you in, kind of.”
“Okay.” Sam tucks his head under Dean's chin. “Okay. Do that.”
**
He falls asleep in Sam's bed and wakes up four hours later sweating and shaking harder than he can ever remember because Jesus Christ Alastair eye droppers and tongs and pulled teeth and there's Sam. Okay. There's Sam. He's lying behind Dean, hands underneath Dean's arms and pressed to his chest, thumbs rubbing circles on Dean's side. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. You're all right. Just a dream. You're here, you're back, we're both okay.”
He's wheezing so, so badly.
And Dean clings to it with both hands, because Sam, the Sam in his head in Hell, he was always okay. Dean breathed in smoke and dirt and rotten bodies and imagined Sam and his whisper-wheeze smiling off somewhere, and no one could fucking take that from him. And now Sam is gripping him so hard and wheezing like he's dying and Dean will fucking take it.
Still, he says, “You need help.”
“I can wait a minute. It's fine.”
Dean pushes his face into his pillow. “Fuck. Sam.”
“It's okay. You're so safe.”
“The things I did...peeled eyes like grapes, Sam, stripped fingers down to fucking tiny bones, bird bones. Sam.”
Sam waits, and Dean thinks he's scared him, he's said too much, Samdoesn'tlovehimanymore, and then he realizes Sam just doesn't want to interrupt him.
“Not gonna talk any more tonight,” Dean says. “So you can.”
Some nights he talks for an hour and Sam nods and tucks his chin on his knees and listens like he isn't scared.
But he can't tonight. He can't do that to Sam right now, and he can't think about this any more. Not tonight.
“Okay.” Both Sam's hands are on his back. “You've been so brave. I don't know how you walk around with this.”
“It was selfish. It really fucking was. Right? I didn't fucking mean it to be, man.”
“What?”
“Leaving you alone.”
“No, Dean. It was...Jesus. You saved my life. You knew I'd get you out of it. I mean, fuck, Dean, it was the only...chance we had to...be together again.”
Fuck, he sounds bad. Dean pushes himself up. “You need help.”
“Shit. Yeah. Please? I did...inhaler. Three hits.”
“Seriously? Fuck.” Dean scrambles to his feet and hits the light, gets a look at him. He's not as bad as Dean had feared-still has his color, isn't going blue, doesn't look too lightheaded-but shit, that wheeze, and he's wincing when he breathes in. His lungs sound clear enough, but he's tight as all hell.
This happens when he's anxious. “You okay?” Dean says, all soft.
Sam knows what he's asking and nods and lifts his chin to get more air.
“We're getting you on a neb, now,” Dean says. “And if that doesn't help, ER. Okay?”
“Okay.”
And then there's a flap of wings, a flap of four fucking wings, and Dean thinks he might lose it completely. It's fucking Uriel again, and Cas, he's sure, but he doesn't see him-until he looks over at the bed and there he is, sitting next to Sam, putting a hand on his back.
He says, “Hello, Dean,” and rubs Sam's back, lowers his voice and says, “Is this all right?”
Sam nods.
Uriel says, “Castiel, don't get your hands dirty,” and Dean's about to fucking lose it but Sam barks, “Shut the...fuck up,” before he can, and shit, no one can get to Sam like an angel. (Dean really doesn't want to think about the implications of that, all right?)
“Leave,” Dean says. “Please. Come back in the morning.”
Uriel says, “You're needed, Dean.”
“I'm about to take him to the hospital. We're not doing this now.”
Sam starts coughing, hard, and he's not exaggerating this time. Cas frowns and presses his hand into his back, his other hand gripping Sam's shoulder to stabilize him. “Am I doing this correctly?” he asks Dean.
“Yeah. Please leave. Sammy. Hey. It's okay.”
Cas says, “I'm sorry, Dean.”
Uriel gives him a look. “Don't apologize to him.”
“We can get Sam to a hospital before we take you-”
“Take me? No.”
Uriel says, “We raised you out of hell for-”
“You didn't raise me! Sam did! Jesus fucking Christ!”
Uriel says, “I can still cast you back down,” and Sam's out of bed, hands in fists, wheezing too hard to stand up straight, and fuck, fuck, this isn't okay. Dean grabs him by the shoulders and guides him back to the bed.
“You. Sit.” He runs his hand roughly through Sam's hair. “Sit. I mean it.”
And then he kneels in front of Sam and Sam watches him and they silently count out breaths together because fuck if Sam is willing to do the nebulizer with them here, if he's going to let himself be even more vulnerable, Dean gets that, but shit, the kid can't breathe, and Uriel goes on and on about these angels being shanked, and how they're going to take Dean and shove him in a room with Alastair and sometimes Dean can't believe the shit the world manages to come up with and fuck, this is going to kill Dean, but right in this goddamn moment it is going to kill Sam.
“You're the best torturer we have,” Uriel says, and what a fucking thing to say when Dean has both hands gripping the hell out of Sam's knees.
“You can't have him,” Sam says. “You can't make him do this. Cas. Please.”
Cas hesitates and says, “Sam, if there were any other-”
“I've had enough of this,” Uriel says, and then he cuts between Dean and Sam and touches his fingers to Dean's forehead and everything goes white.
And he's gone.
**
So he's in some building, staring at Alastair through a window, and his brain can't fucking take hearing Sam wheezing like that one second and then hearing nothing, so, sorry, no.
So he says it, “No, no no no no no” because God fucking damn it he can't imagine anything worse than this, short of being back in the fucking pit, because Jesus Christ Sam is alone and twenty minutes, maybe half an hour away from dying if he doesn't get help, and Dean's who the fuck knows where and Alastair and the stuff on that table and Sam and he makes some noise in the back of his throat that isn't fucking enough, and Cas's hand is on his shoulder, get off, get off.
“I'm sorry,” Cas says. And he sounds like he means it. Shit.
“Bring me back. Right now. Put me back.”
Cas breathes out. “I'm so sorry.”
“I need to go back to Sam.”
Uriel says, “This isn't a favor, Winchester. No one's asking your opinion.”
“I'm not going in there.”
“We have ways of making you.”
Dean feels like a fucking three year old, pissed that his mom's making him eat his carrots, or he would if he weren't so fucking freaked out, if his two worst goddamn nightmares AlastairSammysuffocating weren't playing out at the same fucking time and he presses his hand against the window to hold himself up and says, “Cas, can you just check on Sam?”
“Yes.”
Uriel holds up his hand and says, “Let me.”
“No,” Dean says.
Uriel says, “I think it's time you figured out that what Sam wants isn't the center of this damn plot, boy,” and then he's fucking gone, and Dean thinks his head's going to explode, and Cas says, “Here, here, sit down,” and guides him to some bench, Dean doesn't fucking know.
“What the hell?” Dean says. “Since when is Uriel in charge of you?”
“My loyalty to heaven has been questioned.”
Dean looks up.
Cas isn't looking at him.
“I'm sorry,” Cas says. “For sending you to the boy who died that way.”
“Asthma. Say it out loud, okay?”
“Asthma.” The word sounds funny from him. It's always sounded funny from anyone but Sam, John, Jess. “I'm sorry. For what that must have done to Sam.”
“It didn't do anything. He's fine. He's going to be fine.”
Cas swallows and tilts his head back for a second, then says, “Dean, the angels-”
And then Uriel's back, Uriel isn't supposed to be back, Uriel is supposed to be saying snarky shit to Sam and then beaming him to a goddamn hospital. Uriel isn't supposed to be here and he definitely isn't supposed to be here fucking with Sam, who looks worse, sweaty and pale, hunched over holding his ribcage.
Dean's under his arm to hold him up before he's even fully processed that Sam's here and what the fuck that means. He sits Sam down and looks up at Uriel. “You son of a bitch. What is he doing here?”
“You asked that he be checked on.”
“Sammy. Hey. You okay?”
Sam nods and takes a smoggy breath in.
Dean turns to Cas. “You've got to get him out of here.”
Cas locks eyes with Uriel and says, “Yes.”
“No,” Sam says.
Dean stares at him. “What?”
“I'm not...leaving you here.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Sam looks up at him. “This is going to break you.”
“All the more reason you don't get to fucking see it.”
“No. If something's going to...hurt you...I get to...fucking see it.”
“No.”
Sam glares at him, hard, and with that fucking wheeze it would be kind of funny except it's so so so so fucking not.
Uriel says, “The sooner you get the job done, the sooner you can get Sam to a hospital.”
“Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Get him out of here. Cas. Come on. Please.”
Sam looks at Cas and says. “Don't you dare.”
Cas looks at all three of them, lowers his voice, says, “I'm sorry, Dean.”
“No. Fuck. Come on. Sammy, come on.”
Sam looks at Alastair, and at that point Dean knows he's fucked, because shit, if this were Sam? If Sam were about to go in there against someone who'd tortured him? Dean wouldn't be an inch further away than he had to be, not a fucking chance.
But Dean would also breathe, and that just isn't an option for Sam right now.
And then Uriel says, “I'm getting tired of this,” and snaps his fingers, and Sam gives this breathless yelp and he's cradling his wrist in his hand. It's bent hideously to the side.
“What the fuck?” Dean yells.
Uriel crosses his arm. “Next it'll be his leg.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“When this is over, I'll fix him.”
Sam squeezes his eyes shut and exhales in this desperate fucking wheeze, and Dean says, “You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what the fuck you're doing.”
Cas sits down and talks quietly to Sam. He's soothing him, and Dean just doesn't know what the fuck to do with that.
Sam looks up at him, his pupils shot. He's shaking.
“Fuck,” Dean says. “Fuck. I'll do it.”
**
It isn't hard, once he starts. It never is.
He just becomes this thing, this machine, and he thinks that having Sam watch him will make it impossible, but it doesn't. He just doesn't look at Sam, doesn't think about him gasping in there with his swollen wrist, and it's easier to block him out than it ever, ever has been.
Because he isn't Dean. He definitely isn't anyone's brother. He is syringes of holy water, salt rubs, cheese graters. He's live wires, razor blades, flails. He is the parts of movies where he used to cover Sam's eyes.
He's the monster in the back of the closet.
**
“Your father used to cry for Sam,” Alastair says. “Never for you.”
Demons lie. It's fine.
“You broke the first seal, Dean. You started the apocalpyse. All of this is on you, and you can't stop it. You don't know how.”
Demons lie. It's fine.
“I have a whole team of demons coming to get me. You and your precious little angels don't stand a chance.”
It's fine.
It's fine.
“Poor little Sammy. Can't defend himself so well right now, can he?”
Five minutes later, Dean hears scuffling, hears Cas say something about demons, and he spins around to the window and the angels are worried and Sam is gone and there's a laugh, high and cold and horrible, over Dean's shoulder, and he turns just in time to see Alastair wrench free.
**
No.
This can't be real.
Dean refuses for this to be real.
No.
Alastair, pressed against Dean, forcing his head against the wall, knife underneath his chin, fist driving into his stomach, no, this wasn't supposed to happen agan not fucking ever ever ever again, Sam got him out, Sam got him out--
“Hey!” It's Cas, jamming Ruby's knife into Alastair's back-the knife was already bloody, there were already demons, Alastair didn't lie-and Alastair winces and stumbles but he's not going to die, wouldn't kill Samhain, won't kill Lilith, won't kill Alastair-and Dean makes eye contact with Cas. “Where's Sam?”
“Dean, Sam is-” dead, Sam's dead, but then Alastair straightens and snickers and tugs out the knife and lunges at Dean and then there's another voice, louderdeeperstronger-“Hey!” and Alastair goes flying.
And there he is. Hand out, eyes narrowed, broken wrist hanging at his side. Blood all around his mouth, no, Sammy, no.
Breathing.
Squeezing his hand into a fist and making Alastair moan.
“You okay, Dean?” He doesn't look away from Alastair.
“Sam.” It feels like enough of an answer.
“Hang tight.” His lips twist into a smile. “It's my turn now.”
**
Alastair doesn't know who's killing the angels, but Dean knows Sam doesn't give a shit, knows because he knows his brother, and knows because Sam's smiling while he pumps his fist and watches Alastair choke on nothing.
Uriel and Cas are back, just fucking staring, and Dean's still on the floor dizzy as all hell.
Sam clenches his fist and smiles until blood drips out of his nose and the light goes out of Alastair's white eyes.
He killed him.
He fucking killed him. Didn't exorcise him, didn't disable him, fucking killed him.
Sam can kill demons.
And then Sam turns around and jerks his hand and all of a sudden Uriel's on his knees, and Sam says, “You hurt my brother one too many times, dick,” and Sam can kill more than just demons.
Sam can kill angels.
Sam can kill anything.
Sam is smiling with bloody teeth and he is the scariest thing in the room.
He says, “Dean and I are leaving, now, Cas” and Cas covers his mouth with his hand as they go, like he wants to say something but can't, just can't, and Sam doesn't stick around to make him.
And Dean isn't going to argue with Sam. Not right now.
He doesn't want to lose to Sam right now.
**
Sam drives one-handed, even though he says his wrist doesn't hurt, and he glances over at Dean every so often and whispers “Shhhh,” at red lights, runs his hand up and down Dean's arm.
Dean shudders and closes his eyes and throws up on the side of the road.
**
“Cas is fucked now,” Dean says. “Cas is...whatever the angel term is for fucked.”
“What?”
“He was already in trouble for being friends with us. And now Uriel's dead. And you, and...”
Sam says, “Alastair would have killed you.”
“How much did you drink?”
“I'm not fucking apologizing for what I did, Jesus. How are you feeling?”
“You're going to crash when this is out of you. You're not going to be able to breathe.” How is Dean feeling? He's feeling like he's losing his fucking kid.
“It's fine.”
“This isn't...fuck, Sam. You were almost off it. You were practically off of this shit. And now...” He shakes his head. “We're going back to the motel. We're cleaning you up. We're loading you up on meds and you're sleeping.”
“I'm fucking fine. Let me take care of you.”
“No.”
“You're acting like I'm some rogue fucking child! Exactly how the fuck were we going to get out of there in one piece if I didn't do what I did? Jesus fuck, Dean, I didn't go looking for them, okay? The demons fucking broke in, I had the knife, I couldn't fucking breathe, and you were turning into fucking roboDean in there-”
“Shut up.”
“I'm not a fucking junkie! The blood was there, I made a logical decision, and I did it to help you! I've done fucking all of this to help you, Dean, Jesus.”
Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We're cleaning you up,” he says. “We're loading you up on meds and you're sleeping.”
Sam hits the steering wheel and whispers, “Fine.”
**
By the time Sam gets out of the shower, he's in no state to argue. He's gone gray, and he's twitchy and upset, starting to wheeze again, and fuck, but he looks young, shivering and coughing in his sweatsuit, his hair damp and fucked up.
“Did I scare you?” he says, looking up at Dean, and for the first time, Dean thinks who did you drink? What demon is inside of you?
He tucks this hot, shaky kid under his arm and doesn't say anything. “We're done with this shit,” he says. “Right? We're done?”
Sam hesitates. “Okay.”
Dean lies down with him and rubs his back while his asthma kicks into gear, and he tells Sam bullshit stories about retiring to a house in the mountains and finding a pet Sam isn't allergic to and making pancakes on Sundays and how fucking safe they'll be and when he wakes up Sam is gone.
He's in the bathroom, taking fucking gulps of blood from Ruby's flask, when the fuck did Sam fill that, did Dean really think they were playing fucking Canasta the whole time he was out getting coffee and Dean kind of loses it.
He forces Sam to the floor and yanks his head over the toilet and shoves his fingers down Sam's throat until he throws up, and Sam struggles at first, fighting, but then he gives in and and lets Dean rub his back because what the fuck else is Dean supposed to do, Sam is vomiting blood.
He's done this before, years and years and years ago, helping a miserable fucking Sam throw up at the beginning of an allergic reaction, holding washcloths to his cheeks and blowing on his forehead and promising him it would be okay.
Sam spits and laughs. Low. Cold. “It doesn't matter. It's in me. It's in me and you can't get it out.”
Dean pushes him away and washes his hands.
Sam watches from the floor. “What, is that it? No self-righteous speech?”
“You're an asshole when you're on this shit.”
“No, I'm just not your poor delicate little Sammy you love so fucking much.”
“Shut up, Sam.”
Sam shakes his head and hauls himself to his feet, rinses his mouth out. Christ, his wrist looks horrible. Dean should have brought him to the ER. What the fuck was he thinking? (Sam has blood around his mouth. Sam cannot be seen. Sam is his dirty secret.)
“I was crashing,” Sam said. “I needed it. It's not a big deal.”
“If it talks like an addict-”
“Yeah, fuck you, you smoke fucking cigarettes with an asthmatic little brother, Saint Dean. I drink this shit to help you.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
Sam storms into the bedroom, and Dean follows, because fuck if Sam's getting out of this room. But he doesn't try to leave. He stands over by the table and fucking vibrates.
“You would have died today,” Sam says. “Thank you would be nice.”
“This shit is going to kill you.”
“Yeah well, take a fucking number, demon blood.”
“Stop.”
“You needed me,” Sam says. “Why can't you ever just fucking admit that you need me?”
“I need you, you son of a bitch! I need you. I need my fucking little brother after a fucking nightmare, and I need that goddamn smile of yours to remind me why the fuck I give a shit about any of this fucked up world I'm supposed to be saving, and I need your stupid goddamn jokes and your shitty fucking breathing in the next bed-”
“Well that's spectacular, thank you.”
“--and your fucking heart, okay? I do not need this juiced up asshole who thinks he's a fucking superhero because he can stomach a few mouthfuls of bitch blood.”
“You need more than a shoulder to cry on right now, okay? You're hurt. You were in Hell, for me. You need help, Dean, goddamn it! Someone to goddamn defend you.”
“So you're doing it to help me? You're doing it to breathe? You're doing it to kill Lilith? That's a fuckload of excuses you have there.”
“Reasons, Dean. They're called reasons.”
Dean backs him against a wall (Sam could probably kill him with a fucking glare if he wanted). “You know what I think? I think you like feeling big. I think a lifetime of being sick has finally caught up with you, and now you like how power feels. I think you like killing things."
Sam stares at him, opens his mouth a little.
“What?” Sam says.
“And that's okay.” Dean holds Sam's head still with his hands. “Listen to me. I just tortured someone for an hour and a half, Sam, fuck if I'm throwing stones. But it's my fucking job to make sure the dark parts of you don't take over, and you are fucked in the head if you think I've ever stopped worrying about that.”
“What?” Sam says, again, and he's shaking.
“No. Listen to what I'm saying. I love the motherfucking shit out of you and I am not letting you turn into a fucking...No. This does not happen on my watch. We're done with this crap and we're done now, because I don't care how fucking beat down I am, I don't care if Alastair had ripped me limb from limb to limb, I am still you big brother and that means that before you do something stupid, before you turn yourself into a goddamn monster, you still say Dean, may I.”
And Sam punches him across the face.
**
Dean punches back, and he's not sure if it's just on fucking instinct or if he was looking for an excuse to hit this asshole version of his brother, and he's going to say it's the first one, okay, because as a rule he does not fucking hit Sam, it's different when they're sparring, when Sam's ready for it, when he knows that Sam's okay, but if he's thrown off by listening to Sam breathe like a regular human and by the fucking blow to the face he's fucking excused for punching Sam so hard he goes flying back into the fucking wall, right?
Let's not talk about whether Sam could take Dean in a fight on a normal day (kid can't breathe, seriously, how the fuck is he that fucking strong) but he definitely has an edge when he's juiced up. Sam's on top of him, driving punches into his jaw.
But Dean has a fucking gun with a fucking handle, and he knows the spot on Sam's head that always, always fucking knocks the kid unconscious when he's smacked, so sorry Sam, one-two-you're out. He pushes this massive fucking body off of him and stands up, wipes the blood off his nose, then the blood off of Sam's.
“Road trip, buddy,” he says.
**
Sam wakes up a few minutes later, and Dean's bound his hands and feet (that poor fucking wrist, fucking seriously, Dean splinted it but shit it's got to hurt) and prepared himself for a struggle, but Sam doesn't fight. He opens his eyes and looks at Dean and croaks, “Hey.”
He's wheezing a little, and that's how Dean knows he's coming down, and doesn't that fucking suck.
“Hey,” Dean says.
Sam reaches up and touches Dean's face, carefully. “Hurt you.”
“Didn't even break my nose. You hit like a girl.”
Sam nods a little and leans his head against the window.
“How's your head?”
“Mmm.”
“Oh, I know, kid.”
“You're not mad?”
Of course he is. Of course he fucking is. But what's the point in talking about it? His kid was a violent drugged-out asshole. His kid is sick and he's going to get well.
His kid saved his damn life.
Dean reaches over and runs a thumb over Sam's temple. “You breathing?”
Sam takes a test breath in and lets it out. “Yeah. I'm sorry, Dean.”
“It's all right.”
Sam tries to move his hands to his head and gasps in, and now he's really wheezing, and Dean says, “Hey, hey, I know.” He wants to pull over, he really fucking does, but he doesn't trust Sam not to bolt. So he lets off the gas just a little, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pill he's pre-stashed. “Breathing enough to swallow?”
“Yeah.” Sam looks up as Dean drops the pill into his hand. “Whassit?”
“Percocet. It'll help.”
Sam swallows it, and then he starts in on, “I'm sorry, Dean, I'm sorry,” and fuck, the kid always gets all squishy after a head injury.
“It's okay, Sammy. Everything's going to be okay.”
“I'm never going to do it again.”
“I know. It's okay.”
He wheezes hard and says, “Having trouble, can we pull over?”
And he does sound like he's having trouble. And he does sound like he's sorry. He really, really does. And he's sitting there shaking around that broken wrist and looking so scared and hurt and just like regular, normal, Sammish fucking Sam.
And yeah. He's Sam.
But he's an addict.
So the usual rules don't apply.
“I can't pull over, Sammy. I'm so sorry.”
**
Sam's shaking by the time they get to Bobby's.
“Here,” Dean says. “Here, we're going to take care of you.”
“I'm okay. Don't need taking care of. Dean.” The wrist is fucking killing him. But how the hell is he supposed to take Sam to a hospital right now? He's buzzed and jonesing and no, it's not safe. It's just not fucking safe. It's just a broken wrist. They've weathered out worse.
He keeps a hand on the collar of Sam's jacket as he brings him to Bobby's door, which proves useful when he tries to run a few steps before they reach it, come on, Sam, your fucking hands are still bound.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” he says. “We're okay, buddy.” He puts his arm around Sam's shoulders, locks him dead still. “We're all right.”
Bobby answers the door and looks from Dean, to Sam, back to Dean again. “We have a problem here?”
“Yeah.”
Sam does this whimperflinchwheeze thing and Dean grips him tight.
“You're going to lock us up,” Dean says.
So that's how Dean and Sam end up in the panic room with one bed, one bucket, one duffel bag, and one heavy, bolted door, because Dean doesn't trust Sam not to run and he doesn't trust himself not to cave.
Sam paces and holds his wrist and whispers, “No no no,” for a while before Dean finally gets him to settle on the bed. Sam presses a hand to his cheek and says, “What's in the bag?”
“What's in the box?” Dean fucking forces himself to joke, and Sam gives him this weak smile.
“Every asthma supply we own,” Dean says. “Besides...you know.”
Sam nods a little.
“Okay. Come here.” He guides Sam's head to his shoulder and wraps the blanket around him. “You're going to feel better, kiddo. I promise.”
“I'm not,” Sam whispers. “You're going to feel better.” And then he has his forehead against Dean's neck, and Christ, he's hot, is he sick? And he's crying. Shit. Shit, he can't fucking take when Sam cries.
He holds him and rubs his back through muscle spasms and Sam whisper-begs to be let out and for Dean to feel better.
**
They didn't do cold turkey before, and Sam wasn't fucking on this much before (he drank a demon or two dry back at the warehouse, Dean knows that, Dean isn't fucking stupid) so he's prepared for this to be bad. He knows what they're dealing with.
So it's going to be harder. That's fine.
It's fine.
Sam shakes like all hell and throws up until he has nothing left, so Dean kneels by the bed and helps him through bottles of water. He should have brought more. Fuck. He's going to dehydrate.
“Shit,” Sam gasps. “Shit, shit.”
“It's okay. Breathe.”
“No.” He pushes his face into his pillow. “No no no, Dean. Help. Please. Please.”
“It's okay, Sammy. Come here.” Sam's sweating through his shirt anyway, so Dean strips it off and wastes some water on it, folds it up and lays it on the back of Sam's neck. “There. That's better, huh?”
“No.”
“Okay. What can I do?”
“Hold me down.”
“Shit. Really?” It's just too fucking easy.
But Sam's writing, whispering, “Hold me hold me hold me” so yeah, Dean's up on this tiny as hell bed, wrapping an arm around Sam's waist and holding him.
He stays like that until Sam starts seizing.
**
It's not their first seizure.
Sam used to get them, when he was a tiny fucking kid. Dean barely remembers the first one, just remembers John scared out of his fucking mind and Sam wheezy and off-balance for days. The doctors said it happens sometimes to kids who run high fevers and that they're harmless and will probably help bring the fevers down, and unless he had one when he wasn't fucking feverish, it wasn't anything to worry about, and Sam never did.
And now he's hot as all fucking hell but Dean's thinking this is a different kind of seizure, because little-kid Sam never looked like it hurt, and Dean knows what Sam fucking looks like when he's hurt, okay, and he doesn't think that it's his wrist or the head Dean fucking bashed in, he thinks this is detox and he thinks it fucking sucks, and he remembers reading somewhere that some drugs fucking kill you when you're coming off of them, he knows alcohol, okay, and he knows withdrawal can fucking kill you and what the fuck is this shit in his brother, how the fuck is he supposed to know how to deal with this?
And then there's the whole thing with his kid having the worst lungs this side of any-thefuck-where, yeah, that's kind of a fucking concern.
He didn't want to do it cold turkey, he didn't want to do it this way, but he didn't bring the fucking flask.
So he just kneels onto the floor next to the bed and holds Sam still enough so he doesn't fall off but not so much that he hurts himself flailing against Dean, he knows the rules, and it takes fucking minutes before Sam stops.
He gets Sam on his side in time for him to choke up bloody water, and he doesn't open his eyes, just shakes and gasps and grits his teeth through these fucking endless shudders. If Dean hadn't just seen him have a fucking seizure, he might think that this was one. He's shaking that fucking hard.
“Sam. You with me?”
“Yeah. I-” and then he's coughing, and Dean would bet fucking anything that was the beginnings of “I can't breathe,” so he hits the power on the nebulizer and hands Sam the mouthpiece.
“When you're ready,” Dean says. “I gotcha. It's okay.”
“Help.”
“Sam. Fuck.”
“Help me. Help me. Please.” And then he moves, jostles his wrist, and screams his way into another seizure.
**
“How's it going in there?” Bobby's framed in the tiny window, craning his neck around Dean to see Sam. “Shit.”
“It's not his blood, it's just...what he's bringing up.” Dean runs his hand down his face. “He's been out for a while.”
“He's crying,” Bobby says, softly.
“Yeah. He's been doing that for a while, too. Can you get more water?”
“Of course. You doing all right in there, Dean?”
“I'm fine.”
Bobby gives him a look.
“Jesus, Bobby, look at him, how do you think I am? What do you want me to say?”
Bobby breathes out. “What can I bring you?”
Demon blood. “Water. Some washcloths. A clean bucket.”
“Can't get you a bucket.”
“What?”
“I'm not opening this door, kid.”
“Come on, he can't go anywhere right now.”
“He's not the one I'm worried about leaving,” Bobby says, and Dean works his whole face to look confused and not at all like he'd considering it. (To get his brother what he needs. To get away. To find wherever the fuck he lost Sam along the way.)
**
Sam's doing a little better, which seems fucking ridiculous to think when he's so pale he's green and fighting for breath with every fucking muscle, but he's sitting up, lucid enough despite what feels like an impossible fever, watching Dean with eyes that always look blue when he's sick.
Dean cups Sam's chin and pushes his hair back. “How you doing in there?”
Sam shakes his head. He has a cup of water, and he's shaking hard and spilling it everywhere. Dean covers Sam's hand with his and helps guide it to his mouth.
“Let me see that wrist.”
“No.”
“C'mon. It's okay.”
It isn't, it's a fucking mess, swollen so hard it looks puffy, the only part of Sam besides his blood-tinged lips that isn't one inhuman color. Dean grazes it with his fingers, and Sam flinches and retches into his bucket.
“It's okay, Sam.”
“You've got to get me out of here,” Sam says. “You've got to. This is going to fucking kill me.”
“Shhhh. Please.”
“I can't fucking breathe. How could you fucking do this to me?”
“Whoa. Stop.”
“Fuck you.” Sam lies down and pushes his face into the bed as hard as he can, and Sam, you can't fucking breathe. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you, I thought you gave a shit, I'm gonna die.”
Dean just bites his tongue and pets Sam's hair and sure enough ten minutes later Sam's crying how sorry he is and whispering, “If I die, I love you so fucking much, okay?” and then he's seizing and Dean's beating at the door and begging Bobby to let him out.
Bobby doesn't answer.
“Cas!” Dean closes his eyes. “Damn it, Cas, please! Somebody fucking help!”
Sam's going blue, fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“I made a fucking mistake, somebody fucking help!”
**
He's coming around now.
Dean pats his cheek over and over. “Hey, Sammy. Hey, Simba. Hey, Sam Sam Sammy.”
He sneezes, which is so fucking Sam that Dean wants to cry.
Except he's already fucking crying, so whatever.
“There's my boy. There he is. How's it going, short stack, can you open your eyes?”
Sam sucks a breath in and nods but doesn't open them, and Dean pets his hair for a while and says, “Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm going to take care of you.”
Five minutes later, Sam still hasn't opened his eyes, and Dean touches his forehead but actually has to fucking draw his hand back because Sam is so hot, shit, and he whimpers when Dean touches him, anyway, and fuck, fucking whimpering, Sam should not be allowed to make that fucking noise, he just shouldn't be.
“Hey, buddy.” Dean reaches his hand around and rubs Sam's back, so gently. He's fucking covered in goosebumps, shivering so hard the bed is shaking, and he's holding the mattress and gasping with his eyes squeezed shut and shit, shit, Dean has never seen him this goddamn sick. “Sammy. You in there?”
“Don't.”
Dean takes his hand away. “Okay.”
But Sam starts crying, then and he doesn't have the fucking air, so Dean says, “Okay okay,” and puts his hand back and says, “Look, buddy, we've got to sit up.” He sits cross-legged on top of Sam's pillow and hauls him up gently so he's leaning against him. “I'm sorry. You're not fucking breathing, we've got to sit up. Come here.” He leans Sam forwards and rubs up and down his back. Christ, his fever's so high. His blood is probably fucking boiling.
“Sam. How you doin' in there?”
Sam's teeth chatter and he pushes his forehead into Dean's neck and it hurts him Sam is so hot but what the fuck is Dean going to do, stop him?
And then Sam says, “I want to hold you when it happens,” and Dean thinks the bottom just fell out of his stomach.
“Oh, fuck. Sam. Sam.” Because now Dean's mind is there, right back in that room, Sam and his high fever and the hellhounds gunning for him in three two one, and if Dean's feeling nostalgia for the night that he died, what the the fuck does that tell him about their lives (it doesn't tell him fucking anything that doesn't make him pull Sam closer and hug the shit out of him, he can tell you that goddamn much).
“Go away,” he whispers, hitting the air. “Don't hurt him. Don't hurt m'Dean,” and Dean holds Sam's head and whispers in his ear to shut up, that he needs to shut up, Sammy please.
But Sam doesn't shut up. He hallucinates John and Jess and Mary and writhes on the bed, slipping out of Dean's arms all the fucking time, and his breathing is tanking, fuck, when was the last time Sam had a decent fucking day as an asthmatic that wasn't thanks to this shit he's been drinking? It's been years. If it were Dean, he'd drink cut fucking glass if it would let him take a deep breath.
(And he's not going to fucking think about what he would drink if it would help him take care of Sam, about what fucking lengths he would have gone to if Sam were in Hell and Jesus fucking Christ if Sam were having nightmares like he is, and just, fuck, Dean already wants to be the fucking wall between Sam and the world, and Sam just wanted to be strong. Sam just wanted to be the hero.)
(But God fucking damn it, Sam, you were stupid. Going to the fucking crossroads demon and trying to switch places, what the fuck did he think Dean would do the second he was yanked up? He'd trade the fuck back, Sam, because that's how this shit works, and why the fuck doesn't Sam see how goddamn important he is?)
It's just that there's a really short list of things Dean wouldn't do to make Sam okay to live without him. (He can't live without Sam. He doesn't care. He doesn't ever fucking want to. Eating his gun the day Sam's lungs crap out, that was always the damn plan.)
(Sam doesn't get to do that shit.)
(Sam is strong.)
(Sam is a hero.)
Dean is so, so, so fucking sorry.
**
He gets worse, shaking with fever and coughing up blood (it's got to be his own at this point, it's in his fucking lungs) and he's too hoarse to speak. He has seizures so violent they move the bed, his wrist is purple and black, and he can't breathe. He just can't fucking breathe.
Dean finally fucking gets Bobby to the door and he says, “Let us out. Now.”
It's hurting Bobby not to, Dean can fucking see that, but it doesn't change the fact that Bobby says, “What can you do for him out here, Dean?”
“I can call a fucking ambulance-”
“And tell them what? That's not what you'd do and we both know it.”
Dean pushes his forehead against the door. “There's a flask in my car. If there's any left in it...or just fucking find a demon and kill him, I don't fucking care. We've got to give him some.”
Bobby says, “He survives this, and it's over.”
“He has to fucking survive this, then!”
“We don't have a damn choice, Dean. He's not Sam as long as he's on this ship.”
Dean breathes out, presses a hand to his forehead.
“Listen, son,” Bobby says. “I'm going to make a run out to this friend of Rufus's, about an hour out. He has some experience with poisonings and such, maybe he'll have something that can help.”
“He's allergic to everything. We can't just stuff herbs in him.”
“I'm just going to explore some options. Anything that sounds like it might help get him through this. Something that will help him. Okay?”
Dean nods, eyes closed.
“You have your phone?” Bobby says.
“Yeah.”
“If he...you know. If you need to get him help. You call me, we'll get him upstairs before any damn paramedics get here.”
“Yeah.”
“You're doing a good job, Dean.”
Bobby leaves, and Dean takes several heavy steps backwards until the bed hits him in the back of the knees and he sits down. Sam's awake, eyes glassy and unfocused, but Dean can tell that he sees him.
“Hey,” Dean says. “You're losing a sock, there.”
Sam looks down, where his sock his hanging halfway off his left foot, so pathetic and shitty and so fucking fixable.
Dean tugs it back on, rubs his hand up and down Sam's calf. “There you go.”
Sam smiles at him.
**
He's taking four breaths a minute.
They're slow but short, because they're so fucking shallow, and Dean's just sitting on the floor by the head of the bed so that his eyes are level with Sam's, and he's holding eye contact and not fucking breaking it.
He's about a foot away from Sam's face, and the heat is like burning bones.
But still, he reaches a hand around and rests his fingers on the back of Sam's neck, brushes his thumb over the top of the spine, and then Sam grabs his wrist and puts Dean's hand on his chest, and Dean's heart practically fucking stops and that's when he knows they're really in trouble. Because fuck if Sam ever, ever lets him do what.
Sam still doesn't have a shirt on, so Dean's been forced to watch every damn muscle in him fight for air for hours, now, but feeling it, this is entirely fucking new. There's fluid in his lungs, absolutely, and it's bad. He's getting retractions between his ribs so much that Dean's fingers feel suctioned in. They're stuttered and uneven, because Sam can't breathe at all reliably right now.
Dean puts his other hand, hesitantly, on Sam's chest. Sam doesn't stop him.
Sam can't care anymore.
Dean runs his hands up and down Sam's sides and tries to fucking reconcile the dry fever of Sam's skin with his blue damn lips and Sam tries to cough but can't and he jostles his wrist and squeezes tears out of his eyes like even crying fucking hurts and then he's seizing, he's seizing, and Dean yells for Ruby so loudly that it scrapes up the back of his throat.
**
“I've been looking for you for hours.” She's outside the door, digging around in her bag. “What the fuck is this place?”
He watches her through the window. “Demon-proof.”
“No shit. What have you done to him?”
“I don't want to talk about it. Cut your fucking arm.”
“Hopefully we can even get him into fighting shape.” She pulls a knife out of her bag. “Look what you've fucking done to him.”
“He doesn't need fighting shape. He needs to breathe. Come on, Ruby.”
And she pauses, fucking pauses, and stares at Dean in disbelief, and awesome, Ruby, you just fucking do that while Sam cries his way through post-seizure back there, just fucking do that.
She says, “You don't know?”
“What?”
“Why do you think your boyfriend hasn't come to help you? They've got him, Dean. Lilith has Castiel, and she's breaking the last seal tonight.”
“I can't deal with this tonight. It just...it can't fucking be tonight.”
“Oh, good, I'll just go tell the apocalypse that.”
“I don't know what to do! The angels were supposed to tell me!”
Ruby stares at him. Slowly raises one eyebrow.
“You're supposed to stop Lilith,” Ruby says. “And you're asking me how? You know how.”
“I'm supposed to stop her. Me. Not Sam. This has nothing to do with Sam.”
“You think you're expected to go in there empty-handed? You get a weapon, Dean.”
Dean pushes his palm into his eye.
“No little knife or gun is going to take out Lilith,” Ruby says. “I only know one thing that can. I only know this one fucking thing, and either you load your weapon or your weapon fucking dies, so which do you think is the right choice here?”
Dean thinks there isn't a right fucking choice here, that's what he thinks, okay?
He closes his eyes and behind him, Sam's breathing stutters a-fucking-gain. Christ, he's still working. He's still trying.
So no, Dean's not going to give up.
That's not how this is going to go down.
He goes to Sam's pile of discarded plastic cups and grabs a handful, stuffs them through the window. “Start filling.”
**
Sam looks up as he comes to the bed, mouths, Hey.
He clears his throat. Hard. Again. And again. Okay. “Hey, Sammy. Gonna sit you up, okay?”
Sam shakes his head and winces.
“C'mere. It's okay.” He puts his arm around his rag doll of a brother and leans him into Dean's side. Sam is cuddly and sick and so fucking Sam, latching onto the hem of Dean's shirt and shoving his face into Dean like he's trying to burrow into his ribcage.
He's always been like this, ever since he was a toddler.
His Sam.
Dean takes a deep breath and puts a cup of blood in Sam's hands. Sam stares.
And then he shakes his fucking head and gives the cup back, and something in Dean's chest shatters.
“Come on.” Dean rubs up and down his back. “We have to go get Lilith, okay? We have to get you well.”
Sam is so fucking feverish and so goddamn confused and this is the worst thing Dean has ever, ever done.
And he lifts the cup to Sam's lips and says, “Here we go, okay?” and tips the rim down. The blood is thick, thicker than human, and it hesitates before it falls into Sam's mouth.
Sam drinks.
**
It takes three swallows before Sam's holding the cup on his own, and by the time he's drained it, he's wiping sweat off his forehead and panting through a breaking fever. “Shit,” he whispers, and sticks out a shaking hand for the next cup. Dean hands it over, and Sam knocks it back in one hit, like a shot. “More.”
“Yeah. Hold on.” He goes to the window to grab another cup from Ruby.
“How's he doing?” she says. She sounds a little lightheaded.
“Breathing.” He turns back around, and Sam is out of bed, pacing, holding that wrist like it isn't goddamn killing him. “Sam. You all right?”
“More. Dean?”
“Yeah.” He hands Sam two more cups and takes a few steps back, and his head flashes to Sam at Stanford, at a party or two with Dean, a beer can in each hand, a shit-eating grin on his face, Jess hanging onto his waist, and he looks at his kid dripping sweat and gulping down blood and...Christ, five years ago. It's only been five fucking years.
“I'm so sorry, Sam.”
Sam doesn't hear him. Sam is drinking.
**
In the car, Sam sucks down the rest of what was in the flask and Ruby takes out a plastic bottle full of someone she drained on the way over and Sam drinks it down like he's dying for it, and he sits in the passenger seat and quivers and laughs and tilts his head back at the roof.
“You sure she's going to be here?” Dean says.
“Tracked your little angel buddy. They've definitely brought him here.”
“We're ending this tonight,” Sam says. “I can't fucking believe this. It's all going to be over. You're a motherfucking hero, Dean.” He smiles at him, and Dean wishes he could drive with his eyes closed. “And I'm helping,” Sam says. “I'm fucking helpful.” He growls and looks out the window and laughs and laughs and laughs.
**
In this horrible shitfest of a day, in the ridiculous, enormous number of pictures of Sam that Dean knows his brain will twist into tortured nightmares for the rest of his life, in the sheer amounts of crap Dean will be sorting through forever and ever, trying to piece his kid back together, there's this one moment that stands out. There's this one fucking bit of it all that Dean would pick out, hands-down, as the one he will never forget.
And it's Sam's eyes, while his hand is still out, while Lilith is cooling on the floor, while Cas is banging on the door and shouting, while blood is dripping from his nose, when he looks at Ruby laughing and realizes, half a second before Dean does, what the hell they've just done.
Which means that there's half of a second in which Dean's kid sees the world ending and Dean doesn't.
There's a half a second of horror and terror and pain that Dean doesn't know.
There's a half-second movie that will repeat itself forever in Dean's mind about the time he used his kid as a weapon and lost.
--