Sam Lives Inside My Walls
fTitle: Sam Lives Inside My Walls
Summary: Sam's roommate really, really was not expecting Sam.
Wordcount: 7,075
Author's Note: Stanford, Sam's freshman year, just after Sammy Fell Through the Ice. I know Stanford was not the most-requested in my poll buuuut I already had this finished. And it's MY favorite era. And I wanted to write more Stephen. Also bisexual Sam shows up in this one? It's my headcanon and he's in some of the Jess-lives ones I have in the works so at least college-experimental Sam, tada, here he is. Sorry if you don't like it. Good luck to everyone else gettin' hit by the storm!
Stephen definitely isn't proud of it, but the truth is, up until he got to school, he was not really looking forward to sharing a room with this guy Sam. He might even have sent his friends some bitchy texts to some friends about what a pain in the ass it was going to be living with a guy who fucking willingly confessed that he was annoying to try to sleep around because he breathed badly in his sleep or that, conveniently enough, he would need a fucking ton of sleep also because of what a shitty job he did of it, and he wasn't super psyched about the I really can't have these foods around me list either. But he's not an asshole, and he was totally prepared to (and, despite it all, fine with being nice to--seriously, not an asshole) his geeky little asthmatic roommate. But the thing is that he didn't know he would be Sam.
First of all, he's like six foot thirteen and lanky rather than skinny, and it turns out he plays soccer and can run a four minute mile (seriously, the fuck even is that?) and throws down shots with the best of them. He was totally right about the geeky thing though, but Stephen finds it oddly soothing to come home after his long days in the Chem lab and long nights with hot girls in glasses from his Chem labs and see Sam, who, despite his talents for going out, doesn't very often, mostly because of cigarette smoke and a kind of charming disdain for eighty percent of everybody, hunched over his Norton anthology of whatever the fuck, wheezing and cuddling cups of coffee (in that #1 Brother mug--again, kind of charming) to his chest like it's a heating pad and he hurts.
And yeah, the wheezing thing. Sam wasn't exaggerating about how bad it is--in fact, if anything, Stephen would say he understated it but he's not really mad about it, since even he would probably have run for the hills if he had any idea how bad it would be (before he knew it was Sam, because you might have figured out by now that he's fond of the kid). Sam does keep him up a fair amount of nights (which does annoy him--he's not an asshole but he's not a saint, either) and he does stay home from classes a lot, now that he's got that disability accommodation he was fighting for (way to go, kid). He comes home a lot of the time to Sam pale and plugged into that machine Stephen can never remember the name of (so he calls it a centrifuge just to fuck with him) and Stephen asks quietly when the last time was that he ate and he ignores him.
Turns out the food thing isn't really an issue, by the way. He eats peanut butter sandwiches in the dining hall instead and brings Sam back leftovers of stuff that he can eat because a lot of the time he's too nervous to go out and get something himself (the truth is he's gone from lanky to scrawny and it's pretty sad to watch).
The truth is that Stephen doesn't pity him--you don't pity someone you've known for two and a half months--and he doesn't feel sorry for him. But he does feel really, really bad for him.
**
Stephen goes home for Thanksgiving like a normal person, but Sam gets out of it somehow and stays on campus. But they shut down the dorms during the break so he's without dining hall food even if he is feeling well enough to track it down, and he's also without heat. He got a little heater a few weeks ago because he doesn't do well with cold, but Palo Alto drops hard in November and Stephen's mind does drift to him a few times over the week and a half that he's gone.
He calls at one point and hides worry behind bragging about the Thanksgiving dinner his aunt cooked and laughing about his dad's new car that's so hilariously extravagant that Stephen kind of can't believe it's real. He's a legacy kid.
"What about you?" he says. "How's Thanksgiving there?"
"Someone left me a stuffed turkey," he says.
"What?"
"Anonymous gift. Found it on the doorstep. No note. Maybe it walked here. On its own."
"Gobbled on over," Stephen says. He's not loving those short sentences.
"My brother called. They're in Florida. Warm."
"God, that sounds good." LA's still hot, but all that does is remind Stephen how fucking cold it's going to be back on campus, and the dryness is called pollution and two-thirds of a semester of environmental science is enough to convince him that he's probably going to die before the break is over anyway.
Sam breaks off then to cough some, and it's deep and wet, the kind he hasn't heard much of since the guy was choking on allergies in the beginning of September.
"You better be vacuuming and not sitting around some dusty dorm room." Stephen scuffs his feet over his own carpet. They have a housekeeper.
"You say 'some dorm room' like you think I'm somewhere mysterious."
"Yeah, fuck off."
"Thank you," Sam says, quietly, and it's shit like that that gets to him.
(Sam's just nice, and Sam's just so fucking sick. Is he supposed to not worry a little? He has a twelve-year-old sister he's close to and the girls in her ballet class are calling her fat and this is a problem, but anyway, the fretting thing isn't new.)
Sam's wheezing now, this scratchy breathing he can hear over the phone.
"Hang in there, Sam."
"Hey, I'm fine."
"Go to the hospital and get coddled for a day, seriously. Asthmatic vacation!"
"Stuuuudying."
"You dumb shit."
"Which is why I have to study."
"Get some sleep. You sound like shit."
"I could just stay on the phone. Let you coddle me. Save the school some...insurance money." Breaking to breathe, fantastic.
Stephen needs to make him stop talking. "Nah, I'm getting off now. I'll bring you back pecan pie."
"Asshole. When are you getting back?"
"Sunday. Don't die until then."
"I'll try." But he's just playing around.
Probably.
**
Back on campus, Stephen stops in to see his girl of the month and finishes a legendary burrito con huevos before he's even back to the dorm. His plane was late so doesn't come in until after two, and he's ready to be all quiet because he figures Sam will be asleep, but he's up, sprawled out in bed with the TV on, no books anywhere in arm's reach, which is weird. The turkey's lying next to him with its little legs crossed over its chest.
"Is he dead?" Stephen says.
Sam nods solemnly, turning down the volume. "Tragic turkey accident."
"Fucking turkeys. Drinking and driving?"
"I told him not to."
"You can't trust anyone nowadays."
Sam grins, then wrenches to the side to cough harshly into his elbow. He's wearing that beat-up sweatshirt that's too short in the sleeves for him.
"How you feeling?"
"I'm okay." He nods towards the TV. "Juan here isn't so lucky."
Stephen looks at the screen. "Spanish soap opera?"
"I got on the phone with my brother yesterday and he's like let me tell you what Pilar did to Mateo and fuck if she didn't cheat on him just to have a baby that would be an heir to the Lopez winery."
"Puta!"
"That's sexist gendered language, padawan, but yeah, seriously."
"At least you're doing long sentences again. I brought you coffee."
He perks up immediately. "Yeah?"
"Only person in the world who drinks coffee at 2 AM when he's not even studying. What's up with that, by the way?"
"I love caffeine." Sam cradles the cup. "I love caffeine like you love Tanya."
"Dude, no. Tanya dumped me."
"...how did I not know this?"
"Because the one now is Talia and you don't listen."
"Right. Can I sleep with Tanya?"
"No."
"Damn."
"Don't even fucking pretend you aren't more interested in her brother." Bisexual roommate, what up.
"No comment." He chugs down what's got to be most of the cup and turns to bury his face in the pillow. "Mmph."
"You can't fool me, y'know? You obviously feel like shit."
"Not trying to fool anybody," Sam says, and yeah, that's the part of it Stephen still has issues remembering. When he had a cold a few weeks ago he wanted it to be fucking ignored because he's a nineteen-year-old guy and can handle his own shit, and obviously it's different for Sam, but he's still always kind of taken aback by how easily Sam accepts help. It took him a while to start asking for it--he was very nervous at first, all worried about bothering Stephen all the time--but he's there now, which is kind of confusing and frustrating right now that, no matter what Sam just said, he's clearly feeling a lot worse than he's letting on. Spanish soap operas just to catch up with your brother, yeah right, Sam does not lie around and watch TV unless he's...well, Stephen has never seen Sam just lie around and watch TV.
He crosses the room and rests his fingers against Sam's temple before he can talk himself out of it.
"You know you have a fever?"
"I do?"
"Yeah. No wonder you can't breathe. Come on, I'm turning the light out anyway, I'm fucking exhausted."
Sam nods and curls up around his pillow. He's clearly not getting under his sheets, lazy bastard, so Stephen tugs the comforter off the bottom of the bed and rests it over his legs. Sam's kind of comically too tall for it and is always all scrunched up.
This is new for him, this fever thing. Sam got sick in September but went home for it without Stephen even knowing until he was already gone, and by the time he came home he was fine again. But there are exams coming up and Sam can't really bail out this time, especially if his family's in fucking Florida.
Stephen takes a bottle of water from the mini-fridge, rubs it between his hands to warm it up some, and rests it on the nightstand next to Sam. Something's conspicuously missing. "Where's your inhaler?"
Sam mumbles something and gestures to the pocket of his sweatshirt, aw, kid.
Stephen turns off the night and strips down some, sets his cell phone deliberately within reach just in case.
"Wake me up if you need help," Stephen says. He has easy classes tomorrow.
Sam's quiet, and it takes him a minute to figure out why.
"You can wheeze, y'know?" he says, and Sam does then, wet and messy, damn, Sam, and it takes Stephen a while to fall asleep. He knows Sam's still awake when he does.
**
The sound of the door wakes him up at some point. He rolls over and waits to go back to sleep, but the longer it takes him the more it nags on him that Sam should be back by now. Normally he wouldn't worry--Sam's a wanderer and heads out a lot at night, sometimes when the asthma's bad he unplugs a computer in the lounge and replaces it with that loud machine and camps out there where he won't wake anyone up, which is kind of ingenious if a little sad--but hey, he's a severe asthmatic with a fever and that really does not sound good.
And neither does that really brutal cough he hears all of a sudden from outside, so all right, up and at 'em.
Sam's pacing back and forth down the hallway, socks making whisper noises on the carpet. Besides the breathing he's ghost-quiet.
"Sam?"
His head snaps up. He's panting and his eyes are big and wild.
"All right, buddy, c'mon." He heads down the hall and tugs Sam after him by the sleeve of his t-shirt. He shed the sweatshirt at some point but he's shivering now.
Sam stumbles a little and braces himself against a wall to cough. Fuck, that sounds bad, and the last thing they need is some asshole sticking his head out another room and asking him to quiet down. Sam has this fucking habit of not breathing if he thinks someone's bothered by him trying.
"C'mon," he says, a hand between Sam's shoulder blades now, and that seems to do the trick. He follows, but after a few more stumbles Stephen just wants him sitting down, so he nudges him into his own bed because it's closer. Sam's too out of it to look confused, just balling up and pushing his face into his knees. He flinches with Stephen hits the light.
"Fuck, Sam."
"I need to check the salt..."
"What the hell, kid," he says, but calmly, because if he had a fever like this he'd probably be babbling shit too. He knows Sam has this fucking massive first aid kit, and he goes to the shelving above his bed and digs around in it until he finds a thermometer with a post-it on it--"THIS IS A THERMOMETER, YOU SHOULD USE IT, STUPID SICK KID --D" which makes Stephen smile despite everything--and he brings it over and hands it to Sam. "Get a number on that."
Sam puts in a decent effort but twists away to cough before it's over. Stephen retrieves the thermometer from the bed. It's up past 102 and he didn't even have it in the full time. Shit.
"What do you need, Sam, cough medicine?"
He shakes his head, mumbles "Not for asthmatics," and burrows underneath Stephen's pillow.
"Take your inhaler, though, okay? There you go. All right." He scratches absentmindedly between Sam's shoulder blades while he looks around the room like there's going to be some kind of asthma cure sitting around they hadn't noticed until now. "You want to call your dad?"
Sam shakes his head. "It's 5 AM in Florida."
"I don't think he'd really give a shit, buddy."
"Just sleep," he says, and he sounds halfway there already.
"You know the hospital has oxygen, yeah? And all that medicine. And sometimes a hot nurse or two. You want to head over?" It's worth a shot.
"mmmmno"
"I'm letting it drop for now. I can skip Bio lab to bring you in tomorrow. I would welcome an excuse to skip Bio lab."
"'kay."
"All right. Don't suffocate under there."
"Good pillow sweet pillow," Sam says, which is totally familiar and Stephen can't figure out why until he's all settled in Sam's bed and remembers Sam's brother last time he was here, after that hideous reaction, mumbling out good Sam, sweet Sams when they thought they were alone. He kind of likes Sam's brother. He makes Stephen feel less weird about fussing about the kid a little because Dean takes it to the zillionth degree so it's okay.
Sam's crying a little, and Stephen knows it's just the fever so he doesn't bother him, just lies awake and listens until it quiets down. When Sam eventually does fall asleep, it's with this sigh, this sound like this is okay and Stephen convinces himself that it's true. He'll take him to the hospital tomorrow, get him fixed up. This is okay.
**
Except the next morning he wakes up and Sam's up and fucking dressed, shoving books into his backpack with one hand and pinching a tissue around his nose with the other. He's coughing quietly, muffling it in his hands, and it sounds like there's a gallon of liquid in his lungs, Jesus.
He waits until Sam slings his backpack over his shoulder just in case he's not actually planning to go to class because fucking seriously, Sam, before he sits up and stretches and says, "You've got to be kidding me."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"I'm feeling better." He sneezes a few times and grabs a new handful of tissues.
"You sound like shit."
He shrugs. "Sneezing."
"I thought we were gonna do hospital, now you're going to class?"
"Fever's down," he says. "It's always worse at night. It's the first day back, I can't miss today."
It would be a really shitty day to miss. But still. "Are you sure?"
He has the decency to look guilty now. "I'm not trying to fuck around, I swear. I know I'm sick. I'm the only person in the world who can get a virus from sitting alone in a room for a week, I know. And after class I'm gonna sleep hard, but I can get through the day. It's just two classes."
Fuck, he has an early lab, he's going to be late. He gets up and hurries into some clothes. "What do you have today?"
"Theory, British Lit."
"Who's your friend in Theory?"
"Jessica. I only know her sort of."
"And Brit Lit?"
"Don't really know anyone."
"Okay, then tell Jessica if you need help in Theory and whoever the fuck sits next to you in Brit Lit if you're there. I've got Chem lab until six, want me to send Talia to check on you?"
Sam hesitates, then nods a little.
This is why he likes him, really. Just when you think you've got him pegged--he says he's feeling okay, Stephen, back off, maybe he doesn't want to be babysat--he goes and does the opposite.
"You got it."
**
Talia calls him halfway through lab, and Stephen would take pretty much any excuse to get out of there anyway. And yeah, it's cold as fucking fuck and raining out there so he's been a little worried through the day. It isn't overwhelming. He really did look okay this morning. If he hadn't scared the shit out of him last night, he's not even sure he'd have noticed that he's sick. It's not like he doesn't do a lot of coughing and sneezing even when he's well.
Plus Talia says, "Hey, I checked on Sam. He seems okay. Definitely sick, but not delirious or whatever."
"Breathing?"
"I don't, like, know what his standards are. Sounds like shit. He said it's all right."
"Okay. He doesn't lie about that."
"I wasn't there for very long, I didn't really know what to do..."
Sometimes Stephen has to remind himself that not everyone has baby siblings. He has the sudden urge to call his sister and ask her what she likes when she's sick. But Sam isn't twelve and this isn't some benign stomach flu, and he doesn't know if this can get really bad and he's confused and he just wants Sam to fucking breathe, okay? He's not good at this. Sam probably needs to remind himself that not everyone has an asthmatic little brother, to be perfectly frank.
"What was he doing?"
"Just lying there I guess."
Shit.
"What was he reading?"
"What? He wasn't reading anything."
Well. Shit.
**
He's asleep when Stephen gets back, though, which he'll count as a win. But he stirs when Stephen sets down his stuff, which is convenient because some of said stuff is for Sam.
"Soup, buddy."
"Soup?"
"I told you I liked you."
Sam gives this weak smile and sits up a little. He's paler than this morning but angry fever-pink across his nose and under his eyes. His breathing's definitely the worst of it, and it occurs to him that Sam might not lie but Sam also might be as confused as he is. Shit. What the fuck are two nineteen-year-olds doing trying to manage this shit alone?
"I am not going to school tomorrow," Sam announces.
"Wow shocking."
"Shut up."
"You got through today?"
He nods and coughs into his sleeve some. "Even answered questions, I was a champ. Gold star for me."
"You. Sound. Like. Shit."
"I know. It's bad."
"Hospital?"
He rubs his eye. "You are really pushing this hospital thing."
"They know what to do, unlike some people. Meaning me."
"There's nothing they can do really, they'd strap me down with a nebulizer and hook me to an IV and they couldn't make me better, just more comfortable."
"More comfortable! How awful!"
"I'm comfortable here." He squirms under his covers. "Hospitals have terrible soup."
"That fever goes up any more, I'm bringing you. You're burning like a fire over here."
"Burning like a fire?"
"Shut up."
"Don't ever be an English major."
"Burning like a Sam."
"Fair enough."
"You should do the nebulizer."
"It's all the way over there."
Stephen rolls his eyes and hauls it over and sits on the foot of the bed with it. "Okay, show me how."
Sam's eyes snap up and he says, quietly, "Really?"
"What? Yeah."
It's not until Sam's halfway through explaining that Stephen figures out that this means something to Sam. Learning how to measure out medicine into a cup--seriously, what does Sam think he does in lab all day, this is not hard--is getting to Sam in a way even this fucking virus isn't, and Stephen likes it but is at the same time really fucking frightened by it, and it occurs to him for the first time that Sam's delicate in this way that has nothing directly to do with his lungs. Stephen wonders when the last time was that someone crossed this line for Sam, that someone who didn't have to take care of him did.
"All right, kid," he says, softly. He hands the mouthpiece to Sam as the machine starts up. "No hospital for now."
**
Sam's fast asleep by nine and Stephen has study group, so he leaves a note reminding Sam where he is (he made Sam repeat it back to him before he went to sleep) and grabs an extra sweater before he heads out. It's so fucking cold that he doesn't even complain that they're meeting in the bar for their fucking "study group," even though the thing is that he got a C- on his last test--after the curve--and he really does need to study. But he's cold and the shots feel nice going down.
Everyone's crowded around a table with heavy mugs and heavier textbooks, gel electrophorysis, bio-luminescence, and Stephen's reminded for the twenty-fifth thousandth time (because don't his friends just love to remind him) that his SATs were 200 points below theirs and "if your dad hadn't donated all that money..."
More shots.
"I studied for four hours last night," Kyle says.
Sean laughs. "Four? Sounds relaxing. I was five and a half."
Oh, good! Misery poker! I studied longer! No, I studied longer! My life is horrible! No, my life is MORE horrible! I'm more miserable! I'M more miserable! He sinks his chin down to the table and feels small.
Kevin's girlfriend dumped him. Sean's girlfriend cheated on him. Brian got an eighty-one on his exam. That's nothing, Tommy got a seventy-eight!
"What about you, man, you look tired." Some elbows Stephen, and he realizes for the first time that he is tired.
He's not sure of what.
"My roommate's sick," he says.
Kyle says, "So?" and Stephen--and fucking sue him if he sounds like his mom right now--doesn't think he likes his tone.
"So I was up with him."
"He's got some thing," Sean says to the others. "He's sick a lot."
"He has asthma, it's not exactly some rare tropical illness."
"Who the fuck doesn't have asthma?" Tommy says. "Fuck, I have asthma, it's not a big deal."
Stephen rubs his forehead. "It's different with Sam."
They're laughing and drunk and saying, "Why?"
And Stephen has all these answers on the tip of his tongue--because asthma has different severities, you pre-med assholes, because it's fucking cold outside, because he's such a little brother and I should have brought him home for Thanksgiving--but the one that he says is conveniently his fucking favorite.
"Because I actually like him."
It doesn't have quite the impact he wants it to, because he's drunk and Tommy's drunk and everyone's fucking drunk, and Stephen looks down at his phone to check the time and Kyle says, "Time for you to go check on him?" and no, Stephen does fucking not like his tone, but you know what? It fucking is time to check on him.
"I don't know why it really matters if he's sick," Tommy says while Stephen's gathering his things. "Isn't he an English major?"
Stephen doesn't leave money.
**
The thing is that Stephen loves, loves Biology.
He loves quiet labs. He loves results that make sense. He loves to close his eyes and imagine electron orbitals and visualize cures for diseases he can't pronounce. He loves making mnemonics to remember the functions of different enzymes and he loves when it's just him and just his petri dish and he feels smart.
The thing is that he hates exams and he hates equations that don't make sense and he hates assholes who think he shouldn't need mnemonics.
(The thing is that Stephen hates college and sometimes he thinks his brain locks up like Sam's lungs.)
**
"Hey, Sam. Why are you up?"
He's in front of the microwave. "I'm making tea." Except he's not, he's just standing there shivering and wheezing.
"Where's your mug?" Stephen says. Gently.
"Oh."
"Microwave's not on, buddy."
"Hmm."
"I don't think you're making tea."
"Guess not..."
"C'mon." Stephen nudges him back to bed and digs around the shit on their shared desk, looking for a tea bag. "Your phone's got like six alerts over here."
"It was ringing so I had to put it over there."
"Yeah?"
"If it rang over here it would wake me up so I had to get up and put it over there."
"All right."
Sam sneezes a lot and blows some shitty breaths into his hands.
Stephen sticks a mug of water in the microwave and sits down at the foot of the bed, takes out his textbook. "Want to hear a story? It's called the story of Stephen not fucking understanding Calculus and his asshole friends who apparently took AP before they wore pants without elastic."
"They wear those ugly sweatpants," Sam says. "Still elastic. You're ahead of the curve."
"You should talk," he says, tugging on the knee of Sam's really ugly sweatpants. Sam smiles at him.
"They make you feel like shit," Sam says. "Why are they your friends?"
"I think your insistence that friends should treat you well is maybe why you don't have any friends."
Sam laughs. "Now you know why I hate people."
"That's why I like problem sets." Stephen holds up his textbook. "Problem sets don't have feelings."
Sam shakes his head. "What you need is a book."
"That's your solution to everything."
Sam sneezes hard and then shakes his head a little, straightening up to reach the bookshelves above his bed.
"Hey hey hey, I'll do it. Which one do you want?"
"I don't know yet," Sam says, but then he comes down with a black paperback with a creepy cover.
"Kiss of the Spider Woman?"
"Just read it." He coughs into his sweatshirt. "Don't worry about understanding it."
He leafs through it. "It's got footnotes as big as the pages, when the fuck do I read these?"
"Whenever."
"Is this thing all fucking dialogue?"
"Yeah."
"How do I know who's speaking?"
"Don't think. Just read."
"What the fuck does that even meeeean."
"It means it's all dialogue. So just hear it."
"What's it about?"
Sam squirms under the covers. "It's about two guys stuck in jail together."
"Seriously?"
"They tell each other stories and get sick."
"You like this book, huh?"
Sam cuddles with his pillow. "I like this book."
The microwave beeps, and Stephen brings Sam tea and tosses him his phone. "I bet it's your dad, you should call him."
"Too sick."
"Oxymoron."
"You're an oxymoron."
Stephen settles on his bed and turns the light out. He leaves the little light on on his bed frame so he can see Sam curling up and struggling some with his breathing. He'll turn it off once he's sure he's asleep and okay.
Except he starts reading instead.
And he doesn't understand it.
But he reads Molina telling Valentin what it's like fall in love with a man and Valentin telling him about how unhappy and desperate he is about the world and he watches Sam sleep and, just once, he lets himself not understand.
**
He must fall asleep at some point, because when he opens his eyes his light is still on and the book is scrunched up underneath him and he's so tired, bone-tired, organ-tired, and he doesn't understand why he even woke up until he hears this desperate little howl from the next bed and oh, okay, okay.
Sam has his eyes shut too tightly to be sleeping, but he doesn't really respond when Stephen comes over, just stays curled up and shivering with his arms locked around his chest. Stephen sets the nebulizer up--now that he's done it once, it's easy, just mixing up chemicals--and gets the mask on Sam's face for him. They're clearly doing hospital tonight, but he doesn't want to call an ambulance unless they have to because the hospital's close enough that the hassle's not really worth it, but he also doesn't want to put Sam in a cab in the cold until he's feeling a little better, not if he can help it. It's one of these choices that's so logical and easy that it feels like it has to be wrong, but when Sam's breathing lets up a little it's kind of hard to fight the impulse just to keep him warm (which is so stupid anyway because Jesus Christ this fever, how the fuck high is this?)
He's hunting for the thermometer while Sam plays with the cuff of his shirt--he just needs something to hold, Stephen gets it--when Sam's phone starts vibrating on the night stand. He picks it up. 'D.'
"I'm gonna answer, Sammy."
Sam opens his eyes finally, watches him.
"What's wrong? Hey hey hey you okay?"
He nods.
"Okay. I'm gonna talk to him. Keep the mask on, shh shh shh, stop, breathe. I know." He crosses to the other side of the room and turns away just to get some semblance of privacy, then presses talk. "Dean?"
There's a pause. "I'm looking for my fever. You are not my fever."
"It's Stephen."
"Fever-adjacent. How are you, kid?"
"Fucking freezing."
"That's what I hear, yeah. So why am I talking to you, where's the little one?" Little. "Are you at the hospital?" It's never going to stop confusing Stephen how Dean can be so totally fucking calm about how overbearing he is. Stephen's standing her with a heart rate above any kind of human limit, he's estimating, because Jesus Christ Sam can't fucking breathe, and here's Dean simultaneously sending Sam is the most important thing and yeah whatever it's just Sam vibes and Stephen's too tired to sort this all out so he'll just answer questions, how about that?
"No, we're home still. I think I'm bringing him tonight." There's a little groan from Sam. "Hey, I don't think he wants to..."
"He's just confused. He doesn't mind hospitals really. He likes getting fussed over."
"God, I'm in way over my head here."
"I know, it's okay. Get a read on that fever for me. Is he talking?"
"Not yet. Sam?" He sits on the foot of the bed and looks around. "Where's the thermometer?"
"It fell."
"He's talking, Dean. Fell where?"
"Under the seat."
"You're in bed, buddy."
"I can't find it..."
"It's...here, Sam, look, it's in your hand."
"Oh."
"Okay, Dean, it's in."
"How's he breathing?"
"It's really not good." Something about being on the phone with Dean, with sitting on the foot of the bed and watching Sam trying to pull breaths in around the thermometer, is kicking Stephen's older brother senses all the fuck into overdrive. He has this urge to call is totally healthy, totally asleep little sister and tell her to beat the shit out of the girls in her ballet class.
"Let me hear."
He holds the phone towards Sam, and Sam looks at it warily.
"You don't have to do anything, Sam. Just breathe."
Sam takes the thermometer out the second it beeps and coughs wet and ugly into his elbow, bu Dean, back with Stephen now, says coughing is good, that you have to be able to move air to cough.
Sam's hands are clenched into tight fists over his collarbone, but Stephen takes the one holding the thermometer and carefully eases it open. God, his skin's fucking searing, and the 103.8 on the thermometer isn't much of a surprise, but still, ugh.
"One oh three eight," he tells Dean.
"Damn, that's his least favorite. He crying?"
"I can't tell, he's...a lot of things. Dean, I don't know what I'm doing."
"You're doing great, kid. How's his color, look at fingernails, around his lips."
"He's scrunched all up."
"Coughing still?"
"No, wheezing...yeah, fuck, he's crying."
"That's okay. Take one of his hands, push your thumb into his palm until he uncurls his fingers."
"I don't want to hurt him." It's this moronic thing that gets out of his mouth before he can stop it or even fucking think about it--hurt him? It's just pushing on his hand. (It's just taking away this thing that Sam has cuddled to his chest.)
It's such a fucking stupid thing to say, but Dean says, "I know. He's scary as fuck right now, but he's not nearly as fragile as he looks. He's not even that sick, it's just the fever getting to his head."
"The asthma--"
"--sucks but isn't killing him. But I know it's been bad for a few days and what we're looking for right now is how bad the oxygen deprivation's setting in because that's--Dad shut up, I've got this--more indicative of how serious this is than how bad he's doing right now. Right now is just right now."
"Right now is jut right now, Sammy," Stephen says, taking Sam's hand.
"Hey," Dean says. Sharp.
Stephen almost drops his hand. "What?"
A pause. "Nothing. You're fine."
"Cover your eyes, Sam." Stephen switches on the light on Sam's bed and looks at his fingernails. "Oh, fuck."
"Not good?" Dean's voice is different now.
"No, he's really purple. Okay. Wow. Sam, look at me. His lips too."
"Okay. How are you getting him to the hospital?"
It sounds like a test. "I was gonna call a cab..."
"He's allergic to cabs."
"What?"
"Other people ride in cabs and he's allergic to other people," Dean snaps. "Do you have a car? Aren't you rich?"
"I...yeah, I have a car, but it's at the student lot halfway across campus."
"So?"
"So I don't want to leave him..."
"Shit. Okay." There's a pause, then Dean says, "You know how to be bossy?"
"What?"
"I need you to give him some orders, but you have to act like you mean it or he's not gonna listen."
"I...okay," Stephen says, and Dean feeds him a script and then he sets down the phone and says, "Sam, look at me. Eyes on me."
Sam looks up.
"I'm gonna go get the car. We're going to fix you up. You need to get up and get your clothes on, okay?"
"I'm sick..."
Dean warned him Sam would say that, but he didn't prepare him for the fucking desperate shake in his voice, fuck, what is he doing, he shouldn't care this much, he doesn't want to leave him.
He swallows. "You listen to me, Sam. When I get back, I need you up and in your clothes. Wear your scarf. Put your boots on. Get your wallet, your inhaler, your epipen, your phone. I'm writing this down, okay?" He underlines EPIPEN a few times. Dean's orders. "Wear gloves. You BREATHE until I get back,d o you understand me?"
"I..."
"SAM. Do I make myself clear?"
Sam takes a shaky breath. "Yessir."
Impulsively, Stephen hugs him.
He leaves Dean on the phone in Sam's hand and when he gets back, Sam's ready to go.
"Good job, kid."
**
Except then then they're at the hospital and he says 'severe asthmatic, one oh four,' and there's this flurry of movement and they take him, they take Sam away, and Stephen's standing there going, "No no no his brother said it isn't that bad--" and it's two fucking minutes before he realizes he fucking forgot to tell Sam to put his medic alert bracelet on and he fucking forgot to tell them that he's allergic to penicillin.
And he's fucking pre-med.
**
They didn't give him penicillin for the love of all that is fucking holy, but they weren't as careful with him as they would have been and something clearly got cross-contaminated along the way or a nurse touched him with gloves she hadn't changed or something spilled somewhere and Sam explains all these possibilities to him as he shivers on his gurney and claws at hives on his arms and breathes terrified into his oxygen mask, shh shh shh.
Last time he was here, he was drunk as fuck and had no idea what was going on, just that Sam woke him up and said he was sick so he did what he needed to do. He stood in this fucking ER with no idea what was going on. He called Dean and Dean wanted answers and Stephen just wanted someone to say good job, you got him here, you called his brother, you did okay today.
You did okay for once.
He holds the basin for Sam when he throws up and rubs circles on his back. "God fuck you're really sick."
Sam gives him this weak smile and eases back down on the pillows. "Sorry."
"Pre-med, you know? I'm hard to gross out. You're fine. This from the penicillin that almost was?"
Sam shivers and nods.
"I'm so, so fucking sorry. I shouldn't have let them fucking take you..."
"They do that," Sam says. "They like to grab me. I don't know why."
"Grabbable."
"Apparently."
"Why don't you wear the fucking bracelet all the time?"
Sam closes his eyes and breathes more from the mask. "Dean made me get like thirty before I came to school. They fit like five lines each so I have this whole bunch...I try to coordinate them with what I'm doing that day. Food if I'm doing some lunch thing. Asthma if I'm going jogging. Whatever."
"Apparently not medication if you're sick..."
Sam pouts at him. "Fever."
"Close your eyes. How do you feel?"
"Not great."
"Dean said it's not that bad."
"Dean can suck a load of dicks."
"Can I tell him that?"
"Oh, God, do not."
"Probably would go over easier than 'so on top of all this shit your brother's having an allergic reaction because of me...'"
"Barely an allergic reaction." He scratches the hives some more. "Someday I'm going to have a full-blown reaction on you. When you're not drunk."
"No please."
"You won't mistake this shit for a real reaction after THAT."
"No please."
"Why would you tell Dean, anyway?"
"I....I don't know."
Sam twists his intake bracelet. "I'm not going to tell him, y'know?"
"You're not?"
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"I forgot..." I'm not fucking smart enough.
His hand is on the pillow. He doesn't notice until Sam leans into it, a little.
And then says the one thing that makes Stephen fucking sure he'll be okay.
"Can you read to me?"
**
He takes Kiss of the Spider Woman out of his backpack and reads to Sam until his throat hurts. He figures out when to read the footnotes as he goes. Sometimes he does it one way and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he forgets and has to go back. Sometimes he doesn't go back. Sam doesn't mind. He listens and nods and drifts out and back like Stephen's telling the story exactly how he's supposed to.
Sam's finally checked into a room and in a real deep sleep around eight A.M. Stephen's been texting Dean so that Sam can rest, which mostly consists of taking the pictures that Dean demands--the intake bracelet, the color of his fingernails, his O2 monitor, his little brother smiling.
But now Sam is very asleep and Stephen bunches his backpack on to the arm rest of his chair so maybe he can rest a while, too. At some point he'll go back to the dorm and grab a shower and a change of clothes and maybe a few hours sleep, and he'll eat and bring food back to Sam. He has it all planned out.
But then his phone rings, and he'd been texting for so long he forgot to turn the ringer down, and Sam groans and wheezes his way to half-awake and Stephen says, "No shh shh shh" and squeezes Sam's knee on his way out the door.
"Hello?"
"Dude, where are you, Talia's?" It's Kyle.
"No, I'm not."
"Did you get Brenson's pre-lab done, because for the fucking life of me I can't figure out what the fuck the result we're predicting for 4c--"
"Fuck. That lab's today."
"Yeah...I'm headed there now. Are you not..."
"I'm sorry. I'll talk to Brenson. Find another partner for today?"
"The fuck? This isn't high school."
"Yeah, I'm aware."
"You've got to come to lab. You need to get your shit done."
Sam's still awake in there, tossing around, trying to get comfortable. Stephen says, "Yeah, but..."
"Dude. You're pre-med."
Sam's fussing with his IV in there. It's probably the hives bothering him still. It probably itches. He can get a washcloth and put something over that. He can sit by the bed and read to him some more. He can do all this shit that people think is just for best friends or little sisters or fucking nurse work.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm pre-med."
He brings Sam a fucking washcloth and says, "Come on, kid. Let's you and me design the hospital I'm going to start once I'm running the fucking show."
"No penicillin," Sam says, yawning. "Lots of kids. None of the beds with the sharp corners. Nobody dies."
Stephen takes notes.
(Later he will turn them in to his advisor and get 80% credit for the lab he missed.)
(And his advisor will tell him he'll be a great doctor.)
Summary: Sam's roommate really, really was not expecting Sam.
Wordcount: 7,075
Author's Note: Stanford, Sam's freshman year, just after Sammy Fell Through the Ice. I know Stanford was not the most-requested in my poll buuuut I already had this finished. And it's MY favorite era. And I wanted to write more Stephen. Also bisexual Sam shows up in this one? It's my headcanon and he's in some of the Jess-lives ones I have in the works so at least college-experimental Sam, tada, here he is. Sorry if you don't like it. Good luck to everyone else gettin' hit by the storm!
Stephen definitely isn't proud of it, but the truth is, up until he got to school, he was not really looking forward to sharing a room with this guy Sam. He might even have sent his friends some bitchy texts to some friends about what a pain in the ass it was going to be living with a guy who fucking willingly confessed that he was annoying to try to sleep around because he breathed badly in his sleep or that, conveniently enough, he would need a fucking ton of sleep also because of what a shitty job he did of it, and he wasn't super psyched about the I really can't have these foods around me list either. But he's not an asshole, and he was totally prepared to (and, despite it all, fine with being nice to--seriously, not an asshole) his geeky little asthmatic roommate. But the thing is that he didn't know he would be Sam.
First of all, he's like six foot thirteen and lanky rather than skinny, and it turns out he plays soccer and can run a four minute mile (seriously, the fuck even is that?) and throws down shots with the best of them. He was totally right about the geeky thing though, but Stephen finds it oddly soothing to come home after his long days in the Chem lab and long nights with hot girls in glasses from his Chem labs and see Sam, who, despite his talents for going out, doesn't very often, mostly because of cigarette smoke and a kind of charming disdain for eighty percent of everybody, hunched over his Norton anthology of whatever the fuck, wheezing and cuddling cups of coffee (in that #1 Brother mug--again, kind of charming) to his chest like it's a heating pad and he hurts.
And yeah, the wheezing thing. Sam wasn't exaggerating about how bad it is--in fact, if anything, Stephen would say he understated it but he's not really mad about it, since even he would probably have run for the hills if he had any idea how bad it would be (before he knew it was Sam, because you might have figured out by now that he's fond of the kid). Sam does keep him up a fair amount of nights (which does annoy him--he's not an asshole but he's not a saint, either) and he does stay home from classes a lot, now that he's got that disability accommodation he was fighting for (way to go, kid). He comes home a lot of the time to Sam pale and plugged into that machine Stephen can never remember the name of (so he calls it a centrifuge just to fuck with him) and Stephen asks quietly when the last time was that he ate and he ignores him.
Turns out the food thing isn't really an issue, by the way. He eats peanut butter sandwiches in the dining hall instead and brings Sam back leftovers of stuff that he can eat because a lot of the time he's too nervous to go out and get something himself (the truth is he's gone from lanky to scrawny and it's pretty sad to watch).
The truth is that Stephen doesn't pity him--you don't pity someone you've known for two and a half months--and he doesn't feel sorry for him. But he does feel really, really bad for him.
**
Stephen goes home for Thanksgiving like a normal person, but Sam gets out of it somehow and stays on campus. But they shut down the dorms during the break so he's without dining hall food even if he is feeling well enough to track it down, and he's also without heat. He got a little heater a few weeks ago because he doesn't do well with cold, but Palo Alto drops hard in November and Stephen's mind does drift to him a few times over the week and a half that he's gone.
He calls at one point and hides worry behind bragging about the Thanksgiving dinner his aunt cooked and laughing about his dad's new car that's so hilariously extravagant that Stephen kind of can't believe it's real. He's a legacy kid.
"What about you?" he says. "How's Thanksgiving there?"
"Someone left me a stuffed turkey," he says.
"What?"
"Anonymous gift. Found it on the doorstep. No note. Maybe it walked here. On its own."
"Gobbled on over," Stephen says. He's not loving those short sentences.
"My brother called. They're in Florida. Warm."
"God, that sounds good." LA's still hot, but all that does is remind Stephen how fucking cold it's going to be back on campus, and the dryness is called pollution and two-thirds of a semester of environmental science is enough to convince him that he's probably going to die before the break is over anyway.
Sam breaks off then to cough some, and it's deep and wet, the kind he hasn't heard much of since the guy was choking on allergies in the beginning of September.
"You better be vacuuming and not sitting around some dusty dorm room." Stephen scuffs his feet over his own carpet. They have a housekeeper.
"You say 'some dorm room' like you think I'm somewhere mysterious."
"Yeah, fuck off."
"Thank you," Sam says, quietly, and it's shit like that that gets to him.
(Sam's just nice, and Sam's just so fucking sick. Is he supposed to not worry a little? He has a twelve-year-old sister he's close to and the girls in her ballet class are calling her fat and this is a problem, but anyway, the fretting thing isn't new.)
Sam's wheezing now, this scratchy breathing he can hear over the phone.
"Hang in there, Sam."
"Hey, I'm fine."
"Go to the hospital and get coddled for a day, seriously. Asthmatic vacation!"
"Stuuuudying."
"You dumb shit."
"Which is why I have to study."
"Get some sleep. You sound like shit."
"I could just stay on the phone. Let you coddle me. Save the school some...insurance money." Breaking to breathe, fantastic.
Stephen needs to make him stop talking. "Nah, I'm getting off now. I'll bring you back pecan pie."
"Asshole. When are you getting back?"
"Sunday. Don't die until then."
"I'll try." But he's just playing around.
Probably.
**
Back on campus, Stephen stops in to see his girl of the month and finishes a legendary burrito con huevos before he's even back to the dorm. His plane was late so doesn't come in until after two, and he's ready to be all quiet because he figures Sam will be asleep, but he's up, sprawled out in bed with the TV on, no books anywhere in arm's reach, which is weird. The turkey's lying next to him with its little legs crossed over its chest.
"Is he dead?" Stephen says.
Sam nods solemnly, turning down the volume. "Tragic turkey accident."
"Fucking turkeys. Drinking and driving?"
"I told him not to."
"You can't trust anyone nowadays."
Sam grins, then wrenches to the side to cough harshly into his elbow. He's wearing that beat-up sweatshirt that's too short in the sleeves for him.
"How you feeling?"
"I'm okay." He nods towards the TV. "Juan here isn't so lucky."
Stephen looks at the screen. "Spanish soap opera?"
"I got on the phone with my brother yesterday and he's like let me tell you what Pilar did to Mateo and fuck if she didn't cheat on him just to have a baby that would be an heir to the Lopez winery."
"Puta!"
"That's sexist gendered language, padawan, but yeah, seriously."
"At least you're doing long sentences again. I brought you coffee."
He perks up immediately. "Yeah?"
"Only person in the world who drinks coffee at 2 AM when he's not even studying. What's up with that, by the way?"
"I love caffeine." Sam cradles the cup. "I love caffeine like you love Tanya."
"Dude, no. Tanya dumped me."
"...how did I not know this?"
"Because the one now is Talia and you don't listen."
"Right. Can I sleep with Tanya?"
"No."
"Damn."
"Don't even fucking pretend you aren't more interested in her brother." Bisexual roommate, what up.
"No comment." He chugs down what's got to be most of the cup and turns to bury his face in the pillow. "Mmph."
"You can't fool me, y'know? You obviously feel like shit."
"Not trying to fool anybody," Sam says, and yeah, that's the part of it Stephen still has issues remembering. When he had a cold a few weeks ago he wanted it to be fucking ignored because he's a nineteen-year-old guy and can handle his own shit, and obviously it's different for Sam, but he's still always kind of taken aback by how easily Sam accepts help. It took him a while to start asking for it--he was very nervous at first, all worried about bothering Stephen all the time--but he's there now, which is kind of confusing and frustrating right now that, no matter what Sam just said, he's clearly feeling a lot worse than he's letting on. Spanish soap operas just to catch up with your brother, yeah right, Sam does not lie around and watch TV unless he's...well, Stephen has never seen Sam just lie around and watch TV.
He crosses the room and rests his fingers against Sam's temple before he can talk himself out of it.
"You know you have a fever?"
"I do?"
"Yeah. No wonder you can't breathe. Come on, I'm turning the light out anyway, I'm fucking exhausted."
Sam nods and curls up around his pillow. He's clearly not getting under his sheets, lazy bastard, so Stephen tugs the comforter off the bottom of the bed and rests it over his legs. Sam's kind of comically too tall for it and is always all scrunched up.
This is new for him, this fever thing. Sam got sick in September but went home for it without Stephen even knowing until he was already gone, and by the time he came home he was fine again. But there are exams coming up and Sam can't really bail out this time, especially if his family's in fucking Florida.
Stephen takes a bottle of water from the mini-fridge, rubs it between his hands to warm it up some, and rests it on the nightstand next to Sam. Something's conspicuously missing. "Where's your inhaler?"
Sam mumbles something and gestures to the pocket of his sweatshirt, aw, kid.
Stephen turns off the night and strips down some, sets his cell phone deliberately within reach just in case.
"Wake me up if you need help," Stephen says. He has easy classes tomorrow.
Sam's quiet, and it takes him a minute to figure out why.
"You can wheeze, y'know?" he says, and Sam does then, wet and messy, damn, Sam, and it takes Stephen a while to fall asleep. He knows Sam's still awake when he does.
**
The sound of the door wakes him up at some point. He rolls over and waits to go back to sleep, but the longer it takes him the more it nags on him that Sam should be back by now. Normally he wouldn't worry--Sam's a wanderer and heads out a lot at night, sometimes when the asthma's bad he unplugs a computer in the lounge and replaces it with that loud machine and camps out there where he won't wake anyone up, which is kind of ingenious if a little sad--but hey, he's a severe asthmatic with a fever and that really does not sound good.
And neither does that really brutal cough he hears all of a sudden from outside, so all right, up and at 'em.
Sam's pacing back and forth down the hallway, socks making whisper noises on the carpet. Besides the breathing he's ghost-quiet.
"Sam?"
His head snaps up. He's panting and his eyes are big and wild.
"All right, buddy, c'mon." He heads down the hall and tugs Sam after him by the sleeve of his t-shirt. He shed the sweatshirt at some point but he's shivering now.
Sam stumbles a little and braces himself against a wall to cough. Fuck, that sounds bad, and the last thing they need is some asshole sticking his head out another room and asking him to quiet down. Sam has this fucking habit of not breathing if he thinks someone's bothered by him trying.
"C'mon," he says, a hand between Sam's shoulder blades now, and that seems to do the trick. He follows, but after a few more stumbles Stephen just wants him sitting down, so he nudges him into his own bed because it's closer. Sam's too out of it to look confused, just balling up and pushing his face into his knees. He flinches with Stephen hits the light.
"Fuck, Sam."
"I need to check the salt..."
"What the hell, kid," he says, but calmly, because if he had a fever like this he'd probably be babbling shit too. He knows Sam has this fucking massive first aid kit, and he goes to the shelving above his bed and digs around in it until he finds a thermometer with a post-it on it--"THIS IS A THERMOMETER, YOU SHOULD USE IT, STUPID SICK KID --D" which makes Stephen smile despite everything--and he brings it over and hands it to Sam. "Get a number on that."
Sam puts in a decent effort but twists away to cough before it's over. Stephen retrieves the thermometer from the bed. It's up past 102 and he didn't even have it in the full time. Shit.
"What do you need, Sam, cough medicine?"
He shakes his head, mumbles "Not for asthmatics," and burrows underneath Stephen's pillow.
"Take your inhaler, though, okay? There you go. All right." He scratches absentmindedly between Sam's shoulder blades while he looks around the room like there's going to be some kind of asthma cure sitting around they hadn't noticed until now. "You want to call your dad?"
Sam shakes his head. "It's 5 AM in Florida."
"I don't think he'd really give a shit, buddy."
"Just sleep," he says, and he sounds halfway there already.
"You know the hospital has oxygen, yeah? And all that medicine. And sometimes a hot nurse or two. You want to head over?" It's worth a shot.
"mmmmno"
"I'm letting it drop for now. I can skip Bio lab to bring you in tomorrow. I would welcome an excuse to skip Bio lab."
"'kay."
"All right. Don't suffocate under there."
"Good pillow sweet pillow," Sam says, which is totally familiar and Stephen can't figure out why until he's all settled in Sam's bed and remembers Sam's brother last time he was here, after that hideous reaction, mumbling out good Sam, sweet Sams when they thought they were alone. He kind of likes Sam's brother. He makes Stephen feel less weird about fussing about the kid a little because Dean takes it to the zillionth degree so it's okay.
Sam's crying a little, and Stephen knows it's just the fever so he doesn't bother him, just lies awake and listens until it quiets down. When Sam eventually does fall asleep, it's with this sigh, this sound like this is okay and Stephen convinces himself that it's true. He'll take him to the hospital tomorrow, get him fixed up. This is okay.
**
Except the next morning he wakes up and Sam's up and fucking dressed, shoving books into his backpack with one hand and pinching a tissue around his nose with the other. He's coughing quietly, muffling it in his hands, and it sounds like there's a gallon of liquid in his lungs, Jesus.
He waits until Sam slings his backpack over his shoulder just in case he's not actually planning to go to class because fucking seriously, Sam, before he sits up and stretches and says, "You've got to be kidding me."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"I'm feeling better." He sneezes a few times and grabs a new handful of tissues.
"You sound like shit."
He shrugs. "Sneezing."
"I thought we were gonna do hospital, now you're going to class?"
"Fever's down," he says. "It's always worse at night. It's the first day back, I can't miss today."
It would be a really shitty day to miss. But still. "Are you sure?"
He has the decency to look guilty now. "I'm not trying to fuck around, I swear. I know I'm sick. I'm the only person in the world who can get a virus from sitting alone in a room for a week, I know. And after class I'm gonna sleep hard, but I can get through the day. It's just two classes."
Fuck, he has an early lab, he's going to be late. He gets up and hurries into some clothes. "What do you have today?"
"Theory, British Lit."
"Who's your friend in Theory?"
"Jessica. I only know her sort of."
"And Brit Lit?"
"Don't really know anyone."
"Okay, then tell Jessica if you need help in Theory and whoever the fuck sits next to you in Brit Lit if you're there. I've got Chem lab until six, want me to send Talia to check on you?"
Sam hesitates, then nods a little.
This is why he likes him, really. Just when you think you've got him pegged--he says he's feeling okay, Stephen, back off, maybe he doesn't want to be babysat--he goes and does the opposite.
"You got it."
**
Talia calls him halfway through lab, and Stephen would take pretty much any excuse to get out of there anyway. And yeah, it's cold as fucking fuck and raining out there so he's been a little worried through the day. It isn't overwhelming. He really did look okay this morning. If he hadn't scared the shit out of him last night, he's not even sure he'd have noticed that he's sick. It's not like he doesn't do a lot of coughing and sneezing even when he's well.
Plus Talia says, "Hey, I checked on Sam. He seems okay. Definitely sick, but not delirious or whatever."
"Breathing?"
"I don't, like, know what his standards are. Sounds like shit. He said it's all right."
"Okay. He doesn't lie about that."
"I wasn't there for very long, I didn't really know what to do..."
Sometimes Stephen has to remind himself that not everyone has baby siblings. He has the sudden urge to call his sister and ask her what she likes when she's sick. But Sam isn't twelve and this isn't some benign stomach flu, and he doesn't know if this can get really bad and he's confused and he just wants Sam to fucking breathe, okay? He's not good at this. Sam probably needs to remind himself that not everyone has an asthmatic little brother, to be perfectly frank.
"What was he doing?"
"Just lying there I guess."
Shit.
"What was he reading?"
"What? He wasn't reading anything."
Well. Shit.
**
He's asleep when Stephen gets back, though, which he'll count as a win. But he stirs when Stephen sets down his stuff, which is convenient because some of said stuff is for Sam.
"Soup, buddy."
"Soup?"
"I told you I liked you."
Sam gives this weak smile and sits up a little. He's paler than this morning but angry fever-pink across his nose and under his eyes. His breathing's definitely the worst of it, and it occurs to him that Sam might not lie but Sam also might be as confused as he is. Shit. What the fuck are two nineteen-year-olds doing trying to manage this shit alone?
"I am not going to school tomorrow," Sam announces.
"Wow shocking."
"Shut up."
"You got through today?"
He nods and coughs into his sleeve some. "Even answered questions, I was a champ. Gold star for me."
"You. Sound. Like. Shit."
"I know. It's bad."
"Hospital?"
He rubs his eye. "You are really pushing this hospital thing."
"They know what to do, unlike some people. Meaning me."
"There's nothing they can do really, they'd strap me down with a nebulizer and hook me to an IV and they couldn't make me better, just more comfortable."
"More comfortable! How awful!"
"I'm comfortable here." He squirms under his covers. "Hospitals have terrible soup."
"That fever goes up any more, I'm bringing you. You're burning like a fire over here."
"Burning like a fire?"
"Shut up."
"Don't ever be an English major."
"Burning like a Sam."
"Fair enough."
"You should do the nebulizer."
"It's all the way over there."
Stephen rolls his eyes and hauls it over and sits on the foot of the bed with it. "Okay, show me how."
Sam's eyes snap up and he says, quietly, "Really?"
"What? Yeah."
It's not until Sam's halfway through explaining that Stephen figures out that this means something to Sam. Learning how to measure out medicine into a cup--seriously, what does Sam think he does in lab all day, this is not hard--is getting to Sam in a way even this fucking virus isn't, and Stephen likes it but is at the same time really fucking frightened by it, and it occurs to him for the first time that Sam's delicate in this way that has nothing directly to do with his lungs. Stephen wonders when the last time was that someone crossed this line for Sam, that someone who didn't have to take care of him did.
"All right, kid," he says, softly. He hands the mouthpiece to Sam as the machine starts up. "No hospital for now."
**
Sam's fast asleep by nine and Stephen has study group, so he leaves a note reminding Sam where he is (he made Sam repeat it back to him before he went to sleep) and grabs an extra sweater before he heads out. It's so fucking cold that he doesn't even complain that they're meeting in the bar for their fucking "study group," even though the thing is that he got a C- on his last test--after the curve--and he really does need to study. But he's cold and the shots feel nice going down.
Everyone's crowded around a table with heavy mugs and heavier textbooks, gel electrophorysis, bio-luminescence, and Stephen's reminded for the twenty-fifth thousandth time (because don't his friends just love to remind him) that his SATs were 200 points below theirs and "if your dad hadn't donated all that money..."
More shots.
"I studied for four hours last night," Kyle says.
Sean laughs. "Four? Sounds relaxing. I was five and a half."
Oh, good! Misery poker! I studied longer! No, I studied longer! My life is horrible! No, my life is MORE horrible! I'm more miserable! I'M more miserable! He sinks his chin down to the table and feels small.
Kevin's girlfriend dumped him. Sean's girlfriend cheated on him. Brian got an eighty-one on his exam. That's nothing, Tommy got a seventy-eight!
"What about you, man, you look tired." Some elbows Stephen, and he realizes for the first time that he is tired.
He's not sure of what.
"My roommate's sick," he says.
Kyle says, "So?" and Stephen--and fucking sue him if he sounds like his mom right now--doesn't think he likes his tone.
"So I was up with him."
"He's got some thing," Sean says to the others. "He's sick a lot."
"He has asthma, it's not exactly some rare tropical illness."
"Who the fuck doesn't have asthma?" Tommy says. "Fuck, I have asthma, it's not a big deal."
Stephen rubs his forehead. "It's different with Sam."
They're laughing and drunk and saying, "Why?"
And Stephen has all these answers on the tip of his tongue--because asthma has different severities, you pre-med assholes, because it's fucking cold outside, because he's such a little brother and I should have brought him home for Thanksgiving--but the one that he says is conveniently his fucking favorite.
"Because I actually like him."
It doesn't have quite the impact he wants it to, because he's drunk and Tommy's drunk and everyone's fucking drunk, and Stephen looks down at his phone to check the time and Kyle says, "Time for you to go check on him?" and no, Stephen does fucking not like his tone, but you know what? It fucking is time to check on him.
"I don't know why it really matters if he's sick," Tommy says while Stephen's gathering his things. "Isn't he an English major?"
Stephen doesn't leave money.
**
The thing is that Stephen loves, loves Biology.
He loves quiet labs. He loves results that make sense. He loves to close his eyes and imagine electron orbitals and visualize cures for diseases he can't pronounce. He loves making mnemonics to remember the functions of different enzymes and he loves when it's just him and just his petri dish and he feels smart.
The thing is that he hates exams and he hates equations that don't make sense and he hates assholes who think he shouldn't need mnemonics.
(The thing is that Stephen hates college and sometimes he thinks his brain locks up like Sam's lungs.)
**
"Hey, Sam. Why are you up?"
He's in front of the microwave. "I'm making tea." Except he's not, he's just standing there shivering and wheezing.
"Where's your mug?" Stephen says. Gently.
"Oh."
"Microwave's not on, buddy."
"Hmm."
"I don't think you're making tea."
"Guess not..."
"C'mon." Stephen nudges him back to bed and digs around the shit on their shared desk, looking for a tea bag. "Your phone's got like six alerts over here."
"It was ringing so I had to put it over there."
"Yeah?"
"If it rang over here it would wake me up so I had to get up and put it over there."
"All right."
Sam sneezes a lot and blows some shitty breaths into his hands.
Stephen sticks a mug of water in the microwave and sits down at the foot of the bed, takes out his textbook. "Want to hear a story? It's called the story of Stephen not fucking understanding Calculus and his asshole friends who apparently took AP before they wore pants without elastic."
"They wear those ugly sweatpants," Sam says. "Still elastic. You're ahead of the curve."
"You should talk," he says, tugging on the knee of Sam's really ugly sweatpants. Sam smiles at him.
"They make you feel like shit," Sam says. "Why are they your friends?"
"I think your insistence that friends should treat you well is maybe why you don't have any friends."
Sam laughs. "Now you know why I hate people."
"That's why I like problem sets." Stephen holds up his textbook. "Problem sets don't have feelings."
Sam shakes his head. "What you need is a book."
"That's your solution to everything."
Sam sneezes hard and then shakes his head a little, straightening up to reach the bookshelves above his bed.
"Hey hey hey, I'll do it. Which one do you want?"
"I don't know yet," Sam says, but then he comes down with a black paperback with a creepy cover.
"Kiss of the Spider Woman?"
"Just read it." He coughs into his sweatshirt. "Don't worry about understanding it."
He leafs through it. "It's got footnotes as big as the pages, when the fuck do I read these?"
"Whenever."
"Is this thing all fucking dialogue?"
"Yeah."
"How do I know who's speaking?"
"Don't think. Just read."
"What the fuck does that even meeeean."
"It means it's all dialogue. So just hear it."
"What's it about?"
Sam squirms under the covers. "It's about two guys stuck in jail together."
"Seriously?"
"They tell each other stories and get sick."
"You like this book, huh?"
Sam cuddles with his pillow. "I like this book."
The microwave beeps, and Stephen brings Sam tea and tosses him his phone. "I bet it's your dad, you should call him."
"Too sick."
"Oxymoron."
"You're an oxymoron."
Stephen settles on his bed and turns the light out. He leaves the little light on on his bed frame so he can see Sam curling up and struggling some with his breathing. He'll turn it off once he's sure he's asleep and okay.
Except he starts reading instead.
And he doesn't understand it.
But he reads Molina telling Valentin what it's like fall in love with a man and Valentin telling him about how unhappy and desperate he is about the world and he watches Sam sleep and, just once, he lets himself not understand.
**
He must fall asleep at some point, because when he opens his eyes his light is still on and the book is scrunched up underneath him and he's so tired, bone-tired, organ-tired, and he doesn't understand why he even woke up until he hears this desperate little howl from the next bed and oh, okay, okay.
Sam has his eyes shut too tightly to be sleeping, but he doesn't really respond when Stephen comes over, just stays curled up and shivering with his arms locked around his chest. Stephen sets the nebulizer up--now that he's done it once, it's easy, just mixing up chemicals--and gets the mask on Sam's face for him. They're clearly doing hospital tonight, but he doesn't want to call an ambulance unless they have to because the hospital's close enough that the hassle's not really worth it, but he also doesn't want to put Sam in a cab in the cold until he's feeling a little better, not if he can help it. It's one of these choices that's so logical and easy that it feels like it has to be wrong, but when Sam's breathing lets up a little it's kind of hard to fight the impulse just to keep him warm (which is so stupid anyway because Jesus Christ this fever, how the fuck high is this?)
He's hunting for the thermometer while Sam plays with the cuff of his shirt--he just needs something to hold, Stephen gets it--when Sam's phone starts vibrating on the night stand. He picks it up. 'D.'
"I'm gonna answer, Sammy."
Sam opens his eyes finally, watches him.
"What's wrong? Hey hey hey you okay?"
He nods.
"Okay. I'm gonna talk to him. Keep the mask on, shh shh shh, stop, breathe. I know." He crosses to the other side of the room and turns away just to get some semblance of privacy, then presses talk. "Dean?"
There's a pause. "I'm looking for my fever. You are not my fever."
"It's Stephen."
"Fever-adjacent. How are you, kid?"
"Fucking freezing."
"That's what I hear, yeah. So why am I talking to you, where's the little one?" Little. "Are you at the hospital?" It's never going to stop confusing Stephen how Dean can be so totally fucking calm about how overbearing he is. Stephen's standing her with a heart rate above any kind of human limit, he's estimating, because Jesus Christ Sam can't fucking breathe, and here's Dean simultaneously sending Sam is the most important thing and yeah whatever it's just Sam vibes and Stephen's too tired to sort this all out so he'll just answer questions, how about that?
"No, we're home still. I think I'm bringing him tonight." There's a little groan from Sam. "Hey, I don't think he wants to..."
"He's just confused. He doesn't mind hospitals really. He likes getting fussed over."
"God, I'm in way over my head here."
"I know, it's okay. Get a read on that fever for me. Is he talking?"
"Not yet. Sam?" He sits on the foot of the bed and looks around. "Where's the thermometer?"
"It fell."
"He's talking, Dean. Fell where?"
"Under the seat."
"You're in bed, buddy."
"I can't find it..."
"It's...here, Sam, look, it's in your hand."
"Oh."
"Okay, Dean, it's in."
"How's he breathing?"
"It's really not good." Something about being on the phone with Dean, with sitting on the foot of the bed and watching Sam trying to pull breaths in around the thermometer, is kicking Stephen's older brother senses all the fuck into overdrive. He has this urge to call is totally healthy, totally asleep little sister and tell her to beat the shit out of the girls in her ballet class.
"Let me hear."
He holds the phone towards Sam, and Sam looks at it warily.
"You don't have to do anything, Sam. Just breathe."
Sam takes the thermometer out the second it beeps and coughs wet and ugly into his elbow, bu Dean, back with Stephen now, says coughing is good, that you have to be able to move air to cough.
Sam's hands are clenched into tight fists over his collarbone, but Stephen takes the one holding the thermometer and carefully eases it open. God, his skin's fucking searing, and the 103.8 on the thermometer isn't much of a surprise, but still, ugh.
"One oh three eight," he tells Dean.
"Damn, that's his least favorite. He crying?"
"I can't tell, he's...a lot of things. Dean, I don't know what I'm doing."
"You're doing great, kid. How's his color, look at fingernails, around his lips."
"He's scrunched all up."
"Coughing still?"
"No, wheezing...yeah, fuck, he's crying."
"That's okay. Take one of his hands, push your thumb into his palm until he uncurls his fingers."
"I don't want to hurt him." It's this moronic thing that gets out of his mouth before he can stop it or even fucking think about it--hurt him? It's just pushing on his hand. (It's just taking away this thing that Sam has cuddled to his chest.)
It's such a fucking stupid thing to say, but Dean says, "I know. He's scary as fuck right now, but he's not nearly as fragile as he looks. He's not even that sick, it's just the fever getting to his head."
"The asthma--"
"--sucks but isn't killing him. But I know it's been bad for a few days and what we're looking for right now is how bad the oxygen deprivation's setting in because that's--Dad shut up, I've got this--more indicative of how serious this is than how bad he's doing right now. Right now is just right now."
"Right now is jut right now, Sammy," Stephen says, taking Sam's hand.
"Hey," Dean says. Sharp.
Stephen almost drops his hand. "What?"
A pause. "Nothing. You're fine."
"Cover your eyes, Sam." Stephen switches on the light on Sam's bed and looks at his fingernails. "Oh, fuck."
"Not good?" Dean's voice is different now.
"No, he's really purple. Okay. Wow. Sam, look at me. His lips too."
"Okay. How are you getting him to the hospital?"
It sounds like a test. "I was gonna call a cab..."
"He's allergic to cabs."
"What?"
"Other people ride in cabs and he's allergic to other people," Dean snaps. "Do you have a car? Aren't you rich?"
"I...yeah, I have a car, but it's at the student lot halfway across campus."
"So?"
"So I don't want to leave him..."
"Shit. Okay." There's a pause, then Dean says, "You know how to be bossy?"
"What?"
"I need you to give him some orders, but you have to act like you mean it or he's not gonna listen."
"I...okay," Stephen says, and Dean feeds him a script and then he sets down the phone and says, "Sam, look at me. Eyes on me."
Sam looks up.
"I'm gonna go get the car. We're going to fix you up. You need to get up and get your clothes on, okay?"
"I'm sick..."
Dean warned him Sam would say that, but he didn't prepare him for the fucking desperate shake in his voice, fuck, what is he doing, he shouldn't care this much, he doesn't want to leave him.
He swallows. "You listen to me, Sam. When I get back, I need you up and in your clothes. Wear your scarf. Put your boots on. Get your wallet, your inhaler, your epipen, your phone. I'm writing this down, okay?" He underlines EPIPEN a few times. Dean's orders. "Wear gloves. You BREATHE until I get back,d o you understand me?"
"I..."
"SAM. Do I make myself clear?"
Sam takes a shaky breath. "Yessir."
Impulsively, Stephen hugs him.
He leaves Dean on the phone in Sam's hand and when he gets back, Sam's ready to go.
"Good job, kid."
**
Except then then they're at the hospital and he says 'severe asthmatic, one oh four,' and there's this flurry of movement and they take him, they take Sam away, and Stephen's standing there going, "No no no his brother said it isn't that bad--" and it's two fucking minutes before he realizes he fucking forgot to tell Sam to put his medic alert bracelet on and he fucking forgot to tell them that he's allergic to penicillin.
And he's fucking pre-med.
**
They didn't give him penicillin for the love of all that is fucking holy, but they weren't as careful with him as they would have been and something clearly got cross-contaminated along the way or a nurse touched him with gloves she hadn't changed or something spilled somewhere and Sam explains all these possibilities to him as he shivers on his gurney and claws at hives on his arms and breathes terrified into his oxygen mask, shh shh shh.
Last time he was here, he was drunk as fuck and had no idea what was going on, just that Sam woke him up and said he was sick so he did what he needed to do. He stood in this fucking ER with no idea what was going on. He called Dean and Dean wanted answers and Stephen just wanted someone to say good job, you got him here, you called his brother, you did okay today.
You did okay for once.
He holds the basin for Sam when he throws up and rubs circles on his back. "God fuck you're really sick."
Sam gives him this weak smile and eases back down on the pillows. "Sorry."
"Pre-med, you know? I'm hard to gross out. You're fine. This from the penicillin that almost was?"
Sam shivers and nods.
"I'm so, so fucking sorry. I shouldn't have let them fucking take you..."
"They do that," Sam says. "They like to grab me. I don't know why."
"Grabbable."
"Apparently."
"Why don't you wear the fucking bracelet all the time?"
Sam closes his eyes and breathes more from the mask. "Dean made me get like thirty before I came to school. They fit like five lines each so I have this whole bunch...I try to coordinate them with what I'm doing that day. Food if I'm doing some lunch thing. Asthma if I'm going jogging. Whatever."
"Apparently not medication if you're sick..."
Sam pouts at him. "Fever."
"Close your eyes. How do you feel?"
"Not great."
"Dean said it's not that bad."
"Dean can suck a load of dicks."
"Can I tell him that?"
"Oh, God, do not."
"Probably would go over easier than 'so on top of all this shit your brother's having an allergic reaction because of me...'"
"Barely an allergic reaction." He scratches the hives some more. "Someday I'm going to have a full-blown reaction on you. When you're not drunk."
"No please."
"You won't mistake this shit for a real reaction after THAT."
"No please."
"Why would you tell Dean, anyway?"
"I....I don't know."
Sam twists his intake bracelet. "I'm not going to tell him, y'know?"
"You're not?"
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"I forgot..." I'm not fucking smart enough.
His hand is on the pillow. He doesn't notice until Sam leans into it, a little.
And then says the one thing that makes Stephen fucking sure he'll be okay.
"Can you read to me?"
**
He takes Kiss of the Spider Woman out of his backpack and reads to Sam until his throat hurts. He figures out when to read the footnotes as he goes. Sometimes he does it one way and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he forgets and has to go back. Sometimes he doesn't go back. Sam doesn't mind. He listens and nods and drifts out and back like Stephen's telling the story exactly how he's supposed to.
Sam's finally checked into a room and in a real deep sleep around eight A.M. Stephen's been texting Dean so that Sam can rest, which mostly consists of taking the pictures that Dean demands--the intake bracelet, the color of his fingernails, his O2 monitor, his little brother smiling.
But now Sam is very asleep and Stephen bunches his backpack on to the arm rest of his chair so maybe he can rest a while, too. At some point he'll go back to the dorm and grab a shower and a change of clothes and maybe a few hours sleep, and he'll eat and bring food back to Sam. He has it all planned out.
But then his phone rings, and he'd been texting for so long he forgot to turn the ringer down, and Sam groans and wheezes his way to half-awake and Stephen says, "No shh shh shh" and squeezes Sam's knee on his way out the door.
"Hello?"
"Dude, where are you, Talia's?" It's Kyle.
"No, I'm not."
"Did you get Brenson's pre-lab done, because for the fucking life of me I can't figure out what the fuck the result we're predicting for 4c--"
"Fuck. That lab's today."
"Yeah...I'm headed there now. Are you not..."
"I'm sorry. I'll talk to Brenson. Find another partner for today?"
"The fuck? This isn't high school."
"Yeah, I'm aware."
"You've got to come to lab. You need to get your shit done."
Sam's still awake in there, tossing around, trying to get comfortable. Stephen says, "Yeah, but..."
"Dude. You're pre-med."
Sam's fussing with his IV in there. It's probably the hives bothering him still. It probably itches. He can get a washcloth and put something over that. He can sit by the bed and read to him some more. He can do all this shit that people think is just for best friends or little sisters or fucking nurse work.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm pre-med."
He brings Sam a fucking washcloth and says, "Come on, kid. Let's you and me design the hospital I'm going to start once I'm running the fucking show."
"No penicillin," Sam says, yawning. "Lots of kids. None of the beds with the sharp corners. Nobody dies."
Stephen takes notes.
(Later he will turn them in to his advisor and get 80% credit for the lab he missed.)
(And his advisor will tell him he'll be a great doctor.)