The Rules
Title: The Rules
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Crazy Sam is crazy. Angry Dean is angry. They're gettin' by.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse.
There's something different about a hallucination, but Sam never notices while it's going on, only after, so it's hard to pin down the distinguishing quality.
It's like a nightmare, actually.
So Dean's given him rules to remember. If Lucifer's there, it's a hallucination. If Dean or Dad or Bobby is hurting him, it's a hallucination. If any of these things happen, Sam is supposed to sit down and stay still and not do anything, close his eyes and not talk to the hallucination and wait for it to be over.
It's a good rule, and Sam agrees with it in principle. But also, it's really hard to sit still and wait while your brother peels your skin off.
***
"Is this a hallucination?" Sam asks one morning.
He's just checking. He's choosing a bunch of grapes. He's meeting Dean's eyes. He's all right.
"Nope," Dean says, casually, placing coffee in front of him. Sam nods, taking him at his word. He picks up the coffee cup and rubs it against his neck, absently, and Dean hates this and says nothing.
The things he watches in Sammy now - steady hands, focused eyes - aren't anything like the usual telltale signs he looks for. Dean's used to watching his breathing. His chest. His lungs. Shit is always trying to kill Sam. It makes Dean so goddamn angry sometimes.
He watches for signs, keeps one eye on his brother's volatile lungs and the other on his slipping mind, and smiles and serves the waffles.
***
Sam's tried explaining to Dean why these rules don't work, but he knows it doesn't make sense, that he can't reasonably expect Dean to understand what's happening in his head. He's insane. Not making sense is sort of the ball game.
The problem is that the hell-Dean, the one that lives in his head, is perfectly Dean. He is Dean exactly as Sam knows him. He talks like Dean, makes faces like Dean's, makes jokes and shares beers with Sam and then hurts him, tricks him and fucks with him until he's shaking with horror and Dean finds him and Sam can't tell Dean who took him apart. He can't.
So Dean doesn't understand, can't understand, that when Sam asks if things are real he needs an answer, that it's always probable as not that Sam won't believe him anyway.
***
They go on a walk in the woods, at Sam's request, on a trail that takes them a few miles out from the house. It's been a good day, and Sam's breathing well, so Dean's sort of relaxed, actually. Sam points out oak trees like he did when he was little and thought they were owned by squirrels, and Dean laughs at him and points at rocks and pieces of litter and asks him who owns them, and then out of nowhere Sam's on the ground clawing at his throat, at his chest, and he's not fucking breathing.
His eyes are all kinds of shot, panicky and oxygen-deprived and vague as hell, so this could be anything and what the fuck is Dean supposed to do?
He reverts to habit and shouts his brother's name, drops to his knees and feels Sam's chest. Sam trying so hard to fucking get air, air not coming to him. Sam's body heaving with desperation as his lips turn blue.
He has no idea if this is a hallucination or if it's the asthma, and no idea what he'd do for either.
Sam is suffocating.
***
Sam is suffocating, and he's trying so, so hard to follow Dean's rules, but everything in his body is telling him you can't breathe.
Dean's holding him to the ground, one big hand wrapped around his throat, saying "I like you like this, Sammy, I like you when you can't breathe. I like the way your chest ripples and the way your eyes flutter and how desperate you get, how hungry you are. When I let go, you're going to gasp and gasp."
This isn't really Dean.
"It doesn't matter," the hallucination whispers. "I'm everything Dean is. I'm everything you know about Dean. I think you're beautiful when you're struggling, and I am stronger than you.
Dean wouldn't hurt me.
The hallucination laughs and tightens its grip and says, "are you sure?" And the last thing Sam's aware of as his vision greys out is that no, he isn't sure. He isn't sure at all.
***
Sam's going limp in his arms when it ends.
Dean's holding him and just fucking praying, because there's nothing he can do. Sam needs air now and there's no way he'll get them back in time. He's tried rescue breathing, but it's as if his brother's lungs are closed all the fucking way (which they aren't, that can't happen instantaneously like this, so what's going on) because no air goes in at all.
It ends with a gasp, with Sam jolting upright and breathing way too deep and fast, at a rate his lungs can't handle, and Dean grabs for him and says, "whoa, whoa, Sammy, slow down. And sure enough, Sam erupts into wracking coughs that propel him forward in Dean's arms.
Dean crosses his arms across Sam's chest like the straps of a harness and holds him up and feels the heaves and ripples of his lungs as he coughs. "Good boy," he whispers against Sam's neck. "You're fine now. Good job."
Sam coughs and shudders and coughs.
***
Sam would tell Dean - because he knows this is really Dean, he can tell the difference, okay, it's such a sharp contrast when a hallucination ends that he wonders how he ever doesn't know - that he's coughing because his throat was crushed, and it still fucking hurts.
He would tell him, but he can't talk.
So he makes up Dean's response in his head. That's not real, Sam. Feel your real throat. It's not hurt. It's fine. Feel that? No bruising. No damage. Feel that and breathe.
Dean doesn't understand. It doesn't work that way.
Sam can feel his throat. He knows it's whole and unhurt.
But he can also feel every inch of what the hallucination did to him, every bit as real, at the exact same time.
Because he's crazy, Dean, okay?
So stop trying to reason through it.
***
Sam spits on the ground - blood, but not much - and breathes, raspy and painful-sounding.
Dean pulls Sam's forehead down to rest on his neck, wraps his arms around him, and holds him way too fucking tightly, crushingly. His body is coursing with adrenaline and rage and godfuckingdammitSam.
"Ow," Sam shifts against him.
Dean forces his muscles to relax.
Sam gasps, "I'm sorry, Dean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He can hardly breathe, and that's what he wants to do with his air. It's not helping Dean's rage.
He gets Sam on his feet and they start the long trek back to the house.
***
“Sam. Hey, Sammy.”
Sam focuses on his traditional post-hallucinatory sandwich - Dean serves it to him on the couch each time this happens, with a glass of juice and an optional shot of Vodka, and today Sam opted in for that and asked for seconds and thirds.
“Ignoring me?”
Ignoring him feels like an answer.
“Play nice, Sammy,” Lucifer says. And then, solicitously, “how’s your neck?”
Shut up.
“You know,” Lucifer crosses the room and sits on the chair from the kitchen table that Dean left there, Dean’s chair, usurper, “you should treat me better, Sammy. Do unto others. Besides,” leeringly, “I’m just a piece of your fucked up brain, right?”
“You’re not any part of me,” Sam whispers.
Lucifer laughs at him, and Sam swallows hard and feels every single muscle in his throat protest.
***
“How you doing, kid?”
Sam shrugs. He’s not talking, and his hands are all over his neck, because apparently his fucking brain can imitate feelings of being strangled so well that it’s still goddamn hurting him, and why isn’t this thing corporeal so Dean can just kill the son of a bitch?
“Hey.” Dean takes his wrists, one in each hand, cradling them, not gripping (he learned the hard way not to hold Sam’s wrists when he was waking him up from a nightmare, he won’t forget that scream in a hurry) and guides his hands down. “You know it wasn’t real, right?”
Sam looks at him. “Does it matter?”
No, Dean realizes, it really doesn’t. It’s like saying asthma isn’t real because they can’t see it and touch it and punch it in the fucking face when it’s trying to kill Sam. Just because this thing is in Sam’s mind, in other words, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
“Was it me, Sam?” he asks, and doesn’t want to know, but god, please say no.
Sam looks away. shitfuckSamno This is never going to not be horrible.
***
Dean has a lot of rules for Sam.
Sam has only one.
So when Dean snaps, finally, slams his fists into the exposed brick of the wall and leaves it streaked with his blood, stands there hunched over like he’s breaking, shoulders heaving and breathing way too loud, Sam’s off the couch and at his side in an instant. Because his fear and pain and fucked up head don’t matter, not when his big brother’s losing it.
He comes up behind Dean and wraps himself all the way around him, holding him together. Dean’s so tense in his arms, he’s vibrating.
“Dean,” Sam whispers. “It’s okay.”
“What’s okay? Shit, Sam, nothing’s okay.”
Sam grabs his shoulders and turns him around. “Everything’s okay. Christ, would you look at us? We won, Dean. We beat demons and angels and hell and fucking everything. What’s going to come at us that we can’t handle?”
Dean doesn’t look at him. “I don’t know how you’re calling any of this a win.”
“I can make you pancakes,” Sam says. “You want some pancakes?”
***
Dean’s fucked up broken little brother makes chocolate chip pancakes and stacks them a mile high, passes Dean the syrup, laughs at him when he takes bites that are too big and then peels a banana and eats it in two bites, so who the fuck are you to judge, Sammy? He takes a hit of his inhaler and his breathing doesn’t get bad and they watch Bugs Bunny cartoons and joke about what a shitty hunter Elmer Fudd is. They drink a few beers and drink a few more beers and decide to drink all the beers, and Sam lies on his back on the floor and looks at the ceiling and talks about Dad in that way that’s okay, that way that says I love him and I miss him and remembering him makes me happy and Dean feels happy and floaty on that warm beer buzz and Sam is Sam.
It's a win.
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Crazy Sam is crazy. Angry Dean is angry. They're gettin' by.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse.
There's something different about a hallucination, but Sam never notices while it's going on, only after, so it's hard to pin down the distinguishing quality.
It's like a nightmare, actually.
So Dean's given him rules to remember. If Lucifer's there, it's a hallucination. If Dean or Dad or Bobby is hurting him, it's a hallucination. If any of these things happen, Sam is supposed to sit down and stay still and not do anything, close his eyes and not talk to the hallucination and wait for it to be over.
It's a good rule, and Sam agrees with it in principle. But also, it's really hard to sit still and wait while your brother peels your skin off.
***
"Is this a hallucination?" Sam asks one morning.
He's just checking. He's choosing a bunch of grapes. He's meeting Dean's eyes. He's all right.
"Nope," Dean says, casually, placing coffee in front of him. Sam nods, taking him at his word. He picks up the coffee cup and rubs it against his neck, absently, and Dean hates this and says nothing.
The things he watches in Sammy now - steady hands, focused eyes - aren't anything like the usual telltale signs he looks for. Dean's used to watching his breathing. His chest. His lungs. Shit is always trying to kill Sam. It makes Dean so goddamn angry sometimes.
He watches for signs, keeps one eye on his brother's volatile lungs and the other on his slipping mind, and smiles and serves the waffles.
***
Sam's tried explaining to Dean why these rules don't work, but he knows it doesn't make sense, that he can't reasonably expect Dean to understand what's happening in his head. He's insane. Not making sense is sort of the ball game.
The problem is that the hell-Dean, the one that lives in his head, is perfectly Dean. He is Dean exactly as Sam knows him. He talks like Dean, makes faces like Dean's, makes jokes and shares beers with Sam and then hurts him, tricks him and fucks with him until he's shaking with horror and Dean finds him and Sam can't tell Dean who took him apart. He can't.
So Dean doesn't understand, can't understand, that when Sam asks if things are real he needs an answer, that it's always probable as not that Sam won't believe him anyway.
***
They go on a walk in the woods, at Sam's request, on a trail that takes them a few miles out from the house. It's been a good day, and Sam's breathing well, so Dean's sort of relaxed, actually. Sam points out oak trees like he did when he was little and thought they were owned by squirrels, and Dean laughs at him and points at rocks and pieces of litter and asks him who owns them, and then out of nowhere Sam's on the ground clawing at his throat, at his chest, and he's not fucking breathing.
His eyes are all kinds of shot, panicky and oxygen-deprived and vague as hell, so this could be anything and what the fuck is Dean supposed to do?
He reverts to habit and shouts his brother's name, drops to his knees and feels Sam's chest. Sam trying so hard to fucking get air, air not coming to him. Sam's body heaving with desperation as his lips turn blue.
He has no idea if this is a hallucination or if it's the asthma, and no idea what he'd do for either.
Sam is suffocating.
***
Sam is suffocating, and he's trying so, so hard to follow Dean's rules, but everything in his body is telling him you can't breathe.
Dean's holding him to the ground, one big hand wrapped around his throat, saying "I like you like this, Sammy, I like you when you can't breathe. I like the way your chest ripples and the way your eyes flutter and how desperate you get, how hungry you are. When I let go, you're going to gasp and gasp."
This isn't really Dean.
"It doesn't matter," the hallucination whispers. "I'm everything Dean is. I'm everything you know about Dean. I think you're beautiful when you're struggling, and I am stronger than you.
Dean wouldn't hurt me.
The hallucination laughs and tightens its grip and says, "are you sure?" And the last thing Sam's aware of as his vision greys out is that no, he isn't sure. He isn't sure at all.
***
Sam's going limp in his arms when it ends.
Dean's holding him and just fucking praying, because there's nothing he can do. Sam needs air now and there's no way he'll get them back in time. He's tried rescue breathing, but it's as if his brother's lungs are closed all the fucking way (which they aren't, that can't happen instantaneously like this, so what's going on) because no air goes in at all.
It ends with a gasp, with Sam jolting upright and breathing way too deep and fast, at a rate his lungs can't handle, and Dean grabs for him and says, "whoa, whoa, Sammy, slow down. And sure enough, Sam erupts into wracking coughs that propel him forward in Dean's arms.
Dean crosses his arms across Sam's chest like the straps of a harness and holds him up and feels the heaves and ripples of his lungs as he coughs. "Good boy," he whispers against Sam's neck. "You're fine now. Good job."
Sam coughs and shudders and coughs.
***
Sam would tell Dean - because he knows this is really Dean, he can tell the difference, okay, it's such a sharp contrast when a hallucination ends that he wonders how he ever doesn't know - that he's coughing because his throat was crushed, and it still fucking hurts.
He would tell him, but he can't talk.
So he makes up Dean's response in his head. That's not real, Sam. Feel your real throat. It's not hurt. It's fine. Feel that? No bruising. No damage. Feel that and breathe.
Dean doesn't understand. It doesn't work that way.
Sam can feel his throat. He knows it's whole and unhurt.
But he can also feel every inch of what the hallucination did to him, every bit as real, at the exact same time.
Because he's crazy, Dean, okay?
So stop trying to reason through it.
***
Sam spits on the ground - blood, but not much - and breathes, raspy and painful-sounding.
Dean pulls Sam's forehead down to rest on his neck, wraps his arms around him, and holds him way too fucking tightly, crushingly. His body is coursing with adrenaline and rage and godfuckingdammitSam.
"Ow," Sam shifts against him.
Dean forces his muscles to relax.
Sam gasps, "I'm sorry, Dean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He can hardly breathe, and that's what he wants to do with his air. It's not helping Dean's rage.
He gets Sam on his feet and they start the long trek back to the house.
***
“Sam. Hey, Sammy.”
Sam focuses on his traditional post-hallucinatory sandwich - Dean serves it to him on the couch each time this happens, with a glass of juice and an optional shot of Vodka, and today Sam opted in for that and asked for seconds and thirds.
“Ignoring me?”
Ignoring him feels like an answer.
“Play nice, Sammy,” Lucifer says. And then, solicitously, “how’s your neck?”
Shut up.
“You know,” Lucifer crosses the room and sits on the chair from the kitchen table that Dean left there, Dean’s chair, usurper, “you should treat me better, Sammy. Do unto others. Besides,” leeringly, “I’m just a piece of your fucked up brain, right?”
“You’re not any part of me,” Sam whispers.
Lucifer laughs at him, and Sam swallows hard and feels every single muscle in his throat protest.
***
“How you doing, kid?”
Sam shrugs. He’s not talking, and his hands are all over his neck, because apparently his fucking brain can imitate feelings of being strangled so well that it’s still goddamn hurting him, and why isn’t this thing corporeal so Dean can just kill the son of a bitch?
“Hey.” Dean takes his wrists, one in each hand, cradling them, not gripping (he learned the hard way not to hold Sam’s wrists when he was waking him up from a nightmare, he won’t forget that scream in a hurry) and guides his hands down. “You know it wasn’t real, right?”
Sam looks at him. “Does it matter?”
No, Dean realizes, it really doesn’t. It’s like saying asthma isn’t real because they can’t see it and touch it and punch it in the fucking face when it’s trying to kill Sam. Just because this thing is in Sam’s mind, in other words, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
“Was it me, Sam?” he asks, and doesn’t want to know, but god, please say no.
Sam looks away. shitfuckSamno This is never going to not be horrible.
***
Dean has a lot of rules for Sam.
Sam has only one.
So when Dean snaps, finally, slams his fists into the exposed brick of the wall and leaves it streaked with his blood, stands there hunched over like he’s breaking, shoulders heaving and breathing way too loud, Sam’s off the couch and at his side in an instant. Because his fear and pain and fucked up head don’t matter, not when his big brother’s losing it.
He comes up behind Dean and wraps himself all the way around him, holding him together. Dean’s so tense in his arms, he’s vibrating.
“Dean,” Sam whispers. “It’s okay.”
“What’s okay? Shit, Sam, nothing’s okay.”
Sam grabs his shoulders and turns him around. “Everything’s okay. Christ, would you look at us? We won, Dean. We beat demons and angels and hell and fucking everything. What’s going to come at us that we can’t handle?”
Dean doesn’t look at him. “I don’t know how you’re calling any of this a win.”
“I can make you pancakes,” Sam says. “You want some pancakes?”
***
Dean’s fucked up broken little brother makes chocolate chip pancakes and stacks them a mile high, passes Dean the syrup, laughs at him when he takes bites that are too big and then peels a banana and eats it in two bites, so who the fuck are you to judge, Sammy? He takes a hit of his inhaler and his breathing doesn’t get bad and they watch Bugs Bunny cartoons and joke about what a shitty hunter Elmer Fudd is. They drink a few beers and drink a few more beers and decide to drink all the beers, and Sam lies on his back on the floor and looks at the ceiling and talks about Dad in that way that’s okay, that way that says I love him and I miss him and remembering him makes me happy and Dean feels happy and floaty on that warm beer buzz and Sam is Sam.
It's a win.