Once Upon a Time
Title: Once Upon a Time
Summary: For the 7.03 Comment Fic Meme. Prompt: "The paramedic had a cold and gave it to Sam and Dean. I want Sam all feverish, confused, and clingy, and macho Dean trying to be strong for little brother, but very time he sneezes, the pain in his leg makes him want to cry. Basically, lots of sick and whiny boys looking pitifully at Bobby to make it all better. Gen please, no wincest, just family schmoopiness."
Warnings/Spoilers:Through 7.03.
Wordcount: 3,532
Author's Note: So this was fun. It's more omni than Bobby; really I tried to write this in Dean's voice and it didn't work, which was depressing. I'm at my happiest when I get to ramble. And it's really schmoopy. Like REALLY. It was in the prompt!!
--
Bobby's been playing nursemaid to a sick Dean for two days now, which was bad enough when Dean was a stuffy-nosed eight-year-old, but now he's not only got a bitch of a head cold but a leg that's been broken for all of three days, and he can't seem to decide whether he wants to hobble around on it like it's half-healed or roll and jerk around and moan (like he's having a damn seizure, and isn't that what he wants to be thinking about when he's left Sam upstairs alone so he can get Dean another damn popsicle) every time he coughs. Not to mention that eight-year-old Dean was never high off his ass on painkillers, and his brother was never in a goddamn coma.
“Whed's he godda wake up?” Dean says. All last night he kept sprawling out and falling off the couch when he sneezed, so Bobby spread a quilt on the floor for him this morning and slung the kid on it with his leg propped up on a stack of pillows. After Dean whined for six minutes straight that Bobby'd put him at the wrong angle for breathing through his mouth or drinking his damn soup or watching his damn telenovela, he slept for a blessed fifty-two minutes before he jerked himself away mumbling “Whed's he godda wake up, Whed, Bobby?” and he still sounds like a stuffy-nosed eight-year-old, that's for damn sure.
Except when Dean was eight, Sam was attached to him like a fifth limb. He was always right there.
“When he's good and ready,” Bobby says. He tosses Dean a new box of tissues (the kid's going through them almost as fast as he is his damn painkillers) and winces as the kid blows his nose, and harder when he sneezes and grabs his cast with both hands.
“Nod good edough,” Dean says. He sniffs hard and runs his wrist under his nose.
“He's movin' around more and more all the time, and he groaned a little when I said his name this morning. He's on his way back.”
“Fuggin' sucks,” Dean says. “Last time I was sick, Sammy had t'go-” he stops, sneezes, curses, “and be all in the cage.” He buries his face in the pillow. “I never get m'kid when I'm sick.”
Dean's snoring and Bobby's in the kitchen doing the dishes (for a sick son of a bitch, Dean sure can eat) when a creak to his left makes him reach for his knife, and Sam sinks down to sit on the bottom step and holds his hand up. “Don't stab me?” he says, with this weak smile.
“Christ, kiddo, you got down all those stairs?”
Bobby thought that, if they were lucky, Sam might sit up a little today. This little journey downstairs would look like a sign of something horrible (because, for hunters, anything that's too good to be true is always a sign of something horrible) except it looks like this was just Sam being Sam. Like he used all his energy up in a grand gesture and now he's going to be back on his ass for God knows how long.
But at least Bobby won't have to put up with Dean whining to be carried upstairs every five minutes.
Sam rubs his forehead and starts to say something, but then his attention drifts to somewhere off Bobby's shoulder and he goes pale and his shoulders start heaving. Bobby doubts this is the right time for tough love, so he sits down on the step next to Sam and waits it out with him.
Eventually Sam shakes his head hard (too hard, there goes his cut-up hand back to his forehead) and he looks at Bobby and says, “Is Dean sick?”
“Yeah, he's a little sick. How'd you know?”
“I just...” Sam stops and shrugs.”Fucking head hurts...can I see Dean?”
Bobby helps him up and keeps a hand on his back on the walk to the living room. Sam's breathing hard and swaying by the time Bobby lowers him onto the quilt next to his brother, but Sam reaches out and flicks Dean, expertly, in the forehead. Dean gives a confused snort and then sneezes and winces and finally looks up at Sam, and then he smiles wide and grabs the hand that flicked him and twists it up in his and growls. Sam laughs a little. He's still pale and cold like limestone, and a few minutes later he's fast asleep beside Dean.
**
They're probably all surprised by Sam's recovery. Two days later Sam's following most of their conversations and awake nearly ten hours a day. Dean, predictably only notices the negatives-of course Sam's still dizzy, idjit-but Bobby's read just about everything there is out there about the kind of head injury Sam suffered. Even without the Wall to deal with, the fact that Sam's doing as well as he is when half a week ago his brain was swelling its way up to a brain and a half is about as close to a miracle as the Winchesters get. The hallucinations show up and scare him but very rarely debilitate him, and usually all Bobby has to do is say Sam's name for a while or, for the bad ones, kick Dean awake and make him say Sam's name for a while, and Sam will shake his head and come out of it and nap a little to shake it off. It's a testament to how far they've fallen the past few years that Bobby watches Sam space out and tremble in the middle of a bowl of oatmeal and thinks, we could live with this. If we have to, we can live with this.
Except for one thing.
“Dean's not getting well,” Sam says, quietly. He's sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his legs stretched out so his feet touch Dean's, his neck lolling back on the couch cushions to try to help the headaches he's getting all the time.
Bobby says, “Sure he is, kid, just give him a few days.”
Sam watches Dean and doesn't say anything.
“He doesn't have a fever,” Bobby says. “How worried can you really get when there's no fever?”
“The sneezing and coughing hurt his leg,” Sam says, and Dean coughs and whimpers in his sleep as if to prove Sam's point, and wouldn't that be just like these boys to team up against him even when one of them's asleep and the other one's still a few eggs short of a dozen?
Sam hauls himself onto all-fours and crawls to Dean. He wakes him up, gently and incompletely, so he can adjust the tilt on the pillows and make it easier for Dean to breathe.
Dean pants through half-closed eyes and watches him.
“This sugks, Sabby,” he says. He looks up at Sam's face and doesn't look away, and Sam squirms and blushes and looks down and then flicks his eyes back up to Dean's and gives him that smile Dean was waiting for, but Bobby will forgive Sam for being a little slow.
“You sound like shit,” Sam says. “Do you want some tea?”
Dean shakes his head and starts to sneeze, and Sam grabs a tissue out of the box and gets it to Dean's nose right in time. Bobby recognizes the look on Dean's face as the same one the kid had when nine-year-old Sammy shot down six soda cans in a row, no misses. “Dice reflegxes, Sabby!” he slurs out, and he gives his little brother a punch in the arm and Sam rubs it and blushes (again, and Bobby can tell Dean notices it too and gets a major kick out of it).
“Blow your nose,” Sam says, and Dean does, immediately, even though every time Bobby's told him to he's whined like a toddler. Dean palls up the tissue and gives Sam a sleepy pat on the arm. “Good Sabby.”
“You're stoned,” Sam says. “You want soup or something?”
Dean shakes his head and sneezes again, and Sam reaches down and stabilizes the leg before Dean can. Dean closes his eyes and says, “Here's good. This is good. Could you babybe, um-”
Sam nods that yes, he can, before Dean's even finished asking.
“--ged behind the pillows? 'cause uh, you cad helb them sday up, if you're they wond't slip down, so...”
“Yeah,” Sam says, and he takes a moment to steady himself on the floor before he moves behind Dean. He pulls his knees up and scoots his feet back and forth until he decides on the perfect slant for Dean, then he props a pillow up on his feet and guides Dean down.
Dean, for the first time since they've been in the cabin, sleeps through the night, which means Bobby, on the couch, does too. He assumes Sam does the same, because when he wakes up in the morning, Sam's legs are still in their triangle and the rest of him is lying back on the blanket, his arms wrapped tightly around his head.
**
Bobby makes eggs that morning and Dean whines that it's too early, that his telenovelas aren't on yet, that he wants to go back to sleep. Sam says his legs are sore so Dean has to stay up for a while. Bobby suspects that Sam was just lonely.
“Fine,” Dean says, “But you godda read me a story,” but instead Sam tells Dean a story that he clearly makes up as he goes along, because parts get added and dropped halfway through. He talks about a cowboy and a pretty girl in a saloon and a villain with guns instead of hands. Sometimes he looks into the corner and flinches and says, “No, that's notwhat happens next,” but Dean puts his thumb on Sam's cut hand and says, “Sabby, whad comes negxt?” and Sam gives his head another one of those hard shakes (those have to hurt, Bobby realizes, he'll talk to him about that) and makes up something to happen next.
Sam's worn out before the story's finished and he sleeps through breakfast, but Dean and Bobby are used to him falling asleep in the middle of things-they can live with that-and don't think much of it. They eat their eggs and watch some telenovelas (“Diogo's defidendly hiding sobething,” Dean says), and it's not until quarter to one that Dean brushes up against Sam reaching for a tissue and realizes Sam is burning the fuck up, and three minutes after that he's seizing.
Bobby gets Sam on his side and holds his head steady and says, “Dean, help me, damn it,” but Dean is scooting away, his eyes closed, whispering, “I god him sick, I god him sick” and gritting his teeth in pain when he sneezes.
**
The only good thing about Sam having this many damn seizures is that they now know what to expect, and Bobby at least is prepared to wait a little for him to wake up afterwards. But Sam's taking a little longer than any of them would like, and Dean won't stop tugging on Sam's hand and barking “Sab!” over and over.
Bobby put a thermometer in Sam's ear and tells Dean he's going to be fine.
“He did'd fidish the damb sdory,” Dean growls.
Bobby checks the thermometer. “A hundred two and a half.” He's relieved. That's no joyride of a fever, but with the amount of heat pouring off the kid during the seizure, he was prepared for a lot worse.
Dean nods a little, like he already knew exactly what the fever was. It's the same expression Sam had when he asked Bobby if Dean was sick. These damn boys.
“Wagke up and fidish the sdory, Sab.”
“Dean, blow your nose,” Bobby says.
Dean ignores him and stares at Sam.
A few minutes later, Sam grimaces and rolls his head to the side and croaks, “Once 'pon a time...”
“No,” Dean says. “Sab, you were already id the middle of ode, remember? Fidish that one. Cobe back where you lefd off.”
“Um...”
“Cowboy sdory. C'bon, Sab. You remember. You were here. You were more lucid thad you'd beed in three fugging weegks-”
“I don't remember,” Sam says. He rubs his forehead and claws at Dean's hand and says, “Where are you?”
“I'm right here...”
“Don't go,” Sam says. He's breathing so hard. “Once upon a time...”
But then he's quiet for a while, and then finally, finally he opens his eyes and looks up at Dean and says, “I just want it to be you and me and Bobby for a minute, can you make him go away?” He waves his hand towards the corner that must be Lucifer's favorite, because he's there a damn lot, and Bobby wonders, not for the first time, if putting up a picture or something there would help break the illusion or just give Satan something to look at while he tortures Sam.
Dean takes a deep breath and says, “Of course, Sabby,” but he's making that desperate face and shuffling around because he doesn't know what the hell to do.
Bobby has an idea. He gets down on the floor and carefully nudges Sam's head forwards, so his face is hidden in Dean's shoulder.
Sam grabs hold of Dean and Dean groans and says, “Thangs, Bobby, he''s dever godda led go now,” and keeps one hand on Sam's back and pets his hair with the other.
When Sam's fast asleep half an hour later, Dean gives Bobby a glare like he hasn't seen from him in twenty years when Bobby suggests he let him take Sam upstairs to a real bed. “I'm sigck,” Dean says. “Nod you. I ged Sabby.” When Sam's fever climbs and he curses at Lucifer in his sleep, Dean murmurs stories in Sam's ear. Bobby can't hear most of it, but he makes out something about fireworks. What makes Sam relax, though, is when a sudden sneeze makes Dean grab his leg and wheeze out a few notes of hysterical laughter. Sam hears it and goes limp.
**
It's possibly the saddest thing Bobby's ever seen, and that's saying a damn lot, when Sam's fever is spiking and he's crying out for Dean to get the bad guys away, and Dean has his arms wrapped all the way around him while Sam shivers and jostles the fuck out of Dean's leg, and every few minutes Sam gets lucid enough to say “Dean, Dean don' cry, why y'cryin?” and then drifts back out before he can hear the answer (“because 's brogken, 's all brogken”) and Bobby thinks that Sam is still pale and cold-pale and cold like plaster-and he dreams about splinting Sam up like a bone because he can't get the image of Dean down two limbs out of his mind.
Bobby startles awake from the couch at 4 AM and Sam is awake, sweating and mumbling at the corner and cradling Dean's head as gently as Bobby wishes he would treat his own. Dean told him a long time ago that Sam gets clingy when he's sick, but Bobby thinks now that the truth might be that when Sam is sick, Dean lets him cling.
Bobby watches Sam's lips talk and flinch at no one.
Sam startles himself out of the hallucination and looks at Bobby and whispers “Dean needs juice,” like the sentence means so much more than it does.
Bobby brings juice but coxes Sam into drinking it.
Sam seizes in the middle of the night and kicks Dean in the leg, and Dean grits his teeth and breathes hard but keeps his hands and his eyes on Sam all through the seizure. As soon as Sam's done, he curses up a storm and rolls to the side and wraps his hands around his cast.
“What can I get you, boy?” Bobby asks him.
Dean pushes his face into the pillow and coughs and says, “Whad the fugk are you talging aboud? He jusd had a fuckging seizure, ged your goddamn prioridies straight,” before he tunnels further into the pillow and moans.
So Bobby finds an ice pack for Sam's head, and Sam leans into it and exhales and calms down, but a few minutes later he takes it off and puts it Dean's leg without opening his eyes.
-
Dean's choking on the damn congestion, so in the morning Bobby brings him a pot of boiling water so he can breathe some of the steam. “And Sabby sdays bacgk,” Dean says immediately, and Bobby tugs Sam over a few feet and rebandages his hand to keep him distracted.
Sam seems okay with the whole thing until Dean drapes a towel over his head to contain the steam, at which point he gradually starts to frown more and more and tries to tug his way back to Dean.
“It's too hot for you over there, kid,” Bobby says.
“I'm cold, though...”
Bobby says, “Your fever has me believin' otherwise, sorry, Sam.”
Sam says, “It's too hot, Dean.”
“Doo hot for you,” Dean says, and sneezes from under the towel.
Sam flinches the next time Bobby goes for his hand. “Hey, Sam,” Bobby says. “It's fine. You seeing things?”
Sam shakes his head and watches Dean. He shivers, and Bobby hesitates a minute (doesn't want to freak the kid out) before he puts his hand on Sam's forehead, but Sam closes his eyes and leans into it. The fingers of his right hand worry at the stitches on his left. He pull his hand away again when Bobby reaches for it.
“Can we wait until Dean's done?” he says. Bobby nods, and Sam stays still and chews on his lip and watches Dean like he's afraid he'll disappear.
Dean emerges for air five minutes later, uses up six tissues blowing his nose, then looks up at Sam. “Much better,” he says, and he smiles at his voice.
“Why'd you go away?” Sam says.
Dean stops smiling. “You're such a baby when you're sick.” He sneezes and grits his teeth and holds out an arm for Sam. “C'mere.”
Sam crawls over. He shivers and wraps Dean's shirt around his hand, like a bandage, and Dean monologues about how they need to clean and wrap it for real because Sam is fast asleep.
**
Slowly, Dean gets well, but the idjit seems to forget that it took him a week and a half to get there, because he's fretting over Sam's immune system like a mother hen. He spends all of Thursday morning rubbing Sam's back while the kid shivers and cries for Lucifer to stop talking while he clutches his head and moans whenever Dean moves.
Bobby goes out for more soup and comes home to Sam fast asleep and still and Dean sprawled up against the couch with a beer (so at least Bobby knows Dean can get up on that leg). He's staring at the TV, which isn't on, and he clenches his jaw between sips.
“He's sleeping,” Bobby says. “That's a good sign.”
“I knocked him out on painkillers.”
“Oh.”
“His head was killing him. Fucking kid.” Dean finishes the beer and flings the bottle away. “Fever's been up for three days.”
“It comes and goes,” Bobby says. “Hey, isn't it time for Rosa Fogo? Didn't Diogo have a secret or something?”
“Yeah. I never found out what.” Dean has his gimp leg stretched out in front of him and the other stretched out to the side, socked foot against Sam's chest.
“Watch your show. Think about something else.”
Dean doesn't say anything.
“You're gonna fuss yourself silly,” Bobby says. He sees Dean's eyes glance towards his brother as Sam stretches and blinks.
“I'm not worried at all,” Dean says, a little louder. “Because there's nothing to worry about. Sammy's a tough son of a bitch.” He shakes Sam's chest with his foot and gives the kid a smile, and Sam smiles back so earnestly it makes Dean laugh a little.
And the sound of that makes Sam sigh and wrap his arms around Dean's foot like it's a teddy bear before he goes back to sleep.
**
Bobby's in the kitchen making even more damn tea, and Dean yells in, “Sammy wants soup!”
“Dean needs more painkillers!” Sam calls.
“Yeah!” Dean says. “Yeah, like eight or nine more! Don't forget crackers for Sam, okay?”
“Bring him one pill. Bobby. And grab him some ice?”
“Definitely more than one. And Sam's probably due for more Tylenol, so that too?”
“Everyone mind the mosquitoes!” Sam yells, and Dean's laughing, hard, because aside from these occasional nonsense sentences, Sam's lucid enough that you could almost forget he still has a fever of a hundred and twelve.
Sam's still grinning at Dean when Bobby comes in with the soup and all the other crap the boys made him ferry in, and Dean says, “What, dork?” and knocks his head to the side. Carefully.
“I can't hear other things when you laugh,” Sam says, and Dean finally realizes what Bobby did days ago: the louder Dean is, the easier it is for Sam to sleep.
Dean chews on the inside of his lip. His telenovela's on, but he flips through the channels until he finds America's Funniest Home Videos. Bobby knows from listening to Dean's endless bitching the first few days here that the show grates on every last one of his nerves, but he sits close to Sam and shoves his kid brother under his arm, so his mouth is level with Sam's ear. Bobby can tell at first that Dean's laughing is forced, but then the kid seems to come around and figure out how well his personality jives with watching forty-year-old family men get hit in the balls, and he snorts and chuckles and makes a whole crapload of undignified sounds with each baseball bat to the crotch. Sam slides down so his ear is against Dean's chest, and Dean fucking losing it over a guy getting crushed by a seesaw ends up being Sam's lullaby, and Bobby hates these goddamn boys and all these goddamn feelings, he swears he does.
Dean puts a hand on Sam's head and says “Okay, hurry, hurry, back to Rosa Fogo, I need to find out that big secret right the fuck now.”
Summary: For the 7.03 Comment Fic Meme. Prompt: "The paramedic had a cold and gave it to Sam and Dean. I want Sam all feverish, confused, and clingy, and macho Dean trying to be strong for little brother, but very time he sneezes, the pain in his leg makes him want to cry. Basically, lots of sick and whiny boys looking pitifully at Bobby to make it all better. Gen please, no wincest, just family schmoopiness."
Warnings/Spoilers:Through 7.03.
Wordcount: 3,532
Author's Note: So this was fun. It's more omni than Bobby; really I tried to write this in Dean's voice and it didn't work, which was depressing. I'm at my happiest when I get to ramble. And it's really schmoopy. Like REALLY. It was in the prompt!!
--
Bobby's been playing nursemaid to a sick Dean for two days now, which was bad enough when Dean was a stuffy-nosed eight-year-old, but now he's not only got a bitch of a head cold but a leg that's been broken for all of three days, and he can't seem to decide whether he wants to hobble around on it like it's half-healed or roll and jerk around and moan (like he's having a damn seizure, and isn't that what he wants to be thinking about when he's left Sam upstairs alone so he can get Dean another damn popsicle) every time he coughs. Not to mention that eight-year-old Dean was never high off his ass on painkillers, and his brother was never in a goddamn coma.
“Whed's he godda wake up?” Dean says. All last night he kept sprawling out and falling off the couch when he sneezed, so Bobby spread a quilt on the floor for him this morning and slung the kid on it with his leg propped up on a stack of pillows. After Dean whined for six minutes straight that Bobby'd put him at the wrong angle for breathing through his mouth or drinking his damn soup or watching his damn telenovela, he slept for a blessed fifty-two minutes before he jerked himself away mumbling “Whed's he godda wake up, Whed, Bobby?” and he still sounds like a stuffy-nosed eight-year-old, that's for damn sure.
Except when Dean was eight, Sam was attached to him like a fifth limb. He was always right there.
“When he's good and ready,” Bobby says. He tosses Dean a new box of tissues (the kid's going through them almost as fast as he is his damn painkillers) and winces as the kid blows his nose, and harder when he sneezes and grabs his cast with both hands.
“Nod good edough,” Dean says. He sniffs hard and runs his wrist under his nose.
“He's movin' around more and more all the time, and he groaned a little when I said his name this morning. He's on his way back.”
“Fuggin' sucks,” Dean says. “Last time I was sick, Sammy had t'go-” he stops, sneezes, curses, “and be all in the cage.” He buries his face in the pillow. “I never get m'kid when I'm sick.”
Dean's snoring and Bobby's in the kitchen doing the dishes (for a sick son of a bitch, Dean sure can eat) when a creak to his left makes him reach for his knife, and Sam sinks down to sit on the bottom step and holds his hand up. “Don't stab me?” he says, with this weak smile.
“Christ, kiddo, you got down all those stairs?”
Bobby thought that, if they were lucky, Sam might sit up a little today. This little journey downstairs would look like a sign of something horrible (because, for hunters, anything that's too good to be true is always a sign of something horrible) except it looks like this was just Sam being Sam. Like he used all his energy up in a grand gesture and now he's going to be back on his ass for God knows how long.
But at least Bobby won't have to put up with Dean whining to be carried upstairs every five minutes.
Sam rubs his forehead and starts to say something, but then his attention drifts to somewhere off Bobby's shoulder and he goes pale and his shoulders start heaving. Bobby doubts this is the right time for tough love, so he sits down on the step next to Sam and waits it out with him.
Eventually Sam shakes his head hard (too hard, there goes his cut-up hand back to his forehead) and he looks at Bobby and says, “Is Dean sick?”
“Yeah, he's a little sick. How'd you know?”
“I just...” Sam stops and shrugs.”Fucking head hurts...can I see Dean?”
Bobby helps him up and keeps a hand on his back on the walk to the living room. Sam's breathing hard and swaying by the time Bobby lowers him onto the quilt next to his brother, but Sam reaches out and flicks Dean, expertly, in the forehead. Dean gives a confused snort and then sneezes and winces and finally looks up at Sam, and then he smiles wide and grabs the hand that flicked him and twists it up in his and growls. Sam laughs a little. He's still pale and cold like limestone, and a few minutes later he's fast asleep beside Dean.
**
They're probably all surprised by Sam's recovery. Two days later Sam's following most of their conversations and awake nearly ten hours a day. Dean, predictably only notices the negatives-of course Sam's still dizzy, idjit-but Bobby's read just about everything there is out there about the kind of head injury Sam suffered. Even without the Wall to deal with, the fact that Sam's doing as well as he is when half a week ago his brain was swelling its way up to a brain and a half is about as close to a miracle as the Winchesters get. The hallucinations show up and scare him but very rarely debilitate him, and usually all Bobby has to do is say Sam's name for a while or, for the bad ones, kick Dean awake and make him say Sam's name for a while, and Sam will shake his head and come out of it and nap a little to shake it off. It's a testament to how far they've fallen the past few years that Bobby watches Sam space out and tremble in the middle of a bowl of oatmeal and thinks, we could live with this. If we have to, we can live with this.
Except for one thing.
“Dean's not getting well,” Sam says, quietly. He's sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his legs stretched out so his feet touch Dean's, his neck lolling back on the couch cushions to try to help the headaches he's getting all the time.
Bobby says, “Sure he is, kid, just give him a few days.”
Sam watches Dean and doesn't say anything.
“He doesn't have a fever,” Bobby says. “How worried can you really get when there's no fever?”
“The sneezing and coughing hurt his leg,” Sam says, and Dean coughs and whimpers in his sleep as if to prove Sam's point, and wouldn't that be just like these boys to team up against him even when one of them's asleep and the other one's still a few eggs short of a dozen?
Sam hauls himself onto all-fours and crawls to Dean. He wakes him up, gently and incompletely, so he can adjust the tilt on the pillows and make it easier for Dean to breathe.
Dean pants through half-closed eyes and watches him.
“This sugks, Sabby,” he says. He looks up at Sam's face and doesn't look away, and Sam squirms and blushes and looks down and then flicks his eyes back up to Dean's and gives him that smile Dean was waiting for, but Bobby will forgive Sam for being a little slow.
“You sound like shit,” Sam says. “Do you want some tea?”
Dean shakes his head and starts to sneeze, and Sam grabs a tissue out of the box and gets it to Dean's nose right in time. Bobby recognizes the look on Dean's face as the same one the kid had when nine-year-old Sammy shot down six soda cans in a row, no misses. “Dice reflegxes, Sabby!” he slurs out, and he gives his little brother a punch in the arm and Sam rubs it and blushes (again, and Bobby can tell Dean notices it too and gets a major kick out of it).
“Blow your nose,” Sam says, and Dean does, immediately, even though every time Bobby's told him to he's whined like a toddler. Dean palls up the tissue and gives Sam a sleepy pat on the arm. “Good Sabby.”
“You're stoned,” Sam says. “You want soup or something?”
Dean shakes his head and sneezes again, and Sam reaches down and stabilizes the leg before Dean can. Dean closes his eyes and says, “Here's good. This is good. Could you babybe, um-”
Sam nods that yes, he can, before Dean's even finished asking.
“--ged behind the pillows? 'cause uh, you cad helb them sday up, if you're they wond't slip down, so...”
“Yeah,” Sam says, and he takes a moment to steady himself on the floor before he moves behind Dean. He pulls his knees up and scoots his feet back and forth until he decides on the perfect slant for Dean, then he props a pillow up on his feet and guides Dean down.
Dean, for the first time since they've been in the cabin, sleeps through the night, which means Bobby, on the couch, does too. He assumes Sam does the same, because when he wakes up in the morning, Sam's legs are still in their triangle and the rest of him is lying back on the blanket, his arms wrapped tightly around his head.
**
Bobby makes eggs that morning and Dean whines that it's too early, that his telenovelas aren't on yet, that he wants to go back to sleep. Sam says his legs are sore so Dean has to stay up for a while. Bobby suspects that Sam was just lonely.
“Fine,” Dean says, “But you godda read me a story,” but instead Sam tells Dean a story that he clearly makes up as he goes along, because parts get added and dropped halfway through. He talks about a cowboy and a pretty girl in a saloon and a villain with guns instead of hands. Sometimes he looks into the corner and flinches and says, “No, that's notwhat happens next,” but Dean puts his thumb on Sam's cut hand and says, “Sabby, whad comes negxt?” and Sam gives his head another one of those hard shakes (those have to hurt, Bobby realizes, he'll talk to him about that) and makes up something to happen next.
Sam's worn out before the story's finished and he sleeps through breakfast, but Dean and Bobby are used to him falling asleep in the middle of things-they can live with that-and don't think much of it. They eat their eggs and watch some telenovelas (“Diogo's defidendly hiding sobething,” Dean says), and it's not until quarter to one that Dean brushes up against Sam reaching for a tissue and realizes Sam is burning the fuck up, and three minutes after that he's seizing.
Bobby gets Sam on his side and holds his head steady and says, “Dean, help me, damn it,” but Dean is scooting away, his eyes closed, whispering, “I god him sick, I god him sick” and gritting his teeth in pain when he sneezes.
**
The only good thing about Sam having this many damn seizures is that they now know what to expect, and Bobby at least is prepared to wait a little for him to wake up afterwards. But Sam's taking a little longer than any of them would like, and Dean won't stop tugging on Sam's hand and barking “Sab!” over and over.
Bobby put a thermometer in Sam's ear and tells Dean he's going to be fine.
“He did'd fidish the damb sdory,” Dean growls.
Bobby checks the thermometer. “A hundred two and a half.” He's relieved. That's no joyride of a fever, but with the amount of heat pouring off the kid during the seizure, he was prepared for a lot worse.
Dean nods a little, like he already knew exactly what the fever was. It's the same expression Sam had when he asked Bobby if Dean was sick. These damn boys.
“Wagke up and fidish the sdory, Sab.”
“Dean, blow your nose,” Bobby says.
Dean ignores him and stares at Sam.
A few minutes later, Sam grimaces and rolls his head to the side and croaks, “Once 'pon a time...”
“No,” Dean says. “Sab, you were already id the middle of ode, remember? Fidish that one. Cobe back where you lefd off.”
“Um...”
“Cowboy sdory. C'bon, Sab. You remember. You were here. You were more lucid thad you'd beed in three fugging weegks-”
“I don't remember,” Sam says. He rubs his forehead and claws at Dean's hand and says, “Where are you?”
“I'm right here...”
“Don't go,” Sam says. He's breathing so hard. “Once upon a time...”
But then he's quiet for a while, and then finally, finally he opens his eyes and looks up at Dean and says, “I just want it to be you and me and Bobby for a minute, can you make him go away?” He waves his hand towards the corner that must be Lucifer's favorite, because he's there a damn lot, and Bobby wonders, not for the first time, if putting up a picture or something there would help break the illusion or just give Satan something to look at while he tortures Sam.
Dean takes a deep breath and says, “Of course, Sabby,” but he's making that desperate face and shuffling around because he doesn't know what the hell to do.
Bobby has an idea. He gets down on the floor and carefully nudges Sam's head forwards, so his face is hidden in Dean's shoulder.
Sam grabs hold of Dean and Dean groans and says, “Thangs, Bobby, he''s dever godda led go now,” and keeps one hand on Sam's back and pets his hair with the other.
When Sam's fast asleep half an hour later, Dean gives Bobby a glare like he hasn't seen from him in twenty years when Bobby suggests he let him take Sam upstairs to a real bed. “I'm sigck,” Dean says. “Nod you. I ged Sabby.” When Sam's fever climbs and he curses at Lucifer in his sleep, Dean murmurs stories in Sam's ear. Bobby can't hear most of it, but he makes out something about fireworks. What makes Sam relax, though, is when a sudden sneeze makes Dean grab his leg and wheeze out a few notes of hysterical laughter. Sam hears it and goes limp.
**
It's possibly the saddest thing Bobby's ever seen, and that's saying a damn lot, when Sam's fever is spiking and he's crying out for Dean to get the bad guys away, and Dean has his arms wrapped all the way around him while Sam shivers and jostles the fuck out of Dean's leg, and every few minutes Sam gets lucid enough to say “Dean, Dean don' cry, why y'cryin?” and then drifts back out before he can hear the answer (“because 's brogken, 's all brogken”) and Bobby thinks that Sam is still pale and cold-pale and cold like plaster-and he dreams about splinting Sam up like a bone because he can't get the image of Dean down two limbs out of his mind.
Bobby startles awake from the couch at 4 AM and Sam is awake, sweating and mumbling at the corner and cradling Dean's head as gently as Bobby wishes he would treat his own. Dean told him a long time ago that Sam gets clingy when he's sick, but Bobby thinks now that the truth might be that when Sam is sick, Dean lets him cling.
Bobby watches Sam's lips talk and flinch at no one.
Sam startles himself out of the hallucination and looks at Bobby and whispers “Dean needs juice,” like the sentence means so much more than it does.
Bobby brings juice but coxes Sam into drinking it.
Sam seizes in the middle of the night and kicks Dean in the leg, and Dean grits his teeth and breathes hard but keeps his hands and his eyes on Sam all through the seizure. As soon as Sam's done, he curses up a storm and rolls to the side and wraps his hands around his cast.
“What can I get you, boy?” Bobby asks him.
Dean pushes his face into the pillow and coughs and says, “Whad the fugk are you talging aboud? He jusd had a fuckging seizure, ged your goddamn prioridies straight,” before he tunnels further into the pillow and moans.
So Bobby finds an ice pack for Sam's head, and Sam leans into it and exhales and calms down, but a few minutes later he takes it off and puts it Dean's leg without opening his eyes.
-
Dean's choking on the damn congestion, so in the morning Bobby brings him a pot of boiling water so he can breathe some of the steam. “And Sabby sdays bacgk,” Dean says immediately, and Bobby tugs Sam over a few feet and rebandages his hand to keep him distracted.
Sam seems okay with the whole thing until Dean drapes a towel over his head to contain the steam, at which point he gradually starts to frown more and more and tries to tug his way back to Dean.
“It's too hot for you over there, kid,” Bobby says.
“I'm cold, though...”
Bobby says, “Your fever has me believin' otherwise, sorry, Sam.”
Sam says, “It's too hot, Dean.”
“Doo hot for you,” Dean says, and sneezes from under the towel.
Sam flinches the next time Bobby goes for his hand. “Hey, Sam,” Bobby says. “It's fine. You seeing things?”
Sam shakes his head and watches Dean. He shivers, and Bobby hesitates a minute (doesn't want to freak the kid out) before he puts his hand on Sam's forehead, but Sam closes his eyes and leans into it. The fingers of his right hand worry at the stitches on his left. He pull his hand away again when Bobby reaches for it.
“Can we wait until Dean's done?” he says. Bobby nods, and Sam stays still and chews on his lip and watches Dean like he's afraid he'll disappear.
Dean emerges for air five minutes later, uses up six tissues blowing his nose, then looks up at Sam. “Much better,” he says, and he smiles at his voice.
“Why'd you go away?” Sam says.
Dean stops smiling. “You're such a baby when you're sick.” He sneezes and grits his teeth and holds out an arm for Sam. “C'mere.”
Sam crawls over. He shivers and wraps Dean's shirt around his hand, like a bandage, and Dean monologues about how they need to clean and wrap it for real because Sam is fast asleep.
**
Slowly, Dean gets well, but the idjit seems to forget that it took him a week and a half to get there, because he's fretting over Sam's immune system like a mother hen. He spends all of Thursday morning rubbing Sam's back while the kid shivers and cries for Lucifer to stop talking while he clutches his head and moans whenever Dean moves.
Bobby goes out for more soup and comes home to Sam fast asleep and still and Dean sprawled up against the couch with a beer (so at least Bobby knows Dean can get up on that leg). He's staring at the TV, which isn't on, and he clenches his jaw between sips.
“He's sleeping,” Bobby says. “That's a good sign.”
“I knocked him out on painkillers.”
“Oh.”
“His head was killing him. Fucking kid.” Dean finishes the beer and flings the bottle away. “Fever's been up for three days.”
“It comes and goes,” Bobby says. “Hey, isn't it time for Rosa Fogo? Didn't Diogo have a secret or something?”
“Yeah. I never found out what.” Dean has his gimp leg stretched out in front of him and the other stretched out to the side, socked foot against Sam's chest.
“Watch your show. Think about something else.”
Dean doesn't say anything.
“You're gonna fuss yourself silly,” Bobby says. He sees Dean's eyes glance towards his brother as Sam stretches and blinks.
“I'm not worried at all,” Dean says, a little louder. “Because there's nothing to worry about. Sammy's a tough son of a bitch.” He shakes Sam's chest with his foot and gives the kid a smile, and Sam smiles back so earnestly it makes Dean laugh a little.
And the sound of that makes Sam sigh and wrap his arms around Dean's foot like it's a teddy bear before he goes back to sleep.
**
Bobby's in the kitchen making even more damn tea, and Dean yells in, “Sammy wants soup!”
“Dean needs more painkillers!” Sam calls.
“Yeah!” Dean says. “Yeah, like eight or nine more! Don't forget crackers for Sam, okay?”
“Bring him one pill. Bobby. And grab him some ice?”
“Definitely more than one. And Sam's probably due for more Tylenol, so that too?”
“Everyone mind the mosquitoes!” Sam yells, and Dean's laughing, hard, because aside from these occasional nonsense sentences, Sam's lucid enough that you could almost forget he still has a fever of a hundred and twelve.
Sam's still grinning at Dean when Bobby comes in with the soup and all the other crap the boys made him ferry in, and Dean says, “What, dork?” and knocks his head to the side. Carefully.
“I can't hear other things when you laugh,” Sam says, and Dean finally realizes what Bobby did days ago: the louder Dean is, the easier it is for Sam to sleep.
Dean chews on the inside of his lip. His telenovela's on, but he flips through the channels until he finds America's Funniest Home Videos. Bobby knows from listening to Dean's endless bitching the first few days here that the show grates on every last one of his nerves, but he sits close to Sam and shoves his kid brother under his arm, so his mouth is level with Sam's ear. Bobby can tell at first that Dean's laughing is forced, but then the kid seems to come around and figure out how well his personality jives with watching forty-year-old family men get hit in the balls, and he snorts and chuckles and makes a whole crapload of undignified sounds with each baseball bat to the crotch. Sam slides down so his ear is against Dean's chest, and Dean fucking losing it over a guy getting crushed by a seesaw ends up being Sam's lullaby, and Bobby hates these goddamn boys and all these goddamn feelings, he swears he does.
Dean puts a hand on Sam's head and says “Okay, hurry, hurry, back to Rosa Fogo, I need to find out that big secret right the fuck now.”