Sammy, High Above the Ground
Title: Sammy, High Above the Ground
Summary: Stanford-era: This time, Dean surprises Sam at his door after Jess tells him the kid needs looking after. Except...he doesn't seem sick. So what the hell's the problem and how is Dean supposed to fix it?
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers, bad language.
Wordcount: 7,530
Author's Note: Sammy-verse, so: Dean's POV, Sam has bad asthma, the boys are badasses. I wrote this one while I should have been studying for my midterm, which you'll find funny once you read the thing. Title stolen from "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" by the Decemberists.
Now with FANART by ottermusprime!
--
Dean's phone claims the call is from SAM, but unless Sam's decided to go ahead with that sex change Dean's been suggesting, the voice that answers Dean's hungover “Hello?” is not Sam.
Which would be good, because talking to a girl right now sounds much less exhausting than talking to Sam, except it's generally not a good sign when people call from Sam's phone who are not Sam.
Dean stares down at his omelet and rubs his forehead. “Jess?”
“Yeah. Hey. How are you?”
“Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
This is one of the things that outsiders (and Jess, after a year glued to his brother's side, is still apparently an outsider) never get; the first question is always going to be is he okay, so don't make him ask, all right? Just lead with that.
“I'm just...I didn't have your number,” Jess says. “So I grabbed his phone. He's asleep.”
Dean checks his watch. “At noon?” Doesn't sound like Sammy. Sounds like hungover fucking Dean, hence the blurred vision, the five-cheese omelet, the black, black, black coffee, but how else to celebrate a solo hunt well solo-hunted, right?
“He had a headache. That kind of why I'm calling. Are you busy? Working?”
Dean doesn't know much Jess knows about the family business, and every time he brings it up to Sam he gets pissy, so he sticks with the Winchester code of conduct and says the bare minimum. “Nope.”
“Think you could get out here for the weekend? He's...he's working himself to the bone, and . . . frankly, okay, I can be honest with you. Frankly he's being an asshole.”
Dean chuckles.
“He just needs someone to get him out of this funk,” she says. “Take him out, get him drunk, get him away from his fucking books. I'd ask one of his friends here but he's pissed them all off, and I...need a weekend with the girls.”
Dean signals for the check. “Yeah, sure, what the hell.” He kind of loves bitchy Sammy. And, hey, getting drunk with his kid. What better way to celebrate.
He calls John on the way out to the car, tells him he's going to investigating something in Colorado for the weekend, and he'll talk to him on Monday.
John's silence says fucking everything.
Dean doesn't break it.
Eventually, John breathes out and says, “He okay?”
“Don't know what you're talking about, sir.” He cranks his key in the ignition.
That means, yeah. He's fine.
This big, aggrieved sigh. “All right. We'll talk on Monday.”
Dean cranks up AC/DC and sings his way through “Problem Child” all the way to the interstate.
**
He's seen Sam a bunch since then, but the last time one of them really surprised the other (not counting the the time or two that Dean's surprised Sam at the door of his hospital room, let's not count those, all right?) was two and a half years ago, in some shitty motel in Idaho, when Sam appeared on his doorstep at nine in the morning with a duffel bag and a fever, and now it's eleven thirty at night and Dean has a fifth of tequila and three Indiana Jones movies so he's just going to give himself the trophy in this one, all right?
Sam takes ten minutes to open the door, and when he gets there he looks like such crap that Dean almost feels bad about banging so hard. He's in sweatpants and socks, no shirt, and has a beer can pressed against his temple. His eyes are bleary. He blinks at Dean.
“House call,” Dean says. “What up.”
Sam groans and pads his way back inside. He leaves the door hanging open, so Dean will take that as an invitation.
Sam collapses face down on the couch on top of two textbooks and a binder and says, muffled into the cushions, “I can't believe she called you.”
“Good to see you too, Sammy,” Dean says, but he's just fucking with him, he talked to the kid last week and saw him two months ago, he wasn't really expecting a tearful reunion.
Sam does some sort of vague wave, first at Dean and then to the kitchen, where Dean sees an open six-pack and a half-eaten pizza resting on two thick books.
“That's my boy.”
Sam takes a handful of painkillers and by the time Dean's halfway through his third slice, he's human enough to smile at him, and Dean gives him a lopsided, mouth-full grin back.
“Sorry,” Sam says. “I'm just not exactly fit for company.” He rolls his eyes when Dean's eyes flicker, automatically, to his chest. “Not that. I'm breathing fine. Just...” He gestures around the living room. “It's a fucking mess, if you didn't notice.”
“Because I'm fucking company.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Jess says you're working too hard. I'm here to get you drunk. You don't need a neat fucking house for that.”
“You brought tequila, I noticed.”
“It was on sale.”
“I'm not sure drunk is what you're trying to get me.”
“Yeah, well,” is all Dean has to say, but Sam goes and gets shot glasses and Dean cuts his finger slicing limes and Sam snickers while he gets him a band aid and they pound down shot after shot and suck down lime after lime and Dean runs out to the car to get his massive jug of salt which Sam finds fucking hilarious, and then they're almost through the fifth and screaming kill it! Kill it! at each other and then they're a heap on the fucking floor.
“Missed you,” Sammy says.
“Don't get weepy.”
Sam always fucking gets weepy, but he just smiles a little and plays with Dean's shirt and says, “Been a long week. Month. Yearlife.”
“'M here now.”
“Can y'help?”
“Of course.”
Sam pushes himself up onto knees and hands and rests his forehead against the ground. “Dizzy,” he says. “Supposed to be...shit.”
Dean sits up. The room tips over. “You're wheezing...”
“Jess is gonna dump me.”
“What?”
“Because I'm a fucking jerk, and I'm no fucking fun, and...” he stops talking and just breathes out in this loud, ugly wheeze.
Dean says, “Whoa, okay. Not s'posed to get weepy, Sam.”
Sam drops back to the carpet and moves in close to Dean. His head goes back to Dean's shoulder. Okay. Dean puts his hand in Sam's hair. This is better. This is doable.
Except Sam still doesn't have a shirt on so Dean has to fucking watch the kid's shoulder blades drawing together and his chest deflating too fucking slowly and his stomach muscles clenching up when he coughs and somehow this was all a very bad idea, but Sam's holding onto his shirt and mumbling “'s okay Dean 'sokay” and sofuckingdrunk Sammy's wheezing Sam needs medicine and Dean pushes himself off the floor and Sam slides off him and everything goes kinda brown, fuck his head hurts, ugh.
**
Dean has no idea how much time has passed or how long he's been throwing up, but Jesus, fuck tequila.
“Shhh.” Sam's hand is rubbing up and down his back, feels nice. Dean closes his eyes and rests his cheek against the toilet seat and feels like an asshole.
“S'posed to be taking care of you.”
“Shut up,” Sam says, gently, and he peels Dean away from the toilet and hands him a glass of water. “Here. Sip. Slowly, okay?”
“Not a fucking baby.”
“Shut up.”
Dean grins at him and winces at the water and Sam says, “Here,” and drops a few pills into his hand.
“What'r'they?”
“They'll help.” He breathes out and closes his eyes. “Hold on a sec, k? Need my inhaler.”
“Don't go...” God, pathetic fucking fucking drunk, crashing on his kid's bathroom floor and stopping him from getting his meds, just go the fuck back where you came from, Dean.
Sam hesitates. “I need it,” he says, and starts towards the door, but then he stumbles and holds onto the sink and Dean remembers suddenly that he's not the only drunk one here, except he's puked so he has that going for him at least.
“Okay.” He hauls himself up. “All right. Come on.”
Sam puts both his hands on top of Dean's head and rests his chin on them. “Don't get sick.”
Fucking giant kid. “I'm done now.”
“I worry sometimes. That you'll get sick.”
“What?” Dean slings an arm around Sam's waist and leads him to the living room. He's breathing like he has a chest full of gravel. “I don't get sick.”
“Sometimes.”
“Getting sick's your thing, getting laid's mine, remember?”
Sam snorts and shakes his inhaler. “Yeah, okay.”
“Sit down.”
He stays standing. “Just...I worry, okay? You gotta be careful. You and Dad. I worry that you'll...and you won't know 'cause you're not paying attention, and I'm not there so who's gonna...” He stops shaking the inhaler and looks at it like he can't figure out if he needs it.
“Take it,” Dean says, but then Sam's hauling Dean's feet on the couch and covering him up with a blanket and Dean's saying “Take it, Sammy, take it,” and as soon as he hears the hiss of it and the quiet of Sammy holding his breath he's fast fucking asleep because Sam took his meds so Sam is fine so everything is fine.
**
Jess shows up sometime in the middle of the night or maybe just early in the morning, Dean doesn't know. He hears her shoes but doesn't open his eyes, and then he hears quiet voices in the kitchen-Sam was in the kitchen? Why wasn't Sam in his room?--but then she's bringing him into his room and not ten minutes later Dean hears his kid fucking the shit out of her so there's that, at least. It's a weird lullaby but it works, and doesn't that just suck.
**
He wakes up to the smell of coffee-beautiful, holy, lovely coffee-and something sizzling, and the the blanket is itchy against his cheek, and he opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is Sammy, over at that table in the corner, four books in front of him, two of them open, his forehead propped up on his fist when he reads, and the way the sun hits on him makes him look good for a minute, and then he turns his head and coughs and looks like shit because he's in the same sweatpants as yesterday and he put a shirt on but Dean can still see how hard he's breathing, and he's drilling his knuckles into his forehead like it's the only thing he knows how to do except clearly it's not because he's staring down at those books, fucking staring like he can suck it all in at once.
“Are you going to Scott's today?” Pretty voice. Jess. Dean sits up.
Sam shakes his head but doesn't look up.
“He likes you more than me. It'd be weird for me to go alone.”
Sam coughs into his elbow but doesn't say anything. Dean stretches and sits up, and Sam looks over. “Hey.”
“Mornin'.” Dean runs his hand down his face. “Hey, Jess.”
“Hey!” she calls, (Sam winces) “Waffles or pancakes?”
“Both?”
She grins. “You got it.”
Sam coughs again and hunkers down farther into his book. Dean checks under the blanket to make sure he still has pants on and then gets up and claps his hands on Sam's shoulders on the way to the bathroom. Sam tenses up and is still all fucking on edge when Dean gets back.
“Looks like a bitch of a hangover,” Dean says, lowering himself into the chair across from him. Jesus, all these fucking books. He starts taking them off the table, and Sam looks up all expressionless.
Then he shakes his head and says, “I'm okay. You feeling better?”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek and looks at him. “Well,” he says. “I slept.”
Sam looks down.
“Did you?” Dean says.
“Yeah, a little.”
“You're full of shit.”
“I did. A little. I tried. Really.”
“Breathing that bad?”
Sam shrugs.
“Ooookay.” Jess comes out of the kitchen with her arms full of plates and says, “Sam, get this crap off, okay?”
“I have three pages left.”
Dean says, “And she has two arms trying to hold all this, get your shit off the table.” He helps Jess with the plates and she mouths 'thank you,' and Sam scowls while he snaps his books shut.
Jess is telling Dean all about this thing at Scott's tonight--”Just a small party, just close friends” and Dean's seen enough movies about college to know what that means-and how he and Sam should really come and Dean ignores Sam's glare and says that they will, because his solution to Sam being this much of a bitch is just to push him until he explodes and yells something about what's really bothering him so let's just get him there, all right? With the hangover, it shouldn't take long.
But it's clearly not happening now, because Sam just hunkers down in his seat (which is funny where you're a million fucking feet tall) and cuts his pancakes into tiny pieces. He's not really eating. He looks kind of green, actually, but he should have slept off some of the fucking hangover, you know?
And he should have woken Dean up if he couldn't breathe (Dean should have woken up).
“It'll be good for you,” Jess says to Sam. “Get you out of the house. Time to unwind. And Dean will get to meet everyone.”
Dean really isn't interested in meeting Sam's college friends-especially after Jess told him that all Sam's college friends are pissed at him-but if it works, it works, and in high school Sam was a fucking riot at the parties Dean would throw in their motel rooms. He'd be the fucking fourteen-year-old lady's man and he'd mix drinks like a professional and he was always happy and exhausted and even fucking chattier than usual at the end of the night so yeah. Let's just get him there.
Sam shrugs and wheezes, and Jess says, “Did you take your meds this morning?”
Sam rubs his forehead.
“Hey,” Dean says. “She asked you a fucking question.”
“Bite me, Dean.” He looks at Jess. “Yes, okay? I took them.”
Dean says, “Can't exactly blame her for asking, since morning is kind of a foreign concept when you don't sleep.”
He coughs into his shoulder. “Leave me alone.” The last cough is deep, and he pushes his palm into his forehead and breathes out. “Fuck this. I can't eat right now, I can't breathe.”
“Sam,” Dean says.
“Can't fucking breathe.”
And Jess-she tries so hard, and Dean gets that she loves him, really, he even gets that she probably loves him in this special way when he's infuriating and unreasonable and upset, he knows, so Dean hates to say it-does the wrong fucking thing. She says, “Sam, we're only-” and it's not her fault she has a voice-a really fucking pretty voice usually-that's got to sound like fucking hell on a migraine, but she reaches out and puts her hand on his chest (just don't touch his chest, it's not hard, seriously) and he jumps and says, “Don't touch me, please don't touch me,” and sinks his head down into his hands.
Jess only freezes for half a second before she gets up and grabs her plate and brings it to the kitchen. She throws it into the sink, and Sam cringes and wraps his arms around his head.
“I'll talk to you in a few days,” she says. “I..fucking can't. I'm sorry, Dean.”
Dean doesn't really fucking blame her, but he growls and points at his kid and says, “Stay the fuck there. Eat something,” and follows Jess out the door.
Once they're out on the sidewalk, she turns around and fumbles with her phone. She says,“I just...”
“No, he's being an asshole. He's an asshole.”
She breathes out. “I know he's stressed about exams and shit, but...”
“I don't know what the fuck's wrong with him. I'll figure it out and get him sorted out. You...go home, get some rest, try not to think about it. I'll get him to the party tonight, get him fucking drunk, and either he'll come weeping into your arms or he'll pass out, and either way we win, right?”
She gives him this weak smile. “Yeah.”
“Hey. How's the asthma been?”
She shrugs. “Same as always, so...you know. Shitty. It's April.” Another shrug. “I think it's bothering him more? I don't know. He gets up at night more than he used to...you know, usually he just lies there and takes his inhaler or sits on the side of the bed to catch his breath or whatever, but lately he's getting up and pacing...”
That's never a good fucking sign.
“Is he talking about it?”
“He'll talk about how he's feeling right then, but he doesn't want to discuss it as any kind of larger issue .I talk to him about doctors and he says I'm nagging him. I don't fucking know. I don't think he's trying to hide anything, so there's that. He lets me know when he's feeling shitty. Not in...like, not in a whining way, you know-”
“Yeah, I know. Just letting you know. He's good at that.”
“He's really fucking good at that, so I feel like a bitch complaining that he's not opening up to me, because when I ask him what's going on, you know, he fucking tells me-I'm just stressed about school, I haven't been feeling well, but it's just like...like there's something more I'm not fucking getting, and he's not helping me get there.”
“He gets like this when the asthma's bad sometimes. He bitches out. It sucks.”
“Not like this.”
Dean shrugs. “I'm sure it's nothing I haven't seen. I'll get him straightened out.”
It's nothing Dean hasn't seen. He's seen fucking everything on this kid. He's going to walk in there and Sam's going to be sulking at his pancakes or angry-cleaning the kitchen and he'll yell at Dean for a while and finally admit that his chest hurts and it's freaking him out and he should get some fucking rest and Dean will just fucking sit with him because Sam does all the other stuff, he does fucking everything, but sometimes he just needs to bitch about this fucking asthma and sometimes Dean needs to bitch about it too, sometimes he opens up a fucking blank email on the shitty old laptop Sam left him and addresses it to nobody and write fucking paragraph after paragraph about how this shit is not fucking fair and he is so tired of worrying about Sam every five fucking minutes and how he wishes he could look at a cigarette or a fucking dog and not immediately worry about Sam who isn't even fucking here because he fucking bailed and, no, Dean's still not fucking over it, because he still wakes up in the middle of the fucking night hearing wheezing that's not there and then he texts Sam and Sam's fucking awake wheezing and that's not the kind of bond he ever wanted to have with Sam, okay, that's too far over the line even for fucking Dean when you get to the point of asthmatic fucking telepathy, and Dean is tired, okay, he's fucking tired, and he's tired of hearing his damn kid over the phone being so fucking tired so yeah, he's going to go in there and Sam's going to piss and moan and Dean is going to slap him back into shape because they can't fucking wallow in this, Dean deletes the emails, okay?
Except then Dean goes back into the apartment and Sam's sitting on the floor with some book open, and he's not freaking out or throwing things or anything except reading and wheezing from his whole fucking chest and coughing wet after wet cough into his sleeve and while he rubs his forehead and looking just so fucking allergic and goddamn miserable and why can't he just drama queen the fuck out, why couldn't he have just yelled at them?
Dean closes the door and Sam startles.
“You're being a dick,” Dean says. Gently.
Sam breathes out. It sounds like a snarl, but that's just his fucking lungs.
“I know,” he says.
“And you sound like shit. Are you okay?”
He nods. “I have to get this reading done.”
“No, it's break time, kiddo.” He hauls Sam up by his arm and pulls him to his room. “Come on. Look! A bed! I bet you forgot this was here.”
Sam sneezes and feels around, mumbles something about fucking sweatpants that don't have pockets.
“Inhaler?”
“Yeah.”
“I'll get it. Can you just...lie down? This is time-out. Lie still and think about what you've done.”
Sam burrows under his covers. “I've been an asshole to my girlfriend because her voice hurts my head and she's trying to make me talk to her and she's pointing out that I can't breathe when I already know it, and apparently this is suddenly some huge problem for me. And I fucking suck and I can't fix it.”
“Well, first step is admitting you have a problem. I'll be right back.” Dean goes to the kitchen to grab the inhaler and trips over a book on his way back. Seriously, these things are fucking everywhere. Maybe they're having book sex and babies.
Sam holds up his hands as soon as Dean's through the the doorway and Dean tosses him his inhaler. “Look,” Dean says. “I know you're stressed. And I know you feel like shit. That's why Jess called me, y'know? Give little brother a weekend off and all that. And you can be a bitch to me all you want, but I'm not going to walk out, so take advantage of that, okay? Yell at me instead of Jess. Do it. And then you're going to get some damn sleep, and then later we'll go the party and have some fun, and then we can come back here and cry about our feelings and then you'll be good to go, all right?”
“I don't want to do any of that.”
“Yeah, well, what do you want, Sammy?”
Sam says something under his breath. So just wheezes, basically.
“Speak,” Dean says.
Sam says, “I don't want to do any of this anymore.”
**
Dean's trying to figure out what the hell to write in this email to John: (I'm worried about Sammy, because apparently he could handle digging up of innocent people and getting the crap knocked out of him on a regular basis better than a few essays? Because seriously, what the hell, Sammy) when Sam comes out of the bedroom-he's been sleeping for twenty minutes, if that-and he's holding his head and wheezing really hard and saying, “Dean?”
Dean stands up. “You okay?”
“No. I don't know. Please?”
He gets to the doorway just as Sam starts to waver, and he drags Sam back to his bed and sits him down and says, “Okay. Tell me what's wrong.” He has his hand on Sam's forehead (cool) then he's running his hands all around the kid's head checking for lumps (nothing) but he's wincing at the touches but leaning into Dean and what the fuck, Sam.
“My heart's going so fast.” He gives this junky wheeze and starts coughing. “And my head and just...” he pulls on his shirt over his chest and sinks his forehead to Dean's shoulder. “I don't know what this. I don't know. Do you know what this is?”
Sam's jugular is against Dean's cheek and his pulse is going fucking crazy and Jesus what the hell is going on?
Sam coughs all the fuck over Dean and if that isn't a sign he doesn't know what is, because he doesn't really fucking care (the kid's not contagious) but Sam's always been a nervous little bitch about it so, okay, this is bad.
“Are we doing hospital?” Dean asks.
“Yeah. Jesus. Yeah.”
Dean gets his arm around Sammy's back and helps him up and he feels Sam's heartbeat spike against him and Jesus, Jesus, this is just new, this isn't supposed to be the kind of thing they have to fucking worry about (they have enough to fucking worry about) except he's still coughing.
Dean loads him into the car and Sam balls himself up in the front seat and Dean says, “You need to breathe slower, Sam, okay?” but he can't because this is all freaking him the hell out and every single fucking noise, the engine, the turn signal, Dean's voice is clearly hurting his head and Dean's still not shutting up, he's murmuring Sammy's name and rubbing his back and Sammy's coughing and coughing and coughing and Jesus what the fuck is wrong.
**
A panic attack.
A fucking panic attack.
Granted, panic attacks usually have you just thinking you can't breathe, when Sam's asthma combined with him freaking the fuck out meant he actually couldn't breathe, and the headache's a genuine migraine and his heart rate soaring didn't exactly help with the pain so yeah, it was a fucking badass panic attack, but it was a panic attack.
They gave him something to calm him the fuck down and a neb treatment and tubes up his nose that make him sneeze and some sort of shot for the migraine and he lies there and plays with his hospital gown like it's fucking interesting and makes Dean's fingers walk up and down his leg and God is he stoned. His chest is still stuffed-up (it's fucking April, give him a break) so he's coughing every few sentences but at least he's fucking talking.
Even if it is some nonsense bullshit he's saying.
“I'm so happy you're here, Dean. Just so fucking happy. You're my favorite.”
“Oh dear Lord.”
“You can move in. You can sleep on my floor.” He's twisting Dean's hand around. He's drunker than he was last night.
Dean says, “Not that this isn't adorable, but why don't you use this time to have your breakdown? You'll enjoy it more if you do it stoned.”
Sam looks up. “What?”
“I know you're feeling like crap. And look, I'm being all present for you and shit. I want to fucking talk about it. Let's do it, okay?'
“It's...”
“The asthma's fucking with you in that slow, long way, and I know that really fucks with your head. And I get it. It's just steadily shitty and you'd rather it were just really horrible sometimes and not horrible at others. And you're probably in pain and fucking pissed about it, and I've had migraines, they fucking suck. So you need to stop being a ticking little time bomb and have your explosion so you can stop pissing off your girlfriend, okay?”
“Dean, that's not...”
“Hey. What. Talk to me?”
Sam shrugs. “I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know how to say it. Just...thanks. For trying.”
Thanks for trying? Is he fucking kidding? Yeah, no, that's not what this is Dean doesn't try with Sam. That's just not how this shit works.
But fuck if he knows what to say.
“You just need to have some fun,” Dean says. “And I'm awesome at that.”
Sam nods, looking down, then says, softly, “Fun is really stressing me the fuck out.”
“That's because fun for you is crosswords and Jeopardy. Those things aren't fun. Come on, we had fun last night. Until the puking. We'll avoid that tonight. You can show me off to your friends, they can make me think you're cool, whatever. It'll be fine.” He pushes Sam's hair back. “You'll be fine.”
Sam shrugs and doesn't say anything. He's just staring down at his lap. What the fuck is Dean supposed to do with that?
He rubs his eyes and Dean says, “Tired?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“How much sleep lately?”
Sam shrugs. “Stuff's been keeping me up.”
“Jess mentioned the wheezing, yeah.”
“She doesn't sleep over anymore. Hates it. I keep getting up.”
“Meds aren't helping?”
“The asthma meds? I mean, I'm alive, so they're helping. It's not that. I'm just tired, Dean.”
“You're not getting enough oxygen. That'll wear you out.”
“It's not that. It's just the grind of it. The asthma, yeah, but just...everything. I can't fucking keep up. And I work so hard but then I have to do a day in the ER or I stay up all night coughing until I throw up and-”
“This shouldn't be happening regularly.”
“--or I just can't fucking deal with talking to people and making excuses for why I'm late for everything or why I didn't go to the party or why I'm so tired. And then everyone says, yeah, I'm tired too, but they're not...this.” Sam rakes his hand through his hair. He's shaking a little, but he's on twenty thousand different meds right now. He's still fucking stoned. “Nobody gets that it's just...it's different for me, and I hate it. I hate fucking saying that. I just can't make it all of my classes because I can't physically get across campus some days, because I'm just so worn out. And the it all builds up. It just...piles on me. That's what's going on, Dean.”
But he's still not freaking out.
The kid needs to freak out.
Maybe when he's breathing better, then he'll yell.
“I just don't know what else to do,” Sam says.
“I get it,” Dean says, because he fucking watched the kid take his meds like clockwork for nineteen years and every time he's visited Sam at school there's all his shit lined up on the nightstand, and shit, the kid was concerned about not having his inhaler in his pocket four hours ago and now he's getting migraines and panic attacks and the fucking asthma is keeping him from his friends and that's just not fucking cool, Dean's stood by and watched Sam sacrifice a load of fucking stuff for this fucking thing in his chest but the kid gets to have friends, he gets to have his girlfriend sleep over, he gets to have someone around who understands and will fucking take care of the kid when he's asking for it, when this is Sammy, here, asking for it, and people need to not blow that the fuck off.
“You...get some of it, Dean.”
“What? Fuck you, I get it.”
Sam looks up at him, gives him a small smile. “Okay.”
“Don't okay me. Bitch.”
Sam looks around. “We should really get out of here. They've pumped me full of whatever. Fixed up. Shit to do.”
“Lie the fuck down.”
“I don't think you understand this test I have to-”
“And right now you have a get-out-of-jail free card.”
“That's not how it works, Dean. This isn't like...I can't tell you or Dad that I'm having a shitty day and I need one of you to go burn the bones for me. Nobody else can do this for me. Nobody else can get this information into my head, nobody else can pass my classes for me.”
“You're not going anywhere while you're still fucking stoned.” Dean's head starts making crazy schemes of putting on Sam's (enormous) clothes and sneaking into his classes and doing all his tests for him and Sam totally fixes him with this look and recites, “When pregnant lab rats are given caffeine equivalent to the amount a human would consume by drinking six cups of coffee per day, an increase in the incidence of birth defects results. When asked if the government would require warning labels on products containing caffeine, a spokesperson stated that it would not because if the finding of these studies were to be refuted in the future, the government would lose credibility. Which of the following is most strongly suggested by the government's statement above? (A) A warning that applies to a small population is inappropriate. (B) Very few people drink as many as six cups of coffee a day. (C) There are doubts about the conclusive-”
“Why are you taking a class about rats?”
“It's an LSAT question.”
Dean swallows. “You should not be able to recite that from memory, Sam. Especially not when you're fucking drugged.”
Sam rubs his forehead like he can scrub through to his brain. Like Dean telling him that is enough for him to want to get it out, and isn't that just the fucking worst part of the day, because Dean has no clue what he's doing, and Sam, don't rub through to your brain, okay?
“I know,” Sam says. “They get stuck in my head.”
And then there's something about that, something that's just so Sam, and ugh, kid.
He squeezes Sam's shoulder. “Just...get some sleep. When you're feeling better, we'll go home and get some food in you and you can have a nice little love affair with your inhaler. Then then you can see your friends and Jess tonight and relax. Studying will still be there tomorrow.”
“I know,” Sam says, “I know, I know, it will be.” He sinks his head down to his knees.
Shit.
“You'll feel better,” Dean says, and Sam shakes his head.
“I don't know. I don't think I can feel better.”
**
Dean has to literally drag Sam to the party, but once they're there, Sam takes this deep breath and nods and then he's big smile life of the party, going straight up to Jess and apologizing and kissing her against the wall, and he puts his forehead against the top of her head and his shoulders are heaving, people are smoking here and it's got to be bothering him, but he's here, and he's not in a book, and this is better. He's drinking. He's smiling at his friends. He's laughing at dirty jokes. The coughing isn't bad, it's just normal, he's just normal.
Dean nods at people like he knows them and drinks and leans against a wall and feels fucking creepy watching Sam like this, and for the first time in a while (ever) he's being directly confronted with the fact that Sam's a fucking adult, that he has this whole life that Dean isn't a part of. And it's not like Dean's bitter about that (not anymore, not really) but it's still something he doesn't get, and he's wondering if what's eating Sammy really is something he doesn't fucking see.
When something's bugging Dean, he runs it off, he kills something fucking evil, he calls Sam, and what the hell does Sammy do? (How the fuck would calling Dean help with this?)
What does Sammy do when it's too much? He doesn't get to kill things anymore.
Sam's drinking like a fish, and he's disengaged from Jess just enough to talk to fucking everyone, he's working the damn room and dancing with his arms around Jess's neck and does he realize that frat boy is flirting with him? But then Sam's coughing in earnest at the cigarette smoke and wheezing into his beer bottles and rubbing his forehead between shots and Dean comes up to him when he's doing another fucking round with the frat boy and says, “Hey, tiger, maybe slow down?”
“Nope.” Sam downs the shot. “I'm fine. This is fine.”
“Are you trying to prove some kind of point?”
Sam looks at Dean all startled and says, “No, Dean,” in this voice he can't fake.
“Then you're just being a fucking idiot. Remember how shitty you felt today? Slow down.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“No, Dad never had to do this shit with you because you could fucking control yourself.” And yeah, okay, maybe Dean's a little drunk too, fucking sue him, his brother's self-destructing. “How the fuck am I supposed to tell him that yeah, by the way, sending Sammy to college was a huge fucking mistake because he clearly can't goddamn handle it.”
Sam pours another shot. “Fuck you.”
“You think this is going to help you feel better?”
“Yep.” He clinks glasses with the frat boy and takes the shot. “Helped last night, right?”
“Clearly fucking not...”
“Then what am I supposed to do, Dean?” He reaches for the vodka bottle. “This is what you fucking told me to...ugh.” He stops and stabilizes himself on the counter. Wheezes.
Dean yanks him up and gets all the fucking in his face. “Get in the car.” Is someone whistling? Jesus.
Sam looks at him and doesn't say anything.
“Get in the fucking car.”
He swallows. “I can't. They'll think...I'm already here so I have to stay. They'll think something's wrong.”
“Something is fucking wrong, Sam!”
“I'm fine. I'm just...Ihavetobefine.”
“No, you don't, you fucking idiot, you don't have to be fucking anything except in the fucking car.”
Sam watches him.
“I will drag you by the fucking collar, Sam.”
Sam scowls, stalks over to a very confused Jess, kisses her hard, and goes to the fucking car.
**
“Where are we going?”
Dean just drives.
“I can't just go away! I have shit to do, Dean? Fuck, they're going to think something's wrong with me. They're going to think I'm fucking sick.”
“I don't care.”
“I...”
“Can you just fucking tell me what's going on, Sam? Jesus Christ, yell at me, fucking cry, I don't fucking care, just get it out of you.”
Sam's quiet for a long time, then he says, “I want to. That's...”
“Talk.”
“I'm too tired, Dean. That's it. I can't yell, and I can't cry.” He rests his head against the window. “I'm just so tired.” He wheezes, low and quiet, and rubs his forehead. “Really drunk.”
“This...isn't just asthma, is it?”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Then tell me.”
“I can't. I...” Sam sits up straighter and looks down at his hands. “I don't know how to say it. Everyone else is dealing and I can't. And the asthma's part of it and missing the fuck out of you and Dad is part of it, but that's not all of it. The fact that I guess I never learned how to fucking interact with anyone but you...that's big, I guess. And it's three years in and I should really be used to the fact that these people, these people who like me, do not honestly give a shit about making sure I'm okay, that my fucking chest and my head are okay. But I'm not used to it. And I keep waiting to get used to it. Because other people are fine.” He shakes his head. “ I guess...for nineteen years there was just you and Dad. I didn't have to explain me. And now I do. And the closer I get to Jess and the more work they pile on top of me and the more people I meet at these fucking parties, the more times I have to deal with the fact that I'm just not like them. My entire childhood's a secret, and the asthma's a bitch, and I just miss you, and that stuff's hard, but when it comes down to it...the problem is me. It's just me. And for whatever reason I can't handle what everyone else is handling. And I don't want to yell about it, Dean. I wish I did. I wish I could. I don't have it in me. I don't have anything left in me. It's just the most humiliating thing in the world, and it isn't going anywhere. It's me.”
He turns his head to cough for a while, and just...well, shit.
Just, shit.
Dean says, “Just because they don't get it doesn't mean they don't give a shit, Sammy. I sure as fuck don't get why this college thing has you bent all out of shape.”
“Yeah, I know. It's stupid.”
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But I'm going to fix it.”
“I don't think you can fix it.”
“I can help.”
Sam nods, just a little. “I don't know how.”
“I do.”
**
Sam's mostly passed out by the time they get to his apartment, which is pretty fucking excellent, because then he doesn't have to fight Sam about the fact that the kid does not fucking get to go inside.
Dean goes up and grabs Sam's meds and one of the textbooks, the one he's been drowning himself in the most. Just the one. Time to go.
**
They came to this shitty beach motel once before. Sam was between his freshman and sophomore years, taking a summer class, and Dean kidnapped him and brought him here and they spent a three day weekend on the beach. It was his first time coming to visit when Sam wasn't fucking dying, and it's right up there on the list of Dean's favorite memories, his kid out there in the water, laughing.
He hydrates the fuck out of Sam through the night so he wakes up feeling vaguely all right, and Dean crams him full of breakfast and then they go and sit outside. It's too early in the year for the beach to be that crowded, and it's a cold day, so it's just them for a little while. Just them.
Sam is wearing a hoodie and his scarf and he just sits there and watches the ocean and wraps his arms around his chest.
He says, quietly, “I can just hear myself falling more and more behind.”
“No you can't. You can hear the ocean, Sammy.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “I want to believe all these things you say, you know? These nice things about how I don't have to worry about it. But I do. I fucking worry, Dean. It's my thing.”
“I know.”
“I just worry. And I can't relax because the stuff I worry about is still there.”
“I know.”
“You don't know.”
“I do. I don't get it, I don't fucking understand it, but I know because I fucking know you. And no, I don't understand always what goes on in that freak little head of yours, but I do now how to deal with you. All right?”
“All right.”
Dean takes Sam's textbook out of his bag and puts it on his lap. Sam actually, physically flinches. Jesus, Sammy.
“Look,” Dean says. “Me and fucking school, in the same place. Nothing's exploding. We can fucking coexist, Sam. All this shit in your head can fucking coexist. And you can be a stressed-out asshole and still be my kid brother that you know I'm fucking crazy about. All right?”
Sam gives him a small grin. “All right.”
“When we were kids we did your homework together, you remember?”
“I remember.”
“All right, so, come here.”
Sam scoots closer, and Dean slips half the textbook onto Sam's knee.
“So these fucking rats,” he says. “I think they fucking suck, personally, but they're drinking all these coffee and we just need to figure out what the hell that has to do with us, right?”
“Right.” Sam's so close, wheezing right the fuck in Dean's ear.
“All right then.” He hands Sam a pen. “You and me. Let's figure it out.”
Summary: Stanford-era: This time, Dean surprises Sam at his door after Jess tells him the kid needs looking after. Except...he doesn't seem sick. So what the hell's the problem and how is Dean supposed to fix it?
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers, bad language.
Wordcount: 7,530
Author's Note: Sammy-verse, so: Dean's POV, Sam has bad asthma, the boys are badasses. I wrote this one while I should have been studying for my midterm, which you'll find funny once you read the thing. Title stolen from "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" by the Decemberists.
Now with FANART by ottermusprime!
--
Dean's phone claims the call is from SAM, but unless Sam's decided to go ahead with that sex change Dean's been suggesting, the voice that answers Dean's hungover “Hello?” is not Sam.
Which would be good, because talking to a girl right now sounds much less exhausting than talking to Sam, except it's generally not a good sign when people call from Sam's phone who are not Sam.
Dean stares down at his omelet and rubs his forehead. “Jess?”
“Yeah. Hey. How are you?”
“Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
This is one of the things that outsiders (and Jess, after a year glued to his brother's side, is still apparently an outsider) never get; the first question is always going to be is he okay, so don't make him ask, all right? Just lead with that.
“I'm just...I didn't have your number,” Jess says. “So I grabbed his phone. He's asleep.”
Dean checks his watch. “At noon?” Doesn't sound like Sammy. Sounds like hungover fucking Dean, hence the blurred vision, the five-cheese omelet, the black, black, black coffee, but how else to celebrate a solo hunt well solo-hunted, right?
“He had a headache. That kind of why I'm calling. Are you busy? Working?”
Dean doesn't know much Jess knows about the family business, and every time he brings it up to Sam he gets pissy, so he sticks with the Winchester code of conduct and says the bare minimum. “Nope.”
“Think you could get out here for the weekend? He's...he's working himself to the bone, and . . . frankly, okay, I can be honest with you. Frankly he's being an asshole.”
Dean chuckles.
“He just needs someone to get him out of this funk,” she says. “Take him out, get him drunk, get him away from his fucking books. I'd ask one of his friends here but he's pissed them all off, and I...need a weekend with the girls.”
Dean signals for the check. “Yeah, sure, what the hell.” He kind of loves bitchy Sammy. And, hey, getting drunk with his kid. What better way to celebrate.
He calls John on the way out to the car, tells him he's going to investigating something in Colorado for the weekend, and he'll talk to him on Monday.
John's silence says fucking everything.
Dean doesn't break it.
Eventually, John breathes out and says, “He okay?”
“Don't know what you're talking about, sir.” He cranks his key in the ignition.
That means, yeah. He's fine.
This big, aggrieved sigh. “All right. We'll talk on Monday.”
Dean cranks up AC/DC and sings his way through “Problem Child” all the way to the interstate.
**
He's seen Sam a bunch since then, but the last time one of them really surprised the other (not counting the the time or two that Dean's surprised Sam at the door of his hospital room, let's not count those, all right?) was two and a half years ago, in some shitty motel in Idaho, when Sam appeared on his doorstep at nine in the morning with a duffel bag and a fever, and now it's eleven thirty at night and Dean has a fifth of tequila and three Indiana Jones movies so he's just going to give himself the trophy in this one, all right?
Sam takes ten minutes to open the door, and when he gets there he looks like such crap that Dean almost feels bad about banging so hard. He's in sweatpants and socks, no shirt, and has a beer can pressed against his temple. His eyes are bleary. He blinks at Dean.
“House call,” Dean says. “What up.”
Sam groans and pads his way back inside. He leaves the door hanging open, so Dean will take that as an invitation.
Sam collapses face down on the couch on top of two textbooks and a binder and says, muffled into the cushions, “I can't believe she called you.”
“Good to see you too, Sammy,” Dean says, but he's just fucking with him, he talked to the kid last week and saw him two months ago, he wasn't really expecting a tearful reunion.
Sam does some sort of vague wave, first at Dean and then to the kitchen, where Dean sees an open six-pack and a half-eaten pizza resting on two thick books.
“That's my boy.”
Sam takes a handful of painkillers and by the time Dean's halfway through his third slice, he's human enough to smile at him, and Dean gives him a lopsided, mouth-full grin back.
“Sorry,” Sam says. “I'm just not exactly fit for company.” He rolls his eyes when Dean's eyes flicker, automatically, to his chest. “Not that. I'm breathing fine. Just...” He gestures around the living room. “It's a fucking mess, if you didn't notice.”
“Because I'm fucking company.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Jess says you're working too hard. I'm here to get you drunk. You don't need a neat fucking house for that.”
“You brought tequila, I noticed.”
“It was on sale.”
“I'm not sure drunk is what you're trying to get me.”
“Yeah, well,” is all Dean has to say, but Sam goes and gets shot glasses and Dean cuts his finger slicing limes and Sam snickers while he gets him a band aid and they pound down shot after shot and suck down lime after lime and Dean runs out to the car to get his massive jug of salt which Sam finds fucking hilarious, and then they're almost through the fifth and screaming kill it! Kill it! at each other and then they're a heap on the fucking floor.
“Missed you,” Sammy says.
“Don't get weepy.”
Sam always fucking gets weepy, but he just smiles a little and plays with Dean's shirt and says, “Been a long week. Month. Yearlife.”
“'M here now.”
“Can y'help?”
“Of course.”
Sam pushes himself up onto knees and hands and rests his forehead against the ground. “Dizzy,” he says. “Supposed to be...shit.”
Dean sits up. The room tips over. “You're wheezing...”
“Jess is gonna dump me.”
“What?”
“Because I'm a fucking jerk, and I'm no fucking fun, and...” he stops talking and just breathes out in this loud, ugly wheeze.
Dean says, “Whoa, okay. Not s'posed to get weepy, Sam.”
Sam drops back to the carpet and moves in close to Dean. His head goes back to Dean's shoulder. Okay. Dean puts his hand in Sam's hair. This is better. This is doable.
Except Sam still doesn't have a shirt on so Dean has to fucking watch the kid's shoulder blades drawing together and his chest deflating too fucking slowly and his stomach muscles clenching up when he coughs and somehow this was all a very bad idea, but Sam's holding onto his shirt and mumbling “'s okay Dean 'sokay” and sofuckingdrunk Sammy's wheezing Sam needs medicine and Dean pushes himself off the floor and Sam slides off him and everything goes kinda brown, fuck his head hurts, ugh.
**
Dean has no idea how much time has passed or how long he's been throwing up, but Jesus, fuck tequila.
“Shhh.” Sam's hand is rubbing up and down his back, feels nice. Dean closes his eyes and rests his cheek against the toilet seat and feels like an asshole.
“S'posed to be taking care of you.”
“Shut up,” Sam says, gently, and he peels Dean away from the toilet and hands him a glass of water. “Here. Sip. Slowly, okay?”
“Not a fucking baby.”
“Shut up.”
Dean grins at him and winces at the water and Sam says, “Here,” and drops a few pills into his hand.
“What'r'they?”
“They'll help.” He breathes out and closes his eyes. “Hold on a sec, k? Need my inhaler.”
“Don't go...” God, pathetic fucking fucking drunk, crashing on his kid's bathroom floor and stopping him from getting his meds, just go the fuck back where you came from, Dean.
Sam hesitates. “I need it,” he says, and starts towards the door, but then he stumbles and holds onto the sink and Dean remembers suddenly that he's not the only drunk one here, except he's puked so he has that going for him at least.
“Okay.” He hauls himself up. “All right. Come on.”
Sam puts both his hands on top of Dean's head and rests his chin on them. “Don't get sick.”
Fucking giant kid. “I'm done now.”
“I worry sometimes. That you'll get sick.”
“What?” Dean slings an arm around Sam's waist and leads him to the living room. He's breathing like he has a chest full of gravel. “I don't get sick.”
“Sometimes.”
“Getting sick's your thing, getting laid's mine, remember?”
Sam snorts and shakes his inhaler. “Yeah, okay.”
“Sit down.”
He stays standing. “Just...I worry, okay? You gotta be careful. You and Dad. I worry that you'll...and you won't know 'cause you're not paying attention, and I'm not there so who's gonna...” He stops shaking the inhaler and looks at it like he can't figure out if he needs it.
“Take it,” Dean says, but then Sam's hauling Dean's feet on the couch and covering him up with a blanket and Dean's saying “Take it, Sammy, take it,” and as soon as he hears the hiss of it and the quiet of Sammy holding his breath he's fast fucking asleep because Sam took his meds so Sam is fine so everything is fine.
**
Jess shows up sometime in the middle of the night or maybe just early in the morning, Dean doesn't know. He hears her shoes but doesn't open his eyes, and then he hears quiet voices in the kitchen-Sam was in the kitchen? Why wasn't Sam in his room?--but then she's bringing him into his room and not ten minutes later Dean hears his kid fucking the shit out of her so there's that, at least. It's a weird lullaby but it works, and doesn't that just suck.
**
He wakes up to the smell of coffee-beautiful, holy, lovely coffee-and something sizzling, and the the blanket is itchy against his cheek, and he opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is Sammy, over at that table in the corner, four books in front of him, two of them open, his forehead propped up on his fist when he reads, and the way the sun hits on him makes him look good for a minute, and then he turns his head and coughs and looks like shit because he's in the same sweatpants as yesterday and he put a shirt on but Dean can still see how hard he's breathing, and he's drilling his knuckles into his forehead like it's the only thing he knows how to do except clearly it's not because he's staring down at those books, fucking staring like he can suck it all in at once.
“Are you going to Scott's today?” Pretty voice. Jess. Dean sits up.
Sam shakes his head but doesn't look up.
“He likes you more than me. It'd be weird for me to go alone.”
Sam coughs into his elbow but doesn't say anything. Dean stretches and sits up, and Sam looks over. “Hey.”
“Mornin'.” Dean runs his hand down his face. “Hey, Jess.”
“Hey!” she calls, (Sam winces) “Waffles or pancakes?”
“Both?”
She grins. “You got it.”
Sam coughs again and hunkers down farther into his book. Dean checks under the blanket to make sure he still has pants on and then gets up and claps his hands on Sam's shoulders on the way to the bathroom. Sam tenses up and is still all fucking on edge when Dean gets back.
“Looks like a bitch of a hangover,” Dean says, lowering himself into the chair across from him. Jesus, all these fucking books. He starts taking them off the table, and Sam looks up all expressionless.
Then he shakes his head and says, “I'm okay. You feeling better?”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek and looks at him. “Well,” he says. “I slept.”
Sam looks down.
“Did you?” Dean says.
“Yeah, a little.”
“You're full of shit.”
“I did. A little. I tried. Really.”
“Breathing that bad?”
Sam shrugs.
“Ooookay.” Jess comes out of the kitchen with her arms full of plates and says, “Sam, get this crap off, okay?”
“I have three pages left.”
Dean says, “And she has two arms trying to hold all this, get your shit off the table.” He helps Jess with the plates and she mouths 'thank you,' and Sam scowls while he snaps his books shut.
Jess is telling Dean all about this thing at Scott's tonight--”Just a small party, just close friends” and Dean's seen enough movies about college to know what that means-and how he and Sam should really come and Dean ignores Sam's glare and says that they will, because his solution to Sam being this much of a bitch is just to push him until he explodes and yells something about what's really bothering him so let's just get him there, all right? With the hangover, it shouldn't take long.
But it's clearly not happening now, because Sam just hunkers down in his seat (which is funny where you're a million fucking feet tall) and cuts his pancakes into tiny pieces. He's not really eating. He looks kind of green, actually, but he should have slept off some of the fucking hangover, you know?
And he should have woken Dean up if he couldn't breathe (Dean should have woken up).
“It'll be good for you,” Jess says to Sam. “Get you out of the house. Time to unwind. And Dean will get to meet everyone.”
Dean really isn't interested in meeting Sam's college friends-especially after Jess told him that all Sam's college friends are pissed at him-but if it works, it works, and in high school Sam was a fucking riot at the parties Dean would throw in their motel rooms. He'd be the fucking fourteen-year-old lady's man and he'd mix drinks like a professional and he was always happy and exhausted and even fucking chattier than usual at the end of the night so yeah. Let's just get him there.
Sam shrugs and wheezes, and Jess says, “Did you take your meds this morning?”
Sam rubs his forehead.
“Hey,” Dean says. “She asked you a fucking question.”
“Bite me, Dean.” He looks at Jess. “Yes, okay? I took them.”
Dean says, “Can't exactly blame her for asking, since morning is kind of a foreign concept when you don't sleep.”
He coughs into his shoulder. “Leave me alone.” The last cough is deep, and he pushes his palm into his forehead and breathes out. “Fuck this. I can't eat right now, I can't breathe.”
“Sam,” Dean says.
“Can't fucking breathe.”
And Jess-she tries so hard, and Dean gets that she loves him, really, he even gets that she probably loves him in this special way when he's infuriating and unreasonable and upset, he knows, so Dean hates to say it-does the wrong fucking thing. She says, “Sam, we're only-” and it's not her fault she has a voice-a really fucking pretty voice usually-that's got to sound like fucking hell on a migraine, but she reaches out and puts her hand on his chest (just don't touch his chest, it's not hard, seriously) and he jumps and says, “Don't touch me, please don't touch me,” and sinks his head down into his hands.
Jess only freezes for half a second before she gets up and grabs her plate and brings it to the kitchen. She throws it into the sink, and Sam cringes and wraps his arms around his head.
“I'll talk to you in a few days,” she says. “I..fucking can't. I'm sorry, Dean.”
Dean doesn't really fucking blame her, but he growls and points at his kid and says, “Stay the fuck there. Eat something,” and follows Jess out the door.
Once they're out on the sidewalk, she turns around and fumbles with her phone. She says,“I just...”
“No, he's being an asshole. He's an asshole.”
She breathes out. “I know he's stressed about exams and shit, but...”
“I don't know what the fuck's wrong with him. I'll figure it out and get him sorted out. You...go home, get some rest, try not to think about it. I'll get him to the party tonight, get him fucking drunk, and either he'll come weeping into your arms or he'll pass out, and either way we win, right?”
She gives him this weak smile. “Yeah.”
“Hey. How's the asthma been?”
She shrugs. “Same as always, so...you know. Shitty. It's April.” Another shrug. “I think it's bothering him more? I don't know. He gets up at night more than he used to...you know, usually he just lies there and takes his inhaler or sits on the side of the bed to catch his breath or whatever, but lately he's getting up and pacing...”
That's never a good fucking sign.
“Is he talking about it?”
“He'll talk about how he's feeling right then, but he doesn't want to discuss it as any kind of larger issue .I talk to him about doctors and he says I'm nagging him. I don't fucking know. I don't think he's trying to hide anything, so there's that. He lets me know when he's feeling shitty. Not in...like, not in a whining way, you know-”
“Yeah, I know. Just letting you know. He's good at that.”
“He's really fucking good at that, so I feel like a bitch complaining that he's not opening up to me, because when I ask him what's going on, you know, he fucking tells me-I'm just stressed about school, I haven't been feeling well, but it's just like...like there's something more I'm not fucking getting, and he's not helping me get there.”
“He gets like this when the asthma's bad sometimes. He bitches out. It sucks.”
“Not like this.”
Dean shrugs. “I'm sure it's nothing I haven't seen. I'll get him straightened out.”
It's nothing Dean hasn't seen. He's seen fucking everything on this kid. He's going to walk in there and Sam's going to be sulking at his pancakes or angry-cleaning the kitchen and he'll yell at Dean for a while and finally admit that his chest hurts and it's freaking him out and he should get some fucking rest and Dean will just fucking sit with him because Sam does all the other stuff, he does fucking everything, but sometimes he just needs to bitch about this fucking asthma and sometimes Dean needs to bitch about it too, sometimes he opens up a fucking blank email on the shitty old laptop Sam left him and addresses it to nobody and write fucking paragraph after paragraph about how this shit is not fucking fair and he is so tired of worrying about Sam every five fucking minutes and how he wishes he could look at a cigarette or a fucking dog and not immediately worry about Sam who isn't even fucking here because he fucking bailed and, no, Dean's still not fucking over it, because he still wakes up in the middle of the fucking night hearing wheezing that's not there and then he texts Sam and Sam's fucking awake wheezing and that's not the kind of bond he ever wanted to have with Sam, okay, that's too far over the line even for fucking Dean when you get to the point of asthmatic fucking telepathy, and Dean is tired, okay, he's fucking tired, and he's tired of hearing his damn kid over the phone being so fucking tired so yeah, he's going to go in there and Sam's going to piss and moan and Dean is going to slap him back into shape because they can't fucking wallow in this, Dean deletes the emails, okay?
Except then Dean goes back into the apartment and Sam's sitting on the floor with some book open, and he's not freaking out or throwing things or anything except reading and wheezing from his whole fucking chest and coughing wet after wet cough into his sleeve and while he rubs his forehead and looking just so fucking allergic and goddamn miserable and why can't he just drama queen the fuck out, why couldn't he have just yelled at them?
Dean closes the door and Sam startles.
“You're being a dick,” Dean says. Gently.
Sam breathes out. It sounds like a snarl, but that's just his fucking lungs.
“I know,” he says.
“And you sound like shit. Are you okay?”
He nods. “I have to get this reading done.”
“No, it's break time, kiddo.” He hauls Sam up by his arm and pulls him to his room. “Come on. Look! A bed! I bet you forgot this was here.”
Sam sneezes and feels around, mumbles something about fucking sweatpants that don't have pockets.
“Inhaler?”
“Yeah.”
“I'll get it. Can you just...lie down? This is time-out. Lie still and think about what you've done.”
Sam burrows under his covers. “I've been an asshole to my girlfriend because her voice hurts my head and she's trying to make me talk to her and she's pointing out that I can't breathe when I already know it, and apparently this is suddenly some huge problem for me. And I fucking suck and I can't fix it.”
“Well, first step is admitting you have a problem. I'll be right back.” Dean goes to the kitchen to grab the inhaler and trips over a book on his way back. Seriously, these things are fucking everywhere. Maybe they're having book sex and babies.
Sam holds up his hands as soon as Dean's through the the doorway and Dean tosses him his inhaler. “Look,” Dean says. “I know you're stressed. And I know you feel like shit. That's why Jess called me, y'know? Give little brother a weekend off and all that. And you can be a bitch to me all you want, but I'm not going to walk out, so take advantage of that, okay? Yell at me instead of Jess. Do it. And then you're going to get some damn sleep, and then later we'll go the party and have some fun, and then we can come back here and cry about our feelings and then you'll be good to go, all right?”
“I don't want to do any of that.”
“Yeah, well, what do you want, Sammy?”
Sam says something under his breath. So just wheezes, basically.
“Speak,” Dean says.
Sam says, “I don't want to do any of this anymore.”
**
Dean's trying to figure out what the hell to write in this email to John: (I'm worried about Sammy, because apparently he could handle digging up of innocent people and getting the crap knocked out of him on a regular basis better than a few essays? Because seriously, what the hell, Sammy) when Sam comes out of the bedroom-he's been sleeping for twenty minutes, if that-and he's holding his head and wheezing really hard and saying, “Dean?”
Dean stands up. “You okay?”
“No. I don't know. Please?”
He gets to the doorway just as Sam starts to waver, and he drags Sam back to his bed and sits him down and says, “Okay. Tell me what's wrong.” He has his hand on Sam's forehead (cool) then he's running his hands all around the kid's head checking for lumps (nothing) but he's wincing at the touches but leaning into Dean and what the fuck, Sam.
“My heart's going so fast.” He gives this junky wheeze and starts coughing. “And my head and just...” he pulls on his shirt over his chest and sinks his forehead to Dean's shoulder. “I don't know what this. I don't know. Do you know what this is?”
Sam's jugular is against Dean's cheek and his pulse is going fucking crazy and Jesus what the hell is going on?
Sam coughs all the fuck over Dean and if that isn't a sign he doesn't know what is, because he doesn't really fucking care (the kid's not contagious) but Sam's always been a nervous little bitch about it so, okay, this is bad.
“Are we doing hospital?” Dean asks.
“Yeah. Jesus. Yeah.”
Dean gets his arm around Sammy's back and helps him up and he feels Sam's heartbeat spike against him and Jesus, Jesus, this is just new, this isn't supposed to be the kind of thing they have to fucking worry about (they have enough to fucking worry about) except he's still coughing.
Dean loads him into the car and Sam balls himself up in the front seat and Dean says, “You need to breathe slower, Sam, okay?” but he can't because this is all freaking him the hell out and every single fucking noise, the engine, the turn signal, Dean's voice is clearly hurting his head and Dean's still not shutting up, he's murmuring Sammy's name and rubbing his back and Sammy's coughing and coughing and coughing and Jesus what the fuck is wrong.
**
A panic attack.
A fucking panic attack.
Granted, panic attacks usually have you just thinking you can't breathe, when Sam's asthma combined with him freaking the fuck out meant he actually couldn't breathe, and the headache's a genuine migraine and his heart rate soaring didn't exactly help with the pain so yeah, it was a fucking badass panic attack, but it was a panic attack.
They gave him something to calm him the fuck down and a neb treatment and tubes up his nose that make him sneeze and some sort of shot for the migraine and he lies there and plays with his hospital gown like it's fucking interesting and makes Dean's fingers walk up and down his leg and God is he stoned. His chest is still stuffed-up (it's fucking April, give him a break) so he's coughing every few sentences but at least he's fucking talking.
Even if it is some nonsense bullshit he's saying.
“I'm so happy you're here, Dean. Just so fucking happy. You're my favorite.”
“Oh dear Lord.”
“You can move in. You can sleep on my floor.” He's twisting Dean's hand around. He's drunker than he was last night.
Dean says, “Not that this isn't adorable, but why don't you use this time to have your breakdown? You'll enjoy it more if you do it stoned.”
Sam looks up. “What?”
“I know you're feeling like crap. And look, I'm being all present for you and shit. I want to fucking talk about it. Let's do it, okay?'
“It's...”
“The asthma's fucking with you in that slow, long way, and I know that really fucks with your head. And I get it. It's just steadily shitty and you'd rather it were just really horrible sometimes and not horrible at others. And you're probably in pain and fucking pissed about it, and I've had migraines, they fucking suck. So you need to stop being a ticking little time bomb and have your explosion so you can stop pissing off your girlfriend, okay?”
“Dean, that's not...”
“Hey. What. Talk to me?”
Sam shrugs. “I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know how to say it. Just...thanks. For trying.”
Thanks for trying? Is he fucking kidding? Yeah, no, that's not what this is Dean doesn't try with Sam. That's just not how this shit works.
But fuck if he knows what to say.
“You just need to have some fun,” Dean says. “And I'm awesome at that.”
Sam nods, looking down, then says, softly, “Fun is really stressing me the fuck out.”
“That's because fun for you is crosswords and Jeopardy. Those things aren't fun. Come on, we had fun last night. Until the puking. We'll avoid that tonight. You can show me off to your friends, they can make me think you're cool, whatever. It'll be fine.” He pushes Sam's hair back. “You'll be fine.”
Sam shrugs and doesn't say anything. He's just staring down at his lap. What the fuck is Dean supposed to do with that?
He rubs his eyes and Dean says, “Tired?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“How much sleep lately?”
Sam shrugs. “Stuff's been keeping me up.”
“Jess mentioned the wheezing, yeah.”
“She doesn't sleep over anymore. Hates it. I keep getting up.”
“Meds aren't helping?”
“The asthma meds? I mean, I'm alive, so they're helping. It's not that. I'm just tired, Dean.”
“You're not getting enough oxygen. That'll wear you out.”
“It's not that. It's just the grind of it. The asthma, yeah, but just...everything. I can't fucking keep up. And I work so hard but then I have to do a day in the ER or I stay up all night coughing until I throw up and-”
“This shouldn't be happening regularly.”
“--or I just can't fucking deal with talking to people and making excuses for why I'm late for everything or why I didn't go to the party or why I'm so tired. And then everyone says, yeah, I'm tired too, but they're not...this.” Sam rakes his hand through his hair. He's shaking a little, but he's on twenty thousand different meds right now. He's still fucking stoned. “Nobody gets that it's just...it's different for me, and I hate it. I hate fucking saying that. I just can't make it all of my classes because I can't physically get across campus some days, because I'm just so worn out. And the it all builds up. It just...piles on me. That's what's going on, Dean.”
But he's still not freaking out.
The kid needs to freak out.
Maybe when he's breathing better, then he'll yell.
“I just don't know what else to do,” Sam says.
“I get it,” Dean says, because he fucking watched the kid take his meds like clockwork for nineteen years and every time he's visited Sam at school there's all his shit lined up on the nightstand, and shit, the kid was concerned about not having his inhaler in his pocket four hours ago and now he's getting migraines and panic attacks and the fucking asthma is keeping him from his friends and that's just not fucking cool, Dean's stood by and watched Sam sacrifice a load of fucking stuff for this fucking thing in his chest but the kid gets to have friends, he gets to have his girlfriend sleep over, he gets to have someone around who understands and will fucking take care of the kid when he's asking for it, when this is Sammy, here, asking for it, and people need to not blow that the fuck off.
“You...get some of it, Dean.”
“What? Fuck you, I get it.”
Sam looks up at him, gives him a small smile. “Okay.”
“Don't okay me. Bitch.”
Sam looks around. “We should really get out of here. They've pumped me full of whatever. Fixed up. Shit to do.”
“Lie the fuck down.”
“I don't think you understand this test I have to-”
“And right now you have a get-out-of-jail free card.”
“That's not how it works, Dean. This isn't like...I can't tell you or Dad that I'm having a shitty day and I need one of you to go burn the bones for me. Nobody else can do this for me. Nobody else can get this information into my head, nobody else can pass my classes for me.”
“You're not going anywhere while you're still fucking stoned.” Dean's head starts making crazy schemes of putting on Sam's (enormous) clothes and sneaking into his classes and doing all his tests for him and Sam totally fixes him with this look and recites, “When pregnant lab rats are given caffeine equivalent to the amount a human would consume by drinking six cups of coffee per day, an increase in the incidence of birth defects results. When asked if the government would require warning labels on products containing caffeine, a spokesperson stated that it would not because if the finding of these studies were to be refuted in the future, the government would lose credibility. Which of the following is most strongly suggested by the government's statement above? (A) A warning that applies to a small population is inappropriate. (B) Very few people drink as many as six cups of coffee a day. (C) There are doubts about the conclusive-”
“Why are you taking a class about rats?”
“It's an LSAT question.”
Dean swallows. “You should not be able to recite that from memory, Sam. Especially not when you're fucking drugged.”
Sam rubs his forehead like he can scrub through to his brain. Like Dean telling him that is enough for him to want to get it out, and isn't that just the fucking worst part of the day, because Dean has no clue what he's doing, and Sam, don't rub through to your brain, okay?
“I know,” Sam says. “They get stuck in my head.”
And then there's something about that, something that's just so Sam, and ugh, kid.
He squeezes Sam's shoulder. “Just...get some sleep. When you're feeling better, we'll go home and get some food in you and you can have a nice little love affair with your inhaler. Then then you can see your friends and Jess tonight and relax. Studying will still be there tomorrow.”
“I know,” Sam says, “I know, I know, it will be.” He sinks his head down to his knees.
Shit.
“You'll feel better,” Dean says, and Sam shakes his head.
“I don't know. I don't think I can feel better.”
**
Dean has to literally drag Sam to the party, but once they're there, Sam takes this deep breath and nods and then he's big smile life of the party, going straight up to Jess and apologizing and kissing her against the wall, and he puts his forehead against the top of her head and his shoulders are heaving, people are smoking here and it's got to be bothering him, but he's here, and he's not in a book, and this is better. He's drinking. He's smiling at his friends. He's laughing at dirty jokes. The coughing isn't bad, it's just normal, he's just normal.
Dean nods at people like he knows them and drinks and leans against a wall and feels fucking creepy watching Sam like this, and for the first time in a while (ever) he's being directly confronted with the fact that Sam's a fucking adult, that he has this whole life that Dean isn't a part of. And it's not like Dean's bitter about that (not anymore, not really) but it's still something he doesn't get, and he's wondering if what's eating Sammy really is something he doesn't fucking see.
When something's bugging Dean, he runs it off, he kills something fucking evil, he calls Sam, and what the hell does Sammy do? (How the fuck would calling Dean help with this?)
What does Sammy do when it's too much? He doesn't get to kill things anymore.
Sam's drinking like a fish, and he's disengaged from Jess just enough to talk to fucking everyone, he's working the damn room and dancing with his arms around Jess's neck and does he realize that frat boy is flirting with him? But then Sam's coughing in earnest at the cigarette smoke and wheezing into his beer bottles and rubbing his forehead between shots and Dean comes up to him when he's doing another fucking round with the frat boy and says, “Hey, tiger, maybe slow down?”
“Nope.” Sam downs the shot. “I'm fine. This is fine.”
“Are you trying to prove some kind of point?”
Sam looks at Dean all startled and says, “No, Dean,” in this voice he can't fake.
“Then you're just being a fucking idiot. Remember how shitty you felt today? Slow down.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“No, Dad never had to do this shit with you because you could fucking control yourself.” And yeah, okay, maybe Dean's a little drunk too, fucking sue him, his brother's self-destructing. “How the fuck am I supposed to tell him that yeah, by the way, sending Sammy to college was a huge fucking mistake because he clearly can't goddamn handle it.”
Sam pours another shot. “Fuck you.”
“You think this is going to help you feel better?”
“Yep.” He clinks glasses with the frat boy and takes the shot. “Helped last night, right?”
“Clearly fucking not...”
“Then what am I supposed to do, Dean?” He reaches for the vodka bottle. “This is what you fucking told me to...ugh.” He stops and stabilizes himself on the counter. Wheezes.
Dean yanks him up and gets all the fucking in his face. “Get in the car.” Is someone whistling? Jesus.
Sam looks at him and doesn't say anything.
“Get in the fucking car.”
He swallows. “I can't. They'll think...I'm already here so I have to stay. They'll think something's wrong.”
“Something is fucking wrong, Sam!”
“I'm fine. I'm just...Ihavetobefine.”
“No, you don't, you fucking idiot, you don't have to be fucking anything except in the fucking car.”
Sam watches him.
“I will drag you by the fucking collar, Sam.”
Sam scowls, stalks over to a very confused Jess, kisses her hard, and goes to the fucking car.
**
“Where are we going?”
Dean just drives.
“I can't just go away! I have shit to do, Dean? Fuck, they're going to think something's wrong with me. They're going to think I'm fucking sick.”
“I don't care.”
“I...”
“Can you just fucking tell me what's going on, Sam? Jesus Christ, yell at me, fucking cry, I don't fucking care, just get it out of you.”
Sam's quiet for a long time, then he says, “I want to. That's...”
“Talk.”
“I'm too tired, Dean. That's it. I can't yell, and I can't cry.” He rests his head against the window. “I'm just so tired.” He wheezes, low and quiet, and rubs his forehead. “Really drunk.”
“This...isn't just asthma, is it?”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Then tell me.”
“I can't. I...” Sam sits up straighter and looks down at his hands. “I don't know how to say it. Everyone else is dealing and I can't. And the asthma's part of it and missing the fuck out of you and Dad is part of it, but that's not all of it. The fact that I guess I never learned how to fucking interact with anyone but you...that's big, I guess. And it's three years in and I should really be used to the fact that these people, these people who like me, do not honestly give a shit about making sure I'm okay, that my fucking chest and my head are okay. But I'm not used to it. And I keep waiting to get used to it. Because other people are fine.” He shakes his head. “ I guess...for nineteen years there was just you and Dad. I didn't have to explain me. And now I do. And the closer I get to Jess and the more work they pile on top of me and the more people I meet at these fucking parties, the more times I have to deal with the fact that I'm just not like them. My entire childhood's a secret, and the asthma's a bitch, and I just miss you, and that stuff's hard, but when it comes down to it...the problem is me. It's just me. And for whatever reason I can't handle what everyone else is handling. And I don't want to yell about it, Dean. I wish I did. I wish I could. I don't have it in me. I don't have anything left in me. It's just the most humiliating thing in the world, and it isn't going anywhere. It's me.”
He turns his head to cough for a while, and just...well, shit.
Just, shit.
Dean says, “Just because they don't get it doesn't mean they don't give a shit, Sammy. I sure as fuck don't get why this college thing has you bent all out of shape.”
“Yeah, I know. It's stupid.”
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But I'm going to fix it.”
“I don't think you can fix it.”
“I can help.”
Sam nods, just a little. “I don't know how.”
“I do.”
**
Sam's mostly passed out by the time they get to his apartment, which is pretty fucking excellent, because then he doesn't have to fight Sam about the fact that the kid does not fucking get to go inside.
Dean goes up and grabs Sam's meds and one of the textbooks, the one he's been drowning himself in the most. Just the one. Time to go.
**
They came to this shitty beach motel once before. Sam was between his freshman and sophomore years, taking a summer class, and Dean kidnapped him and brought him here and they spent a three day weekend on the beach. It was his first time coming to visit when Sam wasn't fucking dying, and it's right up there on the list of Dean's favorite memories, his kid out there in the water, laughing.
He hydrates the fuck out of Sam through the night so he wakes up feeling vaguely all right, and Dean crams him full of breakfast and then they go and sit outside. It's too early in the year for the beach to be that crowded, and it's a cold day, so it's just them for a little while. Just them.
Sam is wearing a hoodie and his scarf and he just sits there and watches the ocean and wraps his arms around his chest.
He says, quietly, “I can just hear myself falling more and more behind.”
“No you can't. You can hear the ocean, Sammy.”
Sam huffs out a laugh. “I want to believe all these things you say, you know? These nice things about how I don't have to worry about it. But I do. I fucking worry, Dean. It's my thing.”
“I know.”
“I just worry. And I can't relax because the stuff I worry about is still there.”
“I know.”
“You don't know.”
“I do. I don't get it, I don't fucking understand it, but I know because I fucking know you. And no, I don't understand always what goes on in that freak little head of yours, but I do now how to deal with you. All right?”
“All right.”
Dean takes Sam's textbook out of his bag and puts it on his lap. Sam actually, physically flinches. Jesus, Sammy.
“Look,” Dean says. “Me and fucking school, in the same place. Nothing's exploding. We can fucking coexist, Sam. All this shit in your head can fucking coexist. And you can be a stressed-out asshole and still be my kid brother that you know I'm fucking crazy about. All right?”
Sam gives him a small grin. “All right.”
“When we were kids we did your homework together, you remember?”
“I remember.”
“All right, so, come here.”
Sam scoots closer, and Dean slips half the textbook onto Sam's knee.
“So these fucking rats,” he says. “I think they fucking suck, personally, but they're drinking all these coffee and we just need to figure out what the hell that has to do with us, right?”
“Right.” Sam's so close, wheezing right the fuck in Dean's ear.
“All right then.” He hands Sam a pen. “You and me. Let's figure it out.”