The Unbearable Samness of Sam
Title: The Unbearable Samness of Sam
Summary: Immediately post 1.20. John and Sam and Dean each say things the others were definitely not expecting.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 1, I guess, though I talk about pretty much nothing at all plot-related because that's how I roll. Usual language warning.
Wordcount: 6,147
Author's Note: Sammy-verse, asthma, boys who get along, you know the drill. It's a silly title for a silly fic. Nothing happens in this one and I kind of like it that way.
--
Evil bitches have this habit of choking Sam. It would be a running joke at this point if Sam's lungs had this habit of breathing, but seeing as they like to shirk off that task whenever the fuck possible, somehow this choking thing ever gets around to being funny, imagine fucking that.
Sam's always shitty immediately after being choked, but who the fuck isn't, and then he seems fine for a while and then gets slammed a few hours later. He's in that exciting intermediate stage right now but he knows what the hell's coming and so does Dean, but John hasn't seen Sam in a year and a half and hasn't seen his asthma really bad in even longer, so who the hell knows how aware he is of what's going on. And Sam looks like he's aiming to pretend he's going to be fine, and isn't that just cute. (No.)
The truth is Sam might just be a little out of it, because he got knocked around a lot by vampires (Dean's known about them for all of two days and he hates the shit out of them) and his breathing's been rough all day what with yelling at Dad and running around in dusty barns and burning herbal shit all the fuck over himself, so he's off his game. It's all right. Team Winchester and all that.
Although Sam and John had a fucking hour and a half alone today while Dean went and siphoned out some dead man's blood, and Dean came back to a Sam no less wheezy than when he left so nice job taking care of the kid there, John. (And nice job to you too, Sammy, come on, you're twenty-three, get your shit together.)
“You all right?” Dean says to him, quietly. They're in the kitchenette while John pores over research in the living room and Sam pours them all another drink.
“Mmm.”
“Oh, well, now I'm convinced.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“You're so fucking angsty today,” Dean says. “I have to be all careful you're not tensing your lung muscles or whatever the fuck.”
“You need x-ray vision.”
“Yeah.”
“I'm fine. I feel like total fucking crap, but I'm fine,” and it sounds stupid but this is actually kind of reasonable and Dean's proud of his damn kid for saying it and for knowing the difference between asthma sucks and asthma is trying to kill me.
“Did you take everything?”
“Like triple doses of everything.”
So that's why he's out of it. Benadryl still puts the kid on his ass.
“Just let me know, okay?”
Sam nods, caps the bottle. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, you're very lucky to have such an overbearing big brother,” Dean says, because seriously, if he were Sam he would want to punch Dean in his fucking face. (He's twenty-three years old. Let him get his shit together.)
Sam says, “Overbearing and pessimistic. And short.”
“Could still kick your wheezy ass.”
Sam grins and coughs into his elbow, then makes a face because yeah, shit, that was ugly. Dean is still amazed sometimes at the sounds that kid makes come out of his chest.
“Maybe quadruple doses,” Dean suggests, and Sam nods and heads to the bathroom.
Dean brings the glasses back out to John, who looks up and gives him a small smile. “Weren't there two of you a minute ago?” John says.
“What? No.”
John rolls his eyes, chuckles.
“He's medicating.” Dean pulls his chair out. “Vamp choked him.”
John breathes out. “Right. Fuck.”
“Don't push, okay? He knows what to do. They've been choking the shit out of him all year.”
“How's he been?”
Dean chews on the inside of his cheek and doesn't fucking want to waste this, because there have been twelve hundred fucking times since he's been hunting with Sam again that he's wanted to call John and tell him that he's just not sure what the fuck to do with Sam sometimes. He wants to know what John did that time when Sam was eight and breathed in all that ash because Dean doesn't remember, or how high how a fever has to be before you bring him to the ER instead of waiting for a clinic to open. He wants to know how the fuck John convinced himself that Sam wasn't too sick to do this.
But now he doesn't know what the hell to say, because they spent the better part of the weekend trying to convince John to let them hunt with him, and Sam will come out of the bathroom and freak the fuck out if he finds out Dean said anything to imply Sam's not up for this fight, and yeah, Dean knows that he can't really kick that kid's ass, for the record. He's not delusional.
And now that he's really faced with the chance, his stupid brain does not want to let John the fuck in. He wants to hold onto the dynamic he and Sam have figured out this year and lock it away and not let him fucking touch it because John will make things complicated, John will pull the wrong threads and think the wrong things are important and he will tangle it all up, and there is only so much about Sam that Dean's willing to talk about and the asthma isn't usually high on that list, because the asthma is so inherently Sam's that it feels wrong to talk about it when he isn't here.
John should get that.
But Dean swallows and says, “He knows what he can handle and what he can't, and he doesn't fuck around. But stuff comes up we're not expecting and he can get really bad really quick. He saw some specialist at Stanford, I dunno. He's careful. But, you know. It's Sam. He's sick as fuck.”
John sighs. “Hoped he'd outgrown it some.”
“Nah, getting worse.”
“Rumors of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated,” Sam says, smacking Dean on the back of the head. He's lugging his nebulizer over to the wall socket. “I'm okay,” he tells John. “I mean, in general. And right now, actually.”
John's looking at him all critically, and Sam raises his eyebrows and breathes all combative, and Jesus, no one can get to Sam like John can. Dean's seen it a hundred times. John says something to Sam that's no fucking different from stuff that Dean says to him every day, and Sam smiles at Dean when he says it and throws a fucking hissy fit when John does.
“He's just worried, Sammy,” Dean says.
John says, “Have you been taking everything when you're supposed to?” and see, prime example right here, because Dean asked him a minute ago what he'd taken and it was fine, but now Sam's all pissed off, except it is sort of different because Dean was asking what Sam's taken right now, and John wants to know if he's been taking his pills every night like a good boy and Jesus, does Sam look like he has a fucking death wish? (Don't answer that.)
But Sam grumbles out, “Yessir,” and fills the nebulizer cup.
“Your brother didn't exactly get specific on me,” John says. “How's this year been?”
“Stupendous. Nothing like a dead girlfriend to liven up my life.”
Dean says, “Sam. Don't be a dick.”
“Sorry,” Sam says. To Dean.
John says, “I meant in terms of breathing.”
“Yeah, I know what you meant.” Sam coughs and clears his throat. “I don't know. Fine? Mediocre? Shitty? Same as always? I'm listening synonyms here, stop me if you hear one you like.”
“Sam,” John says.
“What the fuck do you want me to say, Dad? No, I didn't magically heal up while I was at Stanford, and no, I didn't become rogue vagabond sick kid flushing his meds down the toilet. I work hard and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm the same fucking sick kid I always was, just a few years older.”
“You're angry now,” John says. “I've never seen you like this. That healthy for you?”
Dean looks at Sam.
It's kind of like when Bobby or Caleb or someone Dean hadn't seen in a while would tell him he'd gotten taller and laugh at him for not noticing. How the fuck was Dean supposed to know? He was living it day by day. (And of course he was getting taller, he was growing up, and of course Sam is getting angrier. Sam is growing up.)
Sam says, “Yeah, well, I've had that kind of year. But I can take care of myself almost all the time and Jess and Dean took care of me when I couldn't, and Dean's been fucking amazing. So we're fine.” There's a dig in there.
Dean's kind of too distracted to hear it.
John says, “Obviously Dean cares about you.”
“Uh, no shit?”
“And I do too. But if you can't look after yourself-”
“Holy shit, did you not just hear a damn thing I said?”
Dean says, “Dad. He takes care of himself.”
John says, “Dean took a hell of a lot of weekends off to come take care of-”
“Dean took a hell of a lot of weekends off to visit me, and yeah, sometimes I wasn't breathing so well those weekends, so fucking what? It's a lot better than just sending a card when I have pneumonia. Or standing across a fucking hallway watching me get intubated. Dean didn't come down for every little thing, okay? I almost fucking died a few times and didn't call him. Dean, don't freak out, I'll tell you all of it later, I promise.” He doesn't look away from John.
“You almost died?”
“Later.” Now Sam looks at him. “I promise.”
Yeah, no. “It's been a fucking year and you're bringing this up now?”
Sam looks from Dean to John and sinks his head into his hands. “I can take care of myself,” he says. He's all quiet and wheezy. “I know what I need. I know when I need help. Why won't you guys listen to me?”
Maybe because Dean is constantly telling the kid he's wheezing and Sam's all fucking surprised, or that he has to tell him to sit down and take a break when he doesn't fucking want to, or maybe because he's pulling the kid out of fires every five minutes and that'll wear on a guy or maybe it's, hmm, maybe it's the fact that he almost fucking died a few times at Stanford and didn't think to tell him, what the fuck, Sammy.
John starts to say something but Sam shakes his head and says, “Sorry. Sorry. I need a timeout.” He unplugs the nebulizer and drags it over to the kitchenette, and he plugs it in there and sits at the table alone, breathing from the mouthpiece and looking miserable and ugh, Sam.
“I said don't push,” Dean says to John.
“I was...”
“Pushing.”
John raises an eyebrow slowly because Dean's lost his manners, but yeah, well, sue him, it's been a year, and Sam's not the only one of John's sons who nearly died a few times while he was gone, but there's one person and one person only who seems to remember that (Dean: If you ask me one more time how my fucking heart is I'm going to throw you out the car window, Jesus, we're in a fucking desert, what are you wheezing at? Sam: If I rolled my eyes any harder they'd fall out) and it sure as fuck isn't John.
Dean gets up. Break time.
“Hey, psycho.” Dean claps Sam on the back and gets himself a glass of water.
Sam growls and smiles at him.
“Being quite the crotchety little bitch in there,” Dean says. He plays with the hem of Sam's sleeve. “Who the fuck taught you to act like that, huh?”
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. “That would be you, jerk.”
“Hey.”
Sam watches Dean messing with his sleeve.
“He really gets under your skin,” Dean says. “And I really don't get it.”
“Honestly? Me neither. He just talks and I want to hit him.”
“Ohhh, so it's like how I feel about you.”
Sam drops his chin to the table. “Trying to open up to you, here.”
“Uh, hey, if you want to open up?”
“Ugh. I set myself up for this one.”
“Yeah, you did. Tell me about almost dying. Jesus, Sam. How many fucking times are we talking about, here?”
“That you don't know about? I mean, you were there for some of them. Pneumonia, one of the times, and an asthma or attack or two. That reaction in wherever the fuck we were. Bozeman. When you dislocated your shoulder.”
“And we hunted together. I remember.”
“And I told you about the other exciting pneumonia time where Dad creeped on me getting intubated, and I told you about the peanut thing during orientation. So...two that you don't know about.”
He says it like it's fucking nothing, like he's not fucking trying to drop dead everywhere all the damn time. Even for a hunter, Sam's spending a lot of damn time on death's door, and really, what the fuck logic is it that decided Sam should be the one to be teetering on the edge of his life all the time, who the fuck's idea was that (who the fuck decided it was a good idea to give this much of a shit about a sick kid, oh, right, there was no fucking decision, there was Sam ; in the beginning, there was Sam ) and Dean says, “Maybe the Colt can kill asthma.”
“It's like being on a different plane from you sometimes.”
“Tell me the two.”
Sam plays with the mouthpiece. “Early sophomore year, I was living with these guys, same guys from freshman year, most of them, and they weren't careful and cross-contaminated the shit out of my food and I had a bad reaction. I was in the hospital for a while and was in no fucking shape to get in touch with anyone. By the time I was I knew I was going to be fine and I just wanted the whole fucking thing over with.”
“Jesus.”
“I checked into a motel for a few days because I didn't want to go back home and deal with those guys. I couldn't deal with the fact that I'd known them for a year and they still didn't give a shit if I was safe, or...that I'd known them for that long and hadn't been able to fucking explain to them what I need, that's what really freaked me out. Making friends is hard, you know? We never really had to do it.”
“Yeah.”
Sam shrugs. “I just felt really freakish and alone and shitty and wanted to wallow, I don't know.”
“I just...it's not that fucking hard not to eat peanuts. I fucking hate people sometimes.”
Sam gives him a small smile.
“No, but seriously,” Dean says. “I haven't had them since you were a year old and swelled up like a sprained fucking ankle when I ate a candy bar next to you.”
“So for all you know they could be awesome. Really hard to give up. Like crack. You just don't remember the sweating and shaking and peanut cravings.”
“Dad gave them up when he was, what, twenty-nine? I don't remember him going through withdrawal or whatever.” He stops and watches Sam cough for a while. He can see the marks around his neck where the vampire had him. Son of a fucking bitch. Can't they just go after Sam's legs or something? His arms? Things are always just throwing Dean against walls and leaving him there, how about that for Sam instead of grabbing him by the throat for a five minutes first? “How you holding up?”
“Been better.”
“Need anything?”
“No, I've got it.”
“How come you don't get all twisted up when I nag you?”
“If I told you, it would ruin it.”
“What?”
Sam shrugs.
“Whatever. Tell me about the second time you almost died.”
Sam's face changes immediately, and he's like seventeen years old, hiding behind his bangs, chewing on his lip.
“Jesus. That bad?”
Sam shakes his head, then says, quietly, “If I told you, it would ruin it.”
“What?”
“Go help Dad. I'll be in in a minute.” He tilts his head up and looks up at the ceiling, then huffs out a laugh and pushes his hair back. “Christ. Sometimes it hits me so fucking hard.”
He has this special voice that's just for Jess.
“You okay?” Dean says.
“It's not like I wasn't already thinking about her. Like I'm not always.” He rubs his eyebrows. “I want to talk about her. I like talking about her.” He swallows and gestures towards his chest. “Asthma begs to differ.”
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Don't apologize to my asthma.”
“Be nice to Dad, okay? He tries.”
Sam shrugs.
“You confuse him,” Dean says. “We...we confuse him.”
Now Sam looks up at him.
“We've had a year without him,” Dean says. “He has some catching up to do. He'll figure it out.” He stands up and messes up Sam's hair on his way to the sink. He refills his glass and hands it to Sammy.
Sam takes a sip and says, “What am I supposed to do?”
“Breathe.”
“That's hard, though.”
“So's giving a shit about you, and you don't see me complaining.”
Sam laughs. “Wow, that's bullshit.”
“Yeah.” (Yeah, it is.)
**
They've been researching together for an hour before Sam starts to get really bad. He's already turned his chair around so he's straddling it with his forearms resting on the back, which is like a neon sign that says SAM IS HAVING TROUBLE BREATHING but now he's on his third neb treatment and zoning out every few minutes to hold his head in one hand and rub his chest with the other.
Dean rubs Sam's back without really thinking about it. They do that a lot now, more than they used to, because Sam told him that Jess did and that they found out it helps. Dean always thought it mostly just helped him, let him feel that Sam was warm and breathing and calm.
But Sam relaxes more and more so Dean keeps going. He reads John more weather patterns and doesn't fucking fuss over Sam because he's doing everything he can.
John looks at Sam and says, “Should you maybe go to bed, son?”
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. His eyelids are half-shut. “If sleep didn't require breathing, I'd be all over that.”
“It's okay.” Dean scratches at the back of Sam's head. “Just keep going.”
Sam coughs into his elbow.
John looks at Dean. “Does he need a hospital?”
Dean sighs. “He's sitting right next to me, Dad, ask him.”
Sam says, “Nosir,” and readjusts his arms on the back of his chair before he drops his face into them.
“He'll tell us if he does,” Dean says. “Or he'll pass the fuck out and that'll be a pretty good clue.”
Sam kicks him.
Sam doesn't look like he's getting any worse, but it's wearing him out, definitely. He's slumping all over the place and forgetting where he's going in the middle of sentences and starting to get handsy, like he always does when he doesn't feel well, except he's not letting himself do it. He's sitting there twisting his fingers and leaning on the table instead of on Dean.
( It's not a big deal Sam's always said, and for the first time ever Dean sees what he means.)
Because for the first time ever, Sam's leaning away, and Sam's always been the one who would initiate these touches like they were nothing, like he didn't even notice, and that made Dean nervous as all fucking hell, because if Sam could fall into that then Sam was dangerous, Sam is just fucking dangerous, but now Sam is anxious and Dean has to make him feel better. That's Dean's job. And he's anxious about this fucking stupid thing and he's anxious about it because John is here and fuck if Dean is going to let that happen, because he's planning for the two of them to be back with John for a nice long time, thanks, and fuck if John's going to be splitting them up like he did when they were teenagers and he thought Sam was too old to crawl into Dean's bed during an asthma attack. It's been a year. A year of he and Sam just fucking alone together, so John's not going to have Sam fretting that he's making things hard for Dean by leaning against Dean's fucking shoulder, okay? It's been a year with no one watching them and clearly neither of them is fucking dead or broken or whateverthefuck so clearly they're doing something the fuck right. Sam can take care of himself. Dean can take care of himself. And then together they can take care of this thing between them and they don't need any fucking help, okay? They've got this under control. It's been a fucking year. John's not going to come in and make Dean's asthmatic kid worry about something stupid, okay?
John leaves to get another drink and Dean says, “Jesus, Sammy, stop being a bitch,” and tucks him under his arm, puts his hand on the back of Sam's head. Sam slumps into him immediately. He's sounding pretty shitty, all stuffed up. Dean takes his hand off of Sam's head and feels his way down Sam's back. “Here feels tight,” he says, and when Sam nods, he presses the heel of his hand in, gently, and Sam coughs a few times and gets some more air in.
“I don't want this to be hard for you,” Sam says. “It took me fucking ages to condition you back into this.”
The touching thing.
“I know.”
“In the long run I'm going to fucking need this, and I don't want that screwed up because Dad makes you skittish.” It's unnerving how plainspoken Sam is about this shit, but Dean guesses that's kind of the crux of the whole fucking issue.
“Stop worrying,” Dean says. “You can worry again once you can breathe.”
Sam coughs and lowers his forehead down to the table. He always sits in these ways it's really hard to breathe in because he is moronic.
“You're really fucking tense,” Dean says. “You want to get out of here?”
“Like what, hospital?”
“That's...what I was implying, yeah.”
Sam shakes his head. “It's not getting worse.”
“All right. Let me know,” and seriously, how the fuck does Dean get away with doing this? He reads from the same scripts as John, he just does it with an arm around Sam's shoulders and...
and he talks about other fucking things with him.
He talks about Stanford and Jess and what Sam wants for breakfast and what's going on in Sam's book (he doesn't listen, but at least he asks) and if it's Sam's turn to drive and if he's calling first shower or what's on TV. He talks about Sam's nightmares and why his aim's been keeling to the side and whether that cut on Dean's leg needs stitches and when they have to get up in the morning. He talks about wendigos and werewolves and shapeshifters. He talks about what a little health-freak bitch Sammy is and asks him if just once he could remember either his EpiPen or the lighter, Dean will take just fucking one of them, but seriously, Sam, one or the other, and whether that shape ahead on the road is anything to worry about ( it's not, Dean, don't worry, keep going ) and he talks about the assholes who stuck Sam in a cage that left him freaked out in ways he hasn't been able to shake. He talks about the visions. He talks about how ugly Sam's shirt is and whether that blood on it is his or Dean's or the bad guy's and why the fuck Sam always wins the alphabet game and how come he never gets carsick from all that reading and what do you mean his eyesight's better than Dean's, bitch, he will fight you, and then they talk about what's up, what's bugging Sam's asthma and what can Dean do, and it's just normal.
John doesn't let him feel normal. And Dean will tell Sam every day of the week that he's a little freak bitch, but the problem isn't that Sam wants to feel normal compared to everyone else, it's that he wants to feel normal compared to Sam. He needs to not feel like every time he gets wheezy is some weird deviation from his otherwise healthy existence, because have you met the kid, trying to drop dead all the time is kind of a major aspect of his personality, and that needs to just be fucking incorporating, okay? Let's stop chopping Sam into bits.
(Dean wasn't apologizing to the asthma. Dean was apologizing to Sammy.)
“You doing okay over there?” Sam says.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don't apologize, you're fine. Do that pressing in thing again? Yeah.” He coughs. “There. Perfect.”
“I'm not getting skittish,” Dean says, softly.
“Okay.”
“We're kind of normal now.”
Sam grabs Dean's hand and twists it all around until it hurts, then puts it on his back again. “More.”
**
Sam falls asleep with his head on Dean's shoulder and the nebulizer dangling out of his mouth, and he looks so pathetic and goofy and Dean can't really believe his life sometimes that it includes this kid.
Dean rubs up and down Sam's back.
John clears his throat, and maybe Dean was waiting for this. Maybe Dean wanted John to say something.
That's a strange thought.
“Wouldn't he be more comfortable in bed?” John says.
“No, he'd be cold. He's fine here.”
“We still have work to do.”
“I can work like this. He's fine here.”
“Dean.”
Dean looks up and says, for the third time, “He's fine here.”
Sam shifts a little and presses his face against Dean's arm. He's kind of awake now, and that's okay with Dean.
Dean lowers his voice and says, “Remember when he used to get migraines? When he was, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen?”
“Of course.”
“They started happening again at Stanford. A lot. Last month he had his last one since he got out. Really, really horrible one. I had to stay completely fucking still because he couldn't stand the sound of my footsteps, and it was so dark he could barely find the toilet to throw himself at when he was puking every ten minutes. And he had that skin sensitivity thing so bad that he was sweating like a son of a bitch but I couldn't turn the air conditioning on because he couldn't take feeling the air on his skin. So...so he's wheezing, miserable, coughing shit up, and I can't touch him. And it was the first time in four fucking years that something's kept me from touching him.”
John keeps watching him.
“And it was hell,” Dean says.
John says, “Dean...
He feels Sam breathe out, relax.
“Don't be a migraine,” Dean tells John. “We're adults. He's fine here.”
John says, “I worry about what it does to you two. As hunters. Being that attached to someone else...you've seen them use it against me. If the evil bastards out there find out how close you two are.”
“Sorry, sir, but that's bullshit. You're not worried about the bad guys. You're worried that I'm fucking Sam.”
Whoa.
Whoa.
Wow.
Sam sits up and rubs his temple and looks confused but not nearly fucking panicked enough,
John doesn't say anything and Sam doesn't say anything and Dean sure as fuck didn't say anything and just fucking wow how the hell did this conversation happen, and did it really have to happen when Sam's half asleep and can't fucking breathe, because he really always thought it would be Sam and John having this fight, he really thought that Sam was going to have to handle this one.
But Sam just looks so tired.
John says, “Dean. Watch your mouth.”
Dean puts one hand on each of Sam's shoulders. “Look. I'm fucking touching him, all right? I have my hands all the fuck over him and the world isn't ending and nobody's getting killed and Sam's not dying, so I think we're doing fucking okay.”
“Dean.”
“We're adults,” Dean says. “Back off.”
“Does Sam agree with you?”
Sam rubs his forehead. “What?”
John says, “Is Sam comfortable with this?”
Sam yawns. “I've always been the cuddly one.”
“Dean's older,” John says. “And you listen to him a hell of a lot more than I've ever seen you listen to anyone. If he tried-”
“Whoa.” Sam stands up. “Whoa, whoa, okay. C'mon, Dean. We gotta go.”
Dean barely hears him because Dean barely fucking hears anything, he hears something in his head like water and his heartbeat and Sam's breathing because he always hears Sam's breathing and he hears Sam getting up and he hears Sam about to walk out the door Jesus Christ and then Sam's hand is on his arm. Sam is touching him.
“Come on,” Sam says. “Time to go.”
“Where?”
“ER. C'mon.” Sam pulls him up by the scruff of his neck. “Time to go.”
Dean follows like a zombie because Sam said ER and that means Dean listens, and he thinks Sam says something to John on the way out the door but fuck if he knows. He sinks down into the driver's seat and stares at the keys for a while. Sam slides in next to him, waits.
“Want me to drive?” Sam says.
Dean starts the car. “No.”
“We're not going to the ER. By the way.”
“Yeah. I figured. Where are we going?”
“Wherever you want.” Sam yawns and leans his head against the window.
So Dean just drives, past the shops and lights and out to the highway. Sam's sounding okay over there. He feels something in his shoulders loosen, and a few seconds later, Sam says, “There we go. Hey, psycho.”
“Hey.”
“I'm only going to say this once, all right? Because, you know, I'm very ill, and who knows how long I have for this world, I can't go repeating myself all the time.”
“What did I do to deserve this bullshit?”
“Someday we'll find out.” Sam turns towards him. “Look. You're probably the only person in the world who gets what a stubborn hardass son of a bitch I can be when I want to. Outside of bad guys slamming me into walls, people don't make me do shit that I don't want to do. It doesn't work. I had an adviser try to bully me out of taking a class because he said it was too hard for me. You tried to stop me from going to Stanford. Dad tried to stop me from talking to you while I was at Stanford. That doesn't fucking work on me. I shut that crap down.”
“I know that.”
“All right. So if I didn't like you nagging me about the asthma, you wouldn't be fucking doing it. It wouldn't happen. So just...okay?”
“Okay.”
“And Dad can go fuck himself about touching, because...well.”
“Sam. If I ever...make you uncomfortable.”
“You don't. And...hey. Backatcha, okay? Hey. Calm down. I know you hate talking about this. We don't have to. There's nothing that needs talking about.”
“I can't believe I said that to Dad.”
Sam laughs. “Me neither, man. That was insane.”
“Jesus.”
“Who taught you to be so brave, huh?”
Dean shrugs a shoulder and says, “That'd be you, bitch.”
**
They're parked God knows where, sitting on the hood of the car, drinking beers from the trunk, looking up at the stars, when Sam says, “It was also sophomore year, but later. A few weeks before we did spring break together. Jess and I had been together for four months. Had this really hideous asthma attack at her place. Don't know why. Just one of those things. Couldn't explain to her how bad it was. Embarrassing and horrible.” He takes a swig from his bottle.
“What happened?”
“She was calm and amazing and took me to the hospital. I healed up pretty quickly, was out of there the next day, but it just got so bad so fast. She told me later...confessed, really, that she'd almost left. That she almost walked out of the room because she thought she was going to lose it and didn't want to do it in front of me. She said she almost couldn't handle it, but I couldn't tell at the time. She was fantastic. It was like we'd been together forever, and we weren't even all that serious yet. But she was just there. ”
He wheezes a little, tilts his head back, and shit, Sam looks permanent and important and all these other fucking things when he's out here under all these stars, when Dean can really see him and hear every fucking bit of him-the breathing, his swallowing, the slush of his beer bottle, his coat shuffling up on his shoulders.
“She loved you,” Dean says.
“I know. And just...” He taps the bottom of his bottle against the roof of the car. “Just...just, fuck, you know? I have...I mean, Jesus, I have so many people, when just...God, I must be hard to love.”
Dean lies back against the windshield and looks up. It's like there's nothing but him and Sam and the whole world.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Takes everything in me.”
Sam laughs and Dean watches his back. “I think you do love the way I do breathing,” Sam says.
“Badly? Sporadically?”
“Ha. No. Labored. Intentionally. Dramatically...incredibly.”
“Yeah, well, what about you?”
“I do loving you how you do breathing.” He shrugs. “It's my constant, Dean.”
Dean looks at Sam, permanentimportantSam, and Sam nods and says, “I know,” and Dean doesn't have to say anything. He doesn't want to and Sam knows that. Sam knows him.
Sam, the unbearable Samness of Sam, is Dean's constant. Not any fucking feelings, just this kid.
Dean says, “You're fucking wrong, though. Not about you being...but the other thing.”
“What?”
“I guess...it's not that hard. Not as hard as you breathing.”
“Just because it's hard doesn't mean I have a choice to stop,” Sam says. Filling in all the fucking blanks. “Or that I want to. Just means it requires concentration. I'm still breathing all the time. It's hard to watch sometimes, right?”
Dean swallows and nods. “I'm just scared of it, Sam.”
“I know.” Sam lies back next to him. “I'm here.”
“You're supposed to be the worrier,” Dean says.
Sam looks down at Dean's head on his shoulder. “I'm also supposed to be the cuddly one.”
“Shut up, I'm drunk.”
“I can't worry about this.” Sam says. He moves Dean's hand to his chest. “It's all the time. How can you worry about something that isn't going anywhere?”
Dean rubs Sam's chest and feels his rumbly lungs and his steady, constant heart.
Summary: Immediately post 1.20. John and Sam and Dean each say things the others were definitely not expecting.
Warnings/Spoilers: Through season 1, I guess, though I talk about pretty much nothing at all plot-related because that's how I roll. Usual language warning.
Wordcount: 6,147
Author's Note: Sammy-verse, asthma, boys who get along, you know the drill. It's a silly title for a silly fic. Nothing happens in this one and I kind of like it that way.
--
Evil bitches have this habit of choking Sam. It would be a running joke at this point if Sam's lungs had this habit of breathing, but seeing as they like to shirk off that task whenever the fuck possible, somehow this choking thing ever gets around to being funny, imagine fucking that.
Sam's always shitty immediately after being choked, but who the fuck isn't, and then he seems fine for a while and then gets slammed a few hours later. He's in that exciting intermediate stage right now but he knows what the hell's coming and so does Dean, but John hasn't seen Sam in a year and a half and hasn't seen his asthma really bad in even longer, so who the hell knows how aware he is of what's going on. And Sam looks like he's aiming to pretend he's going to be fine, and isn't that just cute. (No.)
The truth is Sam might just be a little out of it, because he got knocked around a lot by vampires (Dean's known about them for all of two days and he hates the shit out of them) and his breathing's been rough all day what with yelling at Dad and running around in dusty barns and burning herbal shit all the fuck over himself, so he's off his game. It's all right. Team Winchester and all that.
Although Sam and John had a fucking hour and a half alone today while Dean went and siphoned out some dead man's blood, and Dean came back to a Sam no less wheezy than when he left so nice job taking care of the kid there, John. (And nice job to you too, Sammy, come on, you're twenty-three, get your shit together.)
“You all right?” Dean says to him, quietly. They're in the kitchenette while John pores over research in the living room and Sam pours them all another drink.
“Mmm.”
“Oh, well, now I'm convinced.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“You're so fucking angsty today,” Dean says. “I have to be all careful you're not tensing your lung muscles or whatever the fuck.”
“You need x-ray vision.”
“Yeah.”
“I'm fine. I feel like total fucking crap, but I'm fine,” and it sounds stupid but this is actually kind of reasonable and Dean's proud of his damn kid for saying it and for knowing the difference between asthma sucks and asthma is trying to kill me.
“Did you take everything?”
“Like triple doses of everything.”
So that's why he's out of it. Benadryl still puts the kid on his ass.
“Just let me know, okay?”
Sam nods, caps the bottle. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, you're very lucky to have such an overbearing big brother,” Dean says, because seriously, if he were Sam he would want to punch Dean in his fucking face. (He's twenty-three years old. Let him get his shit together.)
Sam says, “Overbearing and pessimistic. And short.”
“Could still kick your wheezy ass.”
Sam grins and coughs into his elbow, then makes a face because yeah, shit, that was ugly. Dean is still amazed sometimes at the sounds that kid makes come out of his chest.
“Maybe quadruple doses,” Dean suggests, and Sam nods and heads to the bathroom.
Dean brings the glasses back out to John, who looks up and gives him a small smile. “Weren't there two of you a minute ago?” John says.
“What? No.”
John rolls his eyes, chuckles.
“He's medicating.” Dean pulls his chair out. “Vamp choked him.”
John breathes out. “Right. Fuck.”
“Don't push, okay? He knows what to do. They've been choking the shit out of him all year.”
“How's he been?”
Dean chews on the inside of his cheek and doesn't fucking want to waste this, because there have been twelve hundred fucking times since he's been hunting with Sam again that he's wanted to call John and tell him that he's just not sure what the fuck to do with Sam sometimes. He wants to know what John did that time when Sam was eight and breathed in all that ash because Dean doesn't remember, or how high how a fever has to be before you bring him to the ER instead of waiting for a clinic to open. He wants to know how the fuck John convinced himself that Sam wasn't too sick to do this.
But now he doesn't know what the hell to say, because they spent the better part of the weekend trying to convince John to let them hunt with him, and Sam will come out of the bathroom and freak the fuck out if he finds out Dean said anything to imply Sam's not up for this fight, and yeah, Dean knows that he can't really kick that kid's ass, for the record. He's not delusional.
And now that he's really faced with the chance, his stupid brain does not want to let John the fuck in. He wants to hold onto the dynamic he and Sam have figured out this year and lock it away and not let him fucking touch it because John will make things complicated, John will pull the wrong threads and think the wrong things are important and he will tangle it all up, and there is only so much about Sam that Dean's willing to talk about and the asthma isn't usually high on that list, because the asthma is so inherently Sam's that it feels wrong to talk about it when he isn't here.
John should get that.
But Dean swallows and says, “He knows what he can handle and what he can't, and he doesn't fuck around. But stuff comes up we're not expecting and he can get really bad really quick. He saw some specialist at Stanford, I dunno. He's careful. But, you know. It's Sam. He's sick as fuck.”
John sighs. “Hoped he'd outgrown it some.”
“Nah, getting worse.”
“Rumors of my imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated,” Sam says, smacking Dean on the back of the head. He's lugging his nebulizer over to the wall socket. “I'm okay,” he tells John. “I mean, in general. And right now, actually.”
John's looking at him all critically, and Sam raises his eyebrows and breathes all combative, and Jesus, no one can get to Sam like John can. Dean's seen it a hundred times. John says something to Sam that's no fucking different from stuff that Dean says to him every day, and Sam smiles at Dean when he says it and throws a fucking hissy fit when John does.
“He's just worried, Sammy,” Dean says.
John says, “Have you been taking everything when you're supposed to?” and see, prime example right here, because Dean asked him a minute ago what he'd taken and it was fine, but now Sam's all pissed off, except it is sort of different because Dean was asking what Sam's taken right now, and John wants to know if he's been taking his pills every night like a good boy and Jesus, does Sam look like he has a fucking death wish? (Don't answer that.)
But Sam grumbles out, “Yessir,” and fills the nebulizer cup.
“Your brother didn't exactly get specific on me,” John says. “How's this year been?”
“Stupendous. Nothing like a dead girlfriend to liven up my life.”
Dean says, “Sam. Don't be a dick.”
“Sorry,” Sam says. To Dean.
John says, “I meant in terms of breathing.”
“Yeah, I know what you meant.” Sam coughs and clears his throat. “I don't know. Fine? Mediocre? Shitty? Same as always? I'm listening synonyms here, stop me if you hear one you like.”
“Sam,” John says.
“What the fuck do you want me to say, Dad? No, I didn't magically heal up while I was at Stanford, and no, I didn't become rogue vagabond sick kid flushing his meds down the toilet. I work hard and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm the same fucking sick kid I always was, just a few years older.”
“You're angry now,” John says. “I've never seen you like this. That healthy for you?”
Dean looks at Sam.
It's kind of like when Bobby or Caleb or someone Dean hadn't seen in a while would tell him he'd gotten taller and laugh at him for not noticing. How the fuck was Dean supposed to know? He was living it day by day. (And of course he was getting taller, he was growing up, and of course Sam is getting angrier. Sam is growing up.)
Sam says, “Yeah, well, I've had that kind of year. But I can take care of myself almost all the time and Jess and Dean took care of me when I couldn't, and Dean's been fucking amazing. So we're fine.” There's a dig in there.
Dean's kind of too distracted to hear it.
John says, “Obviously Dean cares about you.”
“Uh, no shit?”
“And I do too. But if you can't look after yourself-”
“Holy shit, did you not just hear a damn thing I said?”
Dean says, “Dad. He takes care of himself.”
John says, “Dean took a hell of a lot of weekends off to come take care of-”
“Dean took a hell of a lot of weekends off to visit me, and yeah, sometimes I wasn't breathing so well those weekends, so fucking what? It's a lot better than just sending a card when I have pneumonia. Or standing across a fucking hallway watching me get intubated. Dean didn't come down for every little thing, okay? I almost fucking died a few times and didn't call him. Dean, don't freak out, I'll tell you all of it later, I promise.” He doesn't look away from John.
“You almost died?”
“Later.” Now Sam looks at him. “I promise.”
Yeah, no. “It's been a fucking year and you're bringing this up now?”
Sam looks from Dean to John and sinks his head into his hands. “I can take care of myself,” he says. He's all quiet and wheezy. “I know what I need. I know when I need help. Why won't you guys listen to me?”
Maybe because Dean is constantly telling the kid he's wheezing and Sam's all fucking surprised, or that he has to tell him to sit down and take a break when he doesn't fucking want to, or maybe because he's pulling the kid out of fires every five minutes and that'll wear on a guy or maybe it's, hmm, maybe it's the fact that he almost fucking died a few times at Stanford and didn't think to tell him, what the fuck, Sammy.
John starts to say something but Sam shakes his head and says, “Sorry. Sorry. I need a timeout.” He unplugs the nebulizer and drags it over to the kitchenette, and he plugs it in there and sits at the table alone, breathing from the mouthpiece and looking miserable and ugh, Sam.
“I said don't push,” Dean says to John.
“I was...”
“Pushing.”
John raises an eyebrow slowly because Dean's lost his manners, but yeah, well, sue him, it's been a year, and Sam's not the only one of John's sons who nearly died a few times while he was gone, but there's one person and one person only who seems to remember that (Dean: If you ask me one more time how my fucking heart is I'm going to throw you out the car window, Jesus, we're in a fucking desert, what are you wheezing at? Sam: If I rolled my eyes any harder they'd fall out) and it sure as fuck isn't John.
Dean gets up. Break time.
“Hey, psycho.” Dean claps Sam on the back and gets himself a glass of water.
Sam growls and smiles at him.
“Being quite the crotchety little bitch in there,” Dean says. He plays with the hem of Sam's sleeve. “Who the fuck taught you to act like that, huh?”
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. “That would be you, jerk.”
“Hey.”
Sam watches Dean messing with his sleeve.
“He really gets under your skin,” Dean says. “And I really don't get it.”
“Honestly? Me neither. He just talks and I want to hit him.”
“Ohhh, so it's like how I feel about you.”
Sam drops his chin to the table. “Trying to open up to you, here.”
“Uh, hey, if you want to open up?”
“Ugh. I set myself up for this one.”
“Yeah, you did. Tell me about almost dying. Jesus, Sam. How many fucking times are we talking about, here?”
“That you don't know about? I mean, you were there for some of them. Pneumonia, one of the times, and an asthma or attack or two. That reaction in wherever the fuck we were. Bozeman. When you dislocated your shoulder.”
“And we hunted together. I remember.”
“And I told you about the other exciting pneumonia time where Dad creeped on me getting intubated, and I told you about the peanut thing during orientation. So...two that you don't know about.”
He says it like it's fucking nothing, like he's not fucking trying to drop dead everywhere all the damn time. Even for a hunter, Sam's spending a lot of damn time on death's door, and really, what the fuck logic is it that decided Sam should be the one to be teetering on the edge of his life all the time, who the fuck's idea was that (who the fuck decided it was a good idea to give this much of a shit about a sick kid, oh, right, there was no fucking decision, there was Sam ; in the beginning, there was Sam ) and Dean says, “Maybe the Colt can kill asthma.”
“It's like being on a different plane from you sometimes.”
“Tell me the two.”
Sam plays with the mouthpiece. “Early sophomore year, I was living with these guys, same guys from freshman year, most of them, and they weren't careful and cross-contaminated the shit out of my food and I had a bad reaction. I was in the hospital for a while and was in no fucking shape to get in touch with anyone. By the time I was I knew I was going to be fine and I just wanted the whole fucking thing over with.”
“Jesus.”
“I checked into a motel for a few days because I didn't want to go back home and deal with those guys. I couldn't deal with the fact that I'd known them for a year and they still didn't give a shit if I was safe, or...that I'd known them for that long and hadn't been able to fucking explain to them what I need, that's what really freaked me out. Making friends is hard, you know? We never really had to do it.”
“Yeah.”
Sam shrugs. “I just felt really freakish and alone and shitty and wanted to wallow, I don't know.”
“I just...it's not that fucking hard not to eat peanuts. I fucking hate people sometimes.”
Sam gives him a small smile.
“No, but seriously,” Dean says. “I haven't had them since you were a year old and swelled up like a sprained fucking ankle when I ate a candy bar next to you.”
“So for all you know they could be awesome. Really hard to give up. Like crack. You just don't remember the sweating and shaking and peanut cravings.”
“Dad gave them up when he was, what, twenty-nine? I don't remember him going through withdrawal or whatever.” He stops and watches Sam cough for a while. He can see the marks around his neck where the vampire had him. Son of a fucking bitch. Can't they just go after Sam's legs or something? His arms? Things are always just throwing Dean against walls and leaving him there, how about that for Sam instead of grabbing him by the throat for a five minutes first? “How you holding up?”
“Been better.”
“Need anything?”
“No, I've got it.”
“How come you don't get all twisted up when I nag you?”
“If I told you, it would ruin it.”
“What?”
Sam shrugs.
“Whatever. Tell me about the second time you almost died.”
Sam's face changes immediately, and he's like seventeen years old, hiding behind his bangs, chewing on his lip.
“Jesus. That bad?”
Sam shakes his head, then says, quietly, “If I told you, it would ruin it.”
“What?”
“Go help Dad. I'll be in in a minute.” He tilts his head up and looks up at the ceiling, then huffs out a laugh and pushes his hair back. “Christ. Sometimes it hits me so fucking hard.”
He has this special voice that's just for Jess.
“You okay?” Dean says.
“It's not like I wasn't already thinking about her. Like I'm not always.” He rubs his eyebrows. “I want to talk about her. I like talking about her.” He swallows and gestures towards his chest. “Asthma begs to differ.”
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Don't apologize to my asthma.”
“Be nice to Dad, okay? He tries.”
Sam shrugs.
“You confuse him,” Dean says. “We...we confuse him.”
Now Sam looks up at him.
“We've had a year without him,” Dean says. “He has some catching up to do. He'll figure it out.” He stands up and messes up Sam's hair on his way to the sink. He refills his glass and hands it to Sammy.
Sam takes a sip and says, “What am I supposed to do?”
“Breathe.”
“That's hard, though.”
“So's giving a shit about you, and you don't see me complaining.”
Sam laughs. “Wow, that's bullshit.”
“Yeah.” (Yeah, it is.)
**
They've been researching together for an hour before Sam starts to get really bad. He's already turned his chair around so he's straddling it with his forearms resting on the back, which is like a neon sign that says SAM IS HAVING TROUBLE BREATHING but now he's on his third neb treatment and zoning out every few minutes to hold his head in one hand and rub his chest with the other.
Dean rubs Sam's back without really thinking about it. They do that a lot now, more than they used to, because Sam told him that Jess did and that they found out it helps. Dean always thought it mostly just helped him, let him feel that Sam was warm and breathing and calm.
But Sam relaxes more and more so Dean keeps going. He reads John more weather patterns and doesn't fucking fuss over Sam because he's doing everything he can.
John looks at Sam and says, “Should you maybe go to bed, son?”
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. His eyelids are half-shut. “If sleep didn't require breathing, I'd be all over that.”
“It's okay.” Dean scratches at the back of Sam's head. “Just keep going.”
Sam coughs into his elbow.
John looks at Dean. “Does he need a hospital?”
Dean sighs. “He's sitting right next to me, Dad, ask him.”
Sam says, “Nosir,” and readjusts his arms on the back of his chair before he drops his face into them.
“He'll tell us if he does,” Dean says. “Or he'll pass the fuck out and that'll be a pretty good clue.”
Sam kicks him.
Sam doesn't look like he's getting any worse, but it's wearing him out, definitely. He's slumping all over the place and forgetting where he's going in the middle of sentences and starting to get handsy, like he always does when he doesn't feel well, except he's not letting himself do it. He's sitting there twisting his fingers and leaning on the table instead of on Dean.
( It's not a big deal Sam's always said, and for the first time ever Dean sees what he means.)
Because for the first time ever, Sam's leaning away, and Sam's always been the one who would initiate these touches like they were nothing, like he didn't even notice, and that made Dean nervous as all fucking hell, because if Sam could fall into that then Sam was dangerous, Sam is just fucking dangerous, but now Sam is anxious and Dean has to make him feel better. That's Dean's job. And he's anxious about this fucking stupid thing and he's anxious about it because John is here and fuck if Dean is going to let that happen, because he's planning for the two of them to be back with John for a nice long time, thanks, and fuck if John's going to be splitting them up like he did when they were teenagers and he thought Sam was too old to crawl into Dean's bed during an asthma attack. It's been a year. A year of he and Sam just fucking alone together, so John's not going to have Sam fretting that he's making things hard for Dean by leaning against Dean's fucking shoulder, okay? It's been a year with no one watching them and clearly neither of them is fucking dead or broken or whateverthefuck so clearly they're doing something the fuck right. Sam can take care of himself. Dean can take care of himself. And then together they can take care of this thing between them and they don't need any fucking help, okay? They've got this under control. It's been a fucking year. John's not going to come in and make Dean's asthmatic kid worry about something stupid, okay?
John leaves to get another drink and Dean says, “Jesus, Sammy, stop being a bitch,” and tucks him under his arm, puts his hand on the back of Sam's head. Sam slumps into him immediately. He's sounding pretty shitty, all stuffed up. Dean takes his hand off of Sam's head and feels his way down Sam's back. “Here feels tight,” he says, and when Sam nods, he presses the heel of his hand in, gently, and Sam coughs a few times and gets some more air in.
“I don't want this to be hard for you,” Sam says. “It took me fucking ages to condition you back into this.”
The touching thing.
“I know.”
“In the long run I'm going to fucking need this, and I don't want that screwed up because Dad makes you skittish.” It's unnerving how plainspoken Sam is about this shit, but Dean guesses that's kind of the crux of the whole fucking issue.
“Stop worrying,” Dean says. “You can worry again once you can breathe.”
Sam coughs and lowers his forehead down to the table. He always sits in these ways it's really hard to breathe in because he is moronic.
“You're really fucking tense,” Dean says. “You want to get out of here?”
“Like what, hospital?”
“That's...what I was implying, yeah.”
Sam shakes his head. “It's not getting worse.”
“All right. Let me know,” and seriously, how the fuck does Dean get away with doing this? He reads from the same scripts as John, he just does it with an arm around Sam's shoulders and...
and he talks about other fucking things with him.
He talks about Stanford and Jess and what Sam wants for breakfast and what's going on in Sam's book (he doesn't listen, but at least he asks) and if it's Sam's turn to drive and if he's calling first shower or what's on TV. He talks about Sam's nightmares and why his aim's been keeling to the side and whether that cut on Dean's leg needs stitches and when they have to get up in the morning. He talks about wendigos and werewolves and shapeshifters. He talks about what a little health-freak bitch Sammy is and asks him if just once he could remember either his EpiPen or the lighter, Dean will take just fucking one of them, but seriously, Sam, one or the other, and whether that shape ahead on the road is anything to worry about ( it's not, Dean, don't worry, keep going ) and he talks about the assholes who stuck Sam in a cage that left him freaked out in ways he hasn't been able to shake. He talks about the visions. He talks about how ugly Sam's shirt is and whether that blood on it is his or Dean's or the bad guy's and why the fuck Sam always wins the alphabet game and how come he never gets carsick from all that reading and what do you mean his eyesight's better than Dean's, bitch, he will fight you, and then they talk about what's up, what's bugging Sam's asthma and what can Dean do, and it's just normal.
John doesn't let him feel normal. And Dean will tell Sam every day of the week that he's a little freak bitch, but the problem isn't that Sam wants to feel normal compared to everyone else, it's that he wants to feel normal compared to Sam. He needs to not feel like every time he gets wheezy is some weird deviation from his otherwise healthy existence, because have you met the kid, trying to drop dead all the time is kind of a major aspect of his personality, and that needs to just be fucking incorporating, okay? Let's stop chopping Sam into bits.
(Dean wasn't apologizing to the asthma. Dean was apologizing to Sammy.)
“You doing okay over there?” Sam says.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don't apologize, you're fine. Do that pressing in thing again? Yeah.” He coughs. “There. Perfect.”
“I'm not getting skittish,” Dean says, softly.
“Okay.”
“We're kind of normal now.”
Sam grabs Dean's hand and twists it all around until it hurts, then puts it on his back again. “More.”
**
Sam falls asleep with his head on Dean's shoulder and the nebulizer dangling out of his mouth, and he looks so pathetic and goofy and Dean can't really believe his life sometimes that it includes this kid.
Dean rubs up and down Sam's back.
John clears his throat, and maybe Dean was waiting for this. Maybe Dean wanted John to say something.
That's a strange thought.
“Wouldn't he be more comfortable in bed?” John says.
“No, he'd be cold. He's fine here.”
“We still have work to do.”
“I can work like this. He's fine here.”
“Dean.”
Dean looks up and says, for the third time, “He's fine here.”
Sam shifts a little and presses his face against Dean's arm. He's kind of awake now, and that's okay with Dean.
Dean lowers his voice and says, “Remember when he used to get migraines? When he was, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen?”
“Of course.”
“They started happening again at Stanford. A lot. Last month he had his last one since he got out. Really, really horrible one. I had to stay completely fucking still because he couldn't stand the sound of my footsteps, and it was so dark he could barely find the toilet to throw himself at when he was puking every ten minutes. And he had that skin sensitivity thing so bad that he was sweating like a son of a bitch but I couldn't turn the air conditioning on because he couldn't take feeling the air on his skin. So...so he's wheezing, miserable, coughing shit up, and I can't touch him. And it was the first time in four fucking years that something's kept me from touching him.”
John keeps watching him.
“And it was hell,” Dean says.
John says, “Dean...
He feels Sam breathe out, relax.
“Don't be a migraine,” Dean tells John. “We're adults. He's fine here.”
John says, “I worry about what it does to you two. As hunters. Being that attached to someone else...you've seen them use it against me. If the evil bastards out there find out how close you two are.”
“Sorry, sir, but that's bullshit. You're not worried about the bad guys. You're worried that I'm fucking Sam.”
Whoa.
Whoa.
Wow.
Sam sits up and rubs his temple and looks confused but not nearly fucking panicked enough,
John doesn't say anything and Sam doesn't say anything and Dean sure as fuck didn't say anything and just fucking wow how the hell did this conversation happen, and did it really have to happen when Sam's half asleep and can't fucking breathe, because he really always thought it would be Sam and John having this fight, he really thought that Sam was going to have to handle this one.
But Sam just looks so tired.
John says, “Dean. Watch your mouth.”
Dean puts one hand on each of Sam's shoulders. “Look. I'm fucking touching him, all right? I have my hands all the fuck over him and the world isn't ending and nobody's getting killed and Sam's not dying, so I think we're doing fucking okay.”
“Dean.”
“We're adults,” Dean says. “Back off.”
“Does Sam agree with you?”
Sam rubs his forehead. “What?”
John says, “Is Sam comfortable with this?”
Sam yawns. “I've always been the cuddly one.”
“Dean's older,” John says. “And you listen to him a hell of a lot more than I've ever seen you listen to anyone. If he tried-”
“Whoa.” Sam stands up. “Whoa, whoa, okay. C'mon, Dean. We gotta go.”
Dean barely hears him because Dean barely fucking hears anything, he hears something in his head like water and his heartbeat and Sam's breathing because he always hears Sam's breathing and he hears Sam getting up and he hears Sam about to walk out the door Jesus Christ and then Sam's hand is on his arm. Sam is touching him.
“Come on,” Sam says. “Time to go.”
“Where?”
“ER. C'mon.” Sam pulls him up by the scruff of his neck. “Time to go.”
Dean follows like a zombie because Sam said ER and that means Dean listens, and he thinks Sam says something to John on the way out the door but fuck if he knows. He sinks down into the driver's seat and stares at the keys for a while. Sam slides in next to him, waits.
“Want me to drive?” Sam says.
Dean starts the car. “No.”
“We're not going to the ER. By the way.”
“Yeah. I figured. Where are we going?”
“Wherever you want.” Sam yawns and leans his head against the window.
So Dean just drives, past the shops and lights and out to the highway. Sam's sounding okay over there. He feels something in his shoulders loosen, and a few seconds later, Sam says, “There we go. Hey, psycho.”
“Hey.”
“I'm only going to say this once, all right? Because, you know, I'm very ill, and who knows how long I have for this world, I can't go repeating myself all the time.”
“What did I do to deserve this bullshit?”
“Someday we'll find out.” Sam turns towards him. “Look. You're probably the only person in the world who gets what a stubborn hardass son of a bitch I can be when I want to. Outside of bad guys slamming me into walls, people don't make me do shit that I don't want to do. It doesn't work. I had an adviser try to bully me out of taking a class because he said it was too hard for me. You tried to stop me from going to Stanford. Dad tried to stop me from talking to you while I was at Stanford. That doesn't fucking work on me. I shut that crap down.”
“I know that.”
“All right. So if I didn't like you nagging me about the asthma, you wouldn't be fucking doing it. It wouldn't happen. So just...okay?”
“Okay.”
“And Dad can go fuck himself about touching, because...well.”
“Sam. If I ever...make you uncomfortable.”
“You don't. And...hey. Backatcha, okay? Hey. Calm down. I know you hate talking about this. We don't have to. There's nothing that needs talking about.”
“I can't believe I said that to Dad.”
Sam laughs. “Me neither, man. That was insane.”
“Jesus.”
“Who taught you to be so brave, huh?”
Dean shrugs a shoulder and says, “That'd be you, bitch.”
**
They're parked God knows where, sitting on the hood of the car, drinking beers from the trunk, looking up at the stars, when Sam says, “It was also sophomore year, but later. A few weeks before we did spring break together. Jess and I had been together for four months. Had this really hideous asthma attack at her place. Don't know why. Just one of those things. Couldn't explain to her how bad it was. Embarrassing and horrible.” He takes a swig from his bottle.
“What happened?”
“She was calm and amazing and took me to the hospital. I healed up pretty quickly, was out of there the next day, but it just got so bad so fast. She told me later...confessed, really, that she'd almost left. That she almost walked out of the room because she thought she was going to lose it and didn't want to do it in front of me. She said she almost couldn't handle it, but I couldn't tell at the time. She was fantastic. It was like we'd been together forever, and we weren't even all that serious yet. But she was just there. ”
He wheezes a little, tilts his head back, and shit, Sam looks permanent and important and all these other fucking things when he's out here under all these stars, when Dean can really see him and hear every fucking bit of him-the breathing, his swallowing, the slush of his beer bottle, his coat shuffling up on his shoulders.
“She loved you,” Dean says.
“I know. And just...” He taps the bottom of his bottle against the roof of the car. “Just...just, fuck, you know? I have...I mean, Jesus, I have so many people, when just...God, I must be hard to love.”
Dean lies back against the windshield and looks up. It's like there's nothing but him and Sam and the whole world.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Takes everything in me.”
Sam laughs and Dean watches his back. “I think you do love the way I do breathing,” Sam says.
“Badly? Sporadically?”
“Ha. No. Labored. Intentionally. Dramatically...incredibly.”
“Yeah, well, what about you?”
“I do loving you how you do breathing.” He shrugs. “It's my constant, Dean.”
Dean looks at Sam, permanentimportantSam, and Sam nods and says, “I know,” and Dean doesn't have to say anything. He doesn't want to and Sam knows that. Sam knows him.
Sam, the unbearable Samness of Sam, is Dean's constant. Not any fucking feelings, just this kid.
Dean says, “You're fucking wrong, though. Not about you being...but the other thing.”
“What?”
“I guess...it's not that hard. Not as hard as you breathing.”
“Just because it's hard doesn't mean I have a choice to stop,” Sam says. Filling in all the fucking blanks. “Or that I want to. Just means it requires concentration. I'm still breathing all the time. It's hard to watch sometimes, right?”
Dean swallows and nods. “I'm just scared of it, Sam.”
“I know.” Sam lies back next to him. “I'm here.”
“You're supposed to be the worrier,” Dean says.
Sam looks down at Dean's head on his shoulder. “I'm also supposed to be the cuddly one.”
“Shut up, I'm drunk.”
“I can't worry about this.” Sam says. He moves Dean's hand to his chest. “It's all the time. How can you worry about something that isn't going anywhere?”
Dean rubs Sam's chest and feels his rumbly lungs and his steady, constant heart.