Because of Houdini, Part 9/?
Note 1: BEAUTIFUL BANNER MADE FOR ME BY THE WONDERFUL pixymisa . I cannot thank her enough. Seriously. Best. Christmas. EVER. She also made half of my icons. AND she writes amazing fic (gen, wincest AND porn!). *stands beneath her window and sings love songs*
Note 2: Sorry about the delayed update. Lots of RL business got in the way. The next update will not take so long, I promise. *kissies*
PART NINE
You're just a kid and you know there's something about your big brother that's different, that people always pet him like he's sad and touch his forehead and then his cheek and then his shoulder and tell him he looks well in a too-cheerful voice.
When he gets sick everything goes silent. Dad wants you to sit in his lap so he can rock you while you watch cartoons. When he rocks you he smells like whiskey. You like the attention but it also makes you feel weird, scared, like Dad is holding onto you because something bad's gonna happen.
Sometimes Dean's coughing keeps you awake night. Sometimes he curls up in a ball and sweats and makes little whining noises that don't sound like him at all. There's always a trashcan by the bed because sometimes he throws up and it smells awful and that keeps you awake, too.
Most of the time, though, you shoot BB guns with Dean and go swimming with Dean and practice playing pool with Dean and you don't think about it much. You stay with Uncle Bobby a lot, run around in the junk yard and play with the dogs, by yourself, until dark.
When you get a little older you're allowed to visit Dean when he goes to the hospital for tune ups. It's like when Dad has to fiddle around all day under the hood of the Impala, except instead it's nurses fiddling around all day with Dean. They attach him to bags of clear liquid and suck boogers out of his nose with a blue plastic bulb. They make him inhale stuff that makes his voice go away, make him blow into a big plastic thing until his face turns red and he coughs and coughs and coughs. Four times a day a male nurse in a paper apron and rubber gloves and a surgical mask comes in and he hits Dean on the back a lot harder than Dad does.
The hospital stays aren't bad, not when you're younger. Dean's usually too tired to act like a jackass, he stops making fun your hair and calling you a girl. Sometimes he just lays there with his eyes open half-mast, swallowing. Sometimes he sleeps and sleeps and you get to play Nintendo, quietly, all by yourself. You're determined to beat him at F-Zero but you never do.
Then you're eleven and watching TV when the motel phone rings. Dad answers and listens and hangs up and turns to you and says get the fuck in the car. You and Dad drive down to the high school to find your brother sitting on the sidewalk and there's blood everywhere. It's all over his mouth and hands and arms and in the street and all over his only suit and he's still spitting it up in big red waves. His date is long gone but Derek's girlfriend Jennifer Higgins is there screaming my dad's seats my dad's seats my dad's seats.
During the surgery to fix his bleeding lung, you ask Dad if Dean is going to die. He says no, finish your goddamn chicken nuggets.
Dean always begs Dad to let him go hunting, even though more often than not he ends up sick. Sometimes he'll come back with a concussion or a cold or a broken arm and you have to stay up all night so you can wake him up every two hours or give him pain medication or make sure he doesn't have a fever.
The same year Dean coughed up all that blood, he decides to throw a party and gets so drunk and so sick that he doesn't know who he is anymore. He drops to his knees and pukes all over your shoes and then in your lap and you don't even flinch because it's not the first time. You make all his friends leave and take off all his pukey clothes and wipe him down with a hot rag and give him his medication and the following Monday you flunk a math test and miss soccer practice, again, and he doesn't even say thank you.
He never says thank you, just smacks you upside the head and acts like he has no idea why you're so afraid.
Then you're sixteen and find out that Dad was lying, Dean is going to die. Nobody knows when, but it'll be sooner rather than later, and Dean makes you a promise he probably can't keep, especially since all he does is hunt and make himself sick and hunt and make himself sick and hunt and make himself sick.
You wish you could show him a picture of what he looked like that day, sitting on that sidewalk covered in blood. You wish you could hold the picture up and say look at all this blood. You already look like a corpse.
***
Free babysitting.
Dean stomps blindly to the end of the block and flings himself over a fence because it's the only way he'll outrun Sam, because he doesn't want to hear how Sam didn't mean it and how he's sorry and how this is all Dad's fault and how Sam really doesn't mind taking care of Dean, really really really really, blah blah blah.
Because it won't be the first and probably not the last time they've had this conversation: I'm sorry I get pissed, Dean, I just wish you'd take better care of yourself, it's hard to watch you suffer, it doesn't get any easier, I just want to you to take care of yourself take care of yourself take care of yourself take care of yourself--
Free fucking babysitting.
It's not long before his lungs are burning, expanding and collapsing stubbornly like they're glued one wall to another. He picks a clean part of the sidewalk and throws himself down, leaning with his back against a retaining wall, silently begging his throat to stay open and his lungs not to seize up like they always seem to do when he's extra super fucking pissed, just this once, just this fucking once.
He fumbles in his pocket for his rescue inhaler, which he still has, thank god, because Sammy's probably on guard at the Impala waiting for him to stumble home and there's no fucking way, no fucking way he's going back. He takes more puffs than he should, maybe because he thinks he needs it, maybe just because no one's around to lecture him about taking too many, about not using a spacer, about how sometimes he just needs to wait, see if he can catch his breath.
The sun is gone and it's a cold night. His back is freezing, his ass even colder. He tries to concentrate on that, rather than the pain in his chest, the tickle in the back of his throat that means he's going to cough soon and probably not stop for a while.
He took care of himself, when he was alone. Sure, the vest and the flutter were lonely replacements for a set of expert hands. Without coaching he sometimes forgot, got tired, couldn't muster up the energy to work at it long enough to clear his lungs. But he dealt with it. Survived.
He took his time driving to Stanford. Instead of going down through Reno he drove west all the way to I-5, through half of Washington, all of Oregon. Spent a week in Redding, eating In-and-Out Burger three times a day, lounging around in a halfway decent hotel room trying to rest up, trying to shake off that I-almost-died feeling. Reacquainting himself with the outside world, relearning how to talk to people who didn't wear scrubs.
Maybe he should just do what Sam really wants. Watch TV all day and go to doctor's appointments and bitch about medications, infections, fatigue. Sam could escort him to support groups with a big fat self-satisfied grin on his smug fucking face, he could push Dean in a fucking wheelchair, plaid blanket on his lap and everything, and Sam could wear an oversized tee-shirt reading WORLD'S BEST MOTHERFUCKING BABYSITTER.
That's pretty much what was supposed to happen, when Sam announced bitterly that he was going to away to college. Because you bet your ass Dad had it all planned out, finally had the big grand exit strategy he'd always been searching for--Dean was gonna find some cheap apartment in Palo Alto, live off his disability checks and when he got sick Sam would drop everything to care for him.
You have a responsibility to your brother, Dad roared at Sam, after he ran out of threats, after he'd monologued himself hoarse about Saving People, Hunting Things.
Honestly Dean had kind of agreed with Sam on that one. It sure sounded like a shit deal.
But still, he thinks, I'll show you fucking free babysitting.
His throat tickles again. He leans forehead and inhales the biggest breath he can manage and lets the cough come.
Sometimes it seems like it's never going to stop. There's no time to take a breath in between and yet he keeps hacking and hacking and hacking until the airlessness makes him gag, which doesn't stop it either, the gagging and the coughing just merge together until his vision tunnels and when it's finally over it doesn't seem to make sense that he's still alive.
He doesn't know how much time passes, really, just that the coughing is over and he's got a mouthful of warm, hot liquid. He turns his head to one side, spits it out, and isn't all that surprised to see that it's mostly blood, bright shiny red blood, a sizeable puddle.
Great. Just fucking great.
"Holy shit are you alright?" a voice says. Dean looks up and sees a guy, maybe a few years older than himself, tossing his bicycle to the ground.
The guy is wearing a tracksuit with long threads of reflective tape running up and down the arms and thighs and one of those space-aged tapered helmets. He approaches Dean but stops just short of the blood.
"You need help?"
It could be nothing, the blood-- could be because Sam has him doing treatments three times a day instead of once or twice or not all like when he was with Dad, like when he was on his way to Stanford after the hospital. Could be stress. Or being smothered. Or who knows, maybe Sam and Jess have been feeding him broken glass.
"I'm fine," Dean says. "I..." But how the hell do you explain in five words or less that it isn't that unusual? So he waves a dismissive hand instead. "Don' t worry about it."
"Is there someone I can call for you?" The man says, fidgeting, eyes darting back and forth from the blood to Dean.
Fucking good Samaritans.
"My brother is coming," Dean says. "Don't worry about it."
And the irritating thing is that it's true. His brother will come. Will find him.
The man shrugs, mounts his bike, and pedals away.
Dean should stand up, keep walking. Back towards his car. Maybe back toward Sam. Maybe to kick Sam's ass. Maybe to fall into Sam's arms and whine about how he doesn't feel good because that's what Sam really wants, isn't it?
Maybe to sheepishly admit that perhaps killing the demon is too ambitious, that destroying whatever killed King, that coked-out douche bag fuck, will be Dean's last hurrah before he drives away, drives until he runs out of gas and wherever that is will be where he puts a fucking gun in his mouth and frees Sam and Dad of his suffering, their suffering, and maybe just to have the last word he'll leave a note saying Guess what being like this sucked for me too.
"Christ, Dean," he says aloud. "Jesus fucking christ."
He allows himself one solid punch at the sidewalk, hard enough that it hurts like a fucking bitch but not hard enough to crack his knuckles open.
And then he's over it, he's out the door of his obscenely grandiose fucking pity party before the puking and fighting and window breaking starts. Because fuck that.
Derek said something to him once. Self-pity will drown you faster than the disease.
Fuck him, Dean had thought once. Fuck that preachy dead fuck.
But he was right. He's gotta go back, dispense with the drama, because people are dying.
So he starts to get up, but it's like something is holding him down, like he hasn't got an ounce of energy left in his bones. The pain in his lungs lingers sharp and steady so he has to keep his breathing rapid and shallow. His heart rate spikes. Too much albuterol. Too much running. Not enough rest.
There's no way he's getting up off the ground. No fucking way.
***
Sam knows there's no point, really, in chasing after him. It will just make Dean more angry. He should just let his brother cool off and come back on his own.
But the air is unnaturally biting cold tonight, like a spirit has wrapped itself around the campus. And Dean might've run too far. He might have pushed himself too hard. He might be laying somewhere gasping for air, flopping on the sidewalk like a fish on a riverbank, very literally hacking up a lung, contracting SARS--
So Sam goes. He knows exactly where his brother's warpath will take him. He can practically see the ghost of Dean's footprints on the ground before him. To the end of the block. Over the fence.
He finds Dean on the sidewalk with his back against a retaining wall, knees drawn up, face hidden in the cross of his arms. He slows down, hesitates, then finally drops to his knees and curls one hand around the nape of his brother's neck. Dean's breathing rapidly, wheezing badly. Sam notices the puddle of blood, shiny and solid-looking like plastic in the fading daylight, and tries not to panic. His main concern getting Dean to calm down and making sure he stays that way.
"Dean," he says, keeping his voice low. "What happened?"
"Nothing." Dean's voice is muffled by his arms. "Nothing. Get the fuck away from me, Sam."
Sam nods though his brother can't see him. He runs his hand up and down Dean's spine. He tries to keep the nag out of his voice. "The blood, Dean. If you're bleeding bad--"
"Not hospital bad. I swear to fucking God, Sam, if you--"
"--Okay, okay. I won't argue. Just tell me you're alright."
Dean half-heartedly nods his head. It looks more like he's wiping his nose on his sleeve. "This isn't how I get my rocks off, Sam. This sucks."
"I know, Dean."
"The fuck you do." Dean lifts his head. His eyes are slanted with anger, blurred with tears, vaguely hysterical. "You need to get the fuck over yourself."
"Dean--"
"--you're the one holding me hostage here, Sam. I tried to leave."
"Dean--"
"Poor Sammy the fucking martyr. Gave up his whole life and happiness to care for his pathetic dying brother."
"I am sorry, Dean. I didn't mean it. Goddamn it... you know I didn't mean it."
Dean hides his face again. He's breathing too damned fast, stopping only to choke on dry, short, unproductive coughs.
It's the asthma, which honestly scares Sam more than the CF, sometimes, because of the rapid onset, the unpredictably, how seems to concurrently mirror and mock Dean's stress levels.
"Dean. Are you--"
"It's fine. Back off." Dean coughs again. "I can't get up."
"What?"
"I can't get up. This isn't fun, Sam. This isn't my idea of a fucking party."
"Dean. I know. You're not..." Sam gives up and hooks his arm around his brother's back and pulls at him. Dean sags easily into his arms and Sam squeezes him unnecessarily hard around the shoulders. "I was just pissed. I didn't mean it. I like making sure you're okay. Okay? I like helping you."
Dean snorts bitter laughter."Sam that's not-- you don't have a--" He huffs and lets his forehead fall hard on Sam's shoulder. "That's your whole fucking problem, Sam. I try do anything for myself... you get fucking hysterical."
"Speaking of hysterical," Sam says, because he refuses to get into it with Dean, not now. "Why don't we try some slow, deep breaths?"
"Christ, Sam," Dean mutters, but his next inhale is deliberately more controlled.
There's still blood around his mouth. Sam wipes it away with his shirtsleeve.
"I should be better by now," Dean says. "I feel like shit. I should be better by now. It's been almost a month."
Sam sighs. He burrows his hand between the flaps of Dean's jacket and rubs back and forth on his chest. Dean doesn't protest or demand that he stop, only huffs out a reluctant breath.
"This might be your new normal," Sam says quietly. "You know that."
It might not be the greatest time to beat his brother over the head with the truth, but positivity or patronizing will just make Dean more angry.
"I know," Dean says, "You think I don't fucking know that?"
Sam stops the smoothing motion of his hand, letting it rest above Dean's heart. "Come on. Let's go home. We'll pass out for a while, get back on this hunt."
"Sam I can't--"
"--yes you can, wuss. Come on." He hauls Dean to his feet, supporting him around the shoulders. "Okay?"
Dean takes a deep, wheezy breath and steadies himself. "Okay."
They walk, nice and slow. Sam suspects Dean's okay to walk on his own but he keeps a hold of him anyway.
It's not long before things get too silent.
"Dean," he tries, one last time, "I want to know that you to believe me. Dad just-- I didn't mean it. I really didn't."
"Forget it, Sam."
"I like taking care of you, okay? You're my brother."
Dean stops dead. "Goddamn it, Sam, this..." His dismisses his thought with a sharp flail of his arms. "Fine. I forgive you, okay? Forgiven. Let's just do this goddamn case."
Sam looks up at the moon. He shouldn't push it, not after beating the shit out of a nerve that was already so raw.
"Okay," he says. "But we're talking about this later."
"The fuck we are."
Yes, we are, Sam thinks. But he keeps his mouth shut.
***
Jess barely gets the key in the door, she's shaking so bad. The apartment is dark and quiet. She pokes her head in the bedroom, sees the brothers asleep together in the bed and no, she absolutely doesn't feel a stab of jealously, absolutely not. Because that would be ridiculous.
Sam is laying uncovered on his stomach, one arm bunched around the tuft of blanket he's using as a pillow, the other arm hanging off the edge of the bed.
Dean's under the blankets, wearing his oxygen, elevated by carefully arranged pillows, almost sitting, his hands folded together like someone posed him that way in his sleep. Like how sick people in soap operas lie dying in cramped hospital beds. Next to him, on the IV pole, is a bag of beige liquid attached to a tube that disappears under the blankets.
Well, she hates to interrupt their darling little slumber, but--
"SAM. Wake up."
If she hadn't heard him snoring a second ago, she wouldn't have believed he was sleeping. He's instantly awake and sitting.
"Shhh," He hisses. "Dean doesn't feel well."
He gets up and ushers her out the bedroom door, closing it behind him. "Why are you-- what's wrong?"
She practically throws herself at him, relieved when he wraps his arms around her without hesitation.
"We took Nate to this stupid karaoke bar," Jess says, "Amy and I. She thought it would help because he's been so mopey. Well, there was this guy there, and-- and it happened again."
Sam pushes her away, holds her at arm's length. "What happened?"
"Just like King. This guy, another friend of Nate's-- he just fell on the floor, started choking. God it was fucking horrible."
And it was. The horrible noises he made, almost like he was angry. It sends fresh waves of tears to her eyes.
But Sam's mind appears to be somewhere else. His eyes are searching the floor.
"Is he dead?" He asks. "The guy?"
"I don't-- almost. They were working on him. Took him away in ambulance. God, and Nate was so--"
"--so they'd probably stash him in the hospital morgue," Sam mutters, more to himself than to her. "What was his name?"
She blinks at him. "Morgue? Sam, what...?"
"His name, Jessica. What was his name?"
"Um. Brand. Brand Weaver. Everyone called him the Warden-- why?"
Sam chews at his lower lip. "Nothing. Look, Jess." he pauses, like he's working something out in his head. "My brother... I-- I think I probably need to take him in. To the hospital. He's really feeling like crap."
"O--okay."
"We'll be back tomorrow morning," he says, going back into the bedroom. "I want you to stay here, don't go anywhere, don't answer the door, don't talk to anyone."
"What? Why?"
Sam doesn't answer, he's busy shaking Dean awake. Dean bats him away without opening his eyes.
"Sammy fuck off," he croaks.
Jess has that feeling again, that Sam is nothing but full of shit. But Dean seems ill enough. His voice is torn to shreds.
"Dean look at me," Sam says, a weird urgency in his voice.
Dean cracks open one eye, then the other.
"Jess came home early so we're going to take you to the hospital now, alright?"
Dean's eyebrows knit like he's got no idea what Sam's talking about. All Jess can see is the back of Sam's head, but she watches Dean watching his brother's face.
"Yeah okay," Dean says, hugging himself around his middle and coughing.
Sam throws back the blankets and detaches the feeding tube from the button on Dean's stomach.
"Sam, let me--"
The liquid drips on Sam's hands. He curses and drapes the tube over the rim of the trashcan near the bed.
"Dude," Dean repeats, his tone much stronger. "We're suppose to at least attempt to keep that sterile."
"Why? You've got piles of this shit in the trunk."
"That's my last gravity bag."
"I saw a pump."
"I don't like the pump."
"So we'll wash it. Come on. Up."
Dean swings his legs over the side of the bed but continues to grumble. "You can't wash-- I've puked in that garbage can. More than once."
"Shut it. Where're your boots? We gotta go."
"In the corner." Dean's eyes flick nervously to Jess as he removes the oxygen and pulls on a shirt. He smiles winningly at her, and she smiles back. "Sam. Isn't there-- isn't there uh... some other way?"
"No." Sam is kneeling on the floor near the bed now. He pops one of Dean's boots on his foot. "Like what?"
"I don't know, I just-- HEY. Can I lace my own fuckin' boots please?"
"Dean," Sam's eyes widen meaningfully at his brother, "Don't scream. You're sick."
Dean irritably shakes his head, but he says, in a calm voice dripping with tension: "Sammy. I'd prefer not to go back to the hospital so soon."
" Such is the tragedy of your illness," Sam replies absently, digging his backpack out from under the bed and dumping everything out of it--school books, pens, notebooks, everything.
"Maybe so," Dean says sharply. "But you know my insurance isn't very good. I'd really rather not. There must be something else we can do."
"Dean," Sam says, just as edgy and his smile toxic, "Get your fuckin' jacket on, cause you're sick and you're going to the hospital."
"I'm coming with you," Jess interrupts, unexpectedly loud. She didn't mean to just blurt it out, but the brothers flinch and turn to her, she finally has their attention, so she squares her shoulders and continues. "There's no fucking way I'm staying here by myself."
Sam hands his brother the backpack. "Put what we'll need in there. Meet you by the car."
Dean nods and leaves.
"Jess, look. I know you're--"
"No. No you fucking don't. I just watched a guy practically drop dead. Out of nowhere. And he was blue and and and and floppy and he he he made this noise-- I don't want to be alone."
"Jessica. My brother--"
"I just want to come with you. That's all, that's it."
"Jess." His hands close around her shoulders. "You can't. It's too dangerous."
"Dangerous?" Jessica spits. "At the fucking hospital? Sam you're lying. You're full of shit."
"Jess--"
"Sam, if you can't do this one thing for me. I don't know if..." She falters, unable to say it and scared shitless that she actually means it. She'll leave him. For good.
He must see it on her face, because he works his jaw, thinking on it for a moment before finally nodding. "Okay. Come on. Let's go."
::::
PART TEN