Fic: Sammy Crockett
Written for the second comment-fic meme.
Title: Sammy Crockett
Author: triquetralmoon
Warnings: just a couple of bad words, spoilers only need to cover end of season 3
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Chapters: One-shot, approx 2,000 words
Disclaimer: Don't own nothin' but the headache.
Prompt: Dean, Sam, gen or slash. Dean has a huge headache and is trying to sleep, and the people in the motel room next to them are being loud and annoying (sex, music...up to you). Sam goes and shuts them up for Dean, who's grateful.
Sam starts noticing something off with Dean when he starts bitching about other cars having their high beams on. This itself, is not unusual. Just that in this case, Dean's commenting on every single car. Sam is very sure the last one that sped by did not have them on.
That's the first indication that something is up with Dean and it just snowballs from there. The squint that is apparently working on getting its citizenship on Dean's face. The constant shrugging of shoulders, craning of the neck. The fact that the decibel level coming from the speakers is actually normal, if not low.
Yeah, one bitch of a headache is going on in the driver's seat.
Rather than say anything about it, Sam just goes for the glove box - grabs the Advil and a bottle of water. He doles four of them out into the palm of his hand, holding them out until Dean takes them, which he does - all of them. So, yeah, he's got to be hurting pretty bad.
Sam figures the Advil will help. Sam figures fucking wrong. Dean lasts about another hour on the road before he pulls over to the shoulder.
"You okay?" Sam asks a little nervously.
Dean nods, but he's gone pale and a little green. "You wanna take the wheel for a bit?"
"Sure. Thanks, man," he replies graciously, making it sound like Dean allowing him to drive the car is a huge favor, rather than the other way around.
As soon as Dean's safely ensconced in the passenger seat, he closes his eyes. Sam knows he's not asleep, though. Can see the throbbing vein in his temple, the way he's clenching his teeth.
:::
:::
It takes another thirty minutes to find a motel, and it is a crappy one. It is the only one around for another hour, though, and Sam is pretty sure that if they kept going he'd have to clean puke out of the Impala later. Stillness and silence will do Dean a world of good right now.
But it doesn't stop Sam from feeling bad about pulling them into this shithole. On his walk into the office, he's pretty sure he's witnessing a drug deal.
Sam jogs back over to the Impala, key in hand, knocks on Dean's window. His brother blinks hard a couple of times as if he's having trouble seeing clearly, brings up a hand to shade his eyes against the lights of the parking lot.
"We're in six." Sam says, handing Dean the key and nodding his head toward the motel in suggestion. He is begging with his eyes for the stubborn jerk to not fight about this, to just go inside and lay down.
Dean takes the key as if he's unsure, but ends up doing exactly that. When Sam starts bringing all their shit in a minute later, he finds Dean belly-down on his usual bed, a pillow over his head and vomit in the trash can.
Sam winces. He has some experience with head pain. Concussion head pain, demon-blood head pain, trying-to-save-your-brother-from-hell-stress-headaches, hangovers. None of them have either lasted more than an hour or not responded to medication. He'd offer Dean some of their meager pain med supply - but a) Dean would refuse, because b) it's meager. So, he finds himself idly wondering if the drug dealers outside are peddling anything in the opiate family less scary than heroin as he cleans out the trash can and plops it down gently on the floor by Dean's bedside. He settles himself down on his own bed, making sure his laptop screen is facing him in a way that is not going to assault Dean's eyes.
"HEY, JIMMY! YOUR MOTHER WAS SO GOOD LAST NIGHT!!"
A cackle of laughter erupts from out in the parking lot. Sam rolls his eyes. "Your mother" jokes have never seemed particularly funny to either Sam or Dean, for obvious reasons. As Sam's headed into his later 20s, he can hardly see the appeal at all.
Sam sees Dean's entire being tense at the noise, which is a feat because he wasn't particularly relaxed to begin with. Both brothers hang there, with ears perked, but aside from some smatterings of conversation and the occasional peal of laughter, nothing tremendous happens. So they both settle back down on their respective mattresses.
Until Dean calmly sits up and grabs the trash can so he can hurl. Sam's never understood why, but Dean faces himself away from Sam when he's throwing up. The man can chat up sex to his little brother like that is an entirely normal conversation to have, but a stomach bug makes him a goddamn shy violet. It isn't like Dean hasn't helped Sam out when he was sick. And it isn't like it bothers Sam to do the same for Dean, or that it grosses him out.
Shaking his head, Sam scoots himself off the bed, grabs a bottle of water and put it next to Dean on the bed without a word. Dean spits, and then with his back still turned towards his brother, lifts the bottle into the air so Sam can see, pausing as an acknowledgment of gratitude. Sam watches as Dean hunches forward, palming his eye like he needs to shove it back into his head.
"You alright?" Sam asks, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.
"Peachy," Dean grumbles, gingerly laying himself back down, facing his back toward Sam.
Sam has to offer, because he has to. "You want one of the Vicodin?"
"No. Just gonna try and sleep."
Devoid of any way to help his brother out, Sam goes back to dicking around on the internet. He makes a mental note to himself to clear his browser history, because if Dean finds out he has an account at Suicidegirls, he'll never hear the end of it.
There is the squeal of rubber on pavement, and the chatter outside gets markedly louder, obnoxiously so really - considering the hour, and then there is the sound of a door slamming. The voices get even louder, the paper thin walls of the motel not buffeting the sound even a little. Sam can make out the entire conversation - and really, he's not sure how it is possible to fit that many 'dawgs' into a sentence.
"So, I says look G.."
The rest of the eloquence is lost when music starts blaring. DMX. The bass is thumping so loudly that a strange buzzing happens when the metal frames showcasing a couple of ugly watercolors vibrate against the wall.
Sam's face contorts into a mask of pure sympathy as Dean again draws the pillow over his head. The fact that Dean isn't storming over there with a loaded weapon is still a further indication of how bad off he feels. Sam pauses for a moment to consider if he should ask Dean if they need to get him checked out if things are that bad, before the music goes up still louder.
"Dude- ," Sam tries to ask Dean if he wants to see if they can change rooms, but he's interrupted when something crashes into the sheetrock on the other side of the wall.
The wall directly behind his brother's head.
Sam hopes that whatever exploded against the wall was a person and that they broke something important. The raucous laughter that ensues tells him it wasn't.
Rage bubbles to the surface, and before he knows what he is doing, Sam bolts up and bangs on the wall as loud as he can.
"HEY!!" he bellows at the top of his lungs. "KNOCK IT OFF!"
Dean flips over quickly, his head wrapped within the pillow like a taco, the look on his face clearly relaying the message that what Sam is doing is not helpful in the least.
And it wasn't - not to Dean, and not to quell the bedlam.
But now Sam sees his brother's face, which is vandalized by pain, a city block of graffiti.
He can't sit there and do nothing.
Sam grabs something out of his duffel and marches out the door without a word. He bangs on the door to the offending room, his large fist pounding into it so hard that the hinges are squeaking. Sam steadies himself with a deep breath.
The door opens and a squirrely looking kid gazes up at him, his head tilting back so far you'd think that he was a budding astronomer. The kid has got to be a full foot shorter than him. In fact, they all do. High-school age kids.
"What the hell do you want?" the pimple-faced kid in the back of the room slurs.
Some very drunk high-school kids.
Sam wastes no time in wielding what he brought with him - a badge.
The music is off before the count of three.
:::
:::
Sam re-enters their motel room quietly, finds Dean looking at him with a mixed expression of curiosity and gratitude.
He doesn't go into long explanations, it is clear to see Dean's still in a world of pain. Sam just hands his brother a baggie with five or six round white pills.
Dean blinks and uses the light from his cell phone to examine the tablets closely. "Percocet?"
"Yep. They say they are very sorry, so they got you a present. And they promise never to steal from mom's medicine cabinet again."
Dean snorts.
"One cried. It was actually pretty touching."
"Way to go, Miami Vice," Dean replies, a touch of admiration underneath the pain in his voice. His hand comes up again to palm his eyeball, so hard you'd think he was trying to detach a retina.
"So, you want one of those, one of the Vicodin, or a trip to the ER?" Sam holds up his fingers to show those are the only three options he's giving.
Dean waits a beat, and apparently his pride settles down, because after a moment he says, "Vicodin."
Sam goes to the bathroom to get the pill out of the first aid kit as Dean sits up and grabs his water from the nightstand. He treads the same path in the stained industrial carpeting on his way back with the pill, holding one of the instant cold packs in his other giant hand, snapping it into activation.
"Put it on your neck," he suggests, handing Dean the pack, then the medication.
Sam heads into the shower once Dean is settled back down on the bed, but still keeps an ear out for the kids next door even as he lets the hot water beat down on the tight muscles of his neck and back. Twenty minutes later, he's crawling into bed. The deep and even breathing he hears implies that his brother is asleep, and Sam feels infinitely relieved knowing that Dean's feeling even minutely better. Glad to know he could help in some way. He lets his mind wander for awhile, chuckles to himself about the scare he gave those kids as he stares up toward the water-damaged ceiling tiles before he drops off to sleep.
:::
The next morning Sam's woken up by the warm sunshine streaming through the window and the aromatic scent of coffee tickling his nostrils. Dean's holding out a hot cup to him, a hot cup with whipped cream and chocolate drizzled on it.
There's no eye roll, no comment about what kind of pansy-assed faux coffee he likes to indulge in every once in awhile. His older brother just hands him the tall dome-topped beverage and sits himself back down on his bed with the newspaper.
"Dean."
Dean flips the edge of the paper down to look at Sam. "Yeah?"
"You're welcome."