Fearful Symmetry
Title: Fearful Symmetry
Summary: My take on The Man Who Knew Too Much. I gave Sam a fever, because why would you not do that?
Rating: R
Sam’s been running a fever for three days when Cas shows up. It’s one of those unrelenting ones that hangs around and doesn’t fluctuate, and for some reason Sam’s gotten stuck at 103.6, which is high enough to render him helplessly teary and miserable but still uncomfortably lucid.
Dean’s lying beside him on the cheap motel mattress, as he has been on and off all day, because touch relaxes Sam when he’s sick. He’s got Sam’s head pillowed on his upper arm, which is bent at the elbow so he can prop his own forehead on the heel of his hand. Sam’s eyes are closed, but he’s not sleeping - he’s whispering to himself ("Don’t feel good don’t feel good”) in this desperate way that puts a lump in Dean’s throat - so Dean hums softly, tunelessly, a meandering hodgepodge to comfort his fretful brother.
Sam shifts in his arms and moans unhappily.
“Hey Sammy,” Dean speaks quietly, gently, wrapping his other arm across his brother to turn a page in TopGear magazine that he’s been staring at without absorbing a word for twenty minutes. “Hey, kid. All right. Okay.” He’s not saying anything, just vocalizing, the way he used to when Sam cried as a baby and Dad said “talk to him, Dean-o, he likes hearing your voice.” Sam soothes a little in his arms now, his whispered mantra giving way to quiet tears that slide down his face without affecting his breathing at all. It’s as if he doesn’t even know he’s crying.
The fever is crying, Dean thinks, nonsensically.
And that’s when Cas appears, blood on his hands and an apology Dean doesn’t want to hear on his lips.
***
So now Sam’s unconscious and shaking with a fever that makes Dean think defying gravity, it’s so high, and Dean isn’t vocalizing anymore because he doesn’t think his brother will hear him.
He draws a hand across his chin and feels the accumulation of stubble - how many days has it been? When did he last eat? Time has started running together, Dean is completely out of commission, and whatever Cas was trying to accomplish by breaking Sam, Dean’s best guess is that it’s working.
Aside from the chills wracking him, Sam isn’t moving. Dean rests a hand alongside his cheek. “What’s going on in there?”
No answer. Of course not.
He thumbs along Sam’s cheekbone, curling his fingers under his brother’s neck. The shift in pressure causes Sam’s head to turn into his palm, and Dean lets himself pretend this is a good sign, that Sam somehow knows he’s here.
***
It’s raining hard and cold and he’s curled up in the scant shelter provided by the side of a dumpster. He’s weak and shaky, too tired to stand, and the rain’s not hitting him quite as hard here.
He licks along the roof of his mouth. It’s sticky-dry, so he tilts his head back and opens his mouth, but the raindrops that are pelting his shoulders and drenching his clothes seem not to want anything to do with his tongue.
He rolls a rock between his fingers. It’s so smooth he thinks he might cry (why does that make him want to cry?) and he runs it over his cheek, eyes closed. His finger passes over his lips and he sucks it into his mouth, and there’s something so comforting about it that he thinks he might be able to sleep.
He shouldn’t sleep.
He just doesn’t remember why.
***
“Well, aren’t you a mess.”
He blinks. Was he asleep? He shouldn’t sleep…
“Hiya, Sam!”
Sam.
“I get it. We’re sick. Well,” the voice chuckles. “I should say you’re sick. Shaking like a strung out junkie, aren’t you? Doesn’t seem to be affecting me very much, though. Why do you suppose that is, Sam?”
Sam.
And, as if echoing from the deepest recesses of memory, Sammy.
“I - I don’t - who’re you?” Sam mumbles. The voice sounds so familiar, and yet there’s something alien about it.
He blinks again, and the face comes into focus, and Sam jerks upright in horror. His stomach turns with the sudden movement and he vomits against the side of the dumpster.
The man with the too-familiar face laughs. “Hey, stranger.”
***
“I’d prefer a fair fight,” says PseudoSam, helping him to his feet, “but you’re about the closest I’m going to get, aren’t you?” He sizes Sam up, clucking disapproval. “Not much to you, is there? You can hardly stand.”
“Asshole.” Sam releases his grip on the lip of the dumpster and sways, but keeps his feet.
PseudoSam looks pseudo-wounded. “Sam. I’m giving you pointers here. You’re outmatched. You can’t fight me.”
“Who says I want -“ Sam’s gripped by a sudden bout of coughing that leaves him doubled over, hands on his knees, staggering. When he gets his breath and looks up through watery eyes, PseudoSam is laughing at him.
“You have to fight,” he says. Then he shrugs, as if it’s just occurred to him, and adds, “Or I can just kill you.”
The next thing Sam knows, a fist is connecting hard and sure with his stomach, and he vomits again. His stomach spasms with effort. There’s nothing left to bring up. The next blow catches him on the side of the head and he sees stars.
***
“Get up.”
He opens his eyes blearily.
“I’m not going to shoot you in the mud like an animal. Get on your feet.”
Sam registers the gun barrel leveled at his face and closes his eyes. He sobs out a sneeze that burns his abused throat like sandpaper.
“Get up.” A reinforced toe connects with his ribs and Sam hears himself whimper. The sound seems unconnected to him, somehow, his brain is swathed in clouds.
The toe draws back for another kick and Sam struggles away, heaves himself upright. The gun follows him all the way up.
“I’m sorry about this,” PseudoSam says, not sounding sorry, but not sounding like he’s getting any particular pleasure from it either. “It’s just that there’s only room here for one of us, and - no offense - you’re a fucking mess.”
It’s true, but also, Sam’s noticed that his doppelganger isn’t entirely correct in claiming to be unaffected. PseudoSam’s face is flushed, and he looks feverish, and when he turns away to cough violently into his shoulder, Sam knows he can beat him.
***
The thing is, he hasn’t eaten in twenty four (forty eight?) hours.
He hasn’t slept, either, but he doesn’t want to sleep, he wants to watch Sam and feel this fever climbing under his fingers (actually, he wants to feel it dropping, if he’s wishing for stuff, but the fever’s not taking requests at the moment.)
The thing is that he can’t ignore the needs of his body anymore, he can’t, even though he wants to do nothing but sit here and hold his brother.
But the thing is, there’s no food left after three days of miserable fever plus however long Sam’s been in whatever this condition is, and the thing is that Dean’s angel has gone rogue and he is completely on his own, and the only calories left in the room belong to a twelve pack of cheap piss beer.
The thing is, if Dean is really honest with himself, he’s fucking terrified for his brother and he’s terrified for (terrified of) Cas, and he could stand to take the edge off, okay?
But none of that matters.
Because the thing is that Dean is standing over the bathroom sink shotgunning beers when his brother goes into convulsions.
***
It saps every scrap of energy in Sam’s body, but the impostor is gone.
He’s shaking so hard it’s scaring him, so he sinks to his knees and then to his hands and lowers himself flat on the wet asphalt, pressing his cheek to the ground, focusing on the rough cut of pebbles against his skin.
Sam…
He squeezes his eyes shut and he’s in a dusty motel room, teeth bared as he fucks a girl whose name he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t look her in the eyes -
-he’s stalking through an alley feeling violent and predatory, knife in hand, and then he’s slamming a man up against a wall and driving the blade into his throat -
- he’s looking at Dean’s name on his cell phone screen and arrowing down from “call” to “delete entry”
-he’s drinking blood from a glass and smiling into the mirror above the sink at his reflection, and his mouth is stained red -
The world spins and Sam moans and welcomes blackness.
***
“Fever’s up,” Dean whispers. Who is he talking to?
Seizures, it turns out, are the last straw for Dean, the thing that push him from don’t want to know right into need to know, so he’s taking Sam’s temperature every five minutes like clockwork and praying for a break, but no, it’s up-up-up. He’s hovering just under 105 now and panting in his sleep, too worked-over sick to even shiver anymore.
He bends down and presses his forehead to Sam’s, feels the heat pulsing back through his brother’s skin. Maybe he feels the rush of blood. Maybe he’s just drunk. Maybe don't drink seven cans of PBR when your brother's hanging in the balance, fuck.
Wake up, Sammy.
Sam is still and silent and Dean bites his lip and actively doesn’t scream.
***
Sam doesn’t notice the rain stopping. He notices the rain has stopped.
It’s not even that. It’s as if it was never raining at all. The ground beneath him is hot and dry, scorching him, scaring him, and he hauls himself quickly to his feet. He’s rewarded with a violent wave of dizziness, and he retches, but his stomach is empty, and that’s not really helping the lightheadedness.
The forest around him (wait, what?) is sparse, made up of the kind of skinny trees without any branches to speak of, so climbing’s out of the question. Sam’s not sure why he’s feeling an urge to climb, either, except that there’s something chilling and unsatisfactory about his current situation.
He feels better. Probably.
He feels better except all these memories, all these things he’s done, are rattling around his head and slotting their way into his brain and taking up residence, and he just wants them gone, he doesn’t want this violent, brutal person to be a part of him, but this is him.
Sam’s done these things.
Sam is this person.
***
He’s curled up at the base of one of the thicker tree trunks, shaking with some new combination of breaking fever and self-loathing, when he hears footsteps in the fallen leaves (fallen leaves?).
“You’re here.”
There’s nothing familiar about this voice, except that somehow it feels like coming home. He looks up.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” He’s hoarse, each word ground out through gritted teeth like it’s causing him unspeakable pain. “I wondered. If it would be you. Or him.”
“It’s me,” Sam’s not sure what he’s admitting to.
This new Sam, this Un-Sam, lowers himself cautiously, gingerly, to the ground. “My money was on the other guy.”
***
Sam and Un-Sam share a bottle of water while Sam examines the burns and lacerations on his counterpart’s body. “What happened to you?”
Un-Sam shakes his head and hucks out a miserable cough. “You don’t want to know.”
He’s teary-eyed and shivering, but Sam doesn’t think he’s crying. He presses his palm to the back of Un-Sam’s neck and has to bite his lip to keep from crying out. He’s dangerously hot. Unnaturally hot.
He’s burning.
“It was - it was hell. Wasn’t it.”
Un-Sam ducks his head and hides behind his hair and doesn’t answer, and Sam can feel the muscles in his neck twitch reflexively, can feel shame fear despair clawing up his throat. “It’s okay,” he whispers, though whether to himself or the broken man beside him, he isn’t sure.
Un-Sam shakes and breathes so heavily it sounds like sobbing, and, with a sense of unreality, Sam draws him close and wraps his arms all the way around him.
It occurs to him that he’s actually embracing hell. That he ought to be pushing this thing away with both hands.
But he holds this new shade of himself closer and presses a kiss to his forehead and waits for whatever comes next.
***
“Are you sure?” Un-Sam whispers.
Sam keeps his fingers gentle across fevered skin. “I’m sure.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying…”
“Shhh.” Sam feels his sanity like fraying cloth. This is probably the worst mistake he’ll ever make. Probably.
“You don’t want me. You don’t want this.”
“That’s not how this works,” Sam says like he’s done this before, like he has any idea how this works.
Un-Sam shifts in his arms so his head is resting against Sam’s collarbone. He’s exhausted, slumping and heavier than he should be (Sam’s not this heavy) and a sheen of sweat is curling the hair across the nape of his neck as the fever crests and starts to break.
“You can’t-you can’t take this back,” he says, lips pressed hot against Sam’s neck.
Sam tightens his embrace and closes his eyes. “I don’t want to.”
***
Sam’s been coasting at a relatively comfortable 101.9 degrees, so Dean feels safe getting some sleep.
His body has other ideas.
He springs awake again and again. The creak of floorboards in the hall has him diving for his gun. A squirrel runs up the brick exterior of the building, and the scratches propel him out of bed. His adrenaline spikes so hard when the curtains flap in the breeze that he has to pace around the room to calm himself down. It isn’t Cas. It’s just the wind. Cas isn’t coming.
Eventually he settles into an uneasy sleep and dreams of mysterious deaths that no one but himself and Sam would recognize as angelic. He dreams of Cas looking pityingly at him as he begs him to put Sammy back together. He dreams monsters are chasing him, and in the dream he tries to scream for Sam, but his throat is closed and he can’t make a sound.
When he wakes up, his brother is burning.
***
Everything floods in like fire like ice like a night in 1991 when Dad and Dean didn’t come home and he lay sobbing with fear on the bathroom floor except somehow he knows this is different, they won’t be there to hold him and whisper comforting words and promise we’ll never never leave you like that again Sammy because he’s alone forever and this is the end of everything and Sam just wants to die so he won’t have to feel this, god, let it end.
There aren’t human translations for the ways they hurt him, the things they did to his body, to his mind, to his fucking soul, he’s shattered.
He hears a cracked moan ("Dean-“) escape his lips and hates himself for his weakness. Dean isn’t coming.
He was right, he was fucking right, I don’t want him, I don’t want this -I can’t -
As the rain picks up again and the fever pushes him toward madness, Sam curls into himself and prays for the fire to reduce him to ashes.
***
And then, as suddenly as it began, it’s over.
Sam drops from too fucking hot to know about to 101.2 in a matter of minutes, and as he falls the final few degrees his body starts to wake up.
First it’s just a few twitches, a squirm here and there, and then before Dean can really process what’s happening he’s writhing in sweat-soaked sheets, gasping for breath and clinging to the pillowcase with his fingertips.
He sucks the edge of the pillow into his mouth and chews it a little, and Dean rolls him onto his back. “Sammy, easy, buddy, breathe -“
Sam’s eyes fly open and he gasps and rolls right over and vomits onto the floor.
***
“Dean - Dean - Dean -“
He’s been repeating this one word, this one fucking syllable, over and over for the past forty five minutes like it’s the only thing he can remember how to say.
Dean’s on the bed behind his brother, hand hovering inches from his skin, ghosting over the lines of his shoulders, arms, back. Nothing has ever been more urgent than his need to touch his brother right now, but god, what if that’s not okay, what if that hurts him more, what if that splits open the seams on whatever the fuck this is and Sammy breaks apart in his hands?
He allows his fingertips to brush the ends of Sam’s hair.
That much seems to be all right.
“Dean,” Sammy whispers. “Dean.”
The sound of his name on his brother’s lips has always been one of the most powerful things in Dean’s world, but it has never fucking sounded like this.
He closes his eyes and wishes his brother would cry and hates himself a little.
***
Dean drags a comb through Sam’s hair, gently working it back from his face. A hot shower seems to have eased the tension in his brother’s shoulders, cleared away the shakiness and sweat of fever and restored him somewhat.
He still won’t meet Dean’s eyes, though.
“What’d they do to you, baby?” Dean cups his brother’s chin and tries to tilt his face up, but Sam resists and Dean doesn’t force it, god, he can’t. How can he make Sammy do anything that doesn’t feel comfortable?
Sam’s still not crying.
He never cries until the danger’s past.
Dean rubs the towel over Sam’s head, messing up his immaculate combing job, and gets his hands under his brother’s elbows so he can pull Sam up to sit beside him on the bed.
“Dean?”
It’s a question this time.
That seems important, somehow. That seems like a turning point.
“I’m here,” Dean whispers, pulling Sam into his arms. “I got you.”
Summary: My take on The Man Who Knew Too Much. I gave Sam a fever, because why would you not do that?
Rating: R
Sam’s been running a fever for three days when Cas shows up. It’s one of those unrelenting ones that hangs around and doesn’t fluctuate, and for some reason Sam’s gotten stuck at 103.6, which is high enough to render him helplessly teary and miserable but still uncomfortably lucid.
Dean’s lying beside him on the cheap motel mattress, as he has been on and off all day, because touch relaxes Sam when he’s sick. He’s got Sam’s head pillowed on his upper arm, which is bent at the elbow so he can prop his own forehead on the heel of his hand. Sam’s eyes are closed, but he’s not sleeping - he’s whispering to himself ("Don’t feel good don’t feel good”) in this desperate way that puts a lump in Dean’s throat - so Dean hums softly, tunelessly, a meandering hodgepodge to comfort his fretful brother.
Sam shifts in his arms and moans unhappily.
“Hey Sammy,” Dean speaks quietly, gently, wrapping his other arm across his brother to turn a page in TopGear magazine that he’s been staring at without absorbing a word for twenty minutes. “Hey, kid. All right. Okay.” He’s not saying anything, just vocalizing, the way he used to when Sam cried as a baby and Dad said “talk to him, Dean-o, he likes hearing your voice.” Sam soothes a little in his arms now, his whispered mantra giving way to quiet tears that slide down his face without affecting his breathing at all. It’s as if he doesn’t even know he’s crying.
The fever is crying, Dean thinks, nonsensically.
And that’s when Cas appears, blood on his hands and an apology Dean doesn’t want to hear on his lips.
***
So now Sam’s unconscious and shaking with a fever that makes Dean think defying gravity, it’s so high, and Dean isn’t vocalizing anymore because he doesn’t think his brother will hear him.
He draws a hand across his chin and feels the accumulation of stubble - how many days has it been? When did he last eat? Time has started running together, Dean is completely out of commission, and whatever Cas was trying to accomplish by breaking Sam, Dean’s best guess is that it’s working.
Aside from the chills wracking him, Sam isn’t moving. Dean rests a hand alongside his cheek. “What’s going on in there?”
No answer. Of course not.
He thumbs along Sam’s cheekbone, curling his fingers under his brother’s neck. The shift in pressure causes Sam’s head to turn into his palm, and Dean lets himself pretend this is a good sign, that Sam somehow knows he’s here.
***
It’s raining hard and cold and he’s curled up in the scant shelter provided by the side of a dumpster. He’s weak and shaky, too tired to stand, and the rain’s not hitting him quite as hard here.
He licks along the roof of his mouth. It’s sticky-dry, so he tilts his head back and opens his mouth, but the raindrops that are pelting his shoulders and drenching his clothes seem not to want anything to do with his tongue.
He rolls a rock between his fingers. It’s so smooth he thinks he might cry (why does that make him want to cry?) and he runs it over his cheek, eyes closed. His finger passes over his lips and he sucks it into his mouth, and there’s something so comforting about it that he thinks he might be able to sleep.
He shouldn’t sleep.
He just doesn’t remember why.
***
“Well, aren’t you a mess.”
He blinks. Was he asleep? He shouldn’t sleep…
“Hiya, Sam!”
Sam.
“I get it. We’re sick. Well,” the voice chuckles. “I should say you’re sick. Shaking like a strung out junkie, aren’t you? Doesn’t seem to be affecting me very much, though. Why do you suppose that is, Sam?”
Sam.
And, as if echoing from the deepest recesses of memory, Sammy.
“I - I don’t - who’re you?” Sam mumbles. The voice sounds so familiar, and yet there’s something alien about it.
He blinks again, and the face comes into focus, and Sam jerks upright in horror. His stomach turns with the sudden movement and he vomits against the side of the dumpster.
The man with the too-familiar face laughs. “Hey, stranger.”
***
“I’d prefer a fair fight,” says PseudoSam, helping him to his feet, “but you’re about the closest I’m going to get, aren’t you?” He sizes Sam up, clucking disapproval. “Not much to you, is there? You can hardly stand.”
“Asshole.” Sam releases his grip on the lip of the dumpster and sways, but keeps his feet.
PseudoSam looks pseudo-wounded. “Sam. I’m giving you pointers here. You’re outmatched. You can’t fight me.”
“Who says I want -“ Sam’s gripped by a sudden bout of coughing that leaves him doubled over, hands on his knees, staggering. When he gets his breath and looks up through watery eyes, PseudoSam is laughing at him.
“You have to fight,” he says. Then he shrugs, as if it’s just occurred to him, and adds, “Or I can just kill you.”
The next thing Sam knows, a fist is connecting hard and sure with his stomach, and he vomits again. His stomach spasms with effort. There’s nothing left to bring up. The next blow catches him on the side of the head and he sees stars.
***
“Get up.”
He opens his eyes blearily.
“I’m not going to shoot you in the mud like an animal. Get on your feet.”
Sam registers the gun barrel leveled at his face and closes his eyes. He sobs out a sneeze that burns his abused throat like sandpaper.
“Get up.” A reinforced toe connects with his ribs and Sam hears himself whimper. The sound seems unconnected to him, somehow, his brain is swathed in clouds.
The toe draws back for another kick and Sam struggles away, heaves himself upright. The gun follows him all the way up.
“I’m sorry about this,” PseudoSam says, not sounding sorry, but not sounding like he’s getting any particular pleasure from it either. “It’s just that there’s only room here for one of us, and - no offense - you’re a fucking mess.”
It’s true, but also, Sam’s noticed that his doppelganger isn’t entirely correct in claiming to be unaffected. PseudoSam’s face is flushed, and he looks feverish, and when he turns away to cough violently into his shoulder, Sam knows he can beat him.
***
The thing is, he hasn’t eaten in twenty four (forty eight?) hours.
He hasn’t slept, either, but he doesn’t want to sleep, he wants to watch Sam and feel this fever climbing under his fingers (actually, he wants to feel it dropping, if he’s wishing for stuff, but the fever’s not taking requests at the moment.)
The thing is that he can’t ignore the needs of his body anymore, he can’t, even though he wants to do nothing but sit here and hold his brother.
But the thing is, there’s no food left after three days of miserable fever plus however long Sam’s been in whatever this condition is, and the thing is that Dean’s angel has gone rogue and he is completely on his own, and the only calories left in the room belong to a twelve pack of cheap piss beer.
The thing is, if Dean is really honest with himself, he’s fucking terrified for his brother and he’s terrified for (terrified of) Cas, and he could stand to take the edge off, okay?
But none of that matters.
Because the thing is that Dean is standing over the bathroom sink shotgunning beers when his brother goes into convulsions.
***
It saps every scrap of energy in Sam’s body, but the impostor is gone.
He’s shaking so hard it’s scaring him, so he sinks to his knees and then to his hands and lowers himself flat on the wet asphalt, pressing his cheek to the ground, focusing on the rough cut of pebbles against his skin.
Sam…
He squeezes his eyes shut and he’s in a dusty motel room, teeth bared as he fucks a girl whose name he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t look her in the eyes -
-he’s stalking through an alley feeling violent and predatory, knife in hand, and then he’s slamming a man up against a wall and driving the blade into his throat -
- he’s looking at Dean’s name on his cell phone screen and arrowing down from “call” to “delete entry”
-he’s drinking blood from a glass and smiling into the mirror above the sink at his reflection, and his mouth is stained red -
The world spins and Sam moans and welcomes blackness.
***
“Fever’s up,” Dean whispers. Who is he talking to?
Seizures, it turns out, are the last straw for Dean, the thing that push him from don’t want to know right into need to know, so he’s taking Sam’s temperature every five minutes like clockwork and praying for a break, but no, it’s up-up-up. He’s hovering just under 105 now and panting in his sleep, too worked-over sick to even shiver anymore.
He bends down and presses his forehead to Sam’s, feels the heat pulsing back through his brother’s skin. Maybe he feels the rush of blood. Maybe he’s just drunk. Maybe don't drink seven cans of PBR when your brother's hanging in the balance, fuck.
Wake up, Sammy.
Sam is still and silent and Dean bites his lip and actively doesn’t scream.
***
Sam doesn’t notice the rain stopping. He notices the rain has stopped.
It’s not even that. It’s as if it was never raining at all. The ground beneath him is hot and dry, scorching him, scaring him, and he hauls himself quickly to his feet. He’s rewarded with a violent wave of dizziness, and he retches, but his stomach is empty, and that’s not really helping the lightheadedness.
The forest around him (wait, what?) is sparse, made up of the kind of skinny trees without any branches to speak of, so climbing’s out of the question. Sam’s not sure why he’s feeling an urge to climb, either, except that there’s something chilling and unsatisfactory about his current situation.
He feels better. Probably.
He feels better except all these memories, all these things he’s done, are rattling around his head and slotting their way into his brain and taking up residence, and he just wants them gone, he doesn’t want this violent, brutal person to be a part of him, but this is him.
Sam’s done these things.
Sam is this person.
***
He’s curled up at the base of one of the thicker tree trunks, shaking with some new combination of breaking fever and self-loathing, when he hears footsteps in the fallen leaves (fallen leaves?).
“You’re here.”
There’s nothing familiar about this voice, except that somehow it feels like coming home. He looks up.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” He’s hoarse, each word ground out through gritted teeth like it’s causing him unspeakable pain. “I wondered. If it would be you. Or him.”
“It’s me,” Sam’s not sure what he’s admitting to.
This new Sam, this Un-Sam, lowers himself cautiously, gingerly, to the ground. “My money was on the other guy.”
***
Sam and Un-Sam share a bottle of water while Sam examines the burns and lacerations on his counterpart’s body. “What happened to you?”
Un-Sam shakes his head and hucks out a miserable cough. “You don’t want to know.”
He’s teary-eyed and shivering, but Sam doesn’t think he’s crying. He presses his palm to the back of Un-Sam’s neck and has to bite his lip to keep from crying out. He’s dangerously hot. Unnaturally hot.
He’s burning.
“It was - it was hell. Wasn’t it.”
Un-Sam ducks his head and hides behind his hair and doesn’t answer, and Sam can feel the muscles in his neck twitch reflexively, can feel shame fear despair clawing up his throat. “It’s okay,” he whispers, though whether to himself or the broken man beside him, he isn’t sure.
Un-Sam shakes and breathes so heavily it sounds like sobbing, and, with a sense of unreality, Sam draws him close and wraps his arms all the way around him.
It occurs to him that he’s actually embracing hell. That he ought to be pushing this thing away with both hands.
But he holds this new shade of himself closer and presses a kiss to his forehead and waits for whatever comes next.
***
“Are you sure?” Un-Sam whispers.
Sam keeps his fingers gentle across fevered skin. “I’m sure.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying…”
“Shhh.” Sam feels his sanity like fraying cloth. This is probably the worst mistake he’ll ever make. Probably.
“You don’t want me. You don’t want this.”
“That’s not how this works,” Sam says like he’s done this before, like he has any idea how this works.
Un-Sam shifts in his arms so his head is resting against Sam’s collarbone. He’s exhausted, slumping and heavier than he should be (Sam’s not this heavy) and a sheen of sweat is curling the hair across the nape of his neck as the fever crests and starts to break.
“You can’t-you can’t take this back,” he says, lips pressed hot against Sam’s neck.
Sam tightens his embrace and closes his eyes. “I don’t want to.”
***
Sam’s been coasting at a relatively comfortable 101.9 degrees, so Dean feels safe getting some sleep.
His body has other ideas.
He springs awake again and again. The creak of floorboards in the hall has him diving for his gun. A squirrel runs up the brick exterior of the building, and the scratches propel him out of bed. His adrenaline spikes so hard when the curtains flap in the breeze that he has to pace around the room to calm himself down. It isn’t Cas. It’s just the wind. Cas isn’t coming.
Eventually he settles into an uneasy sleep and dreams of mysterious deaths that no one but himself and Sam would recognize as angelic. He dreams of Cas looking pityingly at him as he begs him to put Sammy back together. He dreams monsters are chasing him, and in the dream he tries to scream for Sam, but his throat is closed and he can’t make a sound.
When he wakes up, his brother is burning.
***
Everything floods in like fire like ice like a night in 1991 when Dad and Dean didn’t come home and he lay sobbing with fear on the bathroom floor except somehow he knows this is different, they won’t be there to hold him and whisper comforting words and promise we’ll never never leave you like that again Sammy because he’s alone forever and this is the end of everything and Sam just wants to die so he won’t have to feel this, god, let it end.
There aren’t human translations for the ways they hurt him, the things they did to his body, to his mind, to his fucking soul, he’s shattered.
He hears a cracked moan ("Dean-“) escape his lips and hates himself for his weakness. Dean isn’t coming.
He was right, he was fucking right, I don’t want him, I don’t want this -I can’t -
As the rain picks up again and the fever pushes him toward madness, Sam curls into himself and prays for the fire to reduce him to ashes.
***
And then, as suddenly as it began, it’s over.
Sam drops from too fucking hot to know about to 101.2 in a matter of minutes, and as he falls the final few degrees his body starts to wake up.
First it’s just a few twitches, a squirm here and there, and then before Dean can really process what’s happening he’s writhing in sweat-soaked sheets, gasping for breath and clinging to the pillowcase with his fingertips.
He sucks the edge of the pillow into his mouth and chews it a little, and Dean rolls him onto his back. “Sammy, easy, buddy, breathe -“
Sam’s eyes fly open and he gasps and rolls right over and vomits onto the floor.
***
“Dean - Dean - Dean -“
He’s been repeating this one word, this one fucking syllable, over and over for the past forty five minutes like it’s the only thing he can remember how to say.
Dean’s on the bed behind his brother, hand hovering inches from his skin, ghosting over the lines of his shoulders, arms, back. Nothing has ever been more urgent than his need to touch his brother right now, but god, what if that’s not okay, what if that hurts him more, what if that splits open the seams on whatever the fuck this is and Sammy breaks apart in his hands?
He allows his fingertips to brush the ends of Sam’s hair.
That much seems to be all right.
“Dean,” Sammy whispers. “Dean.”
The sound of his name on his brother’s lips has always been one of the most powerful things in Dean’s world, but it has never fucking sounded like this.
He closes his eyes and wishes his brother would cry and hates himself a little.
***
Dean drags a comb through Sam’s hair, gently working it back from his face. A hot shower seems to have eased the tension in his brother’s shoulders, cleared away the shakiness and sweat of fever and restored him somewhat.
He still won’t meet Dean’s eyes, though.
“What’d they do to you, baby?” Dean cups his brother’s chin and tries to tilt his face up, but Sam resists and Dean doesn’t force it, god, he can’t. How can he make Sammy do anything that doesn’t feel comfortable?
Sam’s still not crying.
He never cries until the danger’s past.
Dean rubs the towel over Sam’s head, messing up his immaculate combing job, and gets his hands under his brother’s elbows so he can pull Sam up to sit beside him on the bed.
“Dean?”
It’s a question this time.
That seems important, somehow. That seems like a turning point.
“I’m here,” Dean whispers, pulling Sam into his arms. “I got you.”