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“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family."
-Anthony Brandt-
It starts off innocently enough. Just a cough and this wheezy hitch that seems to hit Sam whenever he gets his geek on and starts explaining things too fast. Dean—someone fucking smite him—rolls his eyes and makes fun of him. Starts calling him an old man and offering him his arm every time they have to climb stairs. Sam scowls, bats his hand away, and it’s business as usual.
Except it’s not, because on a staircase up to a library in Idaho about a month after it starts, Sam actually stops climbing. Dean turns round, sees Sam about five steps down and is—again, smite him someone—pissed. “Goddamn it, Sam. It’s raining, would you just—”
And then it’s his arm out for real when Sam looks up with panicked eyes and slowly starts to crumple.
“Sam!” Dean almost misses a step and falls he gets down to him so fast.
Sam’s skin is white and sweat-slick when Dean gets a hand around his jaw and tilts his face up. “Sammy?” Sam’s hand is round his middle while his body is trying to curl itself around the stair railing. Dean curls right there with him. Dammit, Sam has been coughing in the mornings for a few days now, but nothing to explain this.
“Hurts,” Sam manages on an exhalation, barely a whisper. One hand is clamped around his ribs, the other is a claw on Dean’s shoulder. “Can’t... breathe.” His head comes up and his eyes are wide and liquid, fixed on Dean’s.
Dean swallows hard.“Okay, it’s okay. Just... shit! Can I get some help here?”
In a stroke of luck they never usually get, the nearest hospital is literally next door to the library. Dean and a guy whose name he forgets to ask babystep Sam there between them. Sam is breathing on his own, but he’s not talking. So Dean is. A whole bunch of mindless drivel Sam is undoubtedly going to mock the shit out of him for when this is all over.
Sam stops twice, and Dean doesn’t get why until the second time, when Sam stands stock still, his mouth a tight line of concentration. Dean is seconds from screaming at him to fucking move, when Sam looks at him, eyebrows dancing like crazy while he makes this weird, ineffectual attempt to clear his throat. And Dean realizes Sam is not talking because he doesn’t want to cough; is terrified of coughing. It’s all Dean can do at that point not to wrestle him into some kind of fireman’s carry and try running the rest of the way.
He doesn’t and they get there, and Sam is efficiently taken into a chair and a gurney in quick succession, while Dean is ushered over to start filling in forms. It’s not busy, they’re nice, and he’s got a brand new card to use for whatever Sam needs for this. He’s keeping an eye on the room Sam went into, and when a second nurse goes in with an IV bag, he scrawls something universal at the bottom of all four forms and gets over there.
It’s pneumonia. They want an x-ray to confirm it, but the doctor is pretty sure. Which at once sounds scarier and better than Dean was expecting. Better because Sam is at least sitting up with color in his face and eyes that crinkle in greeting when Dean walks in. Worse, because the reason that’s all Dean gets as a greeting is that Sam has a mask over his nose and mouth, and because... well, because it’s fucking pneumonia. Which no one Dean knows has ever had before.
Dean eyes the bag Sam is hooked up to as he nods at Sam and comes to stand beside him. The doc – a middle aged guy with one of the most Grizzly Adams white beards Dean has ever seen – starts leaning Sam over so he can listen to his back again. Sam makes a noise that fogs up his mask and Dean rests his hand on Sam’s left shin and squeezes.
“So, what do we do, doc? He have to stay here?”
“Just until we get some antibiotics and electrolytes through him. It’s only one lung, so no.” He looks at Sam sternly. “But you will listen to what I say, young man. Pneumonia is not something to take lightly. It is not a bad cold and it is not the flu. It’s a serious lung infection. Which means bed rest, fluids, and antibiotics.”
Sam nods and looks at Dean. So the doctor does too. “It goes to the second lung? He’s in trouble.” Dean nods at the doctor and glares at Sam, as if Sam is already in trouble because he ignored all the doctor’s advice and let it get to his other lung.
Dean looks back at the doctor. “How’d he get this? He’s been coughing off and on for a while, but I had no idea it was this bad. Goddamn it, I didn’t know... I mean, he never...” He trails off, scrubs a hand down his face, and ignores whatever Sam is trying to grunt at him through the mask. Because right now he feels as guilty as fuck.
The doctor looks from one to the other, his gaze lingering on Dean and almost becoming amused.
“I’ll tell you something, pneumonia is actually a kind of catch all term for lung infections, so reactions vary. Some people walk around with it undiagnosed for quite a while before it hits hard. Like your brother here. Others drop like stones as soon as the first cough hits.” He looks at Sam. “He seems fit enough, so you make sure he follows my advice and he should be fine.”
Dean nods, reassured and determined. Sam will follow the doctor’s advice if Dean has to sit on him and bribe him with laundry and driving privileges for a month. Because that shit is just not going to Sam’s other lung on his watch.
The IV is going to be a while, and then there’s the x-ray to wait for. Plus Sam’s eyelids are getting heavier and heavier. So Dean gives his shin one last squeeze, tells him he’ll be back soon, and heads out to the hospital parking lot. Where there is no car, of course, because it’s down the road and parked near the library.
When Dean gets to the Imapala, he opens the door, slides in, gets his key out... and then sits and gazes out the windshield, even though there’s nothing particularly spectacular out there. It’s a bright, cold, late spring afternoon on a non-descript street in downtown Nowheresville, Idaho. A couple of cars up, some kid is getting yanked across the road to an SUV, and he’s trying to get an entire ice cream off the front of his sweater and into his mouth with his free hand before his mother notices. On the other side of the street a couple of high schoolers are leaning against a van making out, two old guys are cackling about something as they walk in front of the Impala clutching fishing gear and beer, and over to the left there’s a small group of skateboarders dodging and weaving their way through the sidewalk, whooping and hollering as they go.
It’s all so mundane and normal and Dean can’t help but sit there and soak it all in. He feels the pride and the pain of the scene before him deep in the hip that will always ache, in the hearing Sam has lost in his left ear, in the shock of pure white that runs through his and Sam’s hair now, and in the scarred ridge that snakes along his back and always catches on his goddamn belt.
No one knows. No one out there knows they have skateboards and boyfriends and girlfriends and ice creams and fishing poles and late afternoons in the sunshine because of the guy sitting in the Impala. And because of that guy’s brother and what went down in a scorched field ten miles east of Detroit.
And now Sam has pneumonia.
Dean’s hand hurts. He looks down and uncurls his fingers from around the car keys. Of course. They got through an apocalypse, the caging of Lucifer and the restoration of the heavenly host, and now, now Sam can’t fucking breathe.
Dean almost says aloud the words that will make the other thoughts in his head real.
He turns the keys in the ignition and pulls out. It doesn’t matter. They are real, and he’ll find the time to say them later. For now he’s got shit to organize and an illness to google.
“Dude, it’s cool. Really. Watch whatever you want.”
Dean frowns. Only about four and half words in that made it out of Sam in real sound. Sam says his throat doesn’t hurt at all, that it’s all to do with his chest but Christ, he sounds like he’s dragging broken glass up from his boots.
The TV is turned to.. Dean squints across from where’s he’s sitting with the laptop at the table. Something about lions. Or hurricanes. One of those earnest documentaries Sam often sneak-watches if Dean is out or asleep.
“Nah, you get your geek porn fix while you can.” Dean stands and walks to the small kitchenette and the two bags of bulging groceries sitting on the counter top. It’s late evening and he moved them into a better motel before he picked Sam up, knowing it would go smoother with less eye-rolling, indignation and coughing if he did things that way round. They’re going to be staying put for at least a week, so decent heating, a fridge, cable, and a hot plate as well as a microwave seemed the smart way to go. The doc actually wants two weeks, and Dean will cross that bridge and hustle pool if and when he has to.
Dean looks back at Sam sitting up on the bed. “You want juice?” Sam opens his mouth, Dean holds up his hand. “Dude, nod or shake.” Sam grins and nods his head.
Dean shakes his and makes his way over with a full glass of orange juice. He hands it over and then sits down on his own bed to watch Sam drink it. So far so okay. Sam has got every pillow but one propping him up and it seems to be helping him stay alert. Before that he’d made several bids for the sofa, until Dean had thrown him the remote and dragged the TV to the foot of his bed to make sure he stayed there.
“You want anything else, Sammy?” Dean can’t stop his voice from being soft. And he’s inches away from smoothing Sam’s hair back and tucking it behind his ears. He knows it’s ridiculous. This Sam, with his scars and his hearing loss and his blood-letting skills, is so far from the Sam he tended to once upon a time with ice cream and cartoons that he sometimes forgets they’re one and the same. But now, something about his brother in bed, pale and still, with a TV on in the background and a blanket tucked high around his shoulders, is connecting the two Sams together again, sharp and sweet in his mind’s eye.
Especially when Sam doesn’t scoff, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t do anything except look at Dean and smile a little.
“’M good, Dean. Just tired is all.”
Dean gives in to the impulse. Brushes the hair off Sam’s forehead once, twice, and then lets his hand rest where it falls, inexplicably touched when Sam simply closes his eyes.
“So sleep,” he finds himself saying. “Tight. And don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
Turns out more than the bed bugs bite. Sam can sleep, but he can’t sleep and cough. And the one seems to cause the other. Dean watches and winces as Sam propels himself upright to hack out half a lung before flopping back down and almost instantly going back to sleep again. It’s weird, like he’s only waking up to cough. The fourth time, though, Dean can’t take it. It lasts too fucking long for one thing and judging from the groan Sam makes when he lies back down, his brother has stayed awake this time.
“Hey,” he says, padding over from the sofa where he’s been stretched out with the laptop. Sam turns tired eyes toward him, but he doesn’t speak. Instead, his shoulders ripple as he tries to contain another cough. His skin shines in the low light, and when Dean stretches out his hand he’s unsurprised to feel the heat.
Shit. “Just a sec, Sam.”
Dean goes for the bag with the meds and comes back with two pills and another glass of orange juice. “Was going to wake you up in half an hour to give you these anyway. Come on.”
Dean gets him up enough to take his meds. When he lets go Sam slumps back down and throws an arm over his eyes.“Wanna sleep, Dean.”
“I know.” Sam sounds like he’s twelve.
“Can’t. Keep fucking coughing.” Maybe not twelve. And then as if to prove his point, Sam jackknifes up again when another spasm racks him.
“Jesus.” Dean grabs hold of Sam’s shoulder with his left hand and presses his right into Sam’s back, just behind his right lung where the infection is. He has no idea if that is what a person is supposed to do for this, but he cannot sit there and just listen to that godawful sound. He starts rubbing slow circles with the heel of his hand. Sam’s head dips forward and he groans. But it sounds like it might be relief and not pain, so Dean doesn’t stop. He leans in to Sam’s good ear so he can keep his voice low. “Listen. When you lie flat, all that crap settles and backs up. Then your brain probably gets a signal to, y’know, get rid of it. Which is why you’re coughing more when you...what, you’re the only one who can google something?”
Dean’s face feels a little hot, caught in the swivel of his brother’s stare. He keeps the circle-thing up, though.
“No... I mean, yes.” Sam clears his throat as his voice cracks back in. “Makes sense. Guess I’mma have to sleep upright or something.”
Dean chews his lip. He looks around the room. And then back at his brother, who suddenly seems small and vulnerable under his hands in a way a dozen battle wounds have yet to make him. Sam is blinking slowly, sucking each breath in with care, and getting heavier and heavier as he leans back onto the press of Dean’s hand. Dean swallows and makes his voice stern, the no-nonsense-older-brother one.
“Sit forward,” he says, decision made. “And don’t say a fucking word.”
It takes an awkward minute or two to get organized. Dean is already showered and changed into sweats and a t-shirt, so all he does is grab the one pillow left from his own bed and put it in front of him. Then he vees out his legs and sits back against the three pillows Sam has already got piled up against the headboard.
“Dean...”
“Shut up and get back here.”
Sam just looks over his shoulder at him. Dean spreads his arms out, pillow resting lengthways down his chest. “No way either of us is getting any sleep with you springing up like a jack-in-the-box every five minutes. This way I at least get to watch some TV.”
Sam’s got the smallest smile on his face, and Dean’s is suddenly hot because fuck, he’s a tool and Sam isn’t a kid anymore and he should just—
“Okay. Um... yeah, okay.” And Sam starts shuffling back. He stops and Dean gets a raised eyebrow and another over-the-shoulder look. “I get the remote, though.”
“Nuh-uh. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.”
“That’s for the car, asshole. This is televison, Dean.”
Sam settles against him tentatively, and Dean wriggles a little. Pillow between them notwithstanding, Sam is heavy. And fucking huge. And the last time they sat like this, Sam was one arm wide, a foot and half shorter, and soothed with comics and popsicles.
Dean wonders if the principle behind soothing that Sam still applies. This Sam is not really leaning back and he’s looking kind of uncomfortable, as if he might make some lame-ass attempt to get up at any moment. So Dean takes a deep breath, wraps one arm around as much of Sam as he can, and hauls him back against the pillow and his own chest. He gets a surprised kind of gruntcough in reply.
“You,” he says into Sam’s right ear after Sam stills, “will always be shotgun. Now gimme the remote, drink your juice, and don’t talk.”
Maybe it’s the illness, maybe it’s the meds, but Sam actually does as he’s told. He stays where he is, sips his juice, and keeps quiet. Dean channel surfs and stops when he finds The Addams Family. Sam puts the juice down and tries a withering look, but Dean’s not buying it. He knows Sam loves this — hell, ‘an axe, that takes me back!’ was a stupid catchphrase between them for years. And besides, it’s Angelica Huston. In black. With ruby red lips. So Dean ignores him and they start watching. Dean remembers Sam wanting to go to summer camp because of Wednesday and Sam coughs and calls him a dick because no he didn’t and that’s the second movie. Which it isn’t and yes he so did, even told Dad it would improve his bow hunting skills. Sam thunks his head back hard on Dean’s collarbone for that, Dean rubs it and calls him a freak. And then Sam just ends up kind of staying there, awake and not coughing. So Dean turns the TV down. Sam’s breathing is a little labored, but steady enough against his chest, and Dean suddenly finds it the easiest thing in the world to reminisce a little more about the life they have both outgrown and almost forgotten. Dad and the haunted baseball diamond, Sam’s passion for Dean’s green t-shirt and a rabbit called Nutmeg, his hatred of grapes and anything purple when he was three, and... Dean takes a breath for this one... how Mom baked her own bread and used to pick Dean up so he could put it on the windowsill to cool.
Sam dozes after that, and Dean does too, because the next thing he remembers is a lighter room, no feeling in his left arm, and the need to get to the bathroom now...
Getting out from under Sam without waking him requires a skill and patience Dean just doesn’t have before coffee and breakfast.
“Sorry,” he says, shaking his arm out. “Go back to sleep.”
“’Timezit?”
“Fuck knows. Early.” Dean gets the blanket back up around Sam’s shoulders, but Sam is a deadweight when Dean tries to get another pillow under him.
“Sam...”
“Me ‘lone,” comes the slurred response as Sam turns on his side and burrows deeper.
“Fine, cough and choke, then.”
He gets a snore as an answer and once he’s satisfied Sam has no fever, he decides to let sleeping Sasquatches lie for as long as they possibly can.
So when Sam sits up and coughs about an hour and a half later, Dean is ready. He gets over to Sam with his meds, a coffee, the promise of pancakes, and a road atlas.
Sam downs the meds, nods to the pancakes, and blinks at the atlas.
“Dean?” he croaks. “Um... we lost?”
Dean stares down at him, heart beating a little, because no matter how long he’s sat at the table thinking this out, he really has no idea how it’s going to go down.
“Not yet. Go shower and we’ll talk.”
He gets a weird look and a raised eyebrow as Sam clambers to his feet, but that’s Sam first thing anyway. He watches him walk slowly away, listing to his right.
“You okay?” he asks after him.
“Yeah,” says Sam, not turning. “Just.. man, it’s like I cracked a rib.”
It’s strange. Sam has had worse. Sam has had so much worse. But watching him move across the room like an arthritic ninety-year-old while he tries not to breathe too deeply is it for Dean - the last drop from the glass, the last straw on the camel. Whatever. It’s the last something.
After the pancakes, Dean slides Sam a second coffee over and points to the atlas.
“We’re out, Sam. As in you and me not doing this shit for a while.” He holds his hand up, anticipating exactly when Sam will interrupt. “Dude, we saved the world. The fucking world, Sam. And I can’t... I need us out for a while, okay?” He looks away, swallows, and then looks back. “I’m asking you for this, Sam.”
Sam eyes go wide and his mouth closes with a click. Dean knows it's because he never asks Sam directly for stuff like this. Always tells him. Or ignores him and does what he thinks is best for both of them anyway. But not this time.
He takes a calming breath, because he need his voice steady. “And it has to be whether you want to or not, because dude, I have been with your sorry ass too long to even think about going solo right now.” He runs a hand through his hair. “So I’m talking about you getting over this, and then the both of us taking off to find a place and just staying there a spell. And Bobby’s does not fucking count, by the way.” He looks up and out of the window, even more sure of what he wants and why he wants it. Then he looks back at Sam, his scarred and patient brother. He almost reaches out and takes his hand. “We saved everyone, Sam. Everyone,” he repeats, voice almost cracking. “And you and me? We deserve to be part of that.”
Dean sits back. He’s done. He can’t say it any better or any worse than that. It’s all up to Sam. Who is nodding. A lot. A muscle jumps along Sam’s jaw as he stares into his coffee and Dean realizes that he honestly has no idea what his brother might say.
“So what’s the atlas for?”
Dean relaxes a little, surprised. “You get to pick.”
Sam’s gaze is everywhere on Dean’s face, and it takes a moment or two for him to speak. “As in... open a page and point, and that’s where we’ll go?”
Where we’ll live, thinks Dean. But instead he just smiles. “If you like, though I was hoping you’d be a little geekier about it. Do some research, look shit up about climate and—”
“I know where to go. I mean, I know where I want to pick.”
Sam’s got the oddest half smile on his face, and the streak in his hair is suddenly very white in the early morning sun coming in the window.
“You do?”
Dean braces himself. He can cope with California, he can.
“Arizona.” Sam says. Quietly, but firmly, as if it’s a decision he’s just made but already likes.
“Yeah?”
Dean thinks about it. He’s been through it, of course, but not since Dad. He remembers the heat, the sun, and a landscape cut straight from the earth’s crust one minute, full of crazy cacti the next. And miles and miles of clear skies and dry air. He looks at Sam, at the answering smile slowly forming on his brother’s face, and he knows. It’s perfect.
“Well, okay then.”
Sam nods. Slowly this time. Then shakes his head, as if he can’t quite believe it.
Dean cannot resist raising his coffee cup, and then leaning in to touch it to Sam’s when Sam smiles and raises his. They have a shitload to think about, even more to discuss, and Sam has to stop wheezing and clutching his side before any of it even begins to happen. But as far as Dean is concerned, this lame touch of styrofoam with Sam seals the deal better than a demon kiss at any crossroad.
And it should, because it’s the last deal he ever wants to make.
******