The Saddest Music In My Sam Tonight
Title: The Saddest Music In My Sam Tonight
Summary: "What do you want for your birthday? It's a simple question. Except not this year. Early season 1.
Warnings/Spoilers: Have you seen the pilot? Awesome.
Wordcount: 4,876
Author's Note: Sammyverse! AlanahC is my prompting hero. I seem to be on a Jess kick lately and it does not appear to be slowing down. Title is from a lyric in Motion City Soundtrack's "So Long Farewell," which I will likely borrow many titles from in the future because mmmm, that song.
--
"So," Sam says, red-nosed, staring down at his coffee cup. Voice light.
Dean raises an eyebrow.
Sam huffs a breath into his hands. "What do you want for your birthday?"
Dean chews the inside of his cheek and doesn't say anything.
**
They had to park a few blocks from the coffee shop--fucking post-holiday shoppers--and they're halfway back, shivering against the wind, when Dean's phone rings. He leans against a lamp post and runs his hand up and down his arm and wonders, again, what the fuck they're doing this far north when it's this damn cold.
Heading a little further up, apparently, because an old contact of Dad's has a job for them. A job that pays.
He looks to his left shoulder, but there's a noticeable lack of enormous little brother.
There he is, a few shops back, forehead pressed to a store window.
He looks up when Dean gets close. "Look." He points to a toy train set through the window and rubs his scarf over his mouth. "We always wanted one of those."
"Yeah, you always wanted one of those. By the time you were old enough to pronounce the R in trains, I'd moved on to blow jobs and beer."
Sam watches the trains and says, "Sure,” vaguely.
"You want some money for your window shopping, Sammy?"
"Mmm." He's not paying any attention.
Dean drums his fingers on Sam's shoulder until he looks up. "I got us a job."
**
Sam's still blowing in his hands when they're heading towards Providence, and Dean says, "Dude, you are really bad at that."
He pants. "I don't have enough air."
Dean cranks up the heat and holds Sam's hand up to the grate, palm out, as it starts to rattle. "Warm up."
"Not sick."
"Yeah. Let's keep it that way."
"You always act like I get sick on purpose."
"No one gets sick as often as you do without some dedication to the cause."
Sam prods him. "Maybe it's my sneaky way of making sure we get some time off. So you can get some sleep? You been doing that?"
"You've been loud at night."
Sam shrugs and looks down. "Cold air's rough." He leans his head against the window and tries another breath into his hands.
"I turned the heat on just for you, you know? Stop with the hand thing." Dean gives him another look. "You sure you're okay?"
"Not sick."
"I know. You run cold when you're upset.”
"I'm okay," Sam says, with sincerity that hits Dean right in the chest. "Just cold."
Dean tugs on Sam's scarf and says, "Wrap up," and Sam cuddles it against his cheek.
"Do you want a scarf for your birthday?" Sam says.
"Sammy."
"We're going to have money. So...think about what you want, okay?"
"How about you take me out and get me drunk like every other damn year?" Dean says, except he fucking chokes on it near the end, because of course that isn't what they've done for the past two; they went out to real fucking restaurants and drank three bottles the year she turned 21.
But Sam just says, "If that's what you want."
Of course it isn't, Sam.
**
Sam sings quietly to Dean's cassettes and naps most of the way to Providence, and Dean is quiet. He listens to AC/DC and Sam's shitty voice and the air whistling out of his chest and thinks about how fucking normal all of this has become, he and Sam traveling, hunting, alone. He and Sam being alone for the longest time, no question, in their entire lives.
They haven't had a case in a few weeks, and outside of ordering at diners and asking for "One room, two beds," Dean doesn't think he's spoken to anyone but Sam in that whole time. That phone call was the first intrusion into that little world.
And Sam, always the chatty one on hunts, making friends with everyone and pulling out their secrets, hasn't spoken a word not to Dean in God knows how long.
But he talks to Dean. A lot. With no problem.
So it'll do, really.
Sam needs time.
So Dean will cover for him.
**
Dean checks the address three, four times against the one he's written down.
"Oh, come on. Fucking seriously?”
Sam peeks an eye open. "Mmm?"
Dean taps on the window.
Sam says, "What is this place?"
Ugh, Sam. "You don't recognize it from..." Dean was going to say field trips, weekends with Mom but yeah, those weren't exactly reality for the kid here. "...books and stuff?"
Sam frowns, then says, "It's a zoo."
"There you go."
"Oh."
"Pretty much."
"I'm allergic to zoos."
"Which is why we're leaving."
"It's cold. Maybe the animals will be inside?"
"I don't think you understand how zoos work."
"Maybe he's just meeting us here. We should find out what's up." He holds his hands up when Dean looks over. "This isn't some kind of elaborate suicide plan, all right?" He digs around in the glove box and finds Benadryl. "It's our fucking job."
"I know."
"I start dying too hard, I'll bail and let you take this one. Okay?"
Dean reaches over and wraps Sam's scarf over his nose and mouth. "Okay. You have a cold, if anyone asks, okay? Favor coughing over wheezing."
Sam nods. "Just like old times."
**
Sam's pawing at his nose through his scarf before they're even at the main office, and Dean can tell that biting back the wheezing is making him a little lightheaded. He puts a hand on Sam's shoulder and pushes him into a chair--Sam doesn't protest, protesting would be obvious--while Dean shakes Joe Willard's hand and asks him what they're dealing with.
"We've had three kids disappear in the past two weeks" he says. "Clearly we have a fucking problem, and the zoo's been shut down, but we're trying to keep it quiet.”
“Any big changes?” Dean says.
“We've built a whole new wing. I'm guessing somewhere over there, but there's so much new stuff...”
“Great. Any idea where the disappearances are taking place? What time of day?"
"It looks like it varies. Like whatever it is seeking the kids out, coming to them."
"Spirit?" Sam says, to Dean, before twisting away and burying his face in his face in his elbow for the first of what's going to be twenty billion sneezes.
Joe says, "You think? Bless you."
"Don't bless him, he does that a lot." Dean opens up the file Joe's nudged at him and flips through profiles of the kids. All between eight and ten years old, all girls, all here with their dads.
Sam's still sneezing like hell over there.
"I don't know," Dean says. "We might not be the right guys for this one."
Sam frowns at Dean over a tissue.
Joe says, "Your dad's voicemail said you were the one to call."
"Right, but Sam's got a cold--"
"Just a cold, Dean." Sam clears his throat. "When the hell'd that ever--" he ducks and sneezes, and there's a distinct wheeze now that he can't hold back "--stop a hunter, right?" He gives Joe that damn grin. Does that count as talking to him? Fucking manipulative Sam, acting like saving a few kids is going to make him all better (did that ever work for John? All right, then).
Dean shoots him a look that better convey we're not fucking doing this.
Sam's eyes say, Dying kids, Dean and ugh, Sam.
And I'd rather mine wasn't one of them. Don't make me drag you out by your ear in front of company.
Don't make me sneeze on you Sam's face says back.
Grrr.
"All right," Dean says. "We'll take a look around tonight. Around midnight? Make sure no one's here to bother us, all right? Give security the night off."
"Will do."
"Come on, Sam. We've got research to do." And yeah, maybe he drags him out by his ear.
**
Sam's settled in one of the big armchairs, legs slung over the side, hat pulled low, scarf hung loosely around his shoulders. He's reading about animal habitats and Dean thinks he might see a hint of a smile.
Dean gets up to hit the bathroom, and when he gets back, Sam is where he was sitting, now, cross-referencing something in his book with someone in Dean's records about bizarre zoo deaths.
"Anything?" Dean says.
"Maybe."
"Get out of my seat."
"Mmm."
He doesn't budge, so Dean picks up the back of the chair and yanks it out from under him. Sam tumbles to the floor and looks up at him all fucking surprised.
"Jerk," he mumbles, grinning like nobody's fucking business, clambering into the chair at Dean's elbow.
"You're looking much too happy over there." Dean reaches underneath Sam's hat and fucks up his hair. "Dead children, remember?"
"I like when you say the complete opposite of what you want to say."
"Yeah, well, I don't like anything you do. Ever."
"Mmmm."
"I especially hate that." He folds a quick football out of a spare piece of paper and slides it towards Sam, and they flick it back and forth for a while.
--
Sam falls asleep on the way back to the zoo, print-outs and copies and Dad's journal splayed out on his lap, and he's got a pretty good wheeze going on so that kind of sucks, but really it's the wincing he's doing in his sleep, the hard swallowing, the stuttered gasps, that are the issue here.
He puts a hand on Sam's knee and pats it a little while they drive. "Hey, kiddo, 'sokay."
He takes this series of small, panicked breaths, the kind that stab right into the make it BETTER part of Dean's brain, so he brings his hand to Sam's shoulder and gives it a shake. "Hey."
Sam startles, jumps, jerks away.
"It's all right," Dean says. "Take your time. It's okay," because Sam always gets all embarrassed and tries to just shake it off and pretend nothing happened and it's really unnecessary, Dean was just there, you know? You're not fucking invisible when you're asleep, Sam (things don't just go away when you close your eyes).
Sam cringes a little into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. "Fuck."
For a second, Dean thinks he's going to want to talk about it.
For a horrible fucking second he thinks Sam's going to say something.
But he doesn't, and Dean, the worst brother in the world, will get down on his fucking knees later and thank God for it.
For now, he says, "Look, why don't I bring you back to the motel and you can try to get some real sleep?"
"No."
"I can do this without you."
"No." He grabs the cuff of Dean's coat.
Dean looks at his hand.
"Okay."
Sam's quiet for a while, just getting a hold on his breathing, but then he says, "Your birthday. What are we going to do?"
Okay. He needs something to focus on. Dean will let him have this. "It's in two days. We'll probably still be in Providence. Italian food?"
Sam nods. "Okay. What else?"
"I think you're misunderstanding the amount of Italian food I'm going to eat."
Sam laughs a little, thank God. "No, what do you want?"
"You really going to get me a present, short stack?"
"Seems nice. I dunno."
"What do you want for your birthday?"
"That's like three months from now."
"Yeah, well, if you'd given me that much advance warning, maybe I would have come up with something."
Sam leans his head against the window. "I want snow."
"You want snow on your birthday?"
"Yeah."
"You're setting yourself up for disappointment."
"Remember the year it snowed in Stanford?"
Dean pushes his tongue against his teeth. "Yeah."
"That wasn't supposed to happen either."
Dean has fuck-nothing to say to that.
"So what do you want?" Sam says, and Dean says, "Can you just let it go?"
**
Sam's sweeping the area with his camera while Dean follows with the EMF, but he's pretty fucking useless because the camera's shaking everywhere because he cannot. Stop. Sneezing.
"Sammy."
Sam starts to answer, then gasps and buries his face in his arms to sneeze for-fucking-ever.
"You want to do the reptile house or something, Sammer?"
Sam digs his knuckle into his eye and sneezes again instead of answering. He gets like this, when his allergies are really bad; he goes off to Allergy World and gets stuffy and stupid and impossible to reach. He's probably already forgotten Dean was talking to him.
"Hey. You. Sneezy."
Sam pauses at the jaguar exhibit, because, oh, that's a good idea, Sam, it's not like you're hideously allergic to fucking normal-sized cats.
Sam rubs his nose hard on his cuff and points to a flat rock at the back of the exhibit. "See?" he says, so fucking stuffed-up, sounding like a little kid.
"Yeah."
"Cad." He sniffles. "Cat."
"Things to kill, people to save..."
"Right." He gives the jaguar a little wave and continues down the path with Dean.
**
After another two hours, the novelty of seeing the animals has way, way worn out for Sam, who's hivey and swollen and wheezy like he ate something he really fucking should not have. None of their leads panned out and they've found jack fucking shit, and Dean looks over at his kid hacking out congested coughs, holding himself up on a decorative goddamn lamp post, and yeah, it's time to go.
"But--" Sam stops and sneezes, "We didn't--" more sneezing.
"Breathe. I'll come back tomorrow night, okay? You did good."
Sam blows his nose. "Yeah?"
"Of course."
**
Sam's no better by the time they get back to the motel, because that's Sam's fucking immune system for you. Dean throws him in the bathroom and throws himself at Sam's laptop. He clicks from page to useless page because there are historically no strange deaths in that zoo and nothing he's able to suss out from the construction god fucking damn it and listens to Sam sneeze enough to make a fucking non-asthmatic pass out.
But Sam doesn't, of course, because sneezing was his extra-curricular activity for his entire fucking life and he's pretty fucking good at it, he just comes out of the shower still all red-eyed and itchy and climbs into a sweatsuit and reaches for his scarf.
Dean snatches it away. "No."
"Please?" Sam says, pawing at his eye.
"It's fucking covered in dust and dander and...and, see, you're sneezing just from me saying dust and dander. No scarf. How's the breathing?"
He pulls in a long breath. Ooh, whistling on the inhale, that's a great sign. "Shitty," he says, before wheezing his way straight into another sneezing fit. Ugh, Sam.
"Gonna be a long night, huh?"
Sam nods between sneezes and fucking attacks his face with his sleeves. "Jesus."
"All right. More Benadryl, and I'm going to shower., get everything off of me.”
"I had, like, all the Benadryl."
Dean goes into the bathroom and picks up the package, tosses it to him. “Have literally all the Benadryl. I'll buy more tomorrow."
He probably doesn't take all of it because he's probably worried about overdosing or some normal person shit when it's fucking Sam so things that go wrong are always fucking allergic and he doesn't think anyone even can be allergic to Benadryl though he wouldn't put it past the kid here, fuck, that's a worry for another time. He comes out of the shower to a Sam all comaed out underneath the covers. Hewas a little stoned before but now he's definitely crashing, so Dean hands him the mouthpiece of the nebulizer and listens to the kid and his stuffy nose try to grab breaths from it.
He figures they might as well get as much sleep as they can before the inevitable asthma attack attacks, which means Sam's going to need to be sitting up, so he sits against the headboard and tugs Sam down in front of him and leans him back against Dean's chest. Sam rests his cheek against him immediately because Sam has no fucking shame, and he falls asleep with the nebulizer in, and Dean falls asleep with his head resting on Sam's.
**
Sam's lungs give them an hour and a half before shocking them both awake, and after the second time Dean decides he's just going to keep him on nebs through the night, which means they're both up every half hour and both cranky and tired and nervy but Dean's trying to keep it in check because Sam is obviously miserable. His nose is still driving him fucking insane and he's shaky and anxious from all the meds. Doctor Dean prescribes actually all the Benadryl at five AM (and he stays up and things watch Sam's breathing doesn't think fire doesn't think blonde hair doesn't think your baby is shattered and you can't fix it.)
Anyway, it doesn't take some kind of math genius to figure out that you take a grieving kid whose lungs shut down when he doesn't talk and give him an asthma attack and a million fucking doses of meds that make him stoned and sleepy and scared and throw in a sullen brother who won't talk to him, you get a little chatterbox.
"Remember the year we made cookies?"
Dean has him sitting on the side of the bed and he's sawing his hand up and down Sam's back, trying to help him get some of the congestion out of his poor fucking lungs. "Yeah."
Shut up, Sam, please.
"Leftover Christmas cookie dough, y'know? And all the...the Christmas cutters. She made the dough for me because she wanted me to have a good Christmas and not die, remember that?"
"Yeah."
"And she bought the reindeer cookie cutter." Sam coughs for a while. "Because it was the closest they had. Just for us. For you. For your birthday. But she didn't make any of those. Just for us. That's what she said, because it was the closest they had, but they're really the same animal, y'know? I thought reindeer has longer antlers but no, they're the same. She didn't know that.”
Shut up, Sam. Shut up and fucking just breathe and then fucking shut up, okay?
"She helped me make the antlers shorter," Sam says.
Please stop talking.
"She understood us, Dean, y'know? I know you think that...but she always did. She never asked me what it meant. I tried to show her. I tried to trim the antlers shorter but there weren't enough antlers to go around I wanted there to be and I tried do you think that I did it? Are you mad at me?”
“What?”
“Do you think I'm a horrible person?"
"Jesus, I...what?"
And then Sam's just fucking crying and Sam no you don't have the air for this, but Sam keeps crying and pulls at Dean's sleeve and says, "It was just this thing and then I met her and then I was supposed to know what everything meant and you weren't there and and and what if I'd told her everything what if then she'd be alive," and they have to stop, they have to fucking stop, Dean has to stop closing his eyes and imagining her and a salt gun in the backseat, this has to end, it just has to fucking end.
"I don't know what to do," Sam says. "There's too many parts of me missing and not missing."
**
Sam's a little better by morning, but not so much that, if someone else sounded like him, Dean wouldn't glare at them in public and worry they were going to get his little brother sick, so that means he has to stay in. It's a rule. He just made it up.
He writes Sam a note--food and Benadryl, back soon, go back to sleep--and walks to the car with his hands in his pockets.
Sam isn't there when Dean gets back, but he shows up while Dean's halfway through dialing (and panicking). "Hey!" He has two armfuls of laundry and a rasp in his voice that makes Dean wince.
"Get in bed, Jesus."
"I'm not sick. Aw, you were worried."
"Yeah, worried you died and I bought forty dollars of Benadryl for nothing." He tosses the package at Sam, who kisses it.
"Sweet, sweet Benadryl." He takes like seven. Good boy.
"Laundry?"
Sam shrugs, dumps it all on the bed, and fishes out his scarf.
"You're so predictable."
"It's warm."
"Bed, c'mon. You sound like shit."
Sam tries to sigh, but it makes him cough and cough and not fucking stop so yeah, Dean's winning this one, sorry, kiddo.
He pulls back the covers for Sam and hands him a cup of shitty convenience store coffee. "I'm going to hit the library. Stay in bed, okay?"
Sam looks down. "I should help."
"You're going to help most by doing that wheeze far enough out of my earshot that you won't freak me out and distract me."
"Yeah."
"Except call if it gets bad, okay? Nebs on the hour, and if you can't get up to do it, that means you need me back here. Okay?"
He nods and curls up with his pillow. "I washed your hoodie."
"Yeah? Thanks, Sammy."
Sam closes his eyes and says, "When you come back, tell me what you want for your birthday."
**
He thinks about what Sam can get him for his birthday. What Sam can possibly wrap up and hand over.
What Sam needs to get rid of.
What Dean needs to take.
Dean wants your fucking feelings for his birthday, Sam. Just for a little while.
No, that's not right.
He wants to help sam.
He wants to be the one to really feel something for once. He wants to stop being the fucking bystander to people falling in love and getting clobbered.
Dean wants to be Sam for his birthday.
And what a fucking hideous thing to realize.
**
Research takes the entire fucking day, and Sam's doing all right, making his neb treatments and watching CNN, still sounding more than shitty enough to justify spending the day in bed (yeah, Dean's hoarding the big brother points where he can get them, so fucking what--but it's not that, okay? It's not jealousy, okay, because it fucking sucks to be Sam Winchester, but it's not entirely pity either, it's this fucking fascination that this kid gets his life and his future ripped away and he can't fucking breathe and he's babbling to Dean about traffic patterns and the world's oldest woman having a birthday around the same time as Dean--are you the world's oldest woman, Dean?--and what the fucking fuck, how does he even work, who the fuck told Sam he was allowed to feel things, who the fuck decided that he got to feel things all over Dean when Dean doesn't feel things Dean feels Sammy, okay, so what the fucking fuck, what do you do with a broken brother, what do you do when he's fucking healing and you can't catch up?)
"Dean. Deeeean."
"Sorry."
"Can I come meet you?"
"No. I'm headed to the zoo now. Take your meds. Get some sleep."
"Do you even know what you're looking for?"
"No. Research fucking sucks."
"I can try looking up--"
"Sleep, Sam."
**
So of course he shouldn't be surprised when two hours later he hears footsteps and sees a shadow approaching in what's supposed to be a fucking locked-down zoo and he spins around with his gun out and the shadow fucking sneezes.
"Goddamn it, Sam."
Sam rubs the end of his scarf against his eye. "Hey."
"Hey. How'd you even get here?"
"Bus. Zoo bus." He coughs into his elbow. He's shaking.
"Are you okay?"
"Bad dream. I just...wanted to get out." He paws at his nose. "Did some research. Part of the construction was that they just planted--" he wrenches away and sneezes. "A memorial thing somewhere. Tree. Seeds from a dead woman's garden. Her son killed her granddaughter.”
"Oh. What?"
"Yeah. But the last article said...still deciding where to put it. So I don't know where." He bends at the waist, hands on his knees, and wheezes some, and Dean shoves his tongue into his cheek.
"Okay, kid. Good job. I'll look for it. You go sit in the car."
Sam shakes his head.
"It's cold as fucking shit and you're having a hard enough time breathing as it is. This isn't a negotiation, Sam."
"Ten minutes?"
"I think that's negotiating..."
"Please."
Sam and those fucking eyes.
"Jesus. Fine."
**
They split up far enough that it'll go faster but not far enough that Dean won't hear if the kid fucking keels over. He's standing on the fence outside the lions, wondering what the fuck he's going to do if the tree is in there--they're fucking lions--when he hears that stuffy little voice go, "Dean?"
He hops down and finds Sam standing in front of a fence, and God, the kid looks so fucking allergic, wheezy and drippy and gross and why the fuck is he still in here and then Sam's pointing, both hands, different directions, one to a tree with a plaque on the edge of the exhibit and one to the temporary plate on the gate telling them what the hell this exhibit is.
ARCTIC CARIBOU.
And Dean is kind of fucking struck, because it's stupid that a word on a plaque and a cage at a zoo could mean so much, except it kind of fucking isn't, because it's Sam in the nurse's station at a Disney World and Sam making Christmas cookies with her and Sam and her her her but her because she is a part of Sam and stupid stops at Caribou Coffee and Sam and this is feeling things.
"Fuck," Dean breathes, and his hand is on Sam's shoulder and he doesn't even remember putting it there, and Sam's choking and wheezing and saying, "I love the zoo, I fucking caribou the zoo."
**
It's a new exhibit, the sign informs them. A mom and baby caribou. They don't even have names yet.
The tree's still little, a sapling of a thing. They'll burn it down, no one will care.
"Smoke going to kill your lungs?" Dean says, because no, it's not that much, but he already sounds like shit. "Sam?"
He turns around. Sam's antlers-to-chest with a caribou. "Um."
"Wow. Allergic?"
"Yeah. Definitely."
"You want to climb out?"
"No." Sam reaches out all slowly and touches her stubby antlers. The caribou blows air at him, and he steps back and laughs. "I don't think I've ever been this close to an animal before. Ever. Ever ever."
"Except for, like, werewolves."
"And that fucking centaur." The caribou nuzzles his chest, and Sam takes a big step back. "Whoa."
"You okay?"
Sam nods and sneezes so hard it sounds it hurts.
"Bless you. You want to do the burning or the, uh, animal rounding?"
"Animal--ohmyGod Dean. Dean. Baby caribou."
And Dean looks and there's this little fucking caribou fawn coming out of the stable and the big one goes over and nuzzles against it and holy fucking shit.
"I wish you weren't allergic to to zoos," Dean says. "We could stay for fucking--Sam."
Sam is petting the fucking baby caribou.
“Saaaaam that is a horrible idea.”
Sam keeps petting it. Sam is petting a baby goddamn caribous.
And when that sentence is one of their realities, it doesn't matter that they're here for a job or that Sam's dying of allergies or that it's been the worst four months of their fucking lives, something is okay.
He pulls out the salt and nudges Sam and his new friends over to the other corner.
**
The fire's crackling, and underneath it, wheezy-voiced Sam, ass on top of the stable, hivey hands on the big caribou, is saying something.
"What's up, Sam?"
Sam says, "Do you think we should name her Dean or Jess?"
And Dean feels things, he feels birthday and twenty-seven and twenty-two and Jess Jess JessJessJessJess andSam.
Everything bu Sam has this habit of going away.
And that makes him really goddamn lucky.
Sam says, “Talk to me?”
"I...”
“Please.”
“I miss her so fucking much, Sam."
Sam looks up and gives him this smile that's soft and sad and amazed and enormous. He says, "I do too, buddy. What do you miss the most?”
The tree burns out, and Dean hops up on the stable next to Sam and wipes the kid's damn nose and tells him that he misses wanting to celebrate his fucking birthday.
Sam says, “I'm going to need help for mine too, you know?”
“Wouldn't miss it.”
Sam tilts his head back and says, “I just want to get you through this.”
“You're my fucking favorite.”
“That'll help.”
The baby caribou nuzzles Dean's hand.
It's starting to snow.