Under Sammy's Skin
Title: Under Sammy's Skin
Summary: Sam wants to be the big damn hero in the shapeshifter case, and Dean wants to know what the hell he missed while Sam was at Stanford. There's a lot of banter and few revelations.
Warnings/Spoilers: It's a take on 1.06, so through that and you're good! I stole some dialogue from the show, particularly in the shifter scene and the last scene, and there are lines elsewhere that are directly from the show as well. Just for fun (I especially wanted to see how much I could fuck with the main plot/themes and still keep the majority of the last scene's dialogue) not pretending I wrote them, and I'll be happy to point out which are not mine if anyone wants to know. I also changed around some plot details--the biggest is that Sam and Dean are tied up in the sewers instead of in some random room. In my defense, I totally thought they were tied up in the sewers instead of in some random room. Hideous language, as usual.
Wordcount: 8,249
Author's Note: So this fic isn't on the Sammyverse masterlist anymore, because, frankly, it was stressing me out there. It doesn't really work inside the verse canon anymore, because I went back and wrote stuff that contradicts it. That's the hazard of writing out of order, I guess, but otherwise I couldn't have written all those Stanford fics, and those are my favorites, soooo..
The story will stick around, but I'm untagging it and taking it off the list, so it's like a little Easter egg, I guess.
Dean's totally been had by a pair of twenty-two-year-old kicked-puppy eyes, and the worst part is that it takes him until they're twenty miles away from the gas station (twenty miles in the wrong direction, back the way they came) to realize it, and by then the kicked puppy in question has stopped trying to hide the shit-eating grin he now has on his face as he looks through the rest of his emails. Chasing down some college friend of his arrested for murder, Dean can't believe this (partly because what are the chances this thing his going to be at all in their area of expertise, mostly because Jesus does Sammy just collect evil bastards wherever he goes, and what the fuck was he doing making friends with murderers, bitch was supposed to keep safe at Stanford, that was the whole goddamn point).
.And fuck, Sam got his way pretty damn easily, probably because it's been a long time (three and a half years) since Dean has seen him calm and devious and fucking Sam enough to hold a conversation and manipulate said conversation like he used to, and of course that means that Dean is going to ruin everything now because what kind of a big brother would he be if he would ever just lay off the kid (even if you really should right now, Dean, look at him, he's still having nightmares, but he's being Sam and that means Dean has to be a little Dean, you know?)
“So,” Dean says, and Sam reaches forwards and turns down the music way, way down and looks at him and well, if Dean hadn't been already about to give him hell, the kid has to go and practically mute “The Chase is Better Than the Catch,” and seriously, sometimes it's like Sam has no idea when he does stuff that makes big brother have to give him hell (sometimes it's like Sam has no idea who Dean is).
“So?”
“So this chick, Rebecca Warren. You fucked her, right?”
Sam gives one of those dry “I am so not amused” half-cough half-laughs things he perfected like two weeks after his asthma diagnosis, and Dean's never heard anyone else who can do it quite like Sam (but he's heard his dad try.)
Dean says, “Okay, so you fucked her brother?”
“I didn't fuck anyone...”
Dean smirks (despite everything).
And Sam actually gives him a smile and an eyeroll. “I didn't fuck Rebecca. She's old. Or Zach. Who's also kinda old. I don't know if you've been listening, but I actually had this girlfriend-”
“For twenty-one months, yeah. I listen.”
Sam chews on the inside of his cheek.
“Meaning,” Dean says, “That we have seventeen whole months of Sam all unaccounted for.”
“You act like it's some mystery where I was and what I was doing. The first two years of college are not that exciting, Dean. There's a lot of late nights and cheap vodka.”
“And fucking random girls and their brothers, that's all I'm saying.”
“I didn't fuck Rebecca! Or Zach!”
“Fine.” Dean knows exactly what he's going to say next, because he's known since Sam's first denial (because it didn't come with any blushing or that weird lip twitch thing he does) that he's telling the truth, but this long pause is good, it'll make the next part easier to say. Because now he really does want to know (because he really wanted to know this for three years and three months). He clears his throat. “I just wonder, man. 'cause I know what you were up to when you were with Dad and me, and I'm sure you were busy being an awesome housewife when you were with Jessica, and I just wonder about before that, y'know? Like what you were doing and who was looking after you. 'Cause you weren't always great about picking up your phone, so it clearly wasn't me.”
“I called.”
“Yeah, the first year. Holidays, birthdays, 4 AM drunk dials.”
“No one looked after me, Dean,” Sam says. “Nobody has that in college. It's a bunch of eighteen-year-olds living in each other's hair and puking on each other's carpets and everyone looks after their own damn selves.”
“Not everyone's you,” Dean says.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning not everyone knows about all the shit that's out there in the dark and has to worry that the shit out there knows about him. Not everyone has a pile of family secrets that could fill the Stanford College Football Stadium-”
“--University, Dean. Law school, remember?--”
“--and not everyone,” Dean says, with a pointed look to his right, “has a set of lungs that likes to fucking bail on him at a moment's notice, so maybe I worried every once in a while, all right?”
Dean is waiting for a very specific answer to this part, and fine, maybe this is what he was trying to get at this whole time, whatever, it's not his fault that the fire was months ago and Sam's still coughing and he's noticed, so what.
Sam doesn't say anything for a long time. Then he clenches his jaw. “I'm here now.”
“Yeah,” is all Dean can figure out how to say, because that didn't exactly go how they wanted (nice job at the heart-to-heart there, Dean, I think you really managed to piss him the fuck off! But next time, more digs at the dead ex-girlfriend, okay, and you should probably go more in-depth on those family secrets. Bring in how they're currently keeping your family apart and how they're responsible for dragging Sam out of his comfortable new life and for the death of that ex-girlfriend!)
But then Sam says, “Becky was a nursing student. Due to Stanford being, you know, a University. She took care of me a few times when I was sick.”
He isn't looking at Dean.
Dean doesn't ask what sick means because they have a special voice for asthma and that was it.
“Oh,” Dean says, and he expects to say, at least to think, 'I'm glad someone took care of you, I'm glad you let them help, because for some reason it's still like Dean's the only person in the damn world who gets how shy Sam is, and how much happier the kid would be if he could hunker down and lock himself somewhere alone (with Jess, with Dean) and never have to see another damn soul (or another damn monster, and isn't that just the root of all things where Sam is concerned because these fucking monsters are his roots) but anyway he's waiting to feel proud of his Sammy or whatever but instead his stupid fucking brain is having a meltdown because after a handful of sleepless nights Sam's first semester he had some sort of epiphany (anxiety attack) and convinced himself that Sam's asthma was fine now, that it was hunting and gunpowder and dirty motel rooms and twenty-degree weather that got to the kid, but out there with the books and the fresh air and no stress outside of memorizing legal codes and no exertion outside of fucking sorority sisters, Sam was fine. They never mentioned it on the phone calls, and Dean never got any messages from hospitals in Stanford (because Sam left his emergency contact blank, he knows that, because how the hell would he have known what number or what name to use, and Dean gets that, but he also decided-he flat-out demanded to himself-that that meant no hospitals for Sam. Because that was why he let Sam go.)
And when Sam was wheezing a little during the Lady in White fiasco, well, he was out of shape, and when he was a fucking mess in that ambulance the night after Jess died, well, that was stress and grief and two tons of smoke but really that was nothing to analyze because Sam could do whatever the fuck he wanted with no reason necessary that night, Sam could have cut himself to ribbons or drunk himself into a coma and Dean wouldn't have blamed him and the worst he could do was hesitate to take his meds when his lungs were shutting down, like, Jesus Christ Sammy you can't even fall apart like a normal fucking person, you have to do it all methodically and logically and in this one way Dean couldn't fucking fix,and anyway he's been kind of off since then, but it happens, and it's no big deal, and it's because he's hunting again and it's the residual smoke inhalation and this is why he got out. Because he's healthier when he's not hunting. Because he was fine when he was at Stanford.
Dean swallows hard and doesn't look at him.
“Bad attacks at Stanford?” he says. He sounds like his father somehow, he thinks, and fuck if that doesn't bring on a lot of feelings he wasn't expecting (most of them not good).
“A few,” Sam says. And it's casual and he's not even faking it, goddamn it. He's just fucking casual about this.
“But smaller ones a lot?”
“No more than usual. I guess,” Sam says, and no more than usual, Dean could fucking punch something.
He settles with driving really fucking fast, like there's anything he wants to see on that other end, and Sammy at least has the sense to be confused, and, well, good, because so's Dean, because apparently he thinks it's a bad thing that Sam didn't just give up and suffocate when he was on his own, and Dean thinks that that's what he'd have done if he were Sam and that that's sort of what he pushed Sam into because he was wheezing during those drunk dials, you asshole, and you didn't say anything because you didn't want to believe it and because he didn't want to hunt with you so you didn't want to care.
“Supposedly St. Louis has amazing ravioli,” Sam says, and kudos, Sammy, you fucking geek, you would know. Dean tries to unscrunch. It's in the past, whatever, and Sam sounds fine right now. Dean will give Becky a hug for taking care of his kid and tell her they're sorry her brother's a pyscho killer (but thanks for not letting him psycho-kill Sam) and they'll be out the door and back to finding Dad (who went and spied on Sam a hundred times at Stanford when Dean didn't come because they both knew he wouldn't be able to do it without letting Sam know they were there, who must have seen the kid running to or from class fifty times and never once mentioned seeing the inhaler when he was running across fucking oceans of grass everyday of course he had his inhaler Dad just didn't want to talk about it, and it looks like Sam is the only one of the bunch who wasn't a fucking idiot about all of this, so kudos again, Sammy, this is why college shelled out the big bucks. But you're a Winchester, so welcome to the passenger seat of the Impala on your way to a murder case with the same shitty lungs you rode in on, it's good to have you back).
(Really.)
God, nothing like asthma talk to turn Dean into a sappy son of a bitch. “I want cheese-stuffed ravioli,” Dean says. “Like, six or seven different varieties of cheese, otherwise we're not stopping.”
“That is totally reasonable.”
Turns out Sam's a bitch and he makes them get chicken sandwiches to-go two hours later so they can drive straight through the day.
**
“Little Becky” dotes all the fuck over Sam, and Dean thinks it's probably a good thing he wasn't around for the past three years because he really doesn't need to see these well-intentioned girls trying to mother around his orphan of a kid (plus this chick is a slip of the tongue away from saying “Sammy” and that wouldn't be good for anyone) but she's cute, and as soon as she looks at Dean instead of Sam, Dean somehow finds all irritation with her draining away. Imagine that.
Zach's house has a picture of Sam on the refrigerator. Past Sammy is smiling but doesn't look happy, and Dean doesn't know how to feel like that. Current Sammy is sneezing because he had a grand total of ten seconds of face time with a dog and that's how Sam is. When Dean gives him a dude, calm that immune system sideways look, Sam says, “Animals have a-” he breaks off and sneezes, “strong sense of the paranormal.”
“Kinda like your strong sense of animals.”
“Heh.”
They go back to Rebecca's house, where he and Sam talk theories for two-places-at-once and scan the police tapes (and Dean's duly impressed that she stole them and even more impressed with her sandwiches, even if they mean they still don't get ravioli). He and Sam are half asleep by the time they roll into the parking lot of the motel, and Dean tells the receptionist twice that the room needs to be non-smoking because Sam was fussing at his chest earlier ( and because Becky was fussing at his chest earlier, and hey, maybe that's what got under Dean's skin-that she was doing it wrong, rubbing Sam's back in the way that makes him nervous, putting her hand too close to his throat, just these little casual things that Sam has never much liked-if you're touching Sam, he wants you to fucking touch him) and Sam takes his pill and his brown inhaler like every night and makes a goofy face at Dean when he catches him looking and Dean makes it back, though he could never really match Sam's because damn is his kid funny looking, and they salt the doors and sleep like the dead.
**
“All right, so what are we doing here at 5:30 in the morning?”
Sam babbles about his breakthrough on the case, but they both know they're here so early because Sam's hyped up on so many cups of coffee that he doesn't give a shit what day it is, not to mention what time, and Dean's had his fair share and his taking slugs from another cup right now because damn, he'd gotten used to sleeping hard these past three years, and waking up every twenty minutes to Sammy coughing is really starting to wear on him. Jess deserves a fucking medal, sharing a bed with him (which Dean did for years, true, but Dean is starting to get to the really hideous conclusion that Sammy is worse now).
Sam skulks around the crime scene looking for clues, and Dean says, “So how'd you meet them, through Jess?”
“Zach and Beck are like the only people I didn't meet through Jess. I was in a group with Zach on this psych project. He had an apartment so we'd work on stuff there, and they're twins so she was always around. We weren't ever that close.”
“But they babysat you? Do I owe them a thank you? Fruit basket?”
“Are you going to help me?”
Dean rubs his eyes. “Ask me in an hour.”
Sam huffs out a breath and coughs again. “We worked late one night and I had a cold and it was raining so I crashed on the couch. I was gross the next morning because I didn't have my meds. That's when I found out she was a nursing student. Like two months later she ran into me at the health center during a flare and brought me back to her place because she had oxygen. She ended up taking me to the hospital that night and Zach came and sat with me the next day when I still was laid up. They're just nice people.”
“Why was your asthma so fucked up?”
Sam looks up from the dumpster he's inspecting. “Dude, why are you harping on this? You haven't asked me anything else about Stanford, now all of a sudden you want to know how I was doing? Do you want my peak flow numbers from each semester?”
“I'm just fucking wondering, all right?”
“It's California. It's green. Stuff grows. Sam wheezes. Circle of life.” He touches a telephone pole. “Blood. Somebody came this way.”
“Yeah, but the trail ends. I don't see anything over here. Don't change the subject.”
Sam looks at him like he has no idea what's going on (like he has on idea who Dean is). “Dean, this case is the subject.”
Yeah, bullshit. “Why didn't you tell us if you were having a hard time? You're in the hospital, you fucking call.”
Sam opens his mouth to say something just as an ambulance roars by. He purses his lips, huffs (wheezes) out another breath, and gives Dean this look that makes Dean feel small and stupid and what the fuck else is new?
“I did call,” Sam says, in the car. Quietly.
“What?”
“I did.” He takes his coffee cup out of the cup holder and tries to drink from it, brilliantly figures out it's empty, and crushes it in his fist. “I called the number I had for you but it'd been disconnected, so I called Dad.”
“When was this?”
“I don't know, March of my freshman year? Dad didn't pick up, I couldn't think of anything to say in a message so I just wheezed for a minute and hung up. Figured that was all the necessary information.”
Dean's quiet. “He never told me.”
“Shocking. He probably had plans for you outside of California that weekend.”
“I would have come.”
“I know.”
Dean's quiet. “March of your freshman year, Dad sent me on my first solo hunt. Gave me the car, pointed me to Kentucky, said he had shit to fly out to do and not to ask questions.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam mumbles.
“Watch it.”
Sam chews on the inside of his cheek and looks out the window.
“I thought I was imagining him,” Sam says. “You know, hallucinating or whatever, seeing his face on someone else. He was all the way down at the end of the hallway, and everyone was rushing around me all the time 'cause they were knocking me out to intubate me. And I thought it was him, just for a minute. He looked older. Then he was gone, or maybe I was just out, I can't remember.”
Dean sets his jaw.
“I would have come and sat with you,” Dean says. “I would have fucking stayed.”
“I know. I think that's why he didn't bring you. He knew you would stay.”
Sam doesn't mean for the weekend, and Dean doesn't even fucking know whether or not he did. All he's thinking about is the night Sam grabbed his shit and screamed in his father's face and got on the plane, and how one of the last things Sam yelled out was that hunting was going to fucking kill him, and John said that a kid who could raise his voice like that to his own father doesn't have lungs that deserve any babying and the door slammed and Dean heard Sam coughing all the way to the end of the block, and John pinched his nose and tried not to cry, and Dean is starting to get to the really hideous conclusion that Sam has always been this fucking bad.
But the asthma was never Sam, it always the job or the dirty motels or the fucking ghosts fucking choking him every other hunt, and the brochures under Sam's bed had all these pictures of college students fucking throwing frisbees, and John would come from Stanford and tell him Sam had grown another fucking inch and he had this pretty girl on his arm and Dean caught all the viruses Sammy usually would and told himself it was fine to feel abandoned and angry and to curse the kid as he was falling asleep alone because Sam didn't need protecting because Sam was in a fucking bubble, he had teachers and friends and a girlfriend and Dad checking in every once in a while and he was fine. He left so he would be fine.
And March of Sam's freshman year Dean took a rough hit to the chest on his first solo hunt and he wore that bruise like a fucking badge of honors because it wasn't on Sam's chest.
“You were supposed to be better there,” Dean says, and Sam says, “And you keep asking why I didn't call.”
**
They park the car and get out to survey the crime scene, and Sam rubs his chest and Dean looks down at his half-full coffee cup and finally wises the fuck up and passes it to Sam, who downs it in two swallows.
Except then ten minutes later he's leading his kid down a manhole, so that's probably the quickest he's cashed in on all his big brother points, and it's cold and wet and Dean can practically see the air settling deep in Sam's lungs, and his head starts rambling off nonsense words that sound like bacteria that are definitely swimming in the crap at their feet.
Sam makes a face. “It's fine.”
“Just, don't...breathe,” Dean says, and Sam laughs a little and says, “Okay.”
“Look at this,” Dean says, and points to a pile of skin and whatever the fuck on the ground, and asthma's forgotten for a little while.
**
A very little while, it turns out, because Sam's lungs decide to freak the fuck out as soon as they're back in fresh air, so between that and some phone call with Rebecca where the little nurse apparently doesn't give enough of a shit about his brother's breathing to cut him a bit of slack, Sammy gets a time-out. They sit on the side of the road and wait it out.
“We could be taking this break in a restaurant,” Dean says. “I'm just saying.”
“I'm sorry I-” wheeze “--ever brought up the fucking ravioli.”
“It's too late now. If we leave here without me trying some of this ravioli, I'm going to be so pissed, Sam.”
Sam takes another hit off the inhaler and lets the breath out slowly.
“What about after freshman year?” Dean says. Softly.
Sam shrugs. “Jess, mostly.”
Sam can say her name without flinching now.
“I mean, she had asthma,” Sam continues. “So she knew the drill.”
“Jess had asthma?”
Sam looks at him. “I didn't tell you that?”
“No.”
“It wasn't as bad as mine. And that was hard-” wheeze “--for her at first, getting that my lungs would get pissed off a lot faster than hers would, and that a hit on her little pink inhaler wouldn't cut it if I left mine in the car.”
“Don't leave your fucking inhaler in the car, what's wrong with you,” Dean says, but he's not really scolding, just trying to ground Sam.
Sam laughs and coughs. “Didn't have my big brother there to kick me around, I guess.”
“Yeah, guess not,” Dean says. Sam's breathing catches, and Dean smacks him behind his lungs in just the right place.
Dean blurts out, “I can't tell whether or not you were worse there.”
“Yeah, neither could I. I think...don't get pissed, okay?”
Dean makes no promises.
“I think it was Dad. Always pushing me and telling me I couldn't take a break when I needed one, and making this big deal out of how strong I was and how I didn't need to give in to the asthma or whatever the fuck cliché he'd latched onto that week. So I was really careful with myself almost in this show for him, taking all my meds in front of him, researching instead of hunting when I could, just anything I could to show him I wasn't like him and I didn't want to-couldn't--keep up with this life.”
Dean was too busy being impressed by the length of those sentences-way to go, Sammy-to process that all the way.
“And then at Stanford, I eat a fucking peanut at orientation week-”
“--what the fuck what-”
“Hey, I'm here, I'm alive. And then I'm immediately the sick kid and I'm not allowed to walk home by myself on rainy nights. And then I'm hitting the gym four hours a day and playing football on the quad and leaving my inhaler in the car because I don't want to be the weakling they think I am. Because I'm not that either. I don't know what the fuck I am, but there's really only two people who have really treated me in that in-between, and one of them's dead and one of them is apparently having some sort of mental breakdown next to me about the peanut thing, I don't know, I'll wait.”
Dean's not even listening because he's trying to force himself to calm down because a fucking week after this kid leaves home something like that happens and he doesn't fucking call Dean, he doesn't get on the first eastward plane and come the fuck home with his fucking tail between his legs, and who the fuck's idea was it to raise this kid to be so rebellious and brave and fucking frustrating and oh wait, yeah, exactly.
He shakes himself out of it and says, “You just can't be easy, can you?”
Sam grins and ducks his head. “It's not my nature.”
“You can keep up with this life, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, asthma's not without its perks. You want to wait in the car while I go back down to the depths?”
“No, I'm good.”
“You sure?”
“Don't baby me.” Sam gets up. “I'll leave my meds in the car out of spite.”
“You're a dick.”
Sam smiles and makes a big show out of stuffing his inhaler in his pocket before he grabs his gun, and look, Dean just fucking adores his kid. God, he really should be immune to asthma talk at this point, but now they're going back underground and seriously, fucking asthmatics in sewers, what the fuck even is this. He wants to give the kid a cup of tea and a shower and make him sit in a clean room, God, one wheezy conversation and now he's thinking all these moronic things, why not just knit the kid a fucking bonnet already.
Then Sam's freakishly humongous body splashes sewer goo all over Dean and Dean hates him again and that's the circle of life as far as Dean's concerned, and he'd tell the kid as much if he weren't too busy headlocking the shit out of him, because seriously, Sam, sewer goo?
And then Sam's coughing and then he's yelling Dean! and Dean's seeing spots Jesus his fucking shoulder what the hell and it's all kind of a blur until he's hunting the damn thing on his own, skulking around the streets like a bandit, and where the fuck is Sam?
Then someone flashes in front of him and raises something over his head and shit Sammy
**
He cracks his eyes open against the headache and coughs on cold wet air. Great. Of all the fucking places to be tied up, a fucking sewer, and goddamn the next time a hunt tries to get them down a fucking manhole they're skipping town, all right, he doesn't care how many people are dying or how good the fucking ravioli allegedly is in the damn city.
His instincts kick in and he squirms around to assess the situation. Unsurprisingly, the shapeshifter's a fucking expert at typing people up, and Dean can barely wiggle his fingers. He calls out “Hey, you doppleganger motherfucker!” and gets no answer, so he tries “Sammy?” and gets nothing from that either, so he pushes his head back against the pole behind him and tries to work his hands free but pretty much he just waits for someone to show up, because he knows by now how this works.
He's worried that when he finally sees Sam he's not going to know if it's him or the shapeshifter, but then a guy looking just like Dean comes in dragging a guy who looks like Sam over his shoulder like he's a eight and a half foot sack of flour, so there's one thing he doesn't have to worry about. Excuse him if he's not thanking his lucky stars right this minute, all right?
“What the fuck'd you do to him,” Dean growls, and if he doesn't get Sam's face away from the fucking sewer goo and his kid gets pneumonia from this Dean is going to tear this fucking shapeshifter limb from freakish limb. “Pick his fucking head up.”
“Relax,” the shifter says, and he gives Dean this goddamn smile and no, that's not going to work on Dean, thanks, he's immune to his own fucking powers of persuasion, “Sammy's just fine,” but that's bullshit, because he drops Sam on some chair and ties him up and Sam's not conscious and he's whistling like a teapot, and the worst part is he's behind him and Dean has his head craned all the way around and he still can't make out more than his kid's shoe and some of his stupid hair and shit.
Then he realizes the asshole stole his necklace, and if that isn't just the last fucking straw.
“Wake up, Sam!” Dean barks, and the shifter rolls his eyes and ambles over (and God, does Dean seriously walk with his fucking knees out like that, Jesus) and gags the fuck out of him with Dean doesn't even want to know what so great, hey there, last straw, take a fucking number, all right?
He chews on the gag and slams his head back against the pole.
He hears the groan and stuttered wheeze of Sam waking up, then the familiar sound of someone shaking an inhaler and Dean is confused because he fucking saw Sam's hands (and his neck his goddamn neck Jesus Christ he can't breathe) get tied up but hey, his kid is good, and what the fuck does he care how he got out because he's got his inhaler and he'll be fine and he can get Dean the hell out of here but Dean twists his head a little further and the fucking shifter has Sam's inhaler, and he's shaking it just a few inches in front of his face.
Sam blinks a few times and breathes out hard. “Where is he? Where's Dean?”
“I wouldn't worry about him,” the shifter says. “I'd worry about you.”
“Where is he?” Sam says, and he needs to fucking shut up and concentrate on his breathing, okay? Dean can look after his own damn self.
“You really don't want to know,” the shifter says, and Sam wheezes a little harder and Dean tries to struggle enough to make some noise or hum around the gag or something, but he's bound up fucking tight and Sam probably can't hear much over his damn breathing anyway, Jesus Christ, the shifter's still shaking his goddamn inhaler. “You doing all right there, Sammy?” the shifter says.
“Don't fucking call me that.”
“Breathing's sounding a little rough. There's a lot about you that's a little rough, huh, Sam?”
Sam starts coughing, and it's one of the ones where the first two bubble out of him and that's just fucking it, he's helpless, and he coughs for a fucking ages and the shifter just stands there and holds his inhaler and watches, and Jesus Christ why does Dean have to see him and not his fucking brother, and why the fuck does he have to wear his skin to do this, and Dean's staring at the shifter's hand-his hand-around the inhaler like if he concentrates hard enough he can cram it into Sammy's mouth, and Sam stop coughing because you need to be the damn hero here because apparently I cannot look after my own damn self.
Son of a bitch. Son of a fucking bitch.
Sam swallows and sucks in a breath.
“Yeah,” the shifter says. “Yeah, you are a piece of work, aren't you?”
“Bite me.”
“I'm sure you know why I wanted to be your brother and not you. Didn't want to risk dealing with your...” he does this really irritating pause and says, “difficulties.”
Dean hears Sam spit at him and he'd smile if not for this fucking piece of cloth cutting into his mouth (and if not for everything fucking else).
“Getting a little tough to breathe, there, huh, Sammy? Air's feeling a little heavy? That rope on your throat nice and tight? We've got some nice local molds down here, too, some sewer rats, all your asthma's favorite toys, hmm?”
“Where's my goddamn brother?” He's hoarse as all fuck.
“What a codependent little son of a bitch you are. I swear, the more I learn about you and your family...”
Sam's breath snags. “Learn?”
Dean watches the shapeshifter freeze, hold his head, now Sammy now he's weak and Sam seems to get the memo and he's struggling hard against the ropes but then the shifter snaps back to life and says, “He's sure got issues with you.”
Sam stops moving.
“He-I--spent my whole damn life looking after you. Protecting you from Dad. Pretending that monsters don't exist. Holding your little hand at doctor's appointments, dosing out your meds. And then you just left. You think I never wanted to get out? That I didn't have dreams of my own? That I wanted to be your babysitter my whole childhood? But Dad needed me to do it. And what the hell did Dad need you for? What good were you?”
”Where is my brother?” Sam barks, and then he's coughing again. The shifter just yells over it.
“I am your brother. See, deep down, I'm just jealous. You got babied when we were kids and you're getting babied now. We came to St. Louis just so I could make my kid brother feel better, you know that, right? Give you some agency. And here you are, tied up like the little damsel in distress, just. Like. Always. Because what's your other use? You think you're ever going to be the hero of a hunt, Sammy? How's that going for you? I'm still picking up after you and rescuing you every single damn hunt. You couldn't even handle college.”
Sam is still fucking coughing.
“Do you know how much faster Dad and I were without you? How much quicker hunting went when we didn't have to check in with you every other minute or worry about everything we fought knocking the air out of you? Do you know how much money we saved when we didn't have to buy you new inhalers all the time? You were holding us back, Sam. Just like you are right now. You think you're a real asset to your brother, tied up here and suffocating? You're a distraction. You're a liability. Even Jess must have thought so, didn't she?”
Dean will fucking kill him.
“Couldn't have been fun, having to babysit her boyfriend all the time. It's a good thing she died before you could knock her up, huh, Sammy? Imagine what a useless wheezy sack of shit your kid would be.” He stops pacing and stands in front of Sam, leans downs so their faces are close. “I'm not making any of this up, Sammy. These are all Dean's thoughts. That's the only reason I know any of this. This is all big brother."
Say something, Sam, Jesus fucking Christ, because Sam is smarter than this shit, Sam knows the fucking tricks that monsters pull, Sam knows who Dean is, even when his wheezing's getting quieter and quieter and he's probably going to drop out from not enough oxygen any minute and Jesus Christ.
“This is dull,” the shifter says. He puts the inhaler in his pocket. “There are things to do. People, even. Like little Becky.”
Sam makes a small noise, thank fucking God.
The shifter says, “You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let's find out.”
And he leaves.
**
Sam's not doing great.
Dean hears him working hard, but the more the kid struggles the more the rope around his neck constricts around his throat, and Sam's not an idiot, so pretty soon he stops and just stays still and tries to breathe steadily, and meanwhile Dean is still twisting his hands and the ropes are digging into him but finally, fucking finally, he finds a loose end. He works one of his wrists out and grabs this fucking gag out of his mouth. “Sam?”
“Thank God.”
“You hang in there, okay?”
“Uh-huh.” More coughing. “You okay?”
“I'm awesome.” He starts working at his other wrist. “You gonna make it a few more minutes?”
“Yeah.” And God, that wheezing sounds like it hurts. “What's in...a few minutes?”
“I don't know, the car, we'll find something.”
“Gotta get to Rebecca's...”
“I know, I know.”
“Dean.” He swallows and coughs. “D'you have an inhaler on you?”
“Hold on,” he says, even though he knows he doesn't, but he gets his other wrist free and pats at his pockets on his way to Sam. “No.”
Sam groans. And God, he looks like shit. He's so pale he looks gray and his neck's raw and bloody from the rope, and he's breathing worse than he has since the fire. Dean palms his cheek for a second before he starts working on the rope on his neck.
“I have an EpiPen,” Dean says.
Sam groans again, harder.
“Yeah, we'll you're getting it. It'll give you twenty minutes of breathing.”
“I hate it...”
“I know.” He frees Sam's neck. “Yahtzee.”
Sam leans forwards immediately and pants. “Hands.”
“Yeah.” The wrists are easier, and in a minute Sam's out. Dean hauls him to his feet and gives him a quick once-over. He must not have been out too long, because the concussion doesn't look too bad, and besides the cuts around his throat and the usual scrapes he seems okay. Except for, you know, the suffocating, so let's not dawdle, all right? “Okay.” Dean keeps a hold on the back of Sam's shirt. “We're getting you up the fucking ladder before I ruin your leg, then we're sitting you down and getting your lungs in fighting shape and then we'll figure the rest out, okay? This comes first.” (It's all just a monologue to keep Sam busy while he gets him to the ladder, because he really doesn't give a fuck what Sam thinks about the situation, this would not be a discussion even if Sam could talk.)
“I'm holding up the hunt,” Sam says. He jerks forwards with coughs and Dean stumbles.
“Come on, man,” Dean says.
“I'm a fucking liability.”
“No.” Dean pushes Sam up the ladder and follows closely behind. “I don't have time for this shit. You know what's a liability? Emo-Sam. So cut that the fuck off. The asthma's not a liability, the asthma's our third party that gets a little twitchy sometimes and we fucking deal with it, okay? We don't sit around and whine about how hard it is and how we wish it weren't here because we're Winchesters, all right, bitch? We get shit done, we take care of business, that's it.” He sits Sam down on the sidewalk and jams the EpiPen into Sam's leg through his jeans. Because nothing makes being covered in sewer goo more healthy than adding a puncture wound, right?
Sam curses and looks away, but Dean can tell he's breathing better almost instantly, and also that he's listening. And he's going to need a minute for the medicine to get all the way through him, so Dean might as well just get this all the fuck out.
“Look,” Dean says. “I guess for some reason this is coming as a huge shock to you, but monsters are full of shit. He was saying whatever he could to piss your chest off.”
“And you're saying whatever the fuck...to fix it.”
“Sam, shut the fuck up and breathe.” Because what the fuck is Dean supposed to say? Because yeah, the shapeshifter only had his thoughts, and yeah, Dean's thought those things, but Dean has thought a whole lot of damn things and they don't fucking matter, this matters, here on the fucking sidewalk and Sam not breathing and Sam Sam Sammy this matters.
Sam scowls and wraps his arms around his chest and wheezes in and out. He closes his eyes to concentrate, and Jesus Christ but the kid works hard. He's timing his breaths and not rushing the exhales and breathing from his diaphragm and keeping his shoulders down and seriously, this kid, what the fuck is Dean supposed to say to make this better when all he can think of is if you were a big brother, you would get it, you would get how scared and frustrated and angry and annoyed and fucking proud of you this thing in your chest makes me, and you would have some idea of how it fucking kills me when I see that it's killing you because I have to tell myself it's okay and you're okay and that you're a machine about it so I don't go and try to track down some hoodoo bitch and pay her in pints of blood to make her give you some herb you'll probably be hideously allergic to that probably won't help anyway or whatever the fuck hoodoo bitches do, and if you were a big brother you'd get that sometimes you have to ask your little brother to just deal with being taken care of and sometimes you just need to believe that you're helping him when there's nothing you can really do besides give the kid twenty minutes or twenty years before his lungs crap the fuck out, and sometimes you need your kid brother to be the strong one, okay? Except why the fuck would he say that because fucking look at Sam and these breaths he's taking and the color he's getting back and the idea that Sam isn't the strong one is just such bullshit that he can't even deal with it, and just look at this kid, goddamn it, there is no one like this goddamn infuriating ridiculous bitch of a kid.
“You're not a liability,” Dean says. “You're fucking awesome. Okay?”
Sam opens one eye.
“Come on,” Dean says. “We have shit to do.”
**
Of course, their plans get fucked up pretty majorly by the news that bizarro-Dean was already spotted trying to kill Rebecca, and they don't have any weapons because that asshole stole his car, and when they track his baby down (and she looks okay but the poor thing's probably traumatized) the cops come out of nowhere and yeah, maybe that wasn't their best move, but it's been a rough night, okay?
“This way, this way,” Dean says, tugging Sam towards a fence.
Sam shakes his head. “You go. I'll hold 'em off.”
“What are you talking about? They'll catch you.”
“I can't hop a fence on this leg. I can barely fucking run. It's fine, they can't hold me.”
Fuck no, he is not leaving Sammy right now, no, but Jesus the fucking cops, this is bad.
Sam sees him hesitating and says, “Dean. They might even get me a fucking inhaler. Just go, keep out of sight. Meet me at Rebecca's.”
Fine. Dean runs and jumps the fence and pretends he doesn't hear Sam telling him not to go into the sewers alone, because what does Sam think he's going to do, wait for him? Yeah, Sam can hang out in the nice warm police station and lawyer their way out of trouble and catch his breath. He'll be fine.
**
So it figures that the next time Dean sees Sam, it's when he's rushing back into the house with Rebecca and the shapeshifter asshole is him again and is choking Sam.
Seriously, there's got to be some sort of monster memo out on them at this point telling them that choking Sam is quick and cheap fun or some shit because this is getting ridiculous. Lay the fuck off Dean's kid.
So yeah, he gets shot. And Dean gets his fucking necklace back, thank you.
“I wanted to be the hero,” Sam mumbles on their way out.
Dean can't even believe this kid sometimes. “Sam, are you fucking kidding me? How long did you fight off a guy in my body how long after that hideous asthma attack? Come on, don't make me do this encouraging shit, it doesn't fit me well.”
Sam smiles a little and is quiet. Eventually he says, “It's not like it was that hard. Fighting a guy in your body.”
“Fuck you.”
“Kinda short.”
“Bite me, Sam.”
**
“So, what about your friend Zach?”
Sam rubs his chest while he gets into the car. They'd probably both like to sit him down in the ER for a few hours to ride the rest of this out, but, well, they can't exactly linger around St. Louis when one of them's walking around with the face of a dead guy. “Cops are blamin’ this Dean Winchester guy for Emily’s murder,” Sam says. “They found the murder weapon in the guy’s lair, Zach’s clothes stained with her blood. Now they’re thinking maybe the surveillance tape was tampered with. Yeah, Becca says Zach will be released soon.”
“Nice paragraph, wheezy.”
“Fuck off.”
Once they're on the road, Dean grabs the med kit out of the glove compartment and tosses it on Sam's lap. Sam takes the spare inhaler out and kisses it.
“Are there any antibiotics in there you can have?” Dean says. “They'd have 'S' stickers on them. I don't want to know what the fuck was in that sewer water.”
“You still put stickers on my meds?”
“Do you remember the time when you were five and decided you were curious about amoxicillin?”
“No.”
“Well, good. That kinda shit sticks, okay?”
Sam digs around the bag. “Yeah, there's azithromyacin.”
“All right, go ahead and take all of them.”
Sam laughs and pops a few. “Hey, you too, all right?”
Dean raises an eyebrow, but Sam looks serious, so he says, “Yeah, sure, what the hell. Save yours, though, gimme something that would kill you.” Sam seems to get a kick out of handling all the bottles without S's on them because the kid's a fucking asshole sent to earth to make Dean nervous, but he eventually shakes out two of some other antibiotic and Dean takes them and then glares at Sam until Sam wipes his hands on his jeans.
Sam stares out the window and chews his cheek at a sign that tells them they're leaving St. Louis and Dean says, “So how'd you know the shifter wasn't me?”
Sam snorts. “You want to know?”
“I asked.”
“I was wheezing and he didn't nag me.”
“Aha, see, what would you do without your big brother on your case all the time?”
“Be constantly confused about his identity, obviously.”
And then they're quiet for a minute.
And Dean says, “I'm sorry, man,” and he can count the number of times he's ever apologized to anyone on one hand (and the number of times he's apologized to anyone who wasn't Sam on zero) so Sam better fucking well pay attention.
He looks up. Good boy. “About what?”
“I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be Joe College. No hunting, no asthma. Just you.”
“No, that's okay. You know, the truth is, deep down, even at Stanford I never really fit in. Because...the hunting and the asthma are me. They're my past. And I don't make sense when I can't explain them, and I couldn't explain...” He rolls his eyes at himself. “I didn't know how to explain them without you there.”
“Well, that's 'cause you're a co-dependent freak.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Well, I’m a co-dependent freak, too. I’m right there with you, all the way.”
“Yeah, I know you are,” Sam says, because Sam knows exactly who the fuck Dean is.
Dean says, “You know, I gotta say-I'm sorry I'm gonna miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“How many chances am I gonna have to see my own funeral?”
Dean thinks that was a pretty great line, but Sam rolls his eyes and then says, “I thought you'd be more pissed about never getting any ravioli,” and Jesus Christ Dean could fucking hit the kid because he'd forgotten all about it and now he can practically smell six or seven varieties of cheese and his kid is laughing himself into a coma there next to him and Dean says “You know what? Fuck St. Louis. Fuck it hard,” and Sam nods and wheeze something about how goofy Dean's face looks and really Sam's one to fucking talk.
“You owe me,” Dean says, and Sam says, “I totally, totally owe you.”
Summary: Sam wants to be the big damn hero in the shapeshifter case, and Dean wants to know what the hell he missed while Sam was at Stanford. There's a lot of banter and few revelations.
Warnings/Spoilers: It's a take on 1.06, so through that and you're good! I stole some dialogue from the show, particularly in the shifter scene and the last scene, and there are lines elsewhere that are directly from the show as well. Just for fun (I especially wanted to see how much I could fuck with the main plot/themes and still keep the majority of the last scene's dialogue) not pretending I wrote them, and I'll be happy to point out which are not mine if anyone wants to know. I also changed around some plot details--the biggest is that Sam and Dean are tied up in the sewers instead of in some random room. In my defense, I totally thought they were tied up in the sewers instead of in some random room. Hideous language, as usual.
Wordcount: 8,249
Author's Note: So this fic isn't on the Sammyverse masterlist anymore, because, frankly, it was stressing me out there. It doesn't really work inside the verse canon anymore, because I went back and wrote stuff that contradicts it. That's the hazard of writing out of order, I guess, but otherwise I couldn't have written all those Stanford fics, and those are my favorites, soooo..
The story will stick around, but I'm untagging it and taking it off the list, so it's like a little Easter egg, I guess.
Dean's totally been had by a pair of twenty-two-year-old kicked-puppy eyes, and the worst part is that it takes him until they're twenty miles away from the gas station (twenty miles in the wrong direction, back the way they came) to realize it, and by then the kicked puppy in question has stopped trying to hide the shit-eating grin he now has on his face as he looks through the rest of his emails. Chasing down some college friend of his arrested for murder, Dean can't believe this (partly because what are the chances this thing his going to be at all in their area of expertise, mostly because Jesus does Sammy just collect evil bastards wherever he goes, and what the fuck was he doing making friends with murderers, bitch was supposed to keep safe at Stanford, that was the whole goddamn point).
.And fuck, Sam got his way pretty damn easily, probably because it's been a long time (three and a half years) since Dean has seen him calm and devious and fucking Sam enough to hold a conversation and manipulate said conversation like he used to, and of course that means that Dean is going to ruin everything now because what kind of a big brother would he be if he would ever just lay off the kid (even if you really should right now, Dean, look at him, he's still having nightmares, but he's being Sam and that means Dean has to be a little Dean, you know?)
“So,” Dean says, and Sam reaches forwards and turns down the music way, way down and looks at him and well, if Dean hadn't been already about to give him hell, the kid has to go and practically mute “The Chase is Better Than the Catch,” and seriously, sometimes it's like Sam has no idea when he does stuff that makes big brother have to give him hell (sometimes it's like Sam has no idea who Dean is).
“So?”
“So this chick, Rebecca Warren. You fucked her, right?”
Sam gives one of those dry “I am so not amused” half-cough half-laughs things he perfected like two weeks after his asthma diagnosis, and Dean's never heard anyone else who can do it quite like Sam (but he's heard his dad try.)
Dean says, “Okay, so you fucked her brother?”
“I didn't fuck anyone...”
Dean smirks (despite everything).
And Sam actually gives him a smile and an eyeroll. “I didn't fuck Rebecca. She's old. Or Zach. Who's also kinda old. I don't know if you've been listening, but I actually had this girlfriend-”
“For twenty-one months, yeah. I listen.”
Sam chews on the inside of his cheek.
“Meaning,” Dean says, “That we have seventeen whole months of Sam all unaccounted for.”
“You act like it's some mystery where I was and what I was doing. The first two years of college are not that exciting, Dean. There's a lot of late nights and cheap vodka.”
“And fucking random girls and their brothers, that's all I'm saying.”
“I didn't fuck Rebecca! Or Zach!”
“Fine.” Dean knows exactly what he's going to say next, because he's known since Sam's first denial (because it didn't come with any blushing or that weird lip twitch thing he does) that he's telling the truth, but this long pause is good, it'll make the next part easier to say. Because now he really does want to know (because he really wanted to know this for three years and three months). He clears his throat. “I just wonder, man. 'cause I know what you were up to when you were with Dad and me, and I'm sure you were busy being an awesome housewife when you were with Jessica, and I just wonder about before that, y'know? Like what you were doing and who was looking after you. 'Cause you weren't always great about picking up your phone, so it clearly wasn't me.”
“I called.”
“Yeah, the first year. Holidays, birthdays, 4 AM drunk dials.”
“No one looked after me, Dean,” Sam says. “Nobody has that in college. It's a bunch of eighteen-year-olds living in each other's hair and puking on each other's carpets and everyone looks after their own damn selves.”
“Not everyone's you,” Dean says.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning not everyone knows about all the shit that's out there in the dark and has to worry that the shit out there knows about him. Not everyone has a pile of family secrets that could fill the Stanford College Football Stadium-”
“--University, Dean. Law school, remember?--”
“--and not everyone,” Dean says, with a pointed look to his right, “has a set of lungs that likes to fucking bail on him at a moment's notice, so maybe I worried every once in a while, all right?”
Dean is waiting for a very specific answer to this part, and fine, maybe this is what he was trying to get at this whole time, whatever, it's not his fault that the fire was months ago and Sam's still coughing and he's noticed, so what.
Sam doesn't say anything for a long time. Then he clenches his jaw. “I'm here now.”
“Yeah,” is all Dean can figure out how to say, because that didn't exactly go how they wanted (nice job at the heart-to-heart there, Dean, I think you really managed to piss him the fuck off! But next time, more digs at the dead ex-girlfriend, okay, and you should probably go more in-depth on those family secrets. Bring in how they're currently keeping your family apart and how they're responsible for dragging Sam out of his comfortable new life and for the death of that ex-girlfriend!)
But then Sam says, “Becky was a nursing student. Due to Stanford being, you know, a University. She took care of me a few times when I was sick.”
He isn't looking at Dean.
Dean doesn't ask what sick means because they have a special voice for asthma and that was it.
“Oh,” Dean says, and he expects to say, at least to think, 'I'm glad someone took care of you, I'm glad you let them help, because for some reason it's still like Dean's the only person in the damn world who gets how shy Sam is, and how much happier the kid would be if he could hunker down and lock himself somewhere alone (with Jess, with Dean) and never have to see another damn soul (or another damn monster, and isn't that just the root of all things where Sam is concerned because these fucking monsters are his roots) but anyway he's waiting to feel proud of his Sammy or whatever but instead his stupid fucking brain is having a meltdown because after a handful of sleepless nights Sam's first semester he had some sort of epiphany (anxiety attack) and convinced himself that Sam's asthma was fine now, that it was hunting and gunpowder and dirty motel rooms and twenty-degree weather that got to the kid, but out there with the books and the fresh air and no stress outside of memorizing legal codes and no exertion outside of fucking sorority sisters, Sam was fine. They never mentioned it on the phone calls, and Dean never got any messages from hospitals in Stanford (because Sam left his emergency contact blank, he knows that, because how the hell would he have known what number or what name to use, and Dean gets that, but he also decided-he flat-out demanded to himself-that that meant no hospitals for Sam. Because that was why he let Sam go.)
And when Sam was wheezing a little during the Lady in White fiasco, well, he was out of shape, and when he was a fucking mess in that ambulance the night after Jess died, well, that was stress and grief and two tons of smoke but really that was nothing to analyze because Sam could do whatever the fuck he wanted with no reason necessary that night, Sam could have cut himself to ribbons or drunk himself into a coma and Dean wouldn't have blamed him and the worst he could do was hesitate to take his meds when his lungs were shutting down, like, Jesus Christ Sammy you can't even fall apart like a normal fucking person, you have to do it all methodically and logically and in this one way Dean couldn't fucking fix,and anyway he's been kind of off since then, but it happens, and it's no big deal, and it's because he's hunting again and it's the residual smoke inhalation and this is why he got out. Because he's healthier when he's not hunting. Because he was fine when he was at Stanford.
Dean swallows hard and doesn't look at him.
“Bad attacks at Stanford?” he says. He sounds like his father somehow, he thinks, and fuck if that doesn't bring on a lot of feelings he wasn't expecting (most of them not good).
“A few,” Sam says. And it's casual and he's not even faking it, goddamn it. He's just fucking casual about this.
“But smaller ones a lot?”
“No more than usual. I guess,” Sam says, and no more than usual, Dean could fucking punch something.
He settles with driving really fucking fast, like there's anything he wants to see on that other end, and Sammy at least has the sense to be confused, and, well, good, because so's Dean, because apparently he thinks it's a bad thing that Sam didn't just give up and suffocate when he was on his own, and Dean thinks that that's what he'd have done if he were Sam and that that's sort of what he pushed Sam into because he was wheezing during those drunk dials, you asshole, and you didn't say anything because you didn't want to believe it and because he didn't want to hunt with you so you didn't want to care.
“Supposedly St. Louis has amazing ravioli,” Sam says, and kudos, Sammy, you fucking geek, you would know. Dean tries to unscrunch. It's in the past, whatever, and Sam sounds fine right now. Dean will give Becky a hug for taking care of his kid and tell her they're sorry her brother's a pyscho killer (but thanks for not letting him psycho-kill Sam) and they'll be out the door and back to finding Dad (who went and spied on Sam a hundred times at Stanford when Dean didn't come because they both knew he wouldn't be able to do it without letting Sam know they were there, who must have seen the kid running to or from class fifty times and never once mentioned seeing the inhaler when he was running across fucking oceans of grass everyday of course he had his inhaler Dad just didn't want to talk about it, and it looks like Sam is the only one of the bunch who wasn't a fucking idiot about all of this, so kudos again, Sammy, this is why college shelled out the big bucks. But you're a Winchester, so welcome to the passenger seat of the Impala on your way to a murder case with the same shitty lungs you rode in on, it's good to have you back).
(Really.)
God, nothing like asthma talk to turn Dean into a sappy son of a bitch. “I want cheese-stuffed ravioli,” Dean says. “Like, six or seven different varieties of cheese, otherwise we're not stopping.”
“That is totally reasonable.”
Turns out Sam's a bitch and he makes them get chicken sandwiches to-go two hours later so they can drive straight through the day.
**
“Little Becky” dotes all the fuck over Sam, and Dean thinks it's probably a good thing he wasn't around for the past three years because he really doesn't need to see these well-intentioned girls trying to mother around his orphan of a kid (plus this chick is a slip of the tongue away from saying “Sammy” and that wouldn't be good for anyone) but she's cute, and as soon as she looks at Dean instead of Sam, Dean somehow finds all irritation with her draining away. Imagine that.
Zach's house has a picture of Sam on the refrigerator. Past Sammy is smiling but doesn't look happy, and Dean doesn't know how to feel like that. Current Sammy is sneezing because he had a grand total of ten seconds of face time with a dog and that's how Sam is. When Dean gives him a dude, calm that immune system sideways look, Sam says, “Animals have a-” he breaks off and sneezes, “strong sense of the paranormal.”
“Kinda like your strong sense of animals.”
“Heh.”
They go back to Rebecca's house, where he and Sam talk theories for two-places-at-once and scan the police tapes (and Dean's duly impressed that she stole them and even more impressed with her sandwiches, even if they mean they still don't get ravioli). He and Sam are half asleep by the time they roll into the parking lot of the motel, and Dean tells the receptionist twice that the room needs to be non-smoking because Sam was fussing at his chest earlier ( and because Becky was fussing at his chest earlier, and hey, maybe that's what got under Dean's skin-that she was doing it wrong, rubbing Sam's back in the way that makes him nervous, putting her hand too close to his throat, just these little casual things that Sam has never much liked-if you're touching Sam, he wants you to fucking touch him) and Sam takes his pill and his brown inhaler like every night and makes a goofy face at Dean when he catches him looking and Dean makes it back, though he could never really match Sam's because damn is his kid funny looking, and they salt the doors and sleep like the dead.
**
“All right, so what are we doing here at 5:30 in the morning?”
Sam babbles about his breakthrough on the case, but they both know they're here so early because Sam's hyped up on so many cups of coffee that he doesn't give a shit what day it is, not to mention what time, and Dean's had his fair share and his taking slugs from another cup right now because damn, he'd gotten used to sleeping hard these past three years, and waking up every twenty minutes to Sammy coughing is really starting to wear on him. Jess deserves a fucking medal, sharing a bed with him (which Dean did for years, true, but Dean is starting to get to the really hideous conclusion that Sammy is worse now).
Sam skulks around the crime scene looking for clues, and Dean says, “So how'd you meet them, through Jess?”
“Zach and Beck are like the only people I didn't meet through Jess. I was in a group with Zach on this psych project. He had an apartment so we'd work on stuff there, and they're twins so she was always around. We weren't ever that close.”
“But they babysat you? Do I owe them a thank you? Fruit basket?”
“Are you going to help me?”
Dean rubs his eyes. “Ask me in an hour.”
Sam huffs out a breath and coughs again. “We worked late one night and I had a cold and it was raining so I crashed on the couch. I was gross the next morning because I didn't have my meds. That's when I found out she was a nursing student. Like two months later she ran into me at the health center during a flare and brought me back to her place because she had oxygen. She ended up taking me to the hospital that night and Zach came and sat with me the next day when I still was laid up. They're just nice people.”
“Why was your asthma so fucked up?”
Sam looks up from the dumpster he's inspecting. “Dude, why are you harping on this? You haven't asked me anything else about Stanford, now all of a sudden you want to know how I was doing? Do you want my peak flow numbers from each semester?”
“I'm just fucking wondering, all right?”
“It's California. It's green. Stuff grows. Sam wheezes. Circle of life.” He touches a telephone pole. “Blood. Somebody came this way.”
“Yeah, but the trail ends. I don't see anything over here. Don't change the subject.”
Sam looks at him like he has no idea what's going on (like he has on idea who Dean is). “Dean, this case is the subject.”
Yeah, bullshit. “Why didn't you tell us if you were having a hard time? You're in the hospital, you fucking call.”
Sam opens his mouth to say something just as an ambulance roars by. He purses his lips, huffs (wheezes) out another breath, and gives Dean this look that makes Dean feel small and stupid and what the fuck else is new?
“I did call,” Sam says, in the car. Quietly.
“What?”
“I did.” He takes his coffee cup out of the cup holder and tries to drink from it, brilliantly figures out it's empty, and crushes it in his fist. “I called the number I had for you but it'd been disconnected, so I called Dad.”
“When was this?”
“I don't know, March of my freshman year? Dad didn't pick up, I couldn't think of anything to say in a message so I just wheezed for a minute and hung up. Figured that was all the necessary information.”
Dean's quiet. “He never told me.”
“Shocking. He probably had plans for you outside of California that weekend.”
“I would have come.”
“I know.”
Dean's quiet. “March of your freshman year, Dad sent me on my first solo hunt. Gave me the car, pointed me to Kentucky, said he had shit to fly out to do and not to ask questions.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam mumbles.
“Watch it.”
Sam chews on the inside of his cheek and looks out the window.
“I thought I was imagining him,” Sam says. “You know, hallucinating or whatever, seeing his face on someone else. He was all the way down at the end of the hallway, and everyone was rushing around me all the time 'cause they were knocking me out to intubate me. And I thought it was him, just for a minute. He looked older. Then he was gone, or maybe I was just out, I can't remember.”
Dean sets his jaw.
“I would have come and sat with you,” Dean says. “I would have fucking stayed.”
“I know. I think that's why he didn't bring you. He knew you would stay.”
Sam doesn't mean for the weekend, and Dean doesn't even fucking know whether or not he did. All he's thinking about is the night Sam grabbed his shit and screamed in his father's face and got on the plane, and how one of the last things Sam yelled out was that hunting was going to fucking kill him, and John said that a kid who could raise his voice like that to his own father doesn't have lungs that deserve any babying and the door slammed and Dean heard Sam coughing all the way to the end of the block, and John pinched his nose and tried not to cry, and Dean is starting to get to the really hideous conclusion that Sam has always been this fucking bad.
But the asthma was never Sam, it always the job or the dirty motels or the fucking ghosts fucking choking him every other hunt, and the brochures under Sam's bed had all these pictures of college students fucking throwing frisbees, and John would come from Stanford and tell him Sam had grown another fucking inch and he had this pretty girl on his arm and Dean caught all the viruses Sammy usually would and told himself it was fine to feel abandoned and angry and to curse the kid as he was falling asleep alone because Sam didn't need protecting because Sam was in a fucking bubble, he had teachers and friends and a girlfriend and Dad checking in every once in a while and he was fine. He left so he would be fine.
And March of Sam's freshman year Dean took a rough hit to the chest on his first solo hunt and he wore that bruise like a fucking badge of honors because it wasn't on Sam's chest.
“You were supposed to be better there,” Dean says, and Sam says, “And you keep asking why I didn't call.”
**
They park the car and get out to survey the crime scene, and Sam rubs his chest and Dean looks down at his half-full coffee cup and finally wises the fuck up and passes it to Sam, who downs it in two swallows.
Except then ten minutes later he's leading his kid down a manhole, so that's probably the quickest he's cashed in on all his big brother points, and it's cold and wet and Dean can practically see the air settling deep in Sam's lungs, and his head starts rambling off nonsense words that sound like bacteria that are definitely swimming in the crap at their feet.
Sam makes a face. “It's fine.”
“Just, don't...breathe,” Dean says, and Sam laughs a little and says, “Okay.”
“Look at this,” Dean says, and points to a pile of skin and whatever the fuck on the ground, and asthma's forgotten for a little while.
**
A very little while, it turns out, because Sam's lungs decide to freak the fuck out as soon as they're back in fresh air, so between that and some phone call with Rebecca where the little nurse apparently doesn't give enough of a shit about his brother's breathing to cut him a bit of slack, Sammy gets a time-out. They sit on the side of the road and wait it out.
“We could be taking this break in a restaurant,” Dean says. “I'm just saying.”
“I'm sorry I-” wheeze “--ever brought up the fucking ravioli.”
“It's too late now. If we leave here without me trying some of this ravioli, I'm going to be so pissed, Sam.”
Sam takes another hit off the inhaler and lets the breath out slowly.
“What about after freshman year?” Dean says. Softly.
Sam shrugs. “Jess, mostly.”
Sam can say her name without flinching now.
“I mean, she had asthma,” Sam continues. “So she knew the drill.”
“Jess had asthma?”
Sam looks at him. “I didn't tell you that?”
“No.”
“It wasn't as bad as mine. And that was hard-” wheeze “--for her at first, getting that my lungs would get pissed off a lot faster than hers would, and that a hit on her little pink inhaler wouldn't cut it if I left mine in the car.”
“Don't leave your fucking inhaler in the car, what's wrong with you,” Dean says, but he's not really scolding, just trying to ground Sam.
Sam laughs and coughs. “Didn't have my big brother there to kick me around, I guess.”
“Yeah, guess not,” Dean says. Sam's breathing catches, and Dean smacks him behind his lungs in just the right place.
Dean blurts out, “I can't tell whether or not you were worse there.”
“Yeah, neither could I. I think...don't get pissed, okay?”
Dean makes no promises.
“I think it was Dad. Always pushing me and telling me I couldn't take a break when I needed one, and making this big deal out of how strong I was and how I didn't need to give in to the asthma or whatever the fuck cliché he'd latched onto that week. So I was really careful with myself almost in this show for him, taking all my meds in front of him, researching instead of hunting when I could, just anything I could to show him I wasn't like him and I didn't want to-couldn't--keep up with this life.”
Dean was too busy being impressed by the length of those sentences-way to go, Sammy-to process that all the way.
“And then at Stanford, I eat a fucking peanut at orientation week-”
“--what the fuck what-”
“Hey, I'm here, I'm alive. And then I'm immediately the sick kid and I'm not allowed to walk home by myself on rainy nights. And then I'm hitting the gym four hours a day and playing football on the quad and leaving my inhaler in the car because I don't want to be the weakling they think I am. Because I'm not that either. I don't know what the fuck I am, but there's really only two people who have really treated me in that in-between, and one of them's dead and one of them is apparently having some sort of mental breakdown next to me about the peanut thing, I don't know, I'll wait.”
Dean's not even listening because he's trying to force himself to calm down because a fucking week after this kid leaves home something like that happens and he doesn't fucking call Dean, he doesn't get on the first eastward plane and come the fuck home with his fucking tail between his legs, and who the fuck's idea was it to raise this kid to be so rebellious and brave and fucking frustrating and oh wait, yeah, exactly.
He shakes himself out of it and says, “You just can't be easy, can you?”
Sam grins and ducks his head. “It's not my nature.”
“You can keep up with this life, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, asthma's not without its perks. You want to wait in the car while I go back down to the depths?”
“No, I'm good.”
“You sure?”
“Don't baby me.” Sam gets up. “I'll leave my meds in the car out of spite.”
“You're a dick.”
Sam smiles and makes a big show out of stuffing his inhaler in his pocket before he grabs his gun, and look, Dean just fucking adores his kid. God, he really should be immune to asthma talk at this point, but now they're going back underground and seriously, fucking asthmatics in sewers, what the fuck even is this. He wants to give the kid a cup of tea and a shower and make him sit in a clean room, God, one wheezy conversation and now he's thinking all these moronic things, why not just knit the kid a fucking bonnet already.
Then Sam's freakishly humongous body splashes sewer goo all over Dean and Dean hates him again and that's the circle of life as far as Dean's concerned, and he'd tell the kid as much if he weren't too busy headlocking the shit out of him, because seriously, Sam, sewer goo?
And then Sam's coughing and then he's yelling Dean! and Dean's seeing spots Jesus his fucking shoulder what the hell and it's all kind of a blur until he's hunting the damn thing on his own, skulking around the streets like a bandit, and where the fuck is Sam?
Then someone flashes in front of him and raises something over his head and shit Sammy
**
He cracks his eyes open against the headache and coughs on cold wet air. Great. Of all the fucking places to be tied up, a fucking sewer, and goddamn the next time a hunt tries to get them down a fucking manhole they're skipping town, all right, he doesn't care how many people are dying or how good the fucking ravioli allegedly is in the damn city.
His instincts kick in and he squirms around to assess the situation. Unsurprisingly, the shapeshifter's a fucking expert at typing people up, and Dean can barely wiggle his fingers. He calls out “Hey, you doppleganger motherfucker!” and gets no answer, so he tries “Sammy?” and gets nothing from that either, so he pushes his head back against the pole behind him and tries to work his hands free but pretty much he just waits for someone to show up, because he knows by now how this works.
He's worried that when he finally sees Sam he's not going to know if it's him or the shapeshifter, but then a guy looking just like Dean comes in dragging a guy who looks like Sam over his shoulder like he's a eight and a half foot sack of flour, so there's one thing he doesn't have to worry about. Excuse him if he's not thanking his lucky stars right this minute, all right?
“What the fuck'd you do to him,” Dean growls, and if he doesn't get Sam's face away from the fucking sewer goo and his kid gets pneumonia from this Dean is going to tear this fucking shapeshifter limb from freakish limb. “Pick his fucking head up.”
“Relax,” the shifter says, and he gives Dean this goddamn smile and no, that's not going to work on Dean, thanks, he's immune to his own fucking powers of persuasion, “Sammy's just fine,” but that's bullshit, because he drops Sam on some chair and ties him up and Sam's not conscious and he's whistling like a teapot, and the worst part is he's behind him and Dean has his head craned all the way around and he still can't make out more than his kid's shoe and some of his stupid hair and shit.
Then he realizes the asshole stole his necklace, and if that isn't just the last fucking straw.
“Wake up, Sam!” Dean barks, and the shifter rolls his eyes and ambles over (and God, does Dean seriously walk with his fucking knees out like that, Jesus) and gags the fuck out of him with Dean doesn't even want to know what so great, hey there, last straw, take a fucking number, all right?
He chews on the gag and slams his head back against the pole.
He hears the groan and stuttered wheeze of Sam waking up, then the familiar sound of someone shaking an inhaler and Dean is confused because he fucking saw Sam's hands (and his neck his goddamn neck Jesus Christ he can't breathe) get tied up but hey, his kid is good, and what the fuck does he care how he got out because he's got his inhaler and he'll be fine and he can get Dean the hell out of here but Dean twists his head a little further and the fucking shifter has Sam's inhaler, and he's shaking it just a few inches in front of his face.
Sam blinks a few times and breathes out hard. “Where is he? Where's Dean?”
“I wouldn't worry about him,” the shifter says. “I'd worry about you.”
“Where is he?” Sam says, and he needs to fucking shut up and concentrate on his breathing, okay? Dean can look after his own damn self.
“You really don't want to know,” the shifter says, and Sam wheezes a little harder and Dean tries to struggle enough to make some noise or hum around the gag or something, but he's bound up fucking tight and Sam probably can't hear much over his damn breathing anyway, Jesus Christ, the shifter's still shaking his goddamn inhaler. “You doing all right there, Sammy?” the shifter says.
“Don't fucking call me that.”
“Breathing's sounding a little rough. There's a lot about you that's a little rough, huh, Sam?”
Sam starts coughing, and it's one of the ones where the first two bubble out of him and that's just fucking it, he's helpless, and he coughs for a fucking ages and the shifter just stands there and holds his inhaler and watches, and Jesus Christ why does Dean have to see him and not his fucking brother, and why the fuck does he have to wear his skin to do this, and Dean's staring at the shifter's hand-his hand-around the inhaler like if he concentrates hard enough he can cram it into Sammy's mouth, and Sam stop coughing because you need to be the damn hero here because apparently I cannot look after my own damn self.
Son of a bitch. Son of a fucking bitch.
Sam swallows and sucks in a breath.
“Yeah,” the shifter says. “Yeah, you are a piece of work, aren't you?”
“Bite me.”
“I'm sure you know why I wanted to be your brother and not you. Didn't want to risk dealing with your...” he does this really irritating pause and says, “difficulties.”
Dean hears Sam spit at him and he'd smile if not for this fucking piece of cloth cutting into his mouth (and if not for everything fucking else).
“Getting a little tough to breathe, there, huh, Sammy? Air's feeling a little heavy? That rope on your throat nice and tight? We've got some nice local molds down here, too, some sewer rats, all your asthma's favorite toys, hmm?”
“Where's my goddamn brother?” He's hoarse as all fuck.
“What a codependent little son of a bitch you are. I swear, the more I learn about you and your family...”
Sam's breath snags. “Learn?”
Dean watches the shapeshifter freeze, hold his head, now Sammy now he's weak and Sam seems to get the memo and he's struggling hard against the ropes but then the shifter snaps back to life and says, “He's sure got issues with you.”
Sam stops moving.
“He-I--spent my whole damn life looking after you. Protecting you from Dad. Pretending that monsters don't exist. Holding your little hand at doctor's appointments, dosing out your meds. And then you just left. You think I never wanted to get out? That I didn't have dreams of my own? That I wanted to be your babysitter my whole childhood? But Dad needed me to do it. And what the hell did Dad need you for? What good were you?”
”Where is my brother?” Sam barks, and then he's coughing again. The shifter just yells over it.
“I am your brother. See, deep down, I'm just jealous. You got babied when we were kids and you're getting babied now. We came to St. Louis just so I could make my kid brother feel better, you know that, right? Give you some agency. And here you are, tied up like the little damsel in distress, just. Like. Always. Because what's your other use? You think you're ever going to be the hero of a hunt, Sammy? How's that going for you? I'm still picking up after you and rescuing you every single damn hunt. You couldn't even handle college.”
Sam is still fucking coughing.
“Do you know how much faster Dad and I were without you? How much quicker hunting went when we didn't have to check in with you every other minute or worry about everything we fought knocking the air out of you? Do you know how much money we saved when we didn't have to buy you new inhalers all the time? You were holding us back, Sam. Just like you are right now. You think you're a real asset to your brother, tied up here and suffocating? You're a distraction. You're a liability. Even Jess must have thought so, didn't she?”
Dean will fucking kill him.
“Couldn't have been fun, having to babysit her boyfriend all the time. It's a good thing she died before you could knock her up, huh, Sammy? Imagine what a useless wheezy sack of shit your kid would be.” He stops pacing and stands in front of Sam, leans downs so their faces are close. “I'm not making any of this up, Sammy. These are all Dean's thoughts. That's the only reason I know any of this. This is all big brother."
Say something, Sam, Jesus fucking Christ, because Sam is smarter than this shit, Sam knows the fucking tricks that monsters pull, Sam knows who Dean is, even when his wheezing's getting quieter and quieter and he's probably going to drop out from not enough oxygen any minute and Jesus Christ.
“This is dull,” the shifter says. He puts the inhaler in his pocket. “There are things to do. People, even. Like little Becky.”
Sam makes a small noise, thank fucking God.
The shifter says, “You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let's find out.”
And he leaves.
**
Sam's not doing great.
Dean hears him working hard, but the more the kid struggles the more the rope around his neck constricts around his throat, and Sam's not an idiot, so pretty soon he stops and just stays still and tries to breathe steadily, and meanwhile Dean is still twisting his hands and the ropes are digging into him but finally, fucking finally, he finds a loose end. He works one of his wrists out and grabs this fucking gag out of his mouth. “Sam?”
“Thank God.”
“You hang in there, okay?”
“Uh-huh.” More coughing. “You okay?”
“I'm awesome.” He starts working at his other wrist. “You gonna make it a few more minutes?”
“Yeah.” And God, that wheezing sounds like it hurts. “What's in...a few minutes?”
“I don't know, the car, we'll find something.”
“Gotta get to Rebecca's...”
“I know, I know.”
“Dean.” He swallows and coughs. “D'you have an inhaler on you?”
“Hold on,” he says, even though he knows he doesn't, but he gets his other wrist free and pats at his pockets on his way to Sam. “No.”
Sam groans. And God, he looks like shit. He's so pale he looks gray and his neck's raw and bloody from the rope, and he's breathing worse than he has since the fire. Dean palms his cheek for a second before he starts working on the rope on his neck.
“I have an EpiPen,” Dean says.
Sam groans again, harder.
“Yeah, we'll you're getting it. It'll give you twenty minutes of breathing.”
“I hate it...”
“I know.” He frees Sam's neck. “Yahtzee.”
Sam leans forwards immediately and pants. “Hands.”
“Yeah.” The wrists are easier, and in a minute Sam's out. Dean hauls him to his feet and gives him a quick once-over. He must not have been out too long, because the concussion doesn't look too bad, and besides the cuts around his throat and the usual scrapes he seems okay. Except for, you know, the suffocating, so let's not dawdle, all right? “Okay.” Dean keeps a hold on the back of Sam's shirt. “We're getting you up the fucking ladder before I ruin your leg, then we're sitting you down and getting your lungs in fighting shape and then we'll figure the rest out, okay? This comes first.” (It's all just a monologue to keep Sam busy while he gets him to the ladder, because he really doesn't give a fuck what Sam thinks about the situation, this would not be a discussion even if Sam could talk.)
“I'm holding up the hunt,” Sam says. He jerks forwards with coughs and Dean stumbles.
“Come on, man,” Dean says.
“I'm a fucking liability.”
“No.” Dean pushes Sam up the ladder and follows closely behind. “I don't have time for this shit. You know what's a liability? Emo-Sam. So cut that the fuck off. The asthma's not a liability, the asthma's our third party that gets a little twitchy sometimes and we fucking deal with it, okay? We don't sit around and whine about how hard it is and how we wish it weren't here because we're Winchesters, all right, bitch? We get shit done, we take care of business, that's it.” He sits Sam down on the sidewalk and jams the EpiPen into Sam's leg through his jeans. Because nothing makes being covered in sewer goo more healthy than adding a puncture wound, right?
Sam curses and looks away, but Dean can tell he's breathing better almost instantly, and also that he's listening. And he's going to need a minute for the medicine to get all the way through him, so Dean might as well just get this all the fuck out.
“Look,” Dean says. “I guess for some reason this is coming as a huge shock to you, but monsters are full of shit. He was saying whatever he could to piss your chest off.”
“And you're saying whatever the fuck...to fix it.”
“Sam, shut the fuck up and breathe.” Because what the fuck is Dean supposed to say? Because yeah, the shapeshifter only had his thoughts, and yeah, Dean's thought those things, but Dean has thought a whole lot of damn things and they don't fucking matter, this matters, here on the fucking sidewalk and Sam not breathing and Sam Sam Sammy this matters.
Sam scowls and wraps his arms around his chest and wheezes in and out. He closes his eyes to concentrate, and Jesus Christ but the kid works hard. He's timing his breaths and not rushing the exhales and breathing from his diaphragm and keeping his shoulders down and seriously, this kid, what the fuck is Dean supposed to say to make this better when all he can think of is if you were a big brother, you would get it, you would get how scared and frustrated and angry and annoyed and fucking proud of you this thing in your chest makes me, and you would have some idea of how it fucking kills me when I see that it's killing you because I have to tell myself it's okay and you're okay and that you're a machine about it so I don't go and try to track down some hoodoo bitch and pay her in pints of blood to make her give you some herb you'll probably be hideously allergic to that probably won't help anyway or whatever the fuck hoodoo bitches do, and if you were a big brother you'd get that sometimes you have to ask your little brother to just deal with being taken care of and sometimes you just need to believe that you're helping him when there's nothing you can really do besides give the kid twenty minutes or twenty years before his lungs crap the fuck out, and sometimes you need your kid brother to be the strong one, okay? Except why the fuck would he say that because fucking look at Sam and these breaths he's taking and the color he's getting back and the idea that Sam isn't the strong one is just such bullshit that he can't even deal with it, and just look at this kid, goddamn it, there is no one like this goddamn infuriating ridiculous bitch of a kid.
“You're not a liability,” Dean says. “You're fucking awesome. Okay?”
Sam opens one eye.
“Come on,” Dean says. “We have shit to do.”
**
Of course, their plans get fucked up pretty majorly by the news that bizarro-Dean was already spotted trying to kill Rebecca, and they don't have any weapons because that asshole stole his car, and when they track his baby down (and she looks okay but the poor thing's probably traumatized) the cops come out of nowhere and yeah, maybe that wasn't their best move, but it's been a rough night, okay?
“This way, this way,” Dean says, tugging Sam towards a fence.
Sam shakes his head. “You go. I'll hold 'em off.”
“What are you talking about? They'll catch you.”
“I can't hop a fence on this leg. I can barely fucking run. It's fine, they can't hold me.”
Fuck no, he is not leaving Sammy right now, no, but Jesus the fucking cops, this is bad.
Sam sees him hesitating and says, “Dean. They might even get me a fucking inhaler. Just go, keep out of sight. Meet me at Rebecca's.”
Fine. Dean runs and jumps the fence and pretends he doesn't hear Sam telling him not to go into the sewers alone, because what does Sam think he's going to do, wait for him? Yeah, Sam can hang out in the nice warm police station and lawyer their way out of trouble and catch his breath. He'll be fine.
**
So it figures that the next time Dean sees Sam, it's when he's rushing back into the house with Rebecca and the shapeshifter asshole is him again and is choking Sam.
Seriously, there's got to be some sort of monster memo out on them at this point telling them that choking Sam is quick and cheap fun or some shit because this is getting ridiculous. Lay the fuck off Dean's kid.
So yeah, he gets shot. And Dean gets his fucking necklace back, thank you.
“I wanted to be the hero,” Sam mumbles on their way out.
Dean can't even believe this kid sometimes. “Sam, are you fucking kidding me? How long did you fight off a guy in my body how long after that hideous asthma attack? Come on, don't make me do this encouraging shit, it doesn't fit me well.”
Sam smiles a little and is quiet. Eventually he says, “It's not like it was that hard. Fighting a guy in your body.”
“Fuck you.”
“Kinda short.”
“Bite me, Sam.”
**
“So, what about your friend Zach?”
Sam rubs his chest while he gets into the car. They'd probably both like to sit him down in the ER for a few hours to ride the rest of this out, but, well, they can't exactly linger around St. Louis when one of them's walking around with the face of a dead guy. “Cops are blamin’ this Dean Winchester guy for Emily’s murder,” Sam says. “They found the murder weapon in the guy’s lair, Zach’s clothes stained with her blood. Now they’re thinking maybe the surveillance tape was tampered with. Yeah, Becca says Zach will be released soon.”
“Nice paragraph, wheezy.”
“Fuck off.”
Once they're on the road, Dean grabs the med kit out of the glove compartment and tosses it on Sam's lap. Sam takes the spare inhaler out and kisses it.
“Are there any antibiotics in there you can have?” Dean says. “They'd have 'S' stickers on them. I don't want to know what the fuck was in that sewer water.”
“You still put stickers on my meds?”
“Do you remember the time when you were five and decided you were curious about amoxicillin?”
“No.”
“Well, good. That kinda shit sticks, okay?”
Sam digs around the bag. “Yeah, there's azithromyacin.”
“All right, go ahead and take all of them.”
Sam laughs and pops a few. “Hey, you too, all right?”
Dean raises an eyebrow, but Sam looks serious, so he says, “Yeah, sure, what the hell. Save yours, though, gimme something that would kill you.” Sam seems to get a kick out of handling all the bottles without S's on them because the kid's a fucking asshole sent to earth to make Dean nervous, but he eventually shakes out two of some other antibiotic and Dean takes them and then glares at Sam until Sam wipes his hands on his jeans.
Sam stares out the window and chews his cheek at a sign that tells them they're leaving St. Louis and Dean says, “So how'd you know the shifter wasn't me?”
Sam snorts. “You want to know?”
“I asked.”
“I was wheezing and he didn't nag me.”
“Aha, see, what would you do without your big brother on your case all the time?”
“Be constantly confused about his identity, obviously.”
And then they're quiet for a minute.
And Dean says, “I'm sorry, man,” and he can count the number of times he's ever apologized to anyone on one hand (and the number of times he's apologized to anyone who wasn't Sam on zero) so Sam better fucking well pay attention.
He looks up. Good boy. “About what?”
“I really wish things could be different, you know? I wish you could just be Joe College. No hunting, no asthma. Just you.”
“No, that's okay. You know, the truth is, deep down, even at Stanford I never really fit in. Because...the hunting and the asthma are me. They're my past. And I don't make sense when I can't explain them, and I couldn't explain...” He rolls his eyes at himself. “I didn't know how to explain them without you there.”
“Well, that's 'cause you're a co-dependent freak.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Well, I’m a co-dependent freak, too. I’m right there with you, all the way.”
“Yeah, I know you are,” Sam says, because Sam knows exactly who the fuck Dean is.
Dean says, “You know, I gotta say-I'm sorry I'm gonna miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“How many chances am I gonna have to see my own funeral?”
Dean thinks that was a pretty great line, but Sam rolls his eyes and then says, “I thought you'd be more pissed about never getting any ravioli,” and Jesus Christ Dean could fucking hit the kid because he'd forgotten all about it and now he can practically smell six or seven varieties of cheese and his kid is laughing himself into a coma there next to him and Dean says “You know what? Fuck St. Louis. Fuck it hard,” and Sam nods and wheeze something about how goofy Dean's face looks and really Sam's one to fucking talk.
“You owe me,” Dean says, and Sam says, “I totally, totally owe you.”