Sammy Sparks
Title: Sammy Sparks
Summary: Post-Hell Sam can't breathe. Doctors are scary.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: This one's dedicated to shangrilada - thanks for the awesome prompt and for not letting me give up on this.
Sam isn’t breathing.
This isn’t breathing. Dean doesn’t know what this is. Sam's pulling in air like he’s drinking it through one of those little non-straws people use to stir their coffee. He breathes out so fucking hard that his neck curls forward with the effort, his head dropping over his chest.
The single breath, in and out, exhausts him so much that he closes his eyes and waits seven seconds - seven long, terrible seconds - before he tries to breathe again.
Dean cups his wrist in one hand and places two fingers over the artery to feel his pulse, those tiny beats coming slower and slower.
“Sam.”
Sam looks up at him and doesn’t speak - doesn’t have air to speak - and drags his head slowly from side to side, like he’s underwater. No.
“Sam, please.”
No.
“You’re not breathing.”
Sam makes an okay sign with his fingers, points to himself.
Dean catches his hand, presses in on his palm until his fingers fan out, and holds it up for Sam to see. “This is bad. You need a doctor, Sam.”
No.
“Not asking.”
No.
***
Sam has died at least five times - this is just off the top of Dean’s head - and he really believed this would be the one that stuck.
It never sticks. He’s beginning to wonder if it ever will.
When Sam was gone Dean thought of parents forced to bury their children, and he was leveled. He honestly doesn't remember most of that year. He didn’t understand it for a while. He kept looking for Sam.
And then Sam came back. He knocked on the fucking door. Like he wasn’t dead for a year, like he wasn’t dragged to hell and back. Bobby opened the door and there he was. Hey Dean. Like nothing had happened.
He was fine It still blows Dean away. He knocked on the door, and he was fine. He smiled, he hugged Dean, he nicked his own arm with the knife and didn’t flinch.
***
Now Sam watches him mistrustfully as he drinks air like a milkshake, thick and wet.
“You need a fucking doctor. We’re not discussing this.” We’re not discussing this because you can't talk.
Sam fists his hands in the bedspread like he’s hanging on and shakes his head way too fast. No no no no no no no.
“Hey.” He speaks quietly, roughly. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you.”
Sam’s always nervous when he’s like this, shit, how could he not be, but this is something else. The expression on his face. God. He’s terrified. He looks like the fifteen year old kid who knelt beside Dean and held his hand while Dad pulled a bullet out of his chest.
Oh. Oh, he’s trying not to cry. Sam, shit.
***
Speeding to the hospital while Sam makes that sound that drowns out the Impala’s engine and scares the fuck out of Dean isn’t unfamiliar. One of his earliest memories is of holding Sam on his lap, feeling the tiny, desperate motions of his chest while Dad gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white and the car pulled them like a spooked horse. He’s made this trip dozens of times. It’s never gotten easier.
Now Sam is leaning against the passenger window, forehead pressed to the glass, fidgety and uncomfortable, and the strange thing isn’t the terror in his eyes, it’s that he’s not clawing hurry hurry hurry at Dean’s arm.
“Breathing?” Dean asks, cutting his eyes sideways at his very very obviously not breathing brother.
Sam nods. Sam has low standards for what counts as breathing.
“Okay. We’ll just get you some medicine or something and clear this shit right up, okay? You’ll be fine. By the time you go to sleep tonight, you’re going to feel so much better, Sam, you wait. Maybe we’ll get pizza, to celebrate how awesome you’re going to feel. You want pizza?”
No.
No pizza. Okay. “What about one of those deep dish places that make the salads you like, with all the eggs and deli meats and bullshit on them?” Fuck, he’s babbling. “You want one of those? Or I could make you breakfast for dinner. Waffles?”
“I’m okay-” Sam breathes so hard. “-Dean.”
“Hey, don’t talk.” He reaches over and grips Sam’s shoulder, Sam’s barely-moving shoulder. “Breathe, Sammy. Come on. You got this.”
“Home,” Sam rasps. The word sounds like it’s swimming. “No doc-“
“Quiet, Sam,” He needs that air, he fucking needs that air, stop trying to say things that Dean can’t pay attention to, Sammy.
“Breathing.” Sam heaves in a rattle. “Breathin-“ the word disappears in convulsive coughs. Sure you’re breathing, Sammy. Sure you are.
The coughs go on and on, shockwaves up the length of Sam’s torso. He doubles over and hugs himself and Dean rubs his back and feels his lungs try to expand and accelerates harder.
***
Once they’re in the waiting room, Sam kind of gives up and drops his head onto Dean’s shoulder, and Dean reaches up automatically to help him compress his chest. “Bad air out,” he whispers, which is fucking stupid, because air isn’t bad, okay, air is fucking everything Sam needs right now.
They don’t wait long, not with the noises Sam is making. The emergency room is a great place to be conspicuous. And a part of Dean wants to say no, he’s got this under control, take that kid with the bloody nose, we can wait because Sam can wait, he needs relief but he isn’t dying and this sounds worse than it is. But he can’t say it, because the rest of him (a much bigger part of him) is screaming get Sammy some air, dammit.
He sits behind Sam on the examination table and holds him up. Sam’s listing all over the place, dizzy and exhausted. The doctor asks quiet questions and Dean answers quietly, as though they’re trying not to drown out the sound of Sam breathing, as though that were possible.
Just give us the medicine.
But the doctor looks up from his chart and says, “I think there’s more to this than just asthma. I’d like to run some tests.” And suddenly Sam is shaking so hard in Dean’s arms.
***
The doctor steps out of the room, which is good, because Sam is fucking breaking down and Dean doesn’t know why and that’s just not fucking acceptable, so he needs a minute. They need a minute.
Sam’s beyond speech. He rocks himself back and forth and grips Dean’s arm so hard Dean knows it’ll leave bruises (and you fucking go ahead, Sammy, it’s fine).
“Okay, I know this wasn’t part of the plan,” Dean says.
Sam looks up at him. Fearful. Trusting. Dean cannot fucking let him down, he just can’t.
“It’s fine, okay?” He slides both hands into Sam’s hair at his temples and grips gently, holding that crazy brain steady, and Sam closes his eyes and tries visibly to relax. “Look, they’ll do whatever they have to do and I’ll be right here, and afterward you’re going to have all the air, okay? Every single fucking molecule.”
Sam’s mouth quirks up a bit.
“That’s right. They probably just want to run a blood test or some…hey!” Sam’s grip tightens abruptly on Dean’s arm. “What are you, trying to break my hand off here?”
Sam’s chest rises and falls desperately, but he’s not moving any extra air, he’s, shit, he’s fucking panicking.
***
Sam’s always been afraid of doctors. It’s kind of ridiculous, actually. He’ll stitch up his own wounds without batting an eye, and he handles on-the-job injuries like a champ. It’s something about the clinical feel of a doctor’s office, Dean thinks - the antiseptic smell, the upbeat posters juxtaposed with ominous brochures, the vulnerability.
They don’t go to doctors until it’s really fucking necessary, and that’s partly because they never have insurance or a steady income, but they both know Dean would knock over every liquor store in a 50 mile radius if Sam needed some procedure paid for, so that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is that Sam would honestly rather breathe shit until he’s vomiting, pale and sweaty and delirious with lack of oxygen, than to allow a medical professional to put a needle in his arm.
But this is something different.
Sam is irrational with fear. He’s straining in Dean’s arms, struggling to get to the door. He’s trying to run.
Why is he so afraid?
Then something clunks into place. Dean is so stupid. God fucking damnit, he’s so stupid. “Sammy, is this…is this about…the cage?”
Sam stops struggling and looks up at him, eyes shining with tears.
Oh no. Fuck, Sammy.
Dean manages to pull his sleeve from Sam’s grip and leaves his tearful, hyperventilating brother alone on the examination table (fuck him, fuck him for not figuring this out, for not being ready, for leaving Sam alone, how stupid could he be?)
***
The nurse running Sam’s tests turns out to be a young guy, probably two days out of medical school, and Dean changes his mind as soon as he lays eyes on the guy. There’s nothing to tell him. What, that Sam’s afraid of needles? That doesn’t cover it. That doesn’t fucking approach it.
So the nurse tells Sam to lie down on his stomach and undoes his gown and Sam’s all exposed and scared, and Dean sits at his head and links his arms with Sam’s and says “Look, cover him up or something.”
The guy drapes a towel across Sam’s waist. A tear escapes. Dean catches it on his thumb, presses his forehead to Sam’s, shakes his head. No.
Sorry, Sam mouths.
No.
Then the nurse slams a fucking needle into Sam’s arm, no warning, neither of them even sees it coming, and Sam convulses once in a silent scream. But it is so, so hard for Dean to be angry, because minutes later Sam’s lungs are filling with clear, clean air.
***
Dean doesn’t have a lot of memories from early childhood, and if he’d had any control, if he’d known what was coming, if a thousand things, he would have chosen different things to hang on to.
He would not have chosen a memory of his father and mother screaming at each other on the streets of an unfamiliar town (he thinks this was in Wisconsin, but he was four years old, what does he know about it) and stalking away from each other in fits of rage. He would not have chosen a memory of standing helplessly on the sidewalk as their angry backs receded farther and farther into the distance, crying and terrified and trying to choose who to run after before they got too far away.
In the end, of course, he ran after Sam, tiny and helpless in his mother’s arms. There wasn’t a choice to be made.
***
The nurse actually gives them a break for a moment, says he’ll be back in five minutes to begin testing Sam for allergies (of course Sam has allergies, Dean could tell them that right now). Dean kneels on the floor at Sam’s head and holds Sam’s elbows, and Sam grips his Dean’s upper arms like he’s holding himself above water.
“I don’t want to,” Sam whispers. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to. Can we go? Please.”
His voice is quiet with fear and shame. He sounds exactly how Dean felt when he got back from the pit, hurt and lost and confused and so, so afraid, so very unlike himself.
He was fine.
Dean wants to grab him up and run away from this tiny (cage) room and leave Nurse Dickweed holding the bag. Fuck anyone who makes Sam feel this way. It’s not these people’s fault, he knows whose fault it is, but fuck them anyway. Sam was fine and now his face is collapsing and his adam’s apple is bobbing doubletime in his throat and he is going to cry and people are not allowed to make Sammy cry.
His shoulders tense. He is physically, viscerally angry. He’s ready to hurt the next person who comes anywhere fucking near Sam.
He’s overreacting. Okay. No one is trying to hurt Sam. They don’ t know - shit, Dean doesn’t even know how fucking damaged this kid is. They need to go home. They need to figure this out.
“You promised you wouldn’t let them hurt me,” Sam says.
It’s the most he’s said in a week. He exhales and Dean can feel the gust of air on his cheek. No, they can’t go. They’re doing this.
“Tell me what you’re afraid of.” He runs his palm up and down Sam’s arm.
“They’ll hold me down and put needles in me.” Sam’s eyes fill with tears. “Dean, don't let them.”
“I need you breathing, Sam.” How can he be so selfish? (How can wanting Sam to have air be selfish? Fuck.)
“You promised.” Sam turns his head away and shakes Dean’s arms off him, and Dean watches his shoulder blades rise and fall in those irregular hiccups that mean he’s crying (that mean he’s breathing.)
***
“Lie still.”
Fuck you, Nurse Jerkwad. Sammy’s trying so hard.
He’s trying, but he can’t see what they’re doing to him and he needs to see, he needs to know when the pain is coming, that’s Sammy 101, that’s always been the case.
He makes this low whine when the nurse swabs his back with disinfectant, and the guy looks up and says “You afraid of needles?” It probably sounds more condescending than he means it to. He’s not implying that Sam is weak. There’s no need for Dean to shove him up against a wall and growl that Sam’s not afraid of fucking needles, he’s afraid of being held down and tortured, you smug bastard. Rinse repeat.
Dean needs to calm down.
They need to take their hands off of Sam.
***
Sam twitches as the nurse marks his skin in preparation for the test, and the nurse sighs in undisguised aggravation and Dean actively doesn’t rip the goddamn pen out of his hands.
“Sam.”
Sam looks up at him, jaw clenched so tight.
“Breathing?”
He nods, but he’s so fucking tense that he’s really not. Every muscle is clenched. Stop touching him.
“Breathe.”
Sam swallows air in a gulp.
“Just a little stick,” says the nurse.
But it’s not just a little stick. It’s five billion fucking needles lined up to penetrate Sam’s skin, and Sam can’t see it. He swallows over and over, barely breathing, dry and pointless convulsions of his throat. Waiting.
Dean sinks into a chair and looks away as the nurse sticks the first needle into his brother.
***
“Almost done,” Dean says quietly, lying through his teeth. He can’t see the tray of needles from here. He doesn’t know how many are left. They’ve got to be almost done. They’ve done hundreds. Thousands. “Almost done, Sam, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, fuck.” Why didn't he ask what this test would be like? Why didn't he haul Sammy the fuck out of here when he had the chance?
Sam presses his face into the examination table, probably so the nurse won’t see him cry. Possibly so Dean won’t see him cry, which is awful. “Stop. Stop. Please.”
“Sorry,” Dean breathes. “Hang on, almost done.”
A sob gets away. Sam’s back jerks and the needle slips, and the nurse goes, “do you need a minute?”
“Finish it,” Dean actually fucking growls, fury vibrating low in his throat.
“No, I want to stop,” Sam whispers. “I want to stop I want to stop please stop.”
"Stay tough, Sammy, let's get it done."
Sam shudders and moans and Dean ducks his face. It’s not crying if no one sees.
***
“All done!” the nurse sings out. “Lie still and we’ll come back and check in a few minutes.”
Finally, fucking finally, he leaves the room.
Dean crosses the room so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t get pulled over, grips Sam’s hand, gets the other arm around his shoulders. “Sammy, Jesus.”
“Sorry.” Sam curls into Dean’s collar. “Sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to.”
“This shit’s all just hitting you right now?”
Sam sobs in answer. Dean tightens his hold.
He probably wants to talk about it (he is Sam, after all), and Dean wants to hear about it, wants to make up advice and pretend it’s good and tell Sam he’s safe, all the big brother things, but not here, not in this too-clean office with scary nurses and detached doctors and Sammy half-naked on an examination table.
“Home soon,” he whispers into Sammy’s hair. “It’s almost over.”
***
Well, no, it’s over now.
It’s over right fucking now.
It’s over the second that nurse walks back into the room flanked by two men in lab coats and says the words “psychiatric consult.”
***
“I’m not crazy,” Sam says. “I’m not crazy, am I? Fuck, this itches. Am I crazy?”
He’s sliding all around in the seat, rubbing his back up against it like a cat at a scratching post. “Hey, don’t scratch, you’ll spread shit around.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think you should scratch it. You want some Benadryl?”
“Yeah. Oh fuck yeah.”
“Glove box.”
Sam rummages through old receipts and spare change and unearths the syrup. He unscrews the cap and drinks directly from the bottle. He does this. He likes getting all stoned out on it. Ordinarily, Dean would yank the bottle away and yell at him and pour a normal dose.
Ordinarily.
“No, you’re not crazy.” You walked out of hell smiling, Sammy, you’re a goddamn miracle.
“That nurse thought I was crazy.”
“That nurse thought you needed some help, Sammy. Psychiatric doesn’t mean crazy.”
Sam slumps in his seat. “It means they think I can’t handle it.”
Dean swallows hard. “It means they think you shouldn’t have to.”
***
He gets Sam’s shirt off, and immediately Sam gets all shaky unsteady like he’s still on that examination table. He lies on the bed and watches quietly as Dean gathers towels and warm water, wiggles around on the bed creating friction between his back and the cheap sheets.
“Roll over, Sam.”
Sam does, with a whimper that’s itchy but not traumatized, so he’s okay right now, he’s fine. Stay fine, Sam.
The truth is, Dean didn’t drag them away from that psychiatrist because Sam didn’t need help. He dragged them away because those people wouldn’t have helped Sam. If Sam is losing it (don't lose it, kid) then he’s beyond the aid of conventional medicine, and it’s going to fall to Dean (big brother, hell alumnus class of 2008) to fix him, and he can’t. He doesn’t know why he’s not insane himself, but it’s by the skin of his fucking teeth. He can’t pull Sam out of that hole.
So Sam will just have to stay okay.
He sits down on the bed and runs his fingers over Sam’s back, an incomprehensible numbered grid with painful-looking swellings. They’re small, mostly, like insect bites, but along his left shoulder there’s a series so inflamed they’ve run together, and Dean can’t even read the numbering. “Scraaaaatch,” Sam groans, shrugging that shoulder up and down like he’s trying to scratch it from inside.
Dean hands over the Benadryl and Sam drinks like it’s fucking water. He fidgets and whines into his pillow. Dean traces the swollen spots lightly, trying to relieve a little of the itching. “Relax.”
“Can’t.”
He dips a towel in the water and threads his fingers through Sam’s, and Sam clings to his hand as he wipes away the numbers, careful not to irritate Sam’s back. He lets Sam hold onto him until the Benadryl has kicked in and started to make him weepy and talky, until the towel is stained black with ink and Sam’s back is still shot full of allergens but it’s clean, not clinical, and then he bends down and blows cool air across his brother’s damp skin.
***
The nurse on the phone isn’t the needle-wielding stab fiend they dealt with yesterday, so Dean restrains himself from yelling at her, even though she’s being so fucking uptight about Sammy’s test results that he wants to reach through the phone and shoot her so full of allergens that she itches and claws herself bloody in her sleep.
“I’m not allowed to discuss test results over the phone,” she says.
Across the room, Sam moans and writes on the bed. “What’s she saying?”
“One minute, kid.” With monumental effort, Dean turns his back on his brother and hisses into the phone, “He’s miserable, okay? Just help me.”
“Sir, if you want to discuss test results you’ll need to make an appointment.”
Dean hangs up the phone in disgust.
Sam sits up a little. “Did they say…?”
“Control freak bitch.” He shakes his head.
Sam adjusts the pillow behind his shoulder and eases back onto it. “This is fucking awful.”
“More Benadryl?
***
Sam on Benadryl is a chatty kid. He climbs up Dean’s chest and practically into his lap and mumbles, “heyyyy big brother.”
Dean smiles. In spite of himself, he likes stoned Sam. “Hey, Sammy.”
“Remember when I died?”
Is this some kind of joke? “Of course I do, Jesus, Sam.”
Sam looks up at him. “Don’t be mad. When?”
“What?”
“When did I die?”
“You died…you died a lot, kid.”
Sam sighs and tucks himself into Dean’s neck. “I know.”
“Are you sad?” This is such a stupid, obvious question, but Dean has never asked it.
“I’m alive.”
“Not what I asked.”
“What was hell like?”
Dean tenses. Sam isn’t supposed to ask that.
“Hot or cold?”
“Neither. Both. It wasn’t like that.” They don’t talk about this. Sam is supposed to be fine.
“Did you miss me?”
Dean ghosts his fingers over his brother’s back, where the drug has temporarily decreased the swelling. “I missed you like crazy. I missed you like you were the one who died.”
Sam nods a little and closes his eyes.
“Did you miss me?” Dean asks quietly.
“Nope.”
He looks down and Sam’s face is split in a sloppy grin. “You little liar.”
“Not little.”
“Yeah, you’ll always be ten.”
Sam reaches up with one of those long monkey arms and swats him in the head.
“Oh, that’s mature.”
“Did you cry?”
“What?”
“When I died. Did you cry?”
Oh, Sammy.
There are things Dean doesn’t talk about.
“I didn’t cry, Sam, what the fuck. I punched things.” It’s half true, which is better than Sam has any right to expect on this subject.
“I cried,” Sam says, and god, he’s welling up right now. “I cried for days, I couldn’t…” pause, long breath - “couldn’t breathe…”
Shit.
***
Sam wheezes his way into sleep.
Dean calls the hospital again and begs and they won't tell him what's doing this to Sam, and Sam is just so fragile. Sam can break.
"It's his shoulder," he says, "left shoulder. What did you test there? That's what's doing it. It's so fucked up, swollen, if he's breathing whatever that is it's no wonder he's fucking choking on it."
They say appointment and regulations and Dean hangs up on them again, because they don't understand.
Sam is so important.
He buries his head in his hands and weighs the consequences of taking Sam back to the hospital against the torture of letting him fight for breath, and waits for anyone at all to tell him what to do.
***
I cried for days.
I couldn’t breathe.
You want to know when you died, Sammy?
We hunted together for twenty goddamn years and I never believed anything could happen to you. Not really.
And then that boy, that boy I killed, put a knife in your back and twisted.
You rose up in the air a little, your mouth open like you were reaching for air, and I swear for the first tenth of a second I thought that’s what it was. Just a deep breath. Just your bullshit lungs.
But he drew his hand back and I saw the knife, and you hovered for a moment and started to fall, and my own lungs were out of control, I screamed so hard it fucking hurt. I watched you fall and knew it could never hurt enough.
I didn’t save you.
I ran to you and held you and you died in my arms.
My arms were supposed to keep you safe.
How can you ask me if I cried?
***
The nurse calls with a note of guilt in her voice and tells Dean his brother is allergic to beech trees.
Whatever.
Dean washes Sam’s back with hypoallergenic soap and rests his palm briefly over the thick, ugly scar where his skin knitted itself back together.
Sam smiles in his sleep.
***
***
Sam wakes up to a steady, familiar rhythm all around him, like a heartbeat, like a pulse, like a Mark IV engine that sang him to sleep as a child. Dean’s got one eye on the road and one hand on his chest, and he’s breathing.
“How’d you get me in the car?”
Dean smirks. “I’m strong.”
“Where are we going?”
“Away from these fucking trees that are killing you.”
“I’m not dead.” He struggles and sits up a little. His back feels okay.
“Yeah,” Dean says quietly. “I know you’re not.”
Dean lets Sam’s lungs upset him so much.
It kind of makes Sam feel guilty sometimes.
Sometimes, fuck, sometimes he kind of likes it.
Summary: Post-Hell Sam can't breathe. Doctors are scary.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: This one's dedicated to shangrilada - thanks for the awesome prompt and for not letting me give up on this.
Sam isn’t breathing.
This isn’t breathing. Dean doesn’t know what this is. Sam's pulling in air like he’s drinking it through one of those little non-straws people use to stir their coffee. He breathes out so fucking hard that his neck curls forward with the effort, his head dropping over his chest.
The single breath, in and out, exhausts him so much that he closes his eyes and waits seven seconds - seven long, terrible seconds - before he tries to breathe again.
Dean cups his wrist in one hand and places two fingers over the artery to feel his pulse, those tiny beats coming slower and slower.
“Sam.”
Sam looks up at him and doesn’t speak - doesn’t have air to speak - and drags his head slowly from side to side, like he’s underwater. No.
“Sam, please.”
No.
“You’re not breathing.”
Sam makes an okay sign with his fingers, points to himself.
Dean catches his hand, presses in on his palm until his fingers fan out, and holds it up for Sam to see. “This is bad. You need a doctor, Sam.”
No.
“Not asking.”
No.
***
Sam has died at least five times - this is just off the top of Dean’s head - and he really believed this would be the one that stuck.
It never sticks. He’s beginning to wonder if it ever will.
When Sam was gone Dean thought of parents forced to bury their children, and he was leveled. He honestly doesn't remember most of that year. He didn’t understand it for a while. He kept looking for Sam.
And then Sam came back. He knocked on the fucking door. Like he wasn’t dead for a year, like he wasn’t dragged to hell and back. Bobby opened the door and there he was. Hey Dean. Like nothing had happened.
He was fine It still blows Dean away. He knocked on the door, and he was fine. He smiled, he hugged Dean, he nicked his own arm with the knife and didn’t flinch.
***
Now Sam watches him mistrustfully as he drinks air like a milkshake, thick and wet.
“You need a fucking doctor. We’re not discussing this.” We’re not discussing this because you can't talk.
Sam fists his hands in the bedspread like he’s hanging on and shakes his head way too fast. No no no no no no no.
“Hey.” He speaks quietly, roughly. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you.”
Sam’s always nervous when he’s like this, shit, how could he not be, but this is something else. The expression on his face. God. He’s terrified. He looks like the fifteen year old kid who knelt beside Dean and held his hand while Dad pulled a bullet out of his chest.
Oh. Oh, he’s trying not to cry. Sam, shit.
***
Speeding to the hospital while Sam makes that sound that drowns out the Impala’s engine and scares the fuck out of Dean isn’t unfamiliar. One of his earliest memories is of holding Sam on his lap, feeling the tiny, desperate motions of his chest while Dad gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white and the car pulled them like a spooked horse. He’s made this trip dozens of times. It’s never gotten easier.
Now Sam is leaning against the passenger window, forehead pressed to the glass, fidgety and uncomfortable, and the strange thing isn’t the terror in his eyes, it’s that he’s not clawing hurry hurry hurry at Dean’s arm.
“Breathing?” Dean asks, cutting his eyes sideways at his very very obviously not breathing brother.
Sam nods. Sam has low standards for what counts as breathing.
“Okay. We’ll just get you some medicine or something and clear this shit right up, okay? You’ll be fine. By the time you go to sleep tonight, you’re going to feel so much better, Sam, you wait. Maybe we’ll get pizza, to celebrate how awesome you’re going to feel. You want pizza?”
No.
No pizza. Okay. “What about one of those deep dish places that make the salads you like, with all the eggs and deli meats and bullshit on them?” Fuck, he’s babbling. “You want one of those? Or I could make you breakfast for dinner. Waffles?”
“I’m okay-” Sam breathes so hard. “-Dean.”
“Hey, don’t talk.” He reaches over and grips Sam’s shoulder, Sam’s barely-moving shoulder. “Breathe, Sammy. Come on. You got this.”
“Home,” Sam rasps. The word sounds like it’s swimming. “No doc-“
“Quiet, Sam,” He needs that air, he fucking needs that air, stop trying to say things that Dean can’t pay attention to, Sammy.
“Breathing.” Sam heaves in a rattle. “Breathin-“ the word disappears in convulsive coughs. Sure you’re breathing, Sammy. Sure you are.
The coughs go on and on, shockwaves up the length of Sam’s torso. He doubles over and hugs himself and Dean rubs his back and feels his lungs try to expand and accelerates harder.
***
Once they’re in the waiting room, Sam kind of gives up and drops his head onto Dean’s shoulder, and Dean reaches up automatically to help him compress his chest. “Bad air out,” he whispers, which is fucking stupid, because air isn’t bad, okay, air is fucking everything Sam needs right now.
They don’t wait long, not with the noises Sam is making. The emergency room is a great place to be conspicuous. And a part of Dean wants to say no, he’s got this under control, take that kid with the bloody nose, we can wait because Sam can wait, he needs relief but he isn’t dying and this sounds worse than it is. But he can’t say it, because the rest of him (a much bigger part of him) is screaming get Sammy some air, dammit.
He sits behind Sam on the examination table and holds him up. Sam’s listing all over the place, dizzy and exhausted. The doctor asks quiet questions and Dean answers quietly, as though they’re trying not to drown out the sound of Sam breathing, as though that were possible.
Just give us the medicine.
But the doctor looks up from his chart and says, “I think there’s more to this than just asthma. I’d like to run some tests.” And suddenly Sam is shaking so hard in Dean’s arms.
***
The doctor steps out of the room, which is good, because Sam is fucking breaking down and Dean doesn’t know why and that’s just not fucking acceptable, so he needs a minute. They need a minute.
Sam’s beyond speech. He rocks himself back and forth and grips Dean’s arm so hard Dean knows it’ll leave bruises (and you fucking go ahead, Sammy, it’s fine).
“Okay, I know this wasn’t part of the plan,” Dean says.
Sam looks up at him. Fearful. Trusting. Dean cannot fucking let him down, he just can’t.
“It’s fine, okay?” He slides both hands into Sam’s hair at his temples and grips gently, holding that crazy brain steady, and Sam closes his eyes and tries visibly to relax. “Look, they’ll do whatever they have to do and I’ll be right here, and afterward you’re going to have all the air, okay? Every single fucking molecule.”
Sam’s mouth quirks up a bit.
“That’s right. They probably just want to run a blood test or some…hey!” Sam’s grip tightens abruptly on Dean’s arm. “What are you, trying to break my hand off here?”
Sam’s chest rises and falls desperately, but he’s not moving any extra air, he’s, shit, he’s fucking panicking.
***
Sam’s always been afraid of doctors. It’s kind of ridiculous, actually. He’ll stitch up his own wounds without batting an eye, and he handles on-the-job injuries like a champ. It’s something about the clinical feel of a doctor’s office, Dean thinks - the antiseptic smell, the upbeat posters juxtaposed with ominous brochures, the vulnerability.
They don’t go to doctors until it’s really fucking necessary, and that’s partly because they never have insurance or a steady income, but they both know Dean would knock over every liquor store in a 50 mile radius if Sam needed some procedure paid for, so that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is that Sam would honestly rather breathe shit until he’s vomiting, pale and sweaty and delirious with lack of oxygen, than to allow a medical professional to put a needle in his arm.
But this is something different.
Sam is irrational with fear. He’s straining in Dean’s arms, struggling to get to the door. He’s trying to run.
Why is he so afraid?
Then something clunks into place. Dean is so stupid. God fucking damnit, he’s so stupid. “Sammy, is this…is this about…the cage?”
Sam stops struggling and looks up at him, eyes shining with tears.
Oh no. Fuck, Sammy.
Dean manages to pull his sleeve from Sam’s grip and leaves his tearful, hyperventilating brother alone on the examination table (fuck him, fuck him for not figuring this out, for not being ready, for leaving Sam alone, how stupid could he be?)
***
The nurse running Sam’s tests turns out to be a young guy, probably two days out of medical school, and Dean changes his mind as soon as he lays eyes on the guy. There’s nothing to tell him. What, that Sam’s afraid of needles? That doesn’t cover it. That doesn’t fucking approach it.
So the nurse tells Sam to lie down on his stomach and undoes his gown and Sam’s all exposed and scared, and Dean sits at his head and links his arms with Sam’s and says “Look, cover him up or something.”
The guy drapes a towel across Sam’s waist. A tear escapes. Dean catches it on his thumb, presses his forehead to Sam’s, shakes his head. No.
Sorry, Sam mouths.
No.
Then the nurse slams a fucking needle into Sam’s arm, no warning, neither of them even sees it coming, and Sam convulses once in a silent scream. But it is so, so hard for Dean to be angry, because minutes later Sam’s lungs are filling with clear, clean air.
***
Dean doesn’t have a lot of memories from early childhood, and if he’d had any control, if he’d known what was coming, if a thousand things, he would have chosen different things to hang on to.
He would not have chosen a memory of his father and mother screaming at each other on the streets of an unfamiliar town (he thinks this was in Wisconsin, but he was four years old, what does he know about it) and stalking away from each other in fits of rage. He would not have chosen a memory of standing helplessly on the sidewalk as their angry backs receded farther and farther into the distance, crying and terrified and trying to choose who to run after before they got too far away.
In the end, of course, he ran after Sam, tiny and helpless in his mother’s arms. There wasn’t a choice to be made.
***
The nurse actually gives them a break for a moment, says he’ll be back in five minutes to begin testing Sam for allergies (of course Sam has allergies, Dean could tell them that right now). Dean kneels on the floor at Sam’s head and holds Sam’s elbows, and Sam grips his Dean’s upper arms like he’s holding himself above water.
“I don’t want to,” Sam whispers. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to. Can we go? Please.”
His voice is quiet with fear and shame. He sounds exactly how Dean felt when he got back from the pit, hurt and lost and confused and so, so afraid, so very unlike himself.
He was fine.
Dean wants to grab him up and run away from this tiny (cage) room and leave Nurse Dickweed holding the bag. Fuck anyone who makes Sam feel this way. It’s not these people’s fault, he knows whose fault it is, but fuck them anyway. Sam was fine and now his face is collapsing and his adam’s apple is bobbing doubletime in his throat and he is going to cry and people are not allowed to make Sammy cry.
His shoulders tense. He is physically, viscerally angry. He’s ready to hurt the next person who comes anywhere fucking near Sam.
He’s overreacting. Okay. No one is trying to hurt Sam. They don’ t know - shit, Dean doesn’t even know how fucking damaged this kid is. They need to go home. They need to figure this out.
“You promised you wouldn’t let them hurt me,” Sam says.
It’s the most he’s said in a week. He exhales and Dean can feel the gust of air on his cheek. No, they can’t go. They’re doing this.
“Tell me what you’re afraid of.” He runs his palm up and down Sam’s arm.
“They’ll hold me down and put needles in me.” Sam’s eyes fill with tears. “Dean, don't let them.”
“I need you breathing, Sam.” How can he be so selfish? (How can wanting Sam to have air be selfish? Fuck.)
“You promised.” Sam turns his head away and shakes Dean’s arms off him, and Dean watches his shoulder blades rise and fall in those irregular hiccups that mean he’s crying (that mean he’s breathing.)
***
“Lie still.”
Fuck you, Nurse Jerkwad. Sammy’s trying so hard.
He’s trying, but he can’t see what they’re doing to him and he needs to see, he needs to know when the pain is coming, that’s Sammy 101, that’s always been the case.
He makes this low whine when the nurse swabs his back with disinfectant, and the guy looks up and says “You afraid of needles?” It probably sounds more condescending than he means it to. He’s not implying that Sam is weak. There’s no need for Dean to shove him up against a wall and growl that Sam’s not afraid of fucking needles, he’s afraid of being held down and tortured, you smug bastard. Rinse repeat.
Dean needs to calm down.
They need to take their hands off of Sam.
***
Sam twitches as the nurse marks his skin in preparation for the test, and the nurse sighs in undisguised aggravation and Dean actively doesn’t rip the goddamn pen out of his hands.
“Sam.”
Sam looks up at him, jaw clenched so tight.
“Breathing?”
He nods, but he’s so fucking tense that he’s really not. Every muscle is clenched. Stop touching him.
“Breathe.”
Sam swallows air in a gulp.
“Just a little stick,” says the nurse.
But it’s not just a little stick. It’s five billion fucking needles lined up to penetrate Sam’s skin, and Sam can’t see it. He swallows over and over, barely breathing, dry and pointless convulsions of his throat. Waiting.
Dean sinks into a chair and looks away as the nurse sticks the first needle into his brother.
***
“Almost done,” Dean says quietly, lying through his teeth. He can’t see the tray of needles from here. He doesn’t know how many are left. They’ve got to be almost done. They’ve done hundreds. Thousands. “Almost done, Sam, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, fuck.” Why didn't he ask what this test would be like? Why didn't he haul Sammy the fuck out of here when he had the chance?
Sam presses his face into the examination table, probably so the nurse won’t see him cry. Possibly so Dean won’t see him cry, which is awful. “Stop. Stop. Please.”
“Sorry,” Dean breathes. “Hang on, almost done.”
A sob gets away. Sam’s back jerks and the needle slips, and the nurse goes, “do you need a minute?”
“Finish it,” Dean actually fucking growls, fury vibrating low in his throat.
“No, I want to stop,” Sam whispers. “I want to stop I want to stop please stop.”
"Stay tough, Sammy, let's get it done."
Sam shudders and moans and Dean ducks his face. It’s not crying if no one sees.
***
“All done!” the nurse sings out. “Lie still and we’ll come back and check in a few minutes.”
Finally, fucking finally, he leaves the room.
Dean crosses the room so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t get pulled over, grips Sam’s hand, gets the other arm around his shoulders. “Sammy, Jesus.”
“Sorry.” Sam curls into Dean’s collar. “Sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to.”
“This shit’s all just hitting you right now?”
Sam sobs in answer. Dean tightens his hold.
He probably wants to talk about it (he is Sam, after all), and Dean wants to hear about it, wants to make up advice and pretend it’s good and tell Sam he’s safe, all the big brother things, but not here, not in this too-clean office with scary nurses and detached doctors and Sammy half-naked on an examination table.
“Home soon,” he whispers into Sammy’s hair. “It’s almost over.”
***
Well, no, it’s over now.
It’s over right fucking now.
It’s over the second that nurse walks back into the room flanked by two men in lab coats and says the words “psychiatric consult.”
***
“I’m not crazy,” Sam says. “I’m not crazy, am I? Fuck, this itches. Am I crazy?”
He’s sliding all around in the seat, rubbing his back up against it like a cat at a scratching post. “Hey, don’t scratch, you’ll spread shit around.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think you should scratch it. You want some Benadryl?”
“Yeah. Oh fuck yeah.”
“Glove box.”
Sam rummages through old receipts and spare change and unearths the syrup. He unscrews the cap and drinks directly from the bottle. He does this. He likes getting all stoned out on it. Ordinarily, Dean would yank the bottle away and yell at him and pour a normal dose.
Ordinarily.
“No, you’re not crazy.” You walked out of hell smiling, Sammy, you’re a goddamn miracle.
“That nurse thought I was crazy.”
“That nurse thought you needed some help, Sammy. Psychiatric doesn’t mean crazy.”
Sam slumps in his seat. “It means they think I can’t handle it.”
Dean swallows hard. “It means they think you shouldn’t have to.”
***
He gets Sam’s shirt off, and immediately Sam gets all shaky unsteady like he’s still on that examination table. He lies on the bed and watches quietly as Dean gathers towels and warm water, wiggles around on the bed creating friction between his back and the cheap sheets.
“Roll over, Sam.”
Sam does, with a whimper that’s itchy but not traumatized, so he’s okay right now, he’s fine. Stay fine, Sam.
The truth is, Dean didn’t drag them away from that psychiatrist because Sam didn’t need help. He dragged them away because those people wouldn’t have helped Sam. If Sam is losing it (don't lose it, kid) then he’s beyond the aid of conventional medicine, and it’s going to fall to Dean (big brother, hell alumnus class of 2008) to fix him, and he can’t. He doesn’t know why he’s not insane himself, but it’s by the skin of his fucking teeth. He can’t pull Sam out of that hole.
So Sam will just have to stay okay.
He sits down on the bed and runs his fingers over Sam’s back, an incomprehensible numbered grid with painful-looking swellings. They’re small, mostly, like insect bites, but along his left shoulder there’s a series so inflamed they’ve run together, and Dean can’t even read the numbering. “Scraaaaatch,” Sam groans, shrugging that shoulder up and down like he’s trying to scratch it from inside.
Dean hands over the Benadryl and Sam drinks like it’s fucking water. He fidgets and whines into his pillow. Dean traces the swollen spots lightly, trying to relieve a little of the itching. “Relax.”
“Can’t.”
He dips a towel in the water and threads his fingers through Sam’s, and Sam clings to his hand as he wipes away the numbers, careful not to irritate Sam’s back. He lets Sam hold onto him until the Benadryl has kicked in and started to make him weepy and talky, until the towel is stained black with ink and Sam’s back is still shot full of allergens but it’s clean, not clinical, and then he bends down and blows cool air across his brother’s damp skin.
***
The nurse on the phone isn’t the needle-wielding stab fiend they dealt with yesterday, so Dean restrains himself from yelling at her, even though she’s being so fucking uptight about Sammy’s test results that he wants to reach through the phone and shoot her so full of allergens that she itches and claws herself bloody in her sleep.
“I’m not allowed to discuss test results over the phone,” she says.
Across the room, Sam moans and writes on the bed. “What’s she saying?”
“One minute, kid.” With monumental effort, Dean turns his back on his brother and hisses into the phone, “He’s miserable, okay? Just help me.”
“Sir, if you want to discuss test results you’ll need to make an appointment.”
Dean hangs up the phone in disgust.
Sam sits up a little. “Did they say…?”
“Control freak bitch.” He shakes his head.
Sam adjusts the pillow behind his shoulder and eases back onto it. “This is fucking awful.”
“More Benadryl?
***
Sam on Benadryl is a chatty kid. He climbs up Dean’s chest and practically into his lap and mumbles, “heyyyy big brother.”
Dean smiles. In spite of himself, he likes stoned Sam. “Hey, Sammy.”
“Remember when I died?”
Is this some kind of joke? “Of course I do, Jesus, Sam.”
Sam looks up at him. “Don’t be mad. When?”
“What?”
“When did I die?”
“You died…you died a lot, kid.”
Sam sighs and tucks himself into Dean’s neck. “I know.”
“Are you sad?” This is such a stupid, obvious question, but Dean has never asked it.
“I’m alive.”
“Not what I asked.”
“What was hell like?”
Dean tenses. Sam isn’t supposed to ask that.
“Hot or cold?”
“Neither. Both. It wasn’t like that.” They don’t talk about this. Sam is supposed to be fine.
“Did you miss me?”
Dean ghosts his fingers over his brother’s back, where the drug has temporarily decreased the swelling. “I missed you like crazy. I missed you like you were the one who died.”
Sam nods a little and closes his eyes.
“Did you miss me?” Dean asks quietly.
“Nope.”
He looks down and Sam’s face is split in a sloppy grin. “You little liar.”
“Not little.”
“Yeah, you’ll always be ten.”
Sam reaches up with one of those long monkey arms and swats him in the head.
“Oh, that’s mature.”
“Did you cry?”
“What?”
“When I died. Did you cry?”
Oh, Sammy.
There are things Dean doesn’t talk about.
“I didn’t cry, Sam, what the fuck. I punched things.” It’s half true, which is better than Sam has any right to expect on this subject.
“I cried,” Sam says, and god, he’s welling up right now. “I cried for days, I couldn’t…” pause, long breath - “couldn’t breathe…”
Shit.
***
Sam wheezes his way into sleep.
Dean calls the hospital again and begs and they won't tell him what's doing this to Sam, and Sam is just so fragile. Sam can break.
"It's his shoulder," he says, "left shoulder. What did you test there? That's what's doing it. It's so fucked up, swollen, if he's breathing whatever that is it's no wonder he's fucking choking on it."
They say appointment and regulations and Dean hangs up on them again, because they don't understand.
Sam is so important.
He buries his head in his hands and weighs the consequences of taking Sam back to the hospital against the torture of letting him fight for breath, and waits for anyone at all to tell him what to do.
***
I cried for days.
I couldn’t breathe.
You want to know when you died, Sammy?
We hunted together for twenty goddamn years and I never believed anything could happen to you. Not really.
And then that boy, that boy I killed, put a knife in your back and twisted.
You rose up in the air a little, your mouth open like you were reaching for air, and I swear for the first tenth of a second I thought that’s what it was. Just a deep breath. Just your bullshit lungs.
But he drew his hand back and I saw the knife, and you hovered for a moment and started to fall, and my own lungs were out of control, I screamed so hard it fucking hurt. I watched you fall and knew it could never hurt enough.
I didn’t save you.
I ran to you and held you and you died in my arms.
My arms were supposed to keep you safe.
How can you ask me if I cried?
***
The nurse calls with a note of guilt in her voice and tells Dean his brother is allergic to beech trees.
Whatever.
Dean washes Sam’s back with hypoallergenic soap and rests his palm briefly over the thick, ugly scar where his skin knitted itself back together.
Sam smiles in his sleep.
***
***
Sam wakes up to a steady, familiar rhythm all around him, like a heartbeat, like a pulse, like a Mark IV engine that sang him to sleep as a child. Dean’s got one eye on the road and one hand on his chest, and he’s breathing.
“How’d you get me in the car?”
Dean smirks. “I’m strong.”
“Where are we going?”
“Away from these fucking trees that are killing you.”
“I’m not dead.” He struggles and sits up a little. His back feels okay.
“Yeah,” Dean says quietly. “I know you’re not.”
Dean lets Sam’s lungs upset him so much.
It kind of makes Sam feel guilty sometimes.
Sometimes, fuck, sometimes he kind of likes it.