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A gas station bathroom stall was far from the ideal place for this.
Sam had always thought the phrase "blinding pain" was clichéd bullshit. Now, though, drenched in sweat and biting down on his arm to keep himself from screaming, he had a newfound appreciation for it-- because this pain was so sharp, so needle-precise and relentless, that he couldn't fucking see.
The fire behind his eyelids was vivid enough that the only thing keeping him from believing it was real was the cold dirty tile beneath him. Tears budded at the corners of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, mingling with the beads of perspiration dripping from his temples. He could barely hear the pounding on the door over the roaring in his ears, could barely make out the voice calling his name from the other side.
Sammy, let me in--
It took all his strength to push himself to his feet and stumble to the door. He opened it a crack to keep out the raging light from the morning sun and tried to focus on his brother's face.
"Sam, are you--"
"I need to be alone," Sam ground out, and shut the door again with a resounding thud that echoed in his brain and sent a wave of vertigo through his body. He sank to the floor, thankful that this was a single-stall bathroom and that he could have some semblance of privacy here, even if it wasn't particularly sanitary.
The vision gave no indicator of a location or timeframe. Sam hated these kinds of visions the most; they were mocking and they made him feel useless. He could take the agony if he knew some good might come of it, providing he acted fast enough. But this... there was no purpose. It was nothing but torture, and he had to ride out the images of death and carnage until it ended.
Sam dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to put a dent in the pain, but it continued to radiate and throb. He wondered if this would ever stop or if it would kill him first.
He wasn't clear on how long it lasted, whether it had been three minutes or thirty, but eventually the white-hot burning ebbed into a steady red pulse, and he could manage that. After adjusting to the return of his sight, he found the sink in the corner and dragged himself to it.
Looking in the mirror verified that he did look as terrible as he felt. He was pale, coated in a thin sheen of sweat, and his eyes were watering and bloodshot. As he leaned forward and splashed water on his face, he found himself reaching for the porcelain rim to steady himself against another surge of dizziness. The visions sometimes made him feel sick, and he knew already that this vision was going to be one of those. His stomach had gone sour and taut, and a burble of air rose in his throat. Sam repressed a groan, shifting his weight between his feet and letting his head hang low over the sink as he stared at the floor. It all just felt so bad; his skin felt restrictive, his body too small.
He wanted to go home and he had no idea where that was.
Sam wiped his face dry with a paper towel and made his way to the door on unsteady legs.
Dean was waiting for him outside, a bottle of ginger ale and a bag of pretzels tucked under his arm. "Wow, you look like shit," he said. "You want some of this?"
Sam waved away the ginger ale that Dean was trying to give to him. The pressure to drink it was teasing at his stress, aggravating the queasy feeling that had settled in the bottom of his chest. "Can we get outta here? I just--" He swallowed hard-- "I really don't feel good, Dean."
Dean's eyes were wide and bright with concern, and Sam couldn't blame him; his voice had been leaning precariously towards a whine and he was barely standing upright. He'd be worried, too, if he hadn't experienced the same thing last week. The frustration was almost as intense as the pain.
"We're a little ways outside Omaha," Dean told him. "It's three hours to Sioux Falls-- two if I speed."
"Don't," Sam begged, feeling carsick from the mere thought of it.
"Alright, alright, no speeding."
Sam let Dean help him to the car without any fuss, unsure if he could make it there on his own and taking comfort in the way Dean's hand rested firm on his back.
"Try and get some shut-eye, kiddo," Dean said as they pulled out of the gas station. "I'll keep the radio down real low for you."
Sam rested his head against the cool glass of the passenger window and let himself drift off, one arm curled around his stomach.
When he awoke, they had passed Elk Point and his head still ached. Nausea had pooled in his gut and his mouth was full of spit that he gulped back down.
"Dean," he managed, strained and weak. He was quickly becoming drenched in a cold sweat, different from before-- a big red flag that he needed Dean to pull over right fucking now.
"Hey, you're up--" Dean cast a glance in Sam's direction and faltered. "Woah, you okay?"
Sam shook his head, panicked by the mounting urgency of the situation. "Feel like I'm gonna throw up," he all but whimpered, covering his mouth as if that would really help.
"Shit, okay." Dean's own panic was reflected by the abrupt change in the way he drove, now straight as a pin in his seat as he checked his mirrors and pulled onto the shoulder lane. "Okay, okay--" he continued that same litany as he threw the car in park and leapt out of the driver's seat, running around to the passenger side.
Sam fumbled to open the door, not even bothering to attempt getting out of the car. He planted his feet on the gravel and braced his elbows on his knees, his head hanging limp as he let lines of drool fall from his parted lips. He didn't notice when Dean came around to the other side until he was there next to him.
Sam grit his teeth around a wet belch and Dean murmured a gentle "easy, easy," with the delicate Kansas lilt that crept back into his voice when he needed to be soft. His hand was at the nape of Sam's neck in a stabilizing grip, his calloused palm rough and familiar against Sam's own skin.
"Don't wanna puke--" Sam moaned, but his words tapered off into a gag.
"You'll feel better after," Dean reassured. "Quit fighting it, Sammy, c'mon."
Sam retched again. His fingers dug into his jeans, white-knuckled and anxious.
"I gotcha," Dean said, cupping Sam's forehead with his free hand when Sam leaned over farther. "Just let it out."
It was as if, after so many years, even Sam's body couldn't resist complying with Dean's orders. His spine arched with a third gag and he vomited onto the gravel, the ground now stained with the contents of his stomach. He drew a shallow breath before more came up, running down his chin and collecting with the rest of the mess.
"You're okay." Dean rubbed Sam's back as he threw up, working against the tense coiling of Sam's muscles. "You're doing good, you're okay."
Sam didn't feel okay. He choked out a dribble of bile that foamed and frothed where it landed, and then he began to dry-heave.
"You're all empty, man. Try and relax."
Sam ran a hand over his face to break up some of the sweat, taking shallow shaking breaths while Dean tried to smooth out the tension in his shoulders.
"You alright?" Dean asked.
Sam thought about lying, then decided he wouldn't be able to hold up the charade for a second. "No," he croaked.
"What's hurting? Your head's not bothering you still, is it?"
His headache had yet to disappear completely, that was true, but that wasn't what Sam meant. "It's just-- it's too much," he said, unable to explain the sheer overstimulation of his visions and the amount of effort it took to control himself after one. Being sick had exacerbated it all, and he couldn't keep it together after that. He was physically drained and emotionally unbalanced, and it was goddamn embarrassing to make matters worse. "Everything, it's-- I can't take it."
"You feeling a little keyed up, huh?"
Sam nodded, ducking his head when he felt his eyes starting to burn.
"Aw, Sammy..." Dean pushed Sam's hair away from his forehead. "C'mon, let's get some air for a bit."
Dean hauled Sam to his feet and guided him around the splatter of sick. Sam was grateful when Dean sat him down by the trunk of the car; he'd been afraid his legs were going to give out if he'd stood any longer.
"We're gonna chill out here for a while, okay?" Dean spoke to him from where he'd gone to one of the backseat doors.
"Okay." Sam didn't think he was loud enough for Dean to hear, but he couldn't raise his voice right now for the life of him. "What are you--"
Dean rounded the car again with the ginger ale, a bottle of water, and an old rag. Sam reached out to take the rag and the water, intent on cleaning himself up because this was, after all, his mess, but Dean was already wetting the rag and crouching next to him.
"Dean, I can do it--"
"I know you can. But I wanna do it."
Sam closed his eyes when the cloth met his skin, thought about how long it had been since they'd had to do this. It had been a while since Sam had let himself be taken care of. At least by Dean. At least like this.
"Sorry," he said, hoarse and cracked.
"Not your fault," Dean murmured. He brushed Sam's hair off his forehead and wiped the sweat from there, too, then tossed the rag off to the side. "You want some of that ginger ale now?"
Sam managed a few sips, but the carbonation irritated his stomach and he had to put it down. He groaned, head falling back to rest against the Impala's sleek black metal as he rode through more nausea.
"Not helping?"
Sam forced himself upright as that god-awful sensation crawled up his throat; he really didn't want to choke on his own puke, on top of everything else he'd been through today. "Don't feel good," he mumbled, and a gurgling belch worked its way out of him.
Dean helped him lean to the side without completely tipping over.
"Christ, Sam," he remarked as Sam brought up the small bit of ginger ale he'd had with a strangled retch.
"Sorry," he repeated on the heels of another gag. The helplessness in him was tangible; it knotted in his stomach and made him even sicker.
"Stop saying sorry, this isn't your fault."
Sam spat a gob of saliva onto the ground and straightened up.
"Breathe, buddy," Dean encouraged. "In and out, real slow."
The pulsing in his head had returned with a vengeance, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. A violent throb reverberated behind his eyes, triggering a whimper to ring in his chest.
"That doesn't look like breathing to me," Dean said, and Sam did his best to suck in a sharp stuttering breath through his clenched teeth. "That's it, there you go..."
After several more of those, the nausea faded out and he was left weak and unsteady in his own body. He hated losing control like this-- hated it more than anything, and he knew Dean knew it, too.
"You with me?"
Sam shrugged out of Dean's touch despite the fact he needed it. Dean had a penchant for walking on eggshells when these things happened, and Sam didn't appreciate it one bit. It did nothing but make him feel more freakish, more monstrous. Like he was diseased.
"Not a wild animal, Dean."
"'Course not. But you can get pretty high-strung, dude. I didn't wanna step on your toes."
Heat flared in Sam's cheeks. "Sorry."
"Thought I told you to stop saying that." Dean sat back on his haunches. "Besides, it's not like you got much of a say in this stuff."
"Yeah." He wished he did; it would've saved him a horrific nauseous spell by the side of the highway and a severely worried older brother.
"You think you can handle some water? Or..." Dean glanced to the front of the car. "We might have Pepto in one of the duffel bags, but no promises."
Sam shook his head. His gut felt wrung out and sore, and he wasn't chancing putting anything in it for a while.
"We gotta get you hydrated at some point, man. Or else your headache's gonna get worse."
"I know." He just really didn't want to throw up again. He'd gotten out of this episode without having a meltdown by the skin of his teeth, and he doubted he'd have the same luck if it happened a second time.
"We could stop at a motel, get some ice for you to suck on." Dean checked his watch. "We're probably an hour out of Sioux Falls by now, if you're game. You can crash for a while once we get there."
Sam took a deep lungful of air and nodded.
● ● ●
The rest of the car ride was doable, but unpleasant. Sam sat in shotgun, head against the window, taking sharp measured breaths through his nose and gritting his jaw so hard that Dean thought it might crack. By the time they pulled into the first motel parking lot Dean saw, Sam had returned to looking pale and clammy, and Dean wasted no time in getting them a room.
Sam collapsed face-first onto the bed closest to the door. Dean dropped their bags by the door and refrained from turning on any lights as he laid out all the salt lines.
"Sammy." Dean nudged him, presented him with the small trashcan that had been sitting by the desk, and watched a little helpless as Sam took it and hugged it close to his chest. "Anything I can do?"
"Dunno." Sam spoke without opening his eyes. "I'm just--" he swallowed, the click of his throat audible in the room-- "I'm so nauseous I can't think straight."
"You can't fight it, you gotta let it happen."
"There's nothing for me to throw up," Sam protested, a frustrated whine on the tails of his words. "Leave me be, okay, I-- god--" He propped himself up on one elbow to lean over the rim of the trashcan, heaving with no results.
Dean hovered for a minute before sitting at the edge of the bed. He smoothed his hand over Sam's back like he'd done before, urging his brother to calm down.
"It's not usually this bad," he said, and immediately felt dumb for it because of course Sam knew that, it was happening to Sam.
"I know," Sam echoed his thoughts, rasping and weak from retching. "I know it's not, but don't freak out on me--"
"Excuse me, I do not freak out." At least not on the outside. And that's where it mattered.
Sam dropped back down into the fetal position. "I don't mean to scare you like this," he managed.
"I'm not scared, I'm worried," Dean said. "You could never scare me. Never."
They locked eyes; Sam's brow furrowed in dazed confusion before clarity gradually seeped into his face. He turned his head away, either ashamed or overwhelmed or both. "Dean--"
"Never means never. You understand me?"
There wasn't much else for Sam to do besides nod.
"Good." Dean stood to grab the duffel bags he'd left by the door. "So you're gonna take however much is left in our bottle of Pepto, and if that stays down we can grab something to eat."
Sam moaned, low and tired, into the comforter on the bed.
"Or I can bring something back for you," Dean relented. "That works too."
The Pepto helped a lot. Sam was a bit shaky for a while, but after the day he'd had it wasn't that unexpected. Dean wrapped Sam up in one of his old hoodies-- the dark one he'd worn home from the hospital last year-- and when he came back from the diner a couple blocks away Sam was still wearing it. The metallic scent of gunpowder, worn leather, and cheap laundry detergent clung to the gentle cotton like it had been stitched in, and it was home to Sam.
"Got a call from Bobby about a black dog in Deadwood," Dean said. By then it was late in the evening; he'd gotten Sam to eat (something Dean prided himself on whenever he was successful in it, because food was tricky when it came to Sam and Dean had never quite figured out why), and now Sam was sitting cross-legged on the bed and reading On the Road for what was probably the fifth time. He'd showered, changed clothes, and generally looked a hundred times better than he had that afternoon. "You think you can do six more hours in the car tomorrow?"
"Yeah, of course."
"And you'd tell me if you thought you couldn't?"
Sam nodded. "I'm alright, Dean. It's fine."
"It's--" Dean looked to the water-stained ceiling for a moment, two parts exhausted and one part exasperated. "This thing was kicking your ass for hours, man."
"And I'm alright now," Sam insisted, enunciating like he was speaking to a child, and it made Dean's blood boil.
"Don't patronize me," Dean snapped. "Don't act like I'm playing this up, not when you've drank yourself delirious because of it--"
"Wow, thanks for the drive-by, can we not bring that up--"
"Bring up what? You asking me to kill you?" Dean spoke above him, loud and authoritarian, but mostly hurt. Mostly broken. This wasn't how he wanted the night to go at all; there was a reason he'd cut their earlier conversation short and it was because he knew this was how it would end, but now it was falling out of his control so fast it was making his head spin. "Hearing it from Dad hurt. Really fucked me up. But it was so much worse hearing it from you."
"Dean--"
"You can't say stuff like that and expect me to drop it. You can't." Dean felt awfully stupid, standing in the middle of the motel room with his arms limp at his sides, but he was rooted to the spot. The one part of this he had maintained control of was his body, and if he moved he risked losing that, too. "Is it 'cause you wish you hadn't said it, or-- or 'cause you haven't stopped thinking like that and you don't want me to know?"
The hazel in Sam's eyes was growing glassy and wet and Dean was really, really regretting this.
"You have to let this go," Dean said, more as a plea than a demand. The power in his voice was gone. "This psychic crap you got going on, it's gotta roll of your shoulders when it flares up or else it's gonna hurt you bad. You're making yourself sick getting so caught up in it."
"You don't see them," Sam whispered, blinking away tears. "You don't know, you don't have that dirty feeling you can never wash away, you'll never feel it--"
"Hey, hey..." Dean's foresight when it came to Sam breaking down was twenty-twenty, and it shattered the paralysis in him like glass. He crossed the room in three long strides, sat beside Sam, and took him by the shoulders. "Look at me."
He palmed Sam's cheek and his heart melted at the baby-soft skin there; Sam was so young, so full of promise, and it had all been ripped from him by one terrible night in November.
"You're right," Dean conceded. "I'll never understand. But you and me, we're gonna figure this out. You're not bad, Sam. And you're not gonna turn bad. That's not you."
"But that's my point." Sam was almost in hysterics. "What if I become someone else, what if I stop being me, what if--?"
Dean hushed him and wiped the tears from his face. "Not gonna happen. Not while I'm around, you hear me?"
"You can't promise that."
"Tough tits, I'm promising it."
Sam looked hesitant about drawing closer, so Dean pulled him in and gave him a couple firm pats on the back.
"I can make it to Deadwood tomorrow," Sam said into the fabric of Dean's shirt.
"Yeah, alright."
Dean waited until Sam was asleep before he went to sit outside the motel room, a couple of beers and his cell phone in hand. He put it on speaker, dialed his father's number over and over. Found himself hoping his father would pick up with each ring. Reminded himself he would get the answering machine every single time.
This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean-- 866-907-3235. He can help.
Redial, redial, redial. He kept at it until all the beer was gone and his face was streaked with saltwater, maybe the holiest kind. He dialed one last time, listened to his father's voice like it was a prayer.
-- If this is an emergency, call my son Dean-- 866-907-3235.
He can help.
Dean wasn't so sure.