Because of Houdini, Part 3/?

Oct 19, 2009 06:46

He can still hear Dad screaming in his head, clear as a bell.

Take care of your brother.

Look out for your brother, boy.

Look out for Dean.

Sam had expected the sadness, the irritation, the anger to come back. That he'd expected from the moment he heard a knock at the door.

Because it's hard to swallow down bile, to keep acid from creeping up your esophagus. Because gross shit sticks. Clings.

The good stuff, though? That stuff vanishes like a salted spirit.

So what he didn't expect to return, ever, was how much he loved his goddamn brother.  That he thought he had put away forever, to always keep but never feel.

The disease and what it does to Dean still makes him feel like he's drowning. But something has changed. There was a time he couldn't get far enough away. Now he can't stop touching his brother, feeling his warm skin like it's the last time, like at any minute someone's going to rip him away.

***

Dean can just barely hear his brother shouting, but the edges are there, the rise and fall of panic.

He should wake up. Tell Sam it's gonna be okay.

But he can only do what his body allows.

***

She used to need two hands to count the things she knew:

Sam Winchester hates his father, took Latin in high school, studied mixed martial arts as a child, moved around a lot.

He can talk about Eve Sedgwick till he's blue in the face.

He had an older brother who died.

He's the most laid back guy you'll ever meet.

He never, ever raises his voice.

Jess sits in the big chair by the sofa and counts again, unneeded fingers curling hard into her palm.

"Dad this is Sam," Sam grits into the phone. He's sitting on the arm of the sofa near Dean's head, but the noise doesn't seem to bother his brother, who's sleeping hard, his chest expanding and collapsing sharply with each noisy breath. "He says he hasn't seen you in a week, but I bet it's been longer. He's a fucking mess, Dad. Totally exhausted. You gotta call me."

He hangs up, curses at the phone and dials again.

Even as he's snarling, his left hand is absently petting the hair off his brother's forehead in a gesture so frighteningly maternal that it makes her chest ache. That is Sam.

She doesn't recognize the rest of him.

"You hear from him, you tell that bastard to call me, you understand me? Remind him he has a son who's fucking dying-- what? I understand that. I don't care. He can take a few months off to--"

Jessica gets up and goes to the bedroom, wraps herself up in the one sheet still left on the bed and does a face plant into her pillow.

She doesn't even know how his mother died. She never found the right moment to ask him, and Sam sure as hell never offered to tell her.

Maybe Mom's not dead, either.

Jessica doesn't know a damn thing.

Sam makes phone call after phone call; after a while his voice drops to a tired murmur, drowned out by Dean's coughing, which sound so much more harsh than it does when he's awake. She didn't know someone could sleep and choke at the same time. It makes her throat feel tight.

Dean coughs. And coughs, and coughs. After a while it begins to sound different. Strangled.

"Alright Dean," she hears Sam say, "alright. Hang on."

He comes to the bedroom door, and Jess closes her eyes just as the sliver of light passes over her face.

"Jess?"

"Mmm."

"I need you to come out to Dean's car with me. Hurry." Sam's holding a brown paper bag, which he unfolds with a flick of his arm.

She flails until she's sitting, panicked by the tone of his voice. "Is he fucking okay?"

"He'll be fine. Just come with me. Please."

She follows him to the living room. Dean's sitting up but hunched elbow-to-knee, one hand splayed over his eyes and forehead, the coughing spaced by low, gasping wheezes.

"Sam... he needs a hospital."

Sam drops a flashlight in her hand. "I just need you to hold this for me, alright? He should have everything he needs in the car."

It's dark but the street lamps are on and Sam easily spots the it; a huge black thing that looks like it sucks up a lot of gas.

He goes straight for the trunk. Jess points the flashlight and there's so much of it. Bottles and bottles and bottles and vials and boxes and syringes and bandages and nutrition shakes and IV bags and masks all in a big pile. It's so full that when Sam unearths a little white contraption that looks like a set of curlers, a few pill bottles cascade over the lip of the trunk and fall at his feet.

He bends, snatching them up and throwing them in the paper bag.

"Alright," he mutters, "Let's see."

Sam starts loading up, glancing briefing at each bottle and vial, muttering the names to himself: "...buterol... cinolone...." Then he hands her an arm-length metal rod.

"What the hell is this?"

"IV pole. Collapsible. For his feeding tube and IV meds."

IV pole. Collapsible. For his feeding tube and IV meds.  Holy god.

"What the hell are we doing, Sam?"

Sam looks at her, a little wrinkle in his brow, clearly confused. "He needs a breathing treatment."

She holds up the IV pole, like that's supposed to explain everything. " You told me he was dead, Sam, and now you're setting up an ICU in our living room?"

"Jess..." He begins, and looks at her with big, sad, pleading eyes and she's not going to fall for it this time, she just won't, he needs to fucking explain.

His gaze is long, his eyes brimming with apology. Then he hitches the bag of medication further up his hip.

"Please, Jess. My brother can't breathe." He turns and darts across the street.

***

Dean's chest is on fire and he's chilling at the edge and probably about to fall down a graying tunnel when suddenly there's a mask over his face and medicine his throat and his lungs suck it down for him, hold it just long enough, let it back out.

He's attached to his nebulizer. It's not his daily medication, though, he can taste the difference; it's for his asthma --he's got asthma on top of CF, cause God is one hilarious son of a bitch.

Which means he probably had an attack. Which means there might be something in the car he's allergic to, needs to get rid of, or maybe Dad forgot and used some new chemical to shine up the Impala's leather.

Except Dad hasn't been home in a few weeks.

And he's not... he's pretty sure he's not in the car.

There's a great big hand on the side of his head and someone's talking at him.

No. Someone's talking at someone else.

"... too fucking filthy for him. You take the couch, I'll sleep on the floor."

Kinda sounds like Sammy.

Except Sammy hasn't been home in a few years.

Has he?

There's an arm slung around his back and someone's petting the hair at the nape of his neck. He must be in the hospital and they must want him to get up and go to the bathroom or something. He doesn't really have to piss and his lungs are pain but he tries to stand up anyway. The arms hold him back.

"Hey-- hey hey hey hey Dean. Stop. Stop. Relax."

Alright then. He falls back against something soft, coughs a bit just to enjoy the feel of air moving through his lungs because everything's finally starting to unclench.

The guy who sounds like Sammy speaks again: "Something in this room set him off, Jess, and if we had just left him out here and gone to bed...?"

Dean waits for the punch line but it doesn't come.

Wait.

Sam's living room. He peels open an eye and discovers he's sitting with Sam, in fact Sam's crushed up against him on the sofa, holding him upright, and near them is Hot Girlfriend in her big easy chair.

"Sa--" Dean begins, but it just starts him coughing again. He hears his brother shushing him, which is irritating to say the least.

"We're gonna put you in our bed, Dean. Soon as you're done."

The fuck you are, Sam, is what Dean wants to say, but jesus, what a mouthful, so instead he says, "Nuh-uh." His voice sounds thin and strangled through the mask. Worse than it should.

"Yeah," Sam responds definitively (he recognizes Sam's and-that's-my-final-word voice). "Something out here's giving you trouble."

"No," Dean repeats.

But fuck, his eyes are closing against his will anyway.

***

Some hours later she rolls over to bury herself in Sam's chest and almost tumbles off the couch. Squinting blearily toward the kitchen she sees his big silhouette stumbling around in the dark.

"It's Saturday, Sam," she says, "no class."

"I know." Sam flicks on the dim oven light, turns his back to her, and starts dropping pills into something she can't see.

Jess glances at the clock on the microwave. "Babe? It's six in the morning."

He shrugs. "We have a lot of shit we have to do. His treatments take a long time."

"Sam." She sits up, regarding him seriously over the back of the sofa. "When are we going to talk about this?"

"Jess, please. I'm sorry."

She knows how sorry he is. And she can sense how overwhelmed he is, how hard it is for him to have his brother here, how what's gone unspoken between them is quickly pushing him over the edge, and something inside her is screaming, loudly, just let it go. Let it fucking go.

"You lied to me," she says anyway, if only to get it out of her head.

He turns and falls back against the stove, letting his head hit the vent, and in the shadows all she can see is the glint of tears in his eyes.

"I know," he whispers.

The bedroom door flies open and Dean stumbles to the end of the short hallway and into the bathroom. The apartment echoes with the sound of vomiting.

"Fuck," Sam says.

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah." He scrubs at his head. "People like him-- bad stomachs. And sometimes he swallows too much of the shit in his lungs. Makes him sick."

"Is he... does he always have this many problems?" She hates herself for asking it. But she has to know, because she hates herself even more for the question she's really asking: is he staying, then? Is this what it's going to be like? Because maybe it's only been a few hours and maybe she's being a selfish bitch but for all of Sam's frantic phone calls it's obvious that he has no plan, has fallen into some instinctive panic mode where all he can do is worry about his brother.

"No, this is worse than usual. When he's healthy you wouldn't even... he's--"  He stops, working his jaw.  "I don't know, I don't know if he's lying to me about how bad his last infection was, or if this is just the way the disease is progressing, I don't know fucking know, Jessica. I don't know."

"Hey." Jess goes to him, wraps her arm around his shoulders, kisses him on a jaw. He's tense as a rock and doesn't lean into her touch. "Get him to stay a few days, okay? Till he's feeling better."

The retching stops. Everything falls eerily silent. Sam shakes Jess off, hurries down the hall, opens the door without knocking.

Jess hears them murmuring , and then Sam calls: "Can you bring us a glass of water?"

She nudges the door open. Dean's sitting on his heels, face hidden in his arms, which are crossed over the toilet. He's covered in a sheen of sweat, his face is grey, lips dark, and Jess can see that he's trembling.

Oh, god.

Sam is kneeling behind him, his hand making sweeping motions over Dean's back. "We have a fever or anything?"

"Fine," Dean says voicelessly. "Be fine."

Sam checks anyway, mopping the moisture from Dean's forehead, and seems satisfied that he's telling the truth. He takes the glass of water from Jess, holds it out to his brother, who shakes his head no.

"You want help back to bed, or you need a minute?"

"Down, Sammy," Dean mutters, using the toilet and the edge of the sink to pull himself up, "It's just a stomachache."

He slides past them into the living room, slightly curled over, his hand on his stomach. He picks up one of his boots.

"I'm leaving," he says. But then he just stands there with his boot in his hand.

Jess watches Sam's face morph instantly from concern to something pouty, almost childish. An expression she's never seen before.

"Just stop it, Dean," he says, "Just stop."

"Stop what?"

"Being an idiot. You're not going anywhere." Sam strides across the room, snatches up the other boot. "You're staying until you're healthy."

Dean snorts. "Till the end of fucking time?"

"You know what I mean."

"It happens, Sam. I threw up, I didn't have a lung collapse. Gimme my fucking boot."

Sam glares at Dean.

Dean glares at Sam.

And then Sam extends his arm, and the boot, over his head.

Dean's face juts forward, his eyes widening in disbelief. "Come on, man. Are you kidding me?"

"Take your boot and leave, Dean," Sam says, in all seriousness, "Go ahead."

"Give me my fucking boot, Sam."

"Come and get it."

Jess finds herself hiding a smile behind her hand.

And then Dean swings.

It all happens so quickly-- both boots go flying , Sam knocks the fist away and throws his own punch but Dean catches him by the wrist, wrangles the other arm, kicks Sam's feet out from under him and they tumble to the ground, Dean straddling Sam, Sam's fingers prying at Dean's hands, which have him just hard enough around the neck that he tries to curse but makes angry little grunting noises instead. Sam's long legs fumble and twist around Dean's middle, and then Dean is tumbling on his back--

"STOP IT!" Jessica yells, yanking Sam by the back of his shirt. It seems to take him by surprise; he chokes and falls off his brother, one pajama'd knee skidding across the hardwood floor.

"Stop," she repeats, and the brothers are look up at her like they're in big fucking trouble. "Get up. Both of you. What the fuck?"

Sam reaches for his brother but Dean knocks his hand away, instead using the kitchen table to haul himself to his feet. He's panting, the crap shifting audibly in his lungs. Sam is also out of breath, but she has a feeling that's not why his shoulders are heaving.

He glares at Dean.

Dean glares at Sam.

"Alright," Dean says. "Two days. That's it."

"Fine. " Sam tears open the refrigerator door. "The shit for your neb is in here. Your pills are sorted out for the next three days in this plastic thing." He kicks the fridge shut and brandishes a compartmentalized piece of tupperware. "These are your steroids, these are your antibiotics, these are your enzymes, and this is the shit for your stomach."

"I had my meds arranged in that trunk how I liked them," Dean replies bitchily.

Sam snorts. "Sure you did." He opens the container. "Here. For your nausea."

"Too late."

"Take it anyway."

"Where's my vest?"

"You don't need it. You have me."

"You are such a little bitch."

"You're a fucking jerk."

"I'm going back to bed," Jess says.

And she does.

:::

PART FOUR

fic: because of houdini, fic, .sick!dean

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