Keeping Sammy in the Dark
Title: Keeping Sammy in the Dark
Summary: Sam and his Stanford friends in a cabin. Add a hurricane, a power outage, an asthma attack, and Dean. And then add alcohol. You should have stopped before the alcohol.
Warnings/Spoilers: Language.
Wordcount: 5,802
Author's Note: Sammy-verse. I don't even know with this one, guys. Tell me what you think.
---
It's so goddamn early when Dean's phone rings because he's in Idaho so it's fucking early all the fucking time, and he gropes around and grabs it and of course it's a California area code, of course, because his fucking little brother gets up at the crack of dawn thanks to this new health kick he's been on since that hideous allergic reaction a couple of months ago which for some fucked-up Sam reason has something to do with going to bed at ten and going fucking jogging and Dean doesn't even fucking know.
Anyway it's his brother calling from a number he doesn't recognize.
“Where in the world is Dean Winchester?” Sam says.
“Twin Falls, Idaho. Someday a spirit is going to haunt a city with a fucking Applebee's. Fuck this middle of nowhere bullshit.”
Sam laughs. “You're telling me. That's not too far from me, yeah?”
“Uh, probably like eleven hours.” He'll drive eleven hours for Sam, but not without giving him some shit for it.
“I'm an hour out of Palo Alto, actually. Vaguely an hour towards you, I think.” He's slurring all his words together, must be hungover.
“Where in the world is Sam Winchester?”
“In a minute. I'm calling to check on your sorry ass. You with Dad?”
Dean sits up and rubs his forehead. “Uh, no, Dad's shacking up with Pastor Jim until his leg heals. Who told him, by the way, that he was lucky the fucking thing hadn't fallen off, and Dad said that's thanks to fucking Sam, so do with that what you will.”
Sam gives this wheeze that's probably supposed to be a sigh.
“I just finished a skinwalker thing, now I'm stalling. Why are you checking up on me?” Dean says.
“There's a hurricane planning to churn through the West Coast starting in like twelve hours. And I'm guessing you had no fucking clue since you didn't call me panicking for my well-being.”
“I'm bored of your well-being.” He had no fucking clue, but it never hurts to knock Sam's ego around a little, because what the hell are big brothers for? (Because they're not for protecting their fucking little brothers, apparently, because what the fuck, a hurricane throwing itself at Sam and Dean didn't know? Isn't October kind of late for hurricanes? Fuck, how was he supposed to prepare for this shit?)
Sam says, “I was hoping you'd say you were in Maryland or something, but here you are. Just stock up on water and stuff, okay?”
“Wait, where are you?”
“Uh, cabin? Woods somewhere.”
Oh, so he isn't drunk, he's strung the fuck out on antihistamines .
“What the fuck, Sam,” he says simply.
Sam laughs. “Jess's brother and some of his friends. But we didn't know about the hurricane when we got here, so I wanted to make sure you were...better prepared than we are. Which is, you know. Not. They don't seem worried.”
Jesus fucking Christ, could this kid be more goddamn transparent? “So you're saying my asthmatic little brother's in the middle of fucking nowhere in some goddamn cabin with a hurricane gunning for him?”
“Kind of leaky in here, too.”
“Text me your coordinates, bitch, I'm on my way.”
“I don't have cell reception. Let me get a map.”
**
Josh always thought he woke up early, but then he spent a weekend with Sam and now he has to reevaluate.
By the time Josh pulls himself out of bed and into the cabin's kitchen for some shitty instant coffee, Sam's wiping down the counter with one hand and picking at an omelet with the other. Josh was going to make pancakes, but he's figured out by now that Sam's kind of funny about food, so he doesn't mention it.
Sam looks up at him and smiles. “Morning.”
“You look fucking chipper.”
Sam laughs. “I'm twice the size of you guys, last night was a cakewalk.” He twists to the side and sneezes into his elbow, makes a face.
“Bless you.”
“Seriously, you don't have to do that.”
Josh shrugs. “Must get annoying as fuck.”
He sneezes. “Blessing me? Yeah.”
Josh takes the eggs out. “Sneezing that much.”
“Oh. Just life. Probably worse to listen to. Not exactly the best company for camping, I know.”
“Shut up, all right?” Josh is pretty much responsible for Sam being here, after all; Sam's dating Tyler's sister, but when Jessica bailed and Tyler was being a fucking tool who couldn't decide whether or not to uninvite Sam, who he liked enough but didn't really know, Josh vouched for him. He's had a few classes with Sam and hung out with him enough that he knew what Jessica on about when she tugged Tyler to the side and talked to him all seriously while Sam was loading the car.
He's pretty proud of himself for telling Tyler to bring Sam, turns out, because Sam's been good company, and he has this weird survivalist thing down pat, maybe from dealing with his own health for ages. He cooked a full meal on a bunsen burner while they were hiking and wrapped an ace bandage around Pete's sprained ankle like he's done it a hundred times before.
The downside is he's now all gung-ho about storm preparation and fretting that they don't have flashlights or generators or cell phone service, and seriously, it's just a storm.
“So I'm heading out tonight, looks like,” Sam says.
“What? Are you...okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, totally. Storm's supposed to hit tonight, and my family can be kind of overprotective. They called and badgered and I did a shitty job of explaining my way out. My brother's coming.”
It's not as if Josh is best friends with the guy, but besides a Dean that Sam mentions in passing accidentally sometimes--“and then Dean and I” in the middle of stories where he'd made it sound like he was alone-whose link to Sam Josh could never quite make out in context, he's never heard Sam talk about his family. He knows that Sam told him once that when he was in the hospital for a few days last winter, Jess ran herself ragged because he had a high fever and there was literally no one else to sit with him. Josh is Jewish; he knows over-protective families, and Sam's doesn't sound like one.
Sam coughs for a while, then clears his throat and apologizes.
“Dude, it's fine. You really okay?”
Sam laughs and throws the dishtowel at him. “You're worse than my brother, man.”
**
Okay, so Sam was full of shit about when the storm was going to start, and Dean was full of shit about it not being a big deal, so they'll just call this one a tie, all right?
Jesus fucking Christ. He's still thirty miles from Sam and it's so fucking windy-afraid his car's going to blow off the fucking road windy-and he can't see a goddamn thing through the rain, and he'd be worried he were going to run into someone if there were any soul fucking stupid enough to be on the damn road. He curses Sam for the billionth time in nine and a half hours.
He manages not to wash the fuck away before he reaches some SUV with a bumper sticker about saving the environment because isn't that just like some damn college kid. A tree has crushed it and blocked off the road.
Well.
He parks and hikes his coat over his his head, grabs what he can carry from the trunk, does a quick once-over of the SUV to make sure there weren't any fucking people caught in it, apologizes to his baby and makes a plea to God on her behalf, and then he's the fuck out of there, and of course he has no fucking cell phone reception now so who the fuck knows how he's going to find the fucking cabin, except Sam's a fucking maniac with directions and he went ahead and told Dean how many fucking steps from the road everything is like the little psycho he is, so Dean's only half-drowned when he reaches the front stoop and bangs the fuck out of the front door.
He doesn't know how the fuck they hear him over the wind, but it's just a few seconds before the front door opens and a guy yanks him inside. He's blond and curly-haired so Dean assumes this is man-Jessica but can't remember his name.
“Dean, yeah?” Man-Jess says. “Good to meet you. Here.” He brings Dean to the kitchen and gives him a dishtowel. Dean rubs his face and hair and nods at the two guys sitting at the kitchen table, and the bucket on the floor catching dripping water, and Christ what a shit hole and he sees the TV flickering on and off and now three nervous guys looking up as the dripping gets faster and the wind sounds like someone crying but he doesn't see the fucking thing he drove ten damn hours for.
“Where's my brother?”
Wow, fuck if he likes that pause.
But then he hears footsteps and the kid himself saying, “Jesus, don't scare him, I'm right here.”
Dean crosses to the living room and there he is, leaning against the wall, looking like hell. He gives Dean an exhausted smile and coughs into his elbow.
“Are you sick? Fuck. You sick?”
Sam stops coughing and huffs out a laugh. “Not sick. Just flaring. Calm down.”
“How long?”
“Few hours. I've been trying to sleep. C'mere.” He holds out a hand and pulls Dean into a hug.
“I'm all fucking wet, I'm going to make you cough more. Yeah. Like that. Right there.”
Sam gets the fit under control. “Don't fuss.”
“Do I look like I'm fucking fussing?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Fuck you, I don't want you to embarrass yourself in front of your friends.”
“They can't hear us. Can't hear shit over that rain. Come on, you need dry clothes.” He pulls him over to duffel bag in the corner and strips off his shirt, pulls on a dry one.
“What the fuck, don't you have a room?”
He shakes his head. “I sleep on the couch.”
“The fuck?”
I'm fucking loud, Dean, no one wants to share a room with me.”
Dean knows it's pretty fucking neurotic even for him, but he's never liked Sam sleeping alone. Probably because for nineteen years the kid never did, and Dean doesn't know how the fuck many nights he had to shake wheezy Sammy awake and what the fuck would have happened if he didn't, so, yeah, he doesn't love that they booted him out here to sleep on some nasty fucking couch so their beauty sleep wouldn't be interrupted by his kid not fucking breathing.
Dean says, “How much do they know?”
“Like, hunting, or...”
“No.”
Sam shrugs. “I don't know, everything? They know asthma, allergies. It's kind of hard to hide, Dean, and why the hell would I try?”
“How bad have they seen you?”
Sam looks at him. “Not very.”
“Okay. Good.”
“It's okay,” Sam says, and then, “You've got shackles up, huh?” all gentle while he digs out a shirt for Dean.
And Dean's all fucking embarrassed, and the fact that Sam's being all understanding about it doesn't help. By all logic he should probably want Sam's friends to know how sick the kid can get and how fucking quickly, but Dean just doesn't like it, okay? He doesn't like his kid fucking vulnerable, because John made a big fucking deal growing up about how Sam's asthma was theirs, it was the Winchesters, because they understood it and what Sam needed and what Sam could do and how to take care of him but the second an outsider found out, Sam was a liability, a problem, a fucking appendage, and yeah, no fucking thank you, and from the first time a spirit choked Sam he and John were fucking vehement that evil bitches did not get to hear Sam wheezing, did not get to know he wasn't fucking perfect, okay, because that just wasn't how their kid was going to go down. Other people did not get to hear about this. This was theirs.
Dean knows Sam needs to open up to people to be safe.
Dean just doesn't fucking like it.
He clears his throat. “I don't think I can get you out of here, Sam. Your friend's car got crushed, by the way.”
“What? Shit.”
“Yeah. Who the fuck knows what kind of work I'm going to have to do on my baby when this is over. And it's fucking worse out there now than it was when I was driving and fuck if I could even find our way back to the car and double fuck if you think I'm marching you and your lungs through there so, yeah, I'm a little fucking stressed. You have what you need here? Meds and stuff?”
“Yeah. Fuck, this wheeze.” He tosses Dean a shirt, then lowers down to put his hands on his knees and breathes out slowly. He's whistling in two different tones. Takes skill.
Dean changes. “Okay, then no freaking out.”
Sam glares up at him. “I'm not freaking out.”
“Okay. Good. Don't. Because your friends are like anxious fucking bunny rabbits in there and you need to not let them work you up, all right?”
Sam nods and straightens up. “Don't you freak out either, okay?”
“I never freak out.”
“Yeah.” The lights flicker, and Sam looks up. “I'm going to get the nebulizer plugged in before-”
The power blows.
It's just completely fucking black.
Sam exhales out in a long wheeze Dean can barely hear over the rain. “That.”
Dean can barely hear him breathing.
**
Josh figures out two things about Dean pretty quickly: he's kind of an asshole, and he and Sam do not get along.
He and Tyler are just trying to get Pete and his sprained ankle into the living room without running themselves into something, and Sam's not any damn help because he's busy snarling at his brother.
“Why the fuck didn't you bring a flashlight?”
Dean says, “Just shut the fuck up, okay?”
Josh runs into the coffee table and gets Pete sitting down.
Sam says, “Cell phones will work for light, at least.” He's starting to sound pretty bad. “Who has charged ones?”
“I do,” Dean says, but then he takes it out and says, “Shit.”
Tyler says, “What?”
“Fucking thing's soaked, won't turn on. I've got to dry the battery out...”
There's coughing, suddenly, and Josh feels a tug in his stomach. “Sam, you okay?”
“He's fine,” Dean says, immediately. “Leave him alone.”
“Jesus, all right.”
There's thunder, then, and the house shakes. Screw Tyler and his taste in cabins.
Sam sneezes twenty hundred times and Josh hears him groan. Then someone's up and moving around. He can't even make out shadows, just noise, and only that in-between thunderclaps and the wind howling everywhere.
“Sounds like wheezing,” Sam says.
Dean says, “What?”
“The wind.”
“Shut up, Sammy.”
Sammy? Seriously?
Pete says, “There's got to be candles or something, right? Someone has a lighter?”
“I do,” Dean says.
Tyler says, “I'll look for candles,” and takes a few steps before he curses and runs into something. They all chuckle a little and Sam's turns into a brutal cough that goes on and on.
Josh swallows. “Sam...”
“Jesus fucking Christ, give it a rest,” Dean says.
Sam says, “Dean. Shut. Up. I'm sorry about him, Josh.”
“No, fuck this, we're not having any pity parties for Sam, okay? He's afraid of clowns and I didn't have time to special-order a cake that won't kill him. Plus you give him half a chance and he'll try to hire a violinist to play a diatribe for him.”
Josh says, “I don't think that's what diatribe means,” at the same time Sam says “Dude, I don't know what the fuck word you're looking for, but it's not diatribe.”
“Yeah, whatever. You. Quiet one. Go get alcohol.”
Sam says, “His ankle's sprained.”
“Fucking fantastic,” Dean grumbles.
Then Sam says, “Dean?” so quiet that Josh can barely hear it, and Dean must not be able to either, because Sam says, “Dean?” again, louder, a minute later.
But then Dean says, “I know, buddy,” in this quiet voice, and he rustles around and says, “Okay. You. The one who's obsessed with my brother.”
Josh says, “Uh. What?”
“You. Yeah. Show me where the bathroom is, come on.”
Josh looks at where he thinks Sam probably is.
“Jesus, stop ogling Sam and let's go.”
Sam coughs and says, “You're such a dick.”
“You need to stop fucking talking.” A hand grabs Josh's arm. “That you?” Dean says.
“Josh. Yeah.”
“Good. Come on.”
They literally blind-lead-blind themselves down the hallway, running into tables and doorways until they hit the bathroom. Dean mumbles and feels around the sink. “Listen,” he says. “You listening?”
“What? Yeah.” Jesus, what a dick.
“I appreciate you worrying about Sam. Seriously. But I don't give a shit if we can't see him, there's a ten-foot-no-drama bubble around him, okay? You need to go cry over poor Sammy's lungs, you go do it over in a corner far the fuck away from him.”
Pill bottles rattle around and Dean mumbles, “Which the fuck are these...Look,” he continues. “He sounds like shit and he should not be in some fucking moldy cabin in the first fucking place and mark my words he's going to get lectured off his ass, but right now we are not going to worry about him anywhere fucking close to him, or he might think that there's something to worry about, and that's just asking for a panic attack and we don't want to fucking go there. Plus he feels like crap and the last thing he needs to worry about is feeling all guilty that we're worrying about him and trying to fucking apologize or some infuriating shit like that, so if I go out there and treat my brother like he's an overreacting piece of shit, you're just going to have to deal with that, all right?”
“Um.”
“Perfect. These are little, right?” Dean finds Josh's hand and drops some pills into it. “They feel pink to you?”
“Uh...”
“I'm just fucking with you. Do you speak? Did I grab the quiet one by accident?”
“Fuck you, I speak. You scare the shit out of Pete, I think.”
“Good to know. Sam's a fuck of a lot scarier than I am, though. If you can handle him, you're fine.” he shakes a few more pill bottles. “Fucking bottles all feel the same...”
“He's going to be okay, right?”
“Yep. He needs the nebulizer which needs to be plugged in, so he's going to feel like shit for a while, but yeah, he's fine.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Josh...”
Josh raises an eyebrow that Dean doesn't see.
Dean says, “Uh, you got a thing for my brother?”
“What?”
“Just asking. Not judging.”
“I...”
“All right. Well, hands fucking off, okay? Kid's not exactly single.”
“I know that. Jesus.”
Dean's hand goes down on Josh's shoulder, and he's quiet for a minute, and Josh has the feeling he's being looked at.
Then Dean says, “Cool. Back we go.” They take a few steps into the hallway and Dean calls, “All right, Sammy, where are you?”
Sam starts to say something but sneezes instead.
Dean says, “All right, cool. It's like Marco Polo. Marco!”
Sam laughs and sneezes again.
“Marco!”
“I don't have to sneeze anymore...”
Josh finds the couch and Dean finds Sam on the floor. “Inhalers. Pills. So stop fucking drama queening, all right? You have asthma, it's very exciting, we're all very impressed.”
Sam's just wheezing. Josh doesn't have any trouble hearing it over the rain now. “Okay. Thanks, Dean. You're still a douchebag.”
“Yeah, but I'm your douchebag. Where the fuck is that alcohol?”
**
Man-Jess found a candle, so that's in the middle of their circle and they're passing a fucking endless supply of rum around, and everyone's kind of quiet and cold and nervous and sneaking glances at Dean's kid and let's fucking not, okay? Sam feels like shit, and Dean really just wants to bring him back to one of the bedrooms and put the kid to bed except fuck if he's letting Sam sleep when he sounds like this, and fuck even more if he's going to let Sam know that he thinks the kid's at the point where he should be sequestered away like some diseased little child. If Dean's going to fucking freak out about Sam's asthma, it has to be when they're on the way to the damn hospital. Those are the rules. He's not going to freak out when he's doing everything he can do, because what the hell's the point of that? Sam's scared enough as it is.
He passes the bottle to Sam and watches him gather up enough air to drink, then put the bottle down and do one of those sneeze-wheeze hybrid things. When he was a little kid Sam legitimately called it snwheezing and John cuddled the shit out of him the first time he said it.
God, it's a relief just to fucking see his kid.
Sam just broke the news to Man-Jess about his car so now they're all having a moment where he's mourning his SUV and taking enormous slugs from the bottle and babbling about everything the car meant to him and Sam turns to Dean with these eyes and says, really softly, “Starting to feel really sick,” and yeah, that's a fucking turning point if Dean's ever heard one.
“Okay.” He moves his hand to Sam's back. “Don't be scared.”
Sam nods, wheezes, grabs the bottle for another swallow. He's been hitting the shit out of his inhaler but he's probably been past that point for the better part of the day. He just wants fucking out of here, away from this gross cottage and the wet air and these loud fucking people and Dean just wants to fucking give him that, because if he can't fix the kid's lungs he should at least have a way to keep him warm, calm, safe, those should be fucking givens, so he says, “You want to go lie down?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Water?”
Sam nods.
“Be right back.”
Sam starts coughing hard when Dean gets up (when Dean takes his hand off his back) and The Quiet One says, “Man, you all right?” and Sam doesn't answer because he's a little busy trying to fucking breathe, thanks.
Dean stops halfway to the kitchen and looks down at them. He can't see them from here (can't see Sam) just the flicker of that candle.
He says. “Sam. They bothering you?”
“No.” Shit, but his voice is wrecked.
Dean points at the circle. “You're bothering him. Stop fussing.”
“He said we're not.”
“Because he's a polite little shit when he wants to be. He's embarrassed and uncomfortable, so just give him some fucking space.”
Sam says, “Probably fair to warn you guys that the worse I get, the more of an asshole he's going to become.”
“Fuck you, Sammy,” Dean calls, feeling his way to the kitchen.
Josh says, “Uh, shouldn't he be getting nicer to you?”
Then Sam's wheeze-laughing. (They don't have a word for that. That sound is just Sam.) “No, no, he'll be nice to me. He'll be a dick to you guys. It's kind of his thing.”
God, fuck that kid.
He comes back with a glass of water and considers pouring it on his kid's fucking head, but Sam's sneezing again, so he just sits down next to him and makes sure to splash some of it on Sam when he passes it over. Sam glares at him.
“I'm drunker than I thought,” Sam says a minute later.
“Yeah?” Dean gestures for the bottle and takes another swallow.
Josh says, “I'm exactly as thought as I...as drunk as I thought,” and Sam laughs (wheezes).
Man-Jess and Quiet One get rowdy and stupid and Josh looks like he's falling asleep, so Dean and Sam keep drinking alone, and they're probably both pretending Sam isn't leaning on him as much as he is, and that he's not sounding quite as shitty, because God, Sam.
He closes his eyes and Dean says, “Stay awake, okay?'
“I'm...really tired.”
“I know. It's an oxygen thing. You're gonna be fine.”
He rubs a hand up and down his ribcage. “Really hurts now.”
Dean plays with his hair and doesn't say anything. Fuck, he is too drunk to be a good nurse right now.
But then ten minutes later something happens, the meds kick in, maybe, or the attack just fucking decides to back down. It's been known to happen. But Sam takes this breath in and starts coughing and he's moving more air than he has been in ages. He still sounds like shit, and probably some sort of asthma layperson or whatever the fuck wouldn't be able to tell that there's much of a difference, but Sam and Dean sure as fuck can. Sam takes a few heaving breaths and looks up at Dean, who gives him a thumbs-up. It's geeky and stupid, but so's Sam.
The candle's burning out, so it's got to be time to put the sick child to sleep, so he says, “Drunk idiots, Sammy's taking one of your beds,” and hauls Sam to his feet and down the hall. It's deep as fuck dark again, and he and Sam feel around the hallway and run into shit but it's just him and Sam so it's okay.
Dean makes executive decisions on what meds Sam hasn't had enough of while Sam strips down to his t-shirt and sweatpants, then Sam is a dick and vetoes his decisions and takes what he wants, and the darkness is really getting to Dean. The fact that he doesn't know exactly what meds Sam took, that he can't see how Sam's color is or if he's scared, that Sam is just nothing but this squirming lump under the comforter and that wheeze...it's scary, and Dean doesn't want to go.
Sam says, quietly, “You can stay in here if you want.”
“I'm in a really stupid mood.”
“You'd fuss and keep me awake?”
Sure. “Yeah.”
He hears Sam nod against the pillow. “Okay.”
“I'm leaving the door open, I'll hear if it gets bad, okay? If I don't, yell or...throw something, if you need me.” His hand finds Sam's face. It's not Dean. It's his hand.
“I'm okay,” Sam says, quietly.
“You're fucking drunk.”
“Yeah. Stay.”
Dean shakes his head. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm fucking drunk, Sam.” Ugh. He stands up. “Call if you need me.”
“Dean...”
Ugh. Too fucking drunk. Dean plops himself on the couch and and gulps down more rum as the candle goes out.
**
Josh wakes up on the floor to absolute dark and quiet. The storm's over.
He feels where the candle was and finds a cold puddle of wax. He says everyone's name, hesitantly, but no one answers. He hears snoring, he thinks. He stretches his feet out and collides with someone's sneaker. The owner of said sneaker groans like Josh kicked a sprained ankle, so there's that figured out. Tyler is probably nearby. Okay. He hears a few people breathing.
He sits up and listens very hard and thinks he hears wheezing from far enough away that he should really not be hearing wheezing. He stumbles to his feet. Where the hell is Dean?
He collides with a boot on his way to the hallway, and he hears Dean grumble and curse.
All right then.
He follows the sound of wheezing down the hall, gripping the wall as best he can. The door's open, and there's enough moonlight coming in now that he can almost see the shape of Sam, very still, under the comforter.
“Sam?”
No answer. He's breathing like that in his sleep, all tight and high-pitched.
“Sam?”
This time Sam startles and coughs, sits up. “Who...”
“Josh. Sorry. I heard you breathing. Scared me.”
“Oh. Um, I'm fine.”
“Right.”
“Where are you? C'mere.” Sam reaches out for him and pulls him onto the bed. Christ, Sam's drunk. Josh is drunk. This is bad, probably.
It doesn't feel bad.
Sam saying, “Y'don't have to worry, m'fine,” doesn't feel bad, and kissing Sam...that doesn't feel bad either.
He probably initiates it. He doesn't know. But Sam doesn't pull away. Sam kisses back. He tastes like rum and medicine and something strange and sharp Josh doesn't know, but it's this sharpness that grabs him, and he needs more. He can't explain it. It's like he tasted something new and strange and incredible and Sam and now he needs more of it, needs all of it, and shit, this is bad. But it doesn't feel bad. And Sam is kissing back.
He has his hands in Sam's hair now, tugging at what's behind his ears, and he's smashing his forehead against Sam's and it's desperate because he is fucking desperate, because there is just fucking something about Sam. And shit, his breathing, Sam pulling back to gasp a little bit, these sick-sounding little wheezes a centimeter from his lips, hen Sam coming back, Sam inhaling during the kiss like he's trying to suck every last thing out of Josh, what is that taste, who knows about that taste, does Dean have any idea what that taste is, dear God what is that taste..
Sam's breathing hard and thick and finally Josh's head takes control and he realizes he's going to suffocate him, so he pulls away, hard, and forces himself to let Sam breathe. Sam coughs for a while. He sounds worse.
“I'm sorry,” Josh says.
“ 's fine. Was just a kiss.”
“Shit. I'm sorry.”
Sam pats his hand, then rolls away from him and coughs, hard, into his pillow.
Josh's pillow. This is Josh's room.
“You need Dean?” Josh says.
Sam slowly stops coughing. “No, 'mokay.” He fishes his inhaler off the nighstand.
“Are you sure?”
“This is just normal, Josh.”
“Oh.”
This is just normal.
“I should go,” Josh says.
“Oh. Okay.”
“Feel better.”
“I feel okay.”
“Good. Good.” Josh gets up and makes his way back into the hallway. His knees feel strange. There is another room and two more beds here somewhere. He can find them.
But he doesn't. He follows some moonlight to the back porch. Everything is wet, but it isn't very cold. He sits down on the steps and thinks about his family and about the stars and about going home. He feels better. He feels okay.
**
Dean wakes up scared out of his fucking mind to absolute darkness and absolute fucking quiet and Jesus Christ his head and his heart are pounding together because something's wrong, something's wrong-Sam. Sam felt like shit, and now it's quiet. Dean doesn't hear anything. It's so dark and there's nothing, no storm, no wheezing, no Sam.
“Sam?”
No answer.
“Sam.” He rolls over onto his stomach. He has to get up. But he's so fucking drunk and fucking shaking because Sam isn't answering, no one is fucking answering, and there's no light and where is his brother and why can't Dean hear him breathing and Jesus after two years apart why does Dean still want to hear Sam breathing when he's scared, why can't he get over that, why can't Dean just fucking get over it and he needs to see his brother.
He closes his eyes and presses his face into the couch and then he hears footsteps, feels someone sit down by his head.
Hears scratchy breathing.
Sammy.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Sam says. “You were calling me.”
Dean nods and feels like a fucking child but it's dark and Sam can't see him so it's okay.
“I couldn't hear you breathing,” he says, after a minute. “It scared me.”
Sam shifts around and his hands move Dean and then Dean's propped up with his ear against Sam's chest and there it is, just that quiet whine in the bottom of Sam's lungs, just the small scraping noise when he breathes out, just that sound that Dean will stupidly think of sometimes as the first sound he ever knew (because of course it wasn't, of course there was a world before Sam. There must have been). Not a scary wheeze, just normal.
“Hear it now?” Sam says.
Dean holds onto Sam's shirt. “Yeah.”
“Good.” Sam squirms around and lies on his back on the couch and Dean just lies all the fuck over him because he has to keep his head on Sam's chest and they've always been fucking touchy when they're drunk and it's probably bad but it doesn't feel bad.
“You feel better?” Dean says.
“Yeah,” Sam says, and then he clears his throat and says, “I feel really good now, actually.” He sticks a hand in Dean's hair and kind of clings.
Dean nods and twists his hands in Sam's shirt and just listens, just lets him breathe.
“Shit,” Sam whispers. “So drunk.”
Dean lifts his head and looks at him.
“It's okay,” Dean says. “You'll feel normal when you wake up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Everything will go back to normal.”
Sam relaxes a little at this, and then Dean, fucking drunk Dean, he kind of just holds on for dear life a little and Sam rubs his back and breathes well.
Summary: Sam and his Stanford friends in a cabin. Add a hurricane, a power outage, an asthma attack, and Dean. And then add alcohol. You should have stopped before the alcohol.
Warnings/Spoilers: Language.
Wordcount: 5,802
Author's Note: Sammy-verse. I don't even know with this one, guys. Tell me what you think.
---
It's so goddamn early when Dean's phone rings because he's in Idaho so it's fucking early all the fucking time, and he gropes around and grabs it and of course it's a California area code, of course, because his fucking little brother gets up at the crack of dawn thanks to this new health kick he's been on since that hideous allergic reaction a couple of months ago which for some fucked-up Sam reason has something to do with going to bed at ten and going fucking jogging and Dean doesn't even fucking know.
Anyway it's his brother calling from a number he doesn't recognize.
“Where in the world is Dean Winchester?” Sam says.
“Twin Falls, Idaho. Someday a spirit is going to haunt a city with a fucking Applebee's. Fuck this middle of nowhere bullshit.”
Sam laughs. “You're telling me. That's not too far from me, yeah?”
“Uh, probably like eleven hours.” He'll drive eleven hours for Sam, but not without giving him some shit for it.
“I'm an hour out of Palo Alto, actually. Vaguely an hour towards you, I think.” He's slurring all his words together, must be hungover.
“Where in the world is Sam Winchester?”
“In a minute. I'm calling to check on your sorry ass. You with Dad?”
Dean sits up and rubs his forehead. “Uh, no, Dad's shacking up with Pastor Jim until his leg heals. Who told him, by the way, that he was lucky the fucking thing hadn't fallen off, and Dad said that's thanks to fucking Sam, so do with that what you will.”
Sam gives this wheeze that's probably supposed to be a sigh.
“I just finished a skinwalker thing, now I'm stalling. Why are you checking up on me?” Dean says.
“There's a hurricane planning to churn through the West Coast starting in like twelve hours. And I'm guessing you had no fucking clue since you didn't call me panicking for my well-being.”
“I'm bored of your well-being.” He had no fucking clue, but it never hurts to knock Sam's ego around a little, because what the hell are big brothers for? (Because they're not for protecting their fucking little brothers, apparently, because what the fuck, a hurricane throwing itself at Sam and Dean didn't know? Isn't October kind of late for hurricanes? Fuck, how was he supposed to prepare for this shit?)
Sam says, “I was hoping you'd say you were in Maryland or something, but here you are. Just stock up on water and stuff, okay?”
“Wait, where are you?”
“Uh, cabin? Woods somewhere.”
Oh, so he isn't drunk, he's strung the fuck out on antihistamines .
“What the fuck, Sam,” he says simply.
Sam laughs. “Jess's brother and some of his friends. But we didn't know about the hurricane when we got here, so I wanted to make sure you were...better prepared than we are. Which is, you know. Not. They don't seem worried.”
Jesus fucking Christ, could this kid be more goddamn transparent? “So you're saying my asthmatic little brother's in the middle of fucking nowhere in some goddamn cabin with a hurricane gunning for him?”
“Kind of leaky in here, too.”
“Text me your coordinates, bitch, I'm on my way.”
“I don't have cell reception. Let me get a map.”
**
Josh always thought he woke up early, but then he spent a weekend with Sam and now he has to reevaluate.
By the time Josh pulls himself out of bed and into the cabin's kitchen for some shitty instant coffee, Sam's wiping down the counter with one hand and picking at an omelet with the other. Josh was going to make pancakes, but he's figured out by now that Sam's kind of funny about food, so he doesn't mention it.
Sam looks up at him and smiles. “Morning.”
“You look fucking chipper.”
Sam laughs. “I'm twice the size of you guys, last night was a cakewalk.” He twists to the side and sneezes into his elbow, makes a face.
“Bless you.”
“Seriously, you don't have to do that.”
Josh shrugs. “Must get annoying as fuck.”
He sneezes. “Blessing me? Yeah.”
Josh takes the eggs out. “Sneezing that much.”
“Oh. Just life. Probably worse to listen to. Not exactly the best company for camping, I know.”
“Shut up, all right?” Josh is pretty much responsible for Sam being here, after all; Sam's dating Tyler's sister, but when Jessica bailed and Tyler was being a fucking tool who couldn't decide whether or not to uninvite Sam, who he liked enough but didn't really know, Josh vouched for him. He's had a few classes with Sam and hung out with him enough that he knew what Jessica on about when she tugged Tyler to the side and talked to him all seriously while Sam was loading the car.
He's pretty proud of himself for telling Tyler to bring Sam, turns out, because Sam's been good company, and he has this weird survivalist thing down pat, maybe from dealing with his own health for ages. He cooked a full meal on a bunsen burner while they were hiking and wrapped an ace bandage around Pete's sprained ankle like he's done it a hundred times before.
The downside is he's now all gung-ho about storm preparation and fretting that they don't have flashlights or generators or cell phone service, and seriously, it's just a storm.
“So I'm heading out tonight, looks like,” Sam says.
“What? Are you...okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, totally. Storm's supposed to hit tonight, and my family can be kind of overprotective. They called and badgered and I did a shitty job of explaining my way out. My brother's coming.”
It's not as if Josh is best friends with the guy, but besides a Dean that Sam mentions in passing accidentally sometimes--“and then Dean and I” in the middle of stories where he'd made it sound like he was alone-whose link to Sam Josh could never quite make out in context, he's never heard Sam talk about his family. He knows that Sam told him once that when he was in the hospital for a few days last winter, Jess ran herself ragged because he had a high fever and there was literally no one else to sit with him. Josh is Jewish; he knows over-protective families, and Sam's doesn't sound like one.
Sam coughs for a while, then clears his throat and apologizes.
“Dude, it's fine. You really okay?”
Sam laughs and throws the dishtowel at him. “You're worse than my brother, man.”
**
Okay, so Sam was full of shit about when the storm was going to start, and Dean was full of shit about it not being a big deal, so they'll just call this one a tie, all right?
Jesus fucking Christ. He's still thirty miles from Sam and it's so fucking windy-afraid his car's going to blow off the fucking road windy-and he can't see a goddamn thing through the rain, and he'd be worried he were going to run into someone if there were any soul fucking stupid enough to be on the damn road. He curses Sam for the billionth time in nine and a half hours.
He manages not to wash the fuck away before he reaches some SUV with a bumper sticker about saving the environment because isn't that just like some damn college kid. A tree has crushed it and blocked off the road.
Well.
He parks and hikes his coat over his his head, grabs what he can carry from the trunk, does a quick once-over of the SUV to make sure there weren't any fucking people caught in it, apologizes to his baby and makes a plea to God on her behalf, and then he's the fuck out of there, and of course he has no fucking cell phone reception now so who the fuck knows how he's going to find the fucking cabin, except Sam's a fucking maniac with directions and he went ahead and told Dean how many fucking steps from the road everything is like the little psycho he is, so Dean's only half-drowned when he reaches the front stoop and bangs the fuck out of the front door.
He doesn't know how the fuck they hear him over the wind, but it's just a few seconds before the front door opens and a guy yanks him inside. He's blond and curly-haired so Dean assumes this is man-Jessica but can't remember his name.
“Dean, yeah?” Man-Jess says. “Good to meet you. Here.” He brings Dean to the kitchen and gives him a dishtowel. Dean rubs his face and hair and nods at the two guys sitting at the kitchen table, and the bucket on the floor catching dripping water, and Christ what a shit hole and he sees the TV flickering on and off and now three nervous guys looking up as the dripping gets faster and the wind sounds like someone crying but he doesn't see the fucking thing he drove ten damn hours for.
“Where's my brother?”
Wow, fuck if he likes that pause.
But then he hears footsteps and the kid himself saying, “Jesus, don't scare him, I'm right here.”
Dean crosses to the living room and there he is, leaning against the wall, looking like hell. He gives Dean an exhausted smile and coughs into his elbow.
“Are you sick? Fuck. You sick?”
Sam stops coughing and huffs out a laugh. “Not sick. Just flaring. Calm down.”
“How long?”
“Few hours. I've been trying to sleep. C'mere.” He holds out a hand and pulls Dean into a hug.
“I'm all fucking wet, I'm going to make you cough more. Yeah. Like that. Right there.”
Sam gets the fit under control. “Don't fuss.”
“Do I look like I'm fucking fussing?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Fuck you, I don't want you to embarrass yourself in front of your friends.”
“They can't hear us. Can't hear shit over that rain. Come on, you need dry clothes.” He pulls him over to duffel bag in the corner and strips off his shirt, pulls on a dry one.
“What the fuck, don't you have a room?”
He shakes his head. “I sleep on the couch.”
“The fuck?”
I'm fucking loud, Dean, no one wants to share a room with me.”
Dean knows it's pretty fucking neurotic even for him, but he's never liked Sam sleeping alone. Probably because for nineteen years the kid never did, and Dean doesn't know how the fuck many nights he had to shake wheezy Sammy awake and what the fuck would have happened if he didn't, so, yeah, he doesn't love that they booted him out here to sleep on some nasty fucking couch so their beauty sleep wouldn't be interrupted by his kid not fucking breathing.
Dean says, “How much do they know?”
“Like, hunting, or...”
“No.”
Sam shrugs. “I don't know, everything? They know asthma, allergies. It's kind of hard to hide, Dean, and why the hell would I try?”
“How bad have they seen you?”
Sam looks at him. “Not very.”
“Okay. Good.”
“It's okay,” Sam says, and then, “You've got shackles up, huh?” all gentle while he digs out a shirt for Dean.
And Dean's all fucking embarrassed, and the fact that Sam's being all understanding about it doesn't help. By all logic he should probably want Sam's friends to know how sick the kid can get and how fucking quickly, but Dean just doesn't like it, okay? He doesn't like his kid fucking vulnerable, because John made a big fucking deal growing up about how Sam's asthma was theirs, it was the Winchesters, because they understood it and what Sam needed and what Sam could do and how to take care of him but the second an outsider found out, Sam was a liability, a problem, a fucking appendage, and yeah, no fucking thank you, and from the first time a spirit choked Sam he and John were fucking vehement that evil bitches did not get to hear Sam wheezing, did not get to know he wasn't fucking perfect, okay, because that just wasn't how their kid was going to go down. Other people did not get to hear about this. This was theirs.
Dean knows Sam needs to open up to people to be safe.
Dean just doesn't fucking like it.
He clears his throat. “I don't think I can get you out of here, Sam. Your friend's car got crushed, by the way.”
“What? Shit.”
“Yeah. Who the fuck knows what kind of work I'm going to have to do on my baby when this is over. And it's fucking worse out there now than it was when I was driving and fuck if I could even find our way back to the car and double fuck if you think I'm marching you and your lungs through there so, yeah, I'm a little fucking stressed. You have what you need here? Meds and stuff?”
“Yeah. Fuck, this wheeze.” He tosses Dean a shirt, then lowers down to put his hands on his knees and breathes out slowly. He's whistling in two different tones. Takes skill.
Dean changes. “Okay, then no freaking out.”
Sam glares up at him. “I'm not freaking out.”
“Okay. Good. Don't. Because your friends are like anxious fucking bunny rabbits in there and you need to not let them work you up, all right?”
Sam nods and straightens up. “Don't you freak out either, okay?”
“I never freak out.”
“Yeah.” The lights flicker, and Sam looks up. “I'm going to get the nebulizer plugged in before-”
The power blows.
It's just completely fucking black.
Sam exhales out in a long wheeze Dean can barely hear over the rain. “That.”
Dean can barely hear him breathing.
**
Josh figures out two things about Dean pretty quickly: he's kind of an asshole, and he and Sam do not get along.
He and Tyler are just trying to get Pete and his sprained ankle into the living room without running themselves into something, and Sam's not any damn help because he's busy snarling at his brother.
“Why the fuck didn't you bring a flashlight?”
Dean says, “Just shut the fuck up, okay?”
Josh runs into the coffee table and gets Pete sitting down.
Sam says, “Cell phones will work for light, at least.” He's starting to sound pretty bad. “Who has charged ones?”
“I do,” Dean says, but then he takes it out and says, “Shit.”
Tyler says, “What?”
“Fucking thing's soaked, won't turn on. I've got to dry the battery out...”
There's coughing, suddenly, and Josh feels a tug in his stomach. “Sam, you okay?”
“He's fine,” Dean says, immediately. “Leave him alone.”
“Jesus, all right.”
There's thunder, then, and the house shakes. Screw Tyler and his taste in cabins.
Sam sneezes twenty hundred times and Josh hears him groan. Then someone's up and moving around. He can't even make out shadows, just noise, and only that in-between thunderclaps and the wind howling everywhere.
“Sounds like wheezing,” Sam says.
Dean says, “What?”
“The wind.”
“Shut up, Sammy.”
Sammy? Seriously?
Pete says, “There's got to be candles or something, right? Someone has a lighter?”
“I do,” Dean says.
Tyler says, “I'll look for candles,” and takes a few steps before he curses and runs into something. They all chuckle a little and Sam's turns into a brutal cough that goes on and on.
Josh swallows. “Sam...”
“Jesus fucking Christ, give it a rest,” Dean says.
Sam says, “Dean. Shut. Up. I'm sorry about him, Josh.”
“No, fuck this, we're not having any pity parties for Sam, okay? He's afraid of clowns and I didn't have time to special-order a cake that won't kill him. Plus you give him half a chance and he'll try to hire a violinist to play a diatribe for him.”
Josh says, “I don't think that's what diatribe means,” at the same time Sam says “Dude, I don't know what the fuck word you're looking for, but it's not diatribe.”
“Yeah, whatever. You. Quiet one. Go get alcohol.”
Sam says, “His ankle's sprained.”
“Fucking fantastic,” Dean grumbles.
Then Sam says, “Dean?” so quiet that Josh can barely hear it, and Dean must not be able to either, because Sam says, “Dean?” again, louder, a minute later.
But then Dean says, “I know, buddy,” in this quiet voice, and he rustles around and says, “Okay. You. The one who's obsessed with my brother.”
Josh says, “Uh. What?”
“You. Yeah. Show me where the bathroom is, come on.”
Josh looks at where he thinks Sam probably is.
“Jesus, stop ogling Sam and let's go.”
Sam coughs and says, “You're such a dick.”
“You need to stop fucking talking.” A hand grabs Josh's arm. “That you?” Dean says.
“Josh. Yeah.”
“Good. Come on.”
They literally blind-lead-blind themselves down the hallway, running into tables and doorways until they hit the bathroom. Dean mumbles and feels around the sink. “Listen,” he says. “You listening?”
“What? Yeah.” Jesus, what a dick.
“I appreciate you worrying about Sam. Seriously. But I don't give a shit if we can't see him, there's a ten-foot-no-drama bubble around him, okay? You need to go cry over poor Sammy's lungs, you go do it over in a corner far the fuck away from him.”
Pill bottles rattle around and Dean mumbles, “Which the fuck are these...Look,” he continues. “He sounds like shit and he should not be in some fucking moldy cabin in the first fucking place and mark my words he's going to get lectured off his ass, but right now we are not going to worry about him anywhere fucking close to him, or he might think that there's something to worry about, and that's just asking for a panic attack and we don't want to fucking go there. Plus he feels like crap and the last thing he needs to worry about is feeling all guilty that we're worrying about him and trying to fucking apologize or some infuriating shit like that, so if I go out there and treat my brother like he's an overreacting piece of shit, you're just going to have to deal with that, all right?”
“Um.”
“Perfect. These are little, right?” Dean finds Josh's hand and drops some pills into it. “They feel pink to you?”
“Uh...”
“I'm just fucking with you. Do you speak? Did I grab the quiet one by accident?”
“Fuck you, I speak. You scare the shit out of Pete, I think.”
“Good to know. Sam's a fuck of a lot scarier than I am, though. If you can handle him, you're fine.” he shakes a few more pill bottles. “Fucking bottles all feel the same...”
“He's going to be okay, right?”
“Yep. He needs the nebulizer which needs to be plugged in, so he's going to feel like shit for a while, but yeah, he's fine.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Josh...”
Josh raises an eyebrow that Dean doesn't see.
Dean says, “Uh, you got a thing for my brother?”
“What?”
“Just asking. Not judging.”
“I...”
“All right. Well, hands fucking off, okay? Kid's not exactly single.”
“I know that. Jesus.”
Dean's hand goes down on Josh's shoulder, and he's quiet for a minute, and Josh has the feeling he's being looked at.
Then Dean says, “Cool. Back we go.” They take a few steps into the hallway and Dean calls, “All right, Sammy, where are you?”
Sam starts to say something but sneezes instead.
Dean says, “All right, cool. It's like Marco Polo. Marco!”
Sam laughs and sneezes again.
“Marco!”
“I don't have to sneeze anymore...”
Josh finds the couch and Dean finds Sam on the floor. “Inhalers. Pills. So stop fucking drama queening, all right? You have asthma, it's very exciting, we're all very impressed.”
Sam's just wheezing. Josh doesn't have any trouble hearing it over the rain now. “Okay. Thanks, Dean. You're still a douchebag.”
“Yeah, but I'm your douchebag. Where the fuck is that alcohol?”
**
Man-Jess found a candle, so that's in the middle of their circle and they're passing a fucking endless supply of rum around, and everyone's kind of quiet and cold and nervous and sneaking glances at Dean's kid and let's fucking not, okay? Sam feels like shit, and Dean really just wants to bring him back to one of the bedrooms and put the kid to bed except fuck if he's letting Sam sleep when he sounds like this, and fuck even more if he's going to let Sam know that he thinks the kid's at the point where he should be sequestered away like some diseased little child. If Dean's going to fucking freak out about Sam's asthma, it has to be when they're on the way to the damn hospital. Those are the rules. He's not going to freak out when he's doing everything he can do, because what the hell's the point of that? Sam's scared enough as it is.
He passes the bottle to Sam and watches him gather up enough air to drink, then put the bottle down and do one of those sneeze-wheeze hybrid things. When he was a little kid Sam legitimately called it snwheezing and John cuddled the shit out of him the first time he said it.
God, it's a relief just to fucking see his kid.
Sam just broke the news to Man-Jess about his car so now they're all having a moment where he's mourning his SUV and taking enormous slugs from the bottle and babbling about everything the car meant to him and Sam turns to Dean with these eyes and says, really softly, “Starting to feel really sick,” and yeah, that's a fucking turning point if Dean's ever heard one.
“Okay.” He moves his hand to Sam's back. “Don't be scared.”
Sam nods, wheezes, grabs the bottle for another swallow. He's been hitting the shit out of his inhaler but he's probably been past that point for the better part of the day. He just wants fucking out of here, away from this gross cottage and the wet air and these loud fucking people and Dean just wants to fucking give him that, because if he can't fix the kid's lungs he should at least have a way to keep him warm, calm, safe, those should be fucking givens, so he says, “You want to go lie down?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Water?”
Sam nods.
“Be right back.”
Sam starts coughing hard when Dean gets up (when Dean takes his hand off his back) and The Quiet One says, “Man, you all right?” and Sam doesn't answer because he's a little busy trying to fucking breathe, thanks.
Dean stops halfway to the kitchen and looks down at them. He can't see them from here (can't see Sam) just the flicker of that candle.
He says. “Sam. They bothering you?”
“No.” Shit, but his voice is wrecked.
Dean points at the circle. “You're bothering him. Stop fussing.”
“He said we're not.”
“Because he's a polite little shit when he wants to be. He's embarrassed and uncomfortable, so just give him some fucking space.”
Sam says, “Probably fair to warn you guys that the worse I get, the more of an asshole he's going to become.”
“Fuck you, Sammy,” Dean calls, feeling his way to the kitchen.
Josh says, “Uh, shouldn't he be getting nicer to you?”
Then Sam's wheeze-laughing. (They don't have a word for that. That sound is just Sam.) “No, no, he'll be nice to me. He'll be a dick to you guys. It's kind of his thing.”
God, fuck that kid.
He comes back with a glass of water and considers pouring it on his kid's fucking head, but Sam's sneezing again, so he just sits down next to him and makes sure to splash some of it on Sam when he passes it over. Sam glares at him.
“I'm drunker than I thought,” Sam says a minute later.
“Yeah?” Dean gestures for the bottle and takes another swallow.
Josh says, “I'm exactly as thought as I...as drunk as I thought,” and Sam laughs (wheezes).
Man-Jess and Quiet One get rowdy and stupid and Josh looks like he's falling asleep, so Dean and Sam keep drinking alone, and they're probably both pretending Sam isn't leaning on him as much as he is, and that he's not sounding quite as shitty, because God, Sam.
He closes his eyes and Dean says, “Stay awake, okay?'
“I'm...really tired.”
“I know. It's an oxygen thing. You're gonna be fine.”
He rubs a hand up and down his ribcage. “Really hurts now.”
Dean plays with his hair and doesn't say anything. Fuck, he is too drunk to be a good nurse right now.
But then ten minutes later something happens, the meds kick in, maybe, or the attack just fucking decides to back down. It's been known to happen. But Sam takes this breath in and starts coughing and he's moving more air than he has been in ages. He still sounds like shit, and probably some sort of asthma layperson or whatever the fuck wouldn't be able to tell that there's much of a difference, but Sam and Dean sure as fuck can. Sam takes a few heaving breaths and looks up at Dean, who gives him a thumbs-up. It's geeky and stupid, but so's Sam.
The candle's burning out, so it's got to be time to put the sick child to sleep, so he says, “Drunk idiots, Sammy's taking one of your beds,” and hauls Sam to his feet and down the hall. It's deep as fuck dark again, and he and Sam feel around the hallway and run into shit but it's just him and Sam so it's okay.
Dean makes executive decisions on what meds Sam hasn't had enough of while Sam strips down to his t-shirt and sweatpants, then Sam is a dick and vetoes his decisions and takes what he wants, and the darkness is really getting to Dean. The fact that he doesn't know exactly what meds Sam took, that he can't see how Sam's color is or if he's scared, that Sam is just nothing but this squirming lump under the comforter and that wheeze...it's scary, and Dean doesn't want to go.
Sam says, quietly, “You can stay in here if you want.”
“I'm in a really stupid mood.”
“You'd fuss and keep me awake?”
Sure. “Yeah.”
He hears Sam nod against the pillow. “Okay.”
“I'm leaving the door open, I'll hear if it gets bad, okay? If I don't, yell or...throw something, if you need me.” His hand finds Sam's face. It's not Dean. It's his hand.
“I'm okay,” Sam says, quietly.
“You're fucking drunk.”
“Yeah. Stay.”
Dean shakes his head. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm fucking drunk, Sam.” Ugh. He stands up. “Call if you need me.”
“Dean...”
Ugh. Too fucking drunk. Dean plops himself on the couch and and gulps down more rum as the candle goes out.
**
Josh wakes up on the floor to absolute dark and quiet. The storm's over.
He feels where the candle was and finds a cold puddle of wax. He says everyone's name, hesitantly, but no one answers. He hears snoring, he thinks. He stretches his feet out and collides with someone's sneaker. The owner of said sneaker groans like Josh kicked a sprained ankle, so there's that figured out. Tyler is probably nearby. Okay. He hears a few people breathing.
He sits up and listens very hard and thinks he hears wheezing from far enough away that he should really not be hearing wheezing. He stumbles to his feet. Where the hell is Dean?
He collides with a boot on his way to the hallway, and he hears Dean grumble and curse.
All right then.
He follows the sound of wheezing down the hall, gripping the wall as best he can. The door's open, and there's enough moonlight coming in now that he can almost see the shape of Sam, very still, under the comforter.
“Sam?”
No answer. He's breathing like that in his sleep, all tight and high-pitched.
“Sam?”
This time Sam startles and coughs, sits up. “Who...”
“Josh. Sorry. I heard you breathing. Scared me.”
“Oh. Um, I'm fine.”
“Right.”
“Where are you? C'mere.” Sam reaches out for him and pulls him onto the bed. Christ, Sam's drunk. Josh is drunk. This is bad, probably.
It doesn't feel bad.
Sam saying, “Y'don't have to worry, m'fine,” doesn't feel bad, and kissing Sam...that doesn't feel bad either.
He probably initiates it. He doesn't know. But Sam doesn't pull away. Sam kisses back. He tastes like rum and medicine and something strange and sharp Josh doesn't know, but it's this sharpness that grabs him, and he needs more. He can't explain it. It's like he tasted something new and strange and incredible and Sam and now he needs more of it, needs all of it, and shit, this is bad. But it doesn't feel bad. And Sam is kissing back.
He has his hands in Sam's hair now, tugging at what's behind his ears, and he's smashing his forehead against Sam's and it's desperate because he is fucking desperate, because there is just fucking something about Sam. And shit, his breathing, Sam pulling back to gasp a little bit, these sick-sounding little wheezes a centimeter from his lips, hen Sam coming back, Sam inhaling during the kiss like he's trying to suck every last thing out of Josh, what is that taste, who knows about that taste, does Dean have any idea what that taste is, dear God what is that taste..
Sam's breathing hard and thick and finally Josh's head takes control and he realizes he's going to suffocate him, so he pulls away, hard, and forces himself to let Sam breathe. Sam coughs for a while. He sounds worse.
“I'm sorry,” Josh says.
“ 's fine. Was just a kiss.”
“Shit. I'm sorry.”
Sam pats his hand, then rolls away from him and coughs, hard, into his pillow.
Josh's pillow. This is Josh's room.
“You need Dean?” Josh says.
Sam slowly stops coughing. “No, 'mokay.” He fishes his inhaler off the nighstand.
“Are you sure?”
“This is just normal, Josh.”
“Oh.”
This is just normal.
“I should go,” Josh says.
“Oh. Okay.”
“Feel better.”
“I feel okay.”
“Good. Good.” Josh gets up and makes his way back into the hallway. His knees feel strange. There is another room and two more beds here somewhere. He can find them.
But he doesn't. He follows some moonlight to the back porch. Everything is wet, but it isn't very cold. He sits down on the steps and thinks about his family and about the stars and about going home. He feels better. He feels okay.
**
Dean wakes up scared out of his fucking mind to absolute darkness and absolute fucking quiet and Jesus Christ his head and his heart are pounding together because something's wrong, something's wrong-Sam. Sam felt like shit, and now it's quiet. Dean doesn't hear anything. It's so dark and there's nothing, no storm, no wheezing, no Sam.
“Sam?”
No answer.
“Sam.” He rolls over onto his stomach. He has to get up. But he's so fucking drunk and fucking shaking because Sam isn't answering, no one is fucking answering, and there's no light and where is his brother and why can't Dean hear him breathing and Jesus after two years apart why does Dean still want to hear Sam breathing when he's scared, why can't he get over that, why can't Dean just fucking get over it and he needs to see his brother.
He closes his eyes and presses his face into the couch and then he hears footsteps, feels someone sit down by his head.
Hears scratchy breathing.
Sammy.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Sam says. “You were calling me.”
Dean nods and feels like a fucking child but it's dark and Sam can't see him so it's okay.
“I couldn't hear you breathing,” he says, after a minute. “It scared me.”
Sam shifts around and his hands move Dean and then Dean's propped up with his ear against Sam's chest and there it is, just that quiet whine in the bottom of Sam's lungs, just the small scraping noise when he breathes out, just that sound that Dean will stupidly think of sometimes as the first sound he ever knew (because of course it wasn't, of course there was a world before Sam. There must have been). Not a scary wheeze, just normal.
“Hear it now?” Sam says.
Dean holds onto Sam's shirt. “Yeah.”
“Good.” Sam squirms around and lies on his back on the couch and Dean just lies all the fuck over him because he has to keep his head on Sam's chest and they've always been fucking touchy when they're drunk and it's probably bad but it doesn't feel bad.
“You feel better?” Dean says.
“Yeah,” Sam says, and then he clears his throat and says, “I feel really good now, actually.” He sticks a hand in Dean's hair and kind of clings.
Dean nods and twists his hands in Sam's shirt and just listens, just lets him breathe.
“Shit,” Sam whispers. “So drunk.”
Dean lifts his head and looks at him.
“It's okay,” Dean says. “You'll feel normal when you wake up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Everything will go back to normal.”
Sam relaxes a little at this, and then Dean, fucking drunk Dean, he kind of just holds on for dear life a little and Sam rubs his back and breathes well.