Testing The Strong Ones
Title: Testing The Strong Ones
Summary: Sometime vaguely post-S5, Team Free Will are driving around hunting together and generally being a team. Then Sam gets a severe migraine and they have to stop. Cas doesn't understand. Dean is a good brother. Oh, and it's Sam/Cas, because I will get out the oars and ROW this ship if I have to.
Rating: Like, PG-13? There's some swearing.
Dean's car has rules. No shoes on the seats. Don't spill food. No animals, bad music, or driving on the highway with the windows down. And Castiel always sits in the backseat.
The passenger seat is for Sam. He stretches all the way out, arms long over his head, back arching so his fingertips are nearly touching Castiel's hair. "Are we almost there?"
"We're only in Ohio, dude." Dean's been driving since Tennessee, but Dean is the driver. That's another rule.
Castiel understands. The car is sacred, in its way. Driving is like prayer for Dean. It centers him. It gives him peace.
Sam's squirming, fitful, his body too big for the seat. "Come on, we've been driving forever. We can stop for the night."
"Bad Axe is just a few more hours, Sammy." Dean doesn't like to be told what to do in his car.
Sam huffs and slumps in his seat. It's unusual to see him behaving like this. Something's not right.
Castiel reaches over the seat back and pushes his fingers into Sam's hair. Immediately Sam relaxes, leans into the gesture. Sam is responsive in ways Castiel doesn't know how to understand, as if every touch is something he's thought about and prepared for. As if nothing is new and overwhelming, the way it is when Sam brushes his lips to the back of Castiel's neck and Castiel forgets how to breathe - except that Sam cries at night and whispers words like perfect amazing beautiful and finally loses speech entirely.
Sam lets Castiel cradle his head for a little while, scuffing his foot against the floor. He's jumpy, muscles twitching, hands twisting at each other. Dean explained this once. It's hard to sit still for long stretches of time. Sam's body wants to move.
"Maybe we should stretch our legs." That's Sam's expression. Walk around, he really means. Or maybe take Sam behind that barn and pin him against the wall. Dean has rules about that in the car, too.
"Let's just get there, Cas," Sam snaps.
Stung, Castiel takes his hand back. Their moods change so quickly. It's impossible to keep up. They spend hours - days - in the car, happy and laughing and singing out of tune to songs that don't make sense, and now those songs are playing and they're here together and Sam is a powder keg.
Something's not right.
***
Sam goes quiet about an hour before Detroit.
He's got his hands fisted in his lap, shoulders tense, and Castiel rests a hand on his shoulder and remembers Lucifer shining out of Sam's eyes, waking up in a field with a sobbing Dean and Sam nowhere to be found, unbearable heat and pressure and shredded screams and that beautiful soul just barely hanging on.
Dean's quiet too, eyes on the road like it might try to escape, hands tight on the wheel. "We'll stop soon, Sammy."
After Detroit, he means. He must mean. They'll stop after Detroit.
Because even though almost nothing happened here - Lucifer rose in Maryland, and he (Sam) fell in Kansas, and this town is a smoggy insignificant pinprick on a damned map - this is the place where the Samness of Sam was buried deep, and Castiel will never forget looking for him and seeing someone else.
Sam blinks once, twice, scrubs a hand across his eyes. "Dean -"
"Yeah, kid, I hear you."
They do this sometimes, communicate in single words and clipped sentences that don't make sense to Castiel - of course Dean hears Sam - but seem to leave neither of them in any doubt. Dean pulls off the road into the parking lot of a motel with a spitting neon sign. Sam doesn't look surprised at all.
"We're still in Detroit," Castiel points out.
"I'm aware of that, Cas." Dean slams the door on the way out of the car, and Sam flinches.
"Sam?"
He's breathing too quickly, huh-ah huh-ah, and his voice shakes when he speaks. "C-Cas?"
"Are you okay? What are we doing?"
He's expecting Sam to say something about this city. Castiel has never been possessed, but he's taken a vessel (and don't think that doesn't haunt him when Sam shakes his way out of nightmares and clings and whispers why can't all angels be like you), he feels every day what was done to Sam, the subjugation of it, the desperate clawing of the soul that used to call this body home.
Jimmy Novak wanted this. Sam Winchester never did.
But Sam's shivering in Castiel's hands. "I think I'm sick."
It's still unfamiliar, still strange, when they get sick. Injury is simple and straightforward, but this business of illness and infection just perplexes him. Last week Dean spent eight hours on his knees in the bathroom and pronounced it "just a bad burrito," but a few months ago Sam went overnight from "feeling a little tired" to shaking too hard to speak, crying with fever, face buried in Castiel's chest while Dean pressed pills and thermometer between them and looked up hospitals on Sam's computer.
Now he strokes Sam's hair away from his face - no fever, not yet - and speaks softly, soothing hands, soothing voice, it's all right, Sam. "What's wrong?"
"Don't feel good," Sam whispers.
***
“What’s wrong with him?”
Dean hoists Sam’s duffel bag out of the trunk and onto his back. Castiel lets him. He can’t have anything in his hands, not now, not while Sam’s sick, Sam needs him, this isn’t making any sense.
“It’s a migraine.” Dean says, his voice grim.
“A what?”
“A headache.”
“Just a headache?” He’s experienced headaches, and they’re painful. Irritating. Maddening, even. But ordinarily, Dean laughs and throws a bottle of pills at him. They don’t stop. Not for a headache.
Not in Detroit.
Sam doesn’t belong here.
Dean’s quiet for a minute. “A bad headache.”
Bad enough, he means.
Sometimes, because it’s new and he hasn’t figured out the rhythm of it yet, Castiel doesn’t sleep. On those nights, he’s quiet, wandering around the motel room or the street they’ve parked on or, when they’re lucky, the yellow bedroom he shares with Sam at the house in Pontiac. He does his best not to disturb anyone, but inevitably Sam finds him. Long, strong arms pull him close, and Sam murmurs “angel” into his hair.
Sam thinks he’s still an angel.
Fingers threaded in sandy hair and flightless wings, they hold each other, swaying. Castiel talks about his brothers, tells stories of the times they spent together and the things they taught him, and Sam’s grip tightens and he whispers his own stories about Castiel’s brothers.
An angel would be able to heal the people he loved.
***
Four months and two days ago, Castiel cut his hand preparing dinner.
He stared at it for a minute, surprised, captivated by the swell of blood, and then the pain hit and he was screaming and Sam and Dean were there. Dean wrapped his hand in a towel and pressed and he sobbed into Sam’s shoulder.
“Take it easy, Cas, it’s not bad.”
“You take it easy, Dean. He’s never done this before.”
“Low pain threshold?”
“You think? It’s okay, Cas. Deep breath. You’re fine.”
A week later, Sam took a bullet in the thigh and ran three miles back to the car.
Now Sam’s curled up on the motel bed, hands over his head defensively as if it’s being attacked from the outside. Silent. Unmoving. Dean presses a finger to his lips and pads into the bathroom.
Sam must be in so much pain.
“Sam?” he tries.
A tiny, agonized noise of protest.
“Can I -“
Dean emerges, face etched into a furious glare. He brings his finger to his lips again, jerky, stabbing, angry.
Oh. Noise is making it worse.
There’s a white pad of paper and a tiny pencil on the table by the bed. Castiel scrawls a quick note - will he be all right? - and thrusts it at Dean.
Dean nods.
What do I do?
Dean sighs, dries his hands on his pants, and takes the paper from Castiel. Don’t talk. Don’t touch him. Stand still and shut up.
It’s possibly the worst answer he could have given.
He retreats to the corner, fingers picking absently at the hem of his coat. Dean perches quietly on the edge of Sam’s bed and, inch by inch, coaxes a towel into his hands.
“No…” Sam whispers.
“Just hold it, Sammy, c’mon.” Dean’s voice is barely there, just gliding over an exhale.
Castiel watches, listens to Sam take awful little half-breaths that double back on themselves and hiccup over gasps of pain.
The towel finds its way into Sam’s hands, and he twists it, wrings it, presses it to his eyes and heaves out a dry sob that makes him go rigid. Castiel’s muscles tighten in sympathy. Sam.
It’s just that he still hasn’t adjusted to the fact that they are so vulnerable, that he’s seen death visited upon humans for centuries and now these two are his family and it’s going to happen to them. He’s going to lose them. Soon.
Castiel has never seen Sam in this much pain. Sam is grit and steel, a three mile run with a bullet in the muscle of his thigh, a shot of whiskey and a triumphant grin when Dean picked it out and Castiel couldn’t even look. How can Sam be this sick and not be at risk?
It’s just that he never expected to fall in love.
***
Eleven p.m.
Castiel can tell time. He does it on the watch with the glass face and the brown band that Sam gave him. Small hand on the 11. Big hand straight up. Dark outside, so p.m. It’s straightforward. It’s easy to understand.
Sam hasn’t moved since eight, and that’s harder.
He watches Dean do the things Dean does to make this easier. Drink from his flask. Read old journals. Clean the guns, slowly, slowly, leaving them in pieces on the table. Look things up on Sam’s computer (Dean isn’t allowed to use Sam’s computer, but Sam’s not protesting, oh god.)
It’s just that Sam sat with his arms around Castiel and showed him how to type in his name (careful, Cas, spell it right) and the computer showed them a town in Switzerland and Castiel told Sam the story of the blind man he healed all those years ago, and now Sam is immobilized with pain and Castiel can’t do a damn thing about it.
The computer didn’t know who “Sam” was.
***
One a.m.
This one’s a trick. It’s still dark outside. The sun won’t come up until about five thirty, so even though Dean calls this one in the morning, Castiel isn’t fooled. This is night.
Sam still isn’t sleeping.
Dean is, finally, snoring softly, drooling into the book he was reading when his head hit the table. He’s accustomed to sleep and his body takes it with or without his permission. He complains about it sometimes - I can’t believe I crashed so early! - but it must be nice, not to be stranded in the dark like this with no map to rest.
And anyway, Castiel can’t sleep while Sam is in pain.
He listens to Sam’s breathing - Sam’s trying to take deep breaths, but they’re short and shuddery - and remembers running around the yard of the house in Pontiac until his lungs burned, falling into the dirt beside Sam, gasping, laughing.
***
Four a.m.
“Cas?”
At first he doesn’t register what he’s hearing. Then - “Sam?”
“Gonna be sick -“
Castiel learned the difference between “sick” and “be sick” the morning after he learned the difference between “soft drinks” and “hard drinks,” the morning after he learned the difference between the tolerance of an angel and that of a fallen angel. On that occasion, Dean sat with him and said offensive things that sounded like I love you (that’s how Dean says I love you) and Sam helped him back to bed, gave him pills, stroked his forehead until he slept.
Tonight the bathroom is too far away, so Castiel holds the garbage can under Sam’s chin and rubs slow circles on his back. “I love you,” he whispers. “I love you. I love you.”
Sam’s body heaves and he clutches his head and cries.
***
In the pale light of early morning, Sam gets out of bed and shuffles slowly to the bathroom.
Castiel watches him go. Maybe the worst of this is over.
Dean yawns, stretches, detaches his face from the pages of his book and sits upright. “Ow. Fuck.” He rubs at his neck a little. “Don’t let me sleep at the table, Cas.”
“You say that every time. And you always complain when I wake you up to move you.”
“Yeah, well…I’m awake now. Listen to awake-me. Not zombie-me. Where’s Sammy?”
As if in response, a small sound comes from the bathroom. Too high-pitched. It doesn’t sound like Sam. Except that Castiel would know Sam’s voice anywhere, even in the wrong octave, distorted by pain, oh no, that’s him.
Dean knows too and is on his feet. “Sammy!”
Oh god.
Sam is good at pain. Sam broke three ribs falling down a hill (he was pushed, Dean shouldn’t laugh, sit still, baby, let me look at it) and didn’t blink. Sam leaned on the burner of the stove and burned ugly blisters across his arm, hissed while Dean applied medicine and wrapped it in gauze and wondered aloud what the scars would look like. Dean ran over Sam’s foot with the car and Sam hopped around swearing for five minutes, strapped on a boot, and was fine.
But now Dean leads Sam out of the bathroom and he’s sobbing, quietly, shaking, and Dean’s holding him with both arms. Castiel jumps up to help. “What happened?”
“Cut himself shaving.”
Sam flinches away from the sound of their voices.
Castiel cups a hand behind Sam’s head and feels the weight of it.
***
“How long will this last?”
Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had one in years. Could be a few days.”
“Fuck.” Castiel doesn’t like to swear. He enjoys it when Sam does it - it’s impassioned, powerful, he likes Sam like that - and Dean swears as a matter of course. But the words aren’t natural to Castiel. He has to reach for them. Today, he feels like reaching.
“Yeah,” If Dean notices the aberration, he doesn’t comment.
“We’re not going to stay here, are we?”
“What?”
“Detroit, Dean.”
“It’s just a city, Cas.”
“It’s not just a city, you know what happened here -“
“Keep your voice down, will you? This door isn’t exactly soundproof.”
“It’s cheap particle board.”
“I fucking know that, Cas.” He turns away.
Castiel hesitates. “We can’t keep him here.”
“We can’t put him in the car. What’s your suggestion?”
The last time they were in Detroit (after losing Sam, when it felt like the world was ending and they clung to each other and tried to process the fact that it actually was) Castiel took Dean’s hand and pulled him away to Kansas to await the inevitable.
That’s not an option now.
***
Dean goes for breakfast alone because no one else is hungry, and Castiel wraps his body around Sam. He’s curled up like he’s protecting something. Castiel threads an arm between Sam’s, across his chest like a seat belt, and cradles him.
“Hi,” Sam breathes.
“Sam.”
“Sorry.”
“Shhh, no.”
“Sick.”
“I know, baby, it’s okay.” He presses two fingers, gently, into the back of Sam’s neck. “What can I do?”
“Stay?”
“Of course.”
Sam turns in his arms - with a whimper, god, it’s hurting him - and hides his face in Castiel’s shoulder. “So sorry.”
“Sam, no.” Fingers in soft hair, soothing, shhh, no.
“Stuck here…I’m sorry…”
He kisses Sam’s forehead. “Don’t be sorry, baby.”
“Detroit.”
“I know.”
“You want to go.”
Oh.
***
Castiel gives up on leaving Detroit. He sits beside Sam and tries not to think about Lucifer and hates himself because that’s so difficult.
This is going to end. This is going to get better.
It has to get better. Dean says so.
It doesn’t get better.
***
“Dean, he’s worse.” Sam’s throwing up again, in the bathroom this time, alone this time because the sound of Castiel moving makes him wrap both arms around his head and groan.
“It goes like this sometimes.” Dean’s voice is cracked with strain. “It gets worse first. He’ll be all right. It’s a migraine. It’ll run its course.”
“He can’t keep doing this.”
“Hey. Don’t get pissed at me, Cas. This isn’t easy for me either.”
Dean’s been eating. Dean’s been sleeping. Dean’s gotten out of this room. Dean isn’t paralyzed on the bathroom floor, sobbing out those little breaths that threaten to shatter Castiel’s heart.
Dean is just sitting here, head in his hands, watching the person he loves most in the world suffer.
Castiel touches his shoulder. “I know.”
***
Finally, finally, Sam crawls out of the bathroom and collapses into their arms.
They hold him together, smooth his hair, whisper his name, wipe the sweat and tears from his face
“I thought I outgrew this,” he mumbles, face pressed into Dean’s stomach.
Dean runs his fingers through his little brother’s hair, over and over, doesn’t say a word.
Summary: Sometime vaguely post-S5, Team Free Will are driving around hunting together and generally being a team. Then Sam gets a severe migraine and they have to stop. Cas doesn't understand. Dean is a good brother. Oh, and it's Sam/Cas, because I will get out the oars and ROW this ship if I have to.
Rating: Like, PG-13? There's some swearing.
Dean's car has rules. No shoes on the seats. Don't spill food. No animals, bad music, or driving on the highway with the windows down. And Castiel always sits in the backseat.
The passenger seat is for Sam. He stretches all the way out, arms long over his head, back arching so his fingertips are nearly touching Castiel's hair. "Are we almost there?"
"We're only in Ohio, dude." Dean's been driving since Tennessee, but Dean is the driver. That's another rule.
Castiel understands. The car is sacred, in its way. Driving is like prayer for Dean. It centers him. It gives him peace.
Sam's squirming, fitful, his body too big for the seat. "Come on, we've been driving forever. We can stop for the night."
"Bad Axe is just a few more hours, Sammy." Dean doesn't like to be told what to do in his car.
Sam huffs and slumps in his seat. It's unusual to see him behaving like this. Something's not right.
Castiel reaches over the seat back and pushes his fingers into Sam's hair. Immediately Sam relaxes, leans into the gesture. Sam is responsive in ways Castiel doesn't know how to understand, as if every touch is something he's thought about and prepared for. As if nothing is new and overwhelming, the way it is when Sam brushes his lips to the back of Castiel's neck and Castiel forgets how to breathe - except that Sam cries at night and whispers words like perfect amazing beautiful and finally loses speech entirely.
Sam lets Castiel cradle his head for a little while, scuffing his foot against the floor. He's jumpy, muscles twitching, hands twisting at each other. Dean explained this once. It's hard to sit still for long stretches of time. Sam's body wants to move.
"Maybe we should stretch our legs." That's Sam's expression. Walk around, he really means. Or maybe take Sam behind that barn and pin him against the wall. Dean has rules about that in the car, too.
"Let's just get there, Cas," Sam snaps.
Stung, Castiel takes his hand back. Their moods change so quickly. It's impossible to keep up. They spend hours - days - in the car, happy and laughing and singing out of tune to songs that don't make sense, and now those songs are playing and they're here together and Sam is a powder keg.
Something's not right.
***
Sam goes quiet about an hour before Detroit.
He's got his hands fisted in his lap, shoulders tense, and Castiel rests a hand on his shoulder and remembers Lucifer shining out of Sam's eyes, waking up in a field with a sobbing Dean and Sam nowhere to be found, unbearable heat and pressure and shredded screams and that beautiful soul just barely hanging on.
Dean's quiet too, eyes on the road like it might try to escape, hands tight on the wheel. "We'll stop soon, Sammy."
After Detroit, he means. He must mean. They'll stop after Detroit.
Because even though almost nothing happened here - Lucifer rose in Maryland, and he (Sam) fell in Kansas, and this town is a smoggy insignificant pinprick on a damned map - this is the place where the Samness of Sam was buried deep, and Castiel will never forget looking for him and seeing someone else.
Sam blinks once, twice, scrubs a hand across his eyes. "Dean -"
"Yeah, kid, I hear you."
They do this sometimes, communicate in single words and clipped sentences that don't make sense to Castiel - of course Dean hears Sam - but seem to leave neither of them in any doubt. Dean pulls off the road into the parking lot of a motel with a spitting neon sign. Sam doesn't look surprised at all.
"We're still in Detroit," Castiel points out.
"I'm aware of that, Cas." Dean slams the door on the way out of the car, and Sam flinches.
"Sam?"
He's breathing too quickly, huh-ah huh-ah, and his voice shakes when he speaks. "C-Cas?"
"Are you okay? What are we doing?"
He's expecting Sam to say something about this city. Castiel has never been possessed, but he's taken a vessel (and don't think that doesn't haunt him when Sam shakes his way out of nightmares and clings and whispers why can't all angels be like you), he feels every day what was done to Sam, the subjugation of it, the desperate clawing of the soul that used to call this body home.
Jimmy Novak wanted this. Sam Winchester never did.
But Sam's shivering in Castiel's hands. "I think I'm sick."
It's still unfamiliar, still strange, when they get sick. Injury is simple and straightforward, but this business of illness and infection just perplexes him. Last week Dean spent eight hours on his knees in the bathroom and pronounced it "just a bad burrito," but a few months ago Sam went overnight from "feeling a little tired" to shaking too hard to speak, crying with fever, face buried in Castiel's chest while Dean pressed pills and thermometer between them and looked up hospitals on Sam's computer.
Now he strokes Sam's hair away from his face - no fever, not yet - and speaks softly, soothing hands, soothing voice, it's all right, Sam. "What's wrong?"
"Don't feel good," Sam whispers.
***
“What’s wrong with him?”
Dean hoists Sam’s duffel bag out of the trunk and onto his back. Castiel lets him. He can’t have anything in his hands, not now, not while Sam’s sick, Sam needs him, this isn’t making any sense.
“It’s a migraine.” Dean says, his voice grim.
“A what?”
“A headache.”
“Just a headache?” He’s experienced headaches, and they’re painful. Irritating. Maddening, even. But ordinarily, Dean laughs and throws a bottle of pills at him. They don’t stop. Not for a headache.
Not in Detroit.
Sam doesn’t belong here.
Dean’s quiet for a minute. “A bad headache.”
Bad enough, he means.
Sometimes, because it’s new and he hasn’t figured out the rhythm of it yet, Castiel doesn’t sleep. On those nights, he’s quiet, wandering around the motel room or the street they’ve parked on or, when they’re lucky, the yellow bedroom he shares with Sam at the house in Pontiac. He does his best not to disturb anyone, but inevitably Sam finds him. Long, strong arms pull him close, and Sam murmurs “angel” into his hair.
Sam thinks he’s still an angel.
Fingers threaded in sandy hair and flightless wings, they hold each other, swaying. Castiel talks about his brothers, tells stories of the times they spent together and the things they taught him, and Sam’s grip tightens and he whispers his own stories about Castiel’s brothers.
An angel would be able to heal the people he loved.
***
Four months and two days ago, Castiel cut his hand preparing dinner.
He stared at it for a minute, surprised, captivated by the swell of blood, and then the pain hit and he was screaming and Sam and Dean were there. Dean wrapped his hand in a towel and pressed and he sobbed into Sam’s shoulder.
“Take it easy, Cas, it’s not bad.”
“You take it easy, Dean. He’s never done this before.”
“Low pain threshold?”
“You think? It’s okay, Cas. Deep breath. You’re fine.”
A week later, Sam took a bullet in the thigh and ran three miles back to the car.
Now Sam’s curled up on the motel bed, hands over his head defensively as if it’s being attacked from the outside. Silent. Unmoving. Dean presses a finger to his lips and pads into the bathroom.
Sam must be in so much pain.
“Sam?” he tries.
A tiny, agonized noise of protest.
“Can I -“
Dean emerges, face etched into a furious glare. He brings his finger to his lips again, jerky, stabbing, angry.
Oh. Noise is making it worse.
There’s a white pad of paper and a tiny pencil on the table by the bed. Castiel scrawls a quick note - will he be all right? - and thrusts it at Dean.
Dean nods.
What do I do?
Dean sighs, dries his hands on his pants, and takes the paper from Castiel. Don’t talk. Don’t touch him. Stand still and shut up.
It’s possibly the worst answer he could have given.
He retreats to the corner, fingers picking absently at the hem of his coat. Dean perches quietly on the edge of Sam’s bed and, inch by inch, coaxes a towel into his hands.
“No…” Sam whispers.
“Just hold it, Sammy, c’mon.” Dean’s voice is barely there, just gliding over an exhale.
Castiel watches, listens to Sam take awful little half-breaths that double back on themselves and hiccup over gasps of pain.
The towel finds its way into Sam’s hands, and he twists it, wrings it, presses it to his eyes and heaves out a dry sob that makes him go rigid. Castiel’s muscles tighten in sympathy. Sam.
It’s just that he still hasn’t adjusted to the fact that they are so vulnerable, that he’s seen death visited upon humans for centuries and now these two are his family and it’s going to happen to them. He’s going to lose them. Soon.
Castiel has never seen Sam in this much pain. Sam is grit and steel, a three mile run with a bullet in the muscle of his thigh, a shot of whiskey and a triumphant grin when Dean picked it out and Castiel couldn’t even look. How can Sam be this sick and not be at risk?
It’s just that he never expected to fall in love.
***
Eleven p.m.
Castiel can tell time. He does it on the watch with the glass face and the brown band that Sam gave him. Small hand on the 11. Big hand straight up. Dark outside, so p.m. It’s straightforward. It’s easy to understand.
Sam hasn’t moved since eight, and that’s harder.
He watches Dean do the things Dean does to make this easier. Drink from his flask. Read old journals. Clean the guns, slowly, slowly, leaving them in pieces on the table. Look things up on Sam’s computer (Dean isn’t allowed to use Sam’s computer, but Sam’s not protesting, oh god.)
It’s just that Sam sat with his arms around Castiel and showed him how to type in his name (careful, Cas, spell it right) and the computer showed them a town in Switzerland and Castiel told Sam the story of the blind man he healed all those years ago, and now Sam is immobilized with pain and Castiel can’t do a damn thing about it.
The computer didn’t know who “Sam” was.
***
One a.m.
This one’s a trick. It’s still dark outside. The sun won’t come up until about five thirty, so even though Dean calls this one in the morning, Castiel isn’t fooled. This is night.
Sam still isn’t sleeping.
Dean is, finally, snoring softly, drooling into the book he was reading when his head hit the table. He’s accustomed to sleep and his body takes it with or without his permission. He complains about it sometimes - I can’t believe I crashed so early! - but it must be nice, not to be stranded in the dark like this with no map to rest.
And anyway, Castiel can’t sleep while Sam is in pain.
He listens to Sam’s breathing - Sam’s trying to take deep breaths, but they’re short and shuddery - and remembers running around the yard of the house in Pontiac until his lungs burned, falling into the dirt beside Sam, gasping, laughing.
***
Four a.m.
“Cas?”
At first he doesn’t register what he’s hearing. Then - “Sam?”
“Gonna be sick -“
Castiel learned the difference between “sick” and “be sick” the morning after he learned the difference between “soft drinks” and “hard drinks,” the morning after he learned the difference between the tolerance of an angel and that of a fallen angel. On that occasion, Dean sat with him and said offensive things that sounded like I love you (that’s how Dean says I love you) and Sam helped him back to bed, gave him pills, stroked his forehead until he slept.
Tonight the bathroom is too far away, so Castiel holds the garbage can under Sam’s chin and rubs slow circles on his back. “I love you,” he whispers. “I love you. I love you.”
Sam’s body heaves and he clutches his head and cries.
***
In the pale light of early morning, Sam gets out of bed and shuffles slowly to the bathroom.
Castiel watches him go. Maybe the worst of this is over.
Dean yawns, stretches, detaches his face from the pages of his book and sits upright. “Ow. Fuck.” He rubs at his neck a little. “Don’t let me sleep at the table, Cas.”
“You say that every time. And you always complain when I wake you up to move you.”
“Yeah, well…I’m awake now. Listen to awake-me. Not zombie-me. Where’s Sammy?”
As if in response, a small sound comes from the bathroom. Too high-pitched. It doesn’t sound like Sam. Except that Castiel would know Sam’s voice anywhere, even in the wrong octave, distorted by pain, oh no, that’s him.
Dean knows too and is on his feet. “Sammy!”
Oh god.
Sam is good at pain. Sam broke three ribs falling down a hill (he was pushed, Dean shouldn’t laugh, sit still, baby, let me look at it) and didn’t blink. Sam leaned on the burner of the stove and burned ugly blisters across his arm, hissed while Dean applied medicine and wrapped it in gauze and wondered aloud what the scars would look like. Dean ran over Sam’s foot with the car and Sam hopped around swearing for five minutes, strapped on a boot, and was fine.
But now Dean leads Sam out of the bathroom and he’s sobbing, quietly, shaking, and Dean’s holding him with both arms. Castiel jumps up to help. “What happened?”
“Cut himself shaving.”
Sam flinches away from the sound of their voices.
Castiel cups a hand behind Sam’s head and feels the weight of it.
***
“How long will this last?”
Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had one in years. Could be a few days.”
“Fuck.” Castiel doesn’t like to swear. He enjoys it when Sam does it - it’s impassioned, powerful, he likes Sam like that - and Dean swears as a matter of course. But the words aren’t natural to Castiel. He has to reach for them. Today, he feels like reaching.
“Yeah,” If Dean notices the aberration, he doesn’t comment.
“We’re not going to stay here, are we?”
“What?”
“Detroit, Dean.”
“It’s just a city, Cas.”
“It’s not just a city, you know what happened here -“
“Keep your voice down, will you? This door isn’t exactly soundproof.”
“It’s cheap particle board.”
“I fucking know that, Cas.” He turns away.
Castiel hesitates. “We can’t keep him here.”
“We can’t put him in the car. What’s your suggestion?”
The last time they were in Detroit (after losing Sam, when it felt like the world was ending and they clung to each other and tried to process the fact that it actually was) Castiel took Dean’s hand and pulled him away to Kansas to await the inevitable.
That’s not an option now.
***
Dean goes for breakfast alone because no one else is hungry, and Castiel wraps his body around Sam. He’s curled up like he’s protecting something. Castiel threads an arm between Sam’s, across his chest like a seat belt, and cradles him.
“Hi,” Sam breathes.
“Sam.”
“Sorry.”
“Shhh, no.”
“Sick.”
“I know, baby, it’s okay.” He presses two fingers, gently, into the back of Sam’s neck. “What can I do?”
“Stay?”
“Of course.”
Sam turns in his arms - with a whimper, god, it’s hurting him - and hides his face in Castiel’s shoulder. “So sorry.”
“Sam, no.” Fingers in soft hair, soothing, shhh, no.
“Stuck here…I’m sorry…”
He kisses Sam’s forehead. “Don’t be sorry, baby.”
“Detroit.”
“I know.”
“You want to go.”
Oh.
***
Castiel gives up on leaving Detroit. He sits beside Sam and tries not to think about Lucifer and hates himself because that’s so difficult.
This is going to end. This is going to get better.
It has to get better. Dean says so.
It doesn’t get better.
***
“Dean, he’s worse.” Sam’s throwing up again, in the bathroom this time, alone this time because the sound of Castiel moving makes him wrap both arms around his head and groan.
“It goes like this sometimes.” Dean’s voice is cracked with strain. “It gets worse first. He’ll be all right. It’s a migraine. It’ll run its course.”
“He can’t keep doing this.”
“Hey. Don’t get pissed at me, Cas. This isn’t easy for me either.”
Dean’s been eating. Dean’s been sleeping. Dean’s gotten out of this room. Dean isn’t paralyzed on the bathroom floor, sobbing out those little breaths that threaten to shatter Castiel’s heart.
Dean is just sitting here, head in his hands, watching the person he loves most in the world suffer.
Castiel touches his shoulder. “I know.”
***
Finally, finally, Sam crawls out of the bathroom and collapses into their arms.
They hold him together, smooth his hair, whisper his name, wipe the sweat and tears from his face
“I thought I outgrew this,” he mumbles, face pressed into Dean’s stomach.
Dean runs his fingers through his little brother’s hair, over and over, doesn’t say a word.