Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You know, you wouldn’t have to do that if you’d just eat something.” Sam said it casually, like it was supposed to be helpful, with a hard edge of condescension, like Dean should be smart enough to figure it out on his own.

Dean looked up from piercing a new hole in the leather of his belt just long enough to glare at Sam where he lounged on the bed, laptop on his knees, then turned his attention back to twisting the knife carefully through the leather.

He heard Sam sigh, too loud not to be purposeful. “When you’re done, we can go to dinner.” A challenge shrouded in mundanity.

Dean lifted one shoulder less than an inch and dropped it again in the semblance of a shrug, refusing to rise to the bait.

“What do you want to eat?” Sam pressed.

“Don’t care,” he muttered, widening the hole he’d made slightly, cleaning up the edges.

“Dean, come on.”

Dean forced himself to look up. “What?”

“You’ve been back for weeks now,” Sam said, and Dean sighed just as loudly as Sam had earlier, looking back at his belt. “Don’t do that, you know we have to talk about this.”

“No, we really don’t,” Dean snapped, standing up to thread his belt through the loops. He wasn’t staying for this conversation, not again.

“You’re skinny, man. I know…I know Purgatory was rough, but –”

“You don’t know a damn thing about Purgatory,” Dean cut him off. “I spent a goddamn year running and fighting for my life while you were here shacking up with some chick, not even bothering to look for me.” He picked up his gun, his jacket, and his keys, jerked the motel door open. “Don’t act like you care about what happens to me,” he spat and slammed the door, the echo of his words behind him less angry than he meant for them to be, sadder than he cared to admit.
Dean drove half a mile before he pulled over, smacking his hand against the steering wheel, then rested his head against it. “Sorry, baby,” he murmured.

When he let himself, he was furious at Sam. He was hurt and betrayed and angry, and he wanted to be those things. He wanted to yell and scream and throw some punches, because every second Sam was gone, Dean was looking for him. Every night Sam was gone, Dean drank until he passed out because he couldn’t stop remembering Sam, couldn’t stop thinking he was about to walk around the corner and gripe about Dean’s socks on the floor, or tell him about a hunt or hand him a beer. He wanted to be angry, but every time he thought of how awful it was without Sam, he knew he couldn’t afford it. And when he thought about the first moment he saw Sam after Purgatory, the feel of Sam alive and breathing in his arms, he could almost convince himself he wasn’t angry at all.

He let the anger flare up, once in a while, because of all the things he felt, anger was the cheapest. Anger was a tiny down payment on the betrayal and mistrust and uncertainty between them. So he pulled it out like a shield every time Sam nagged him about the weight he’d lost, because if he wasn’t angry at Sam for being annoying, he’d be embarrassingly grateful that he even noticed. Dean didn’t have that kind of chick flick moment left in him.

An hour after he stormed out, Dean returned with dinner as a peace offering. Sam had moved to the table, squinting at his laptop screen, but as soon as Dean approached, he slammed it shut. Dean raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment. He wasn’t in a position to be demanding his brother’s secrets. He handed a Styrofoam box to Sam.

“I found the most disgustingly healthy thing on the menu for you,” he said offhand, as though he hadn’t spent a full five minutes looking for something just this absurd. Sam opened the box to reveal what was supposedly some kind of sandwich, except it was vegetarian and gluten-free, whatever the fuck that meant.

“Thanks,” Sam said, actually looking kind of happy about the green abomination sitting in front of him. Dean settled onto Sam’s bed, opening his own box to reveal a burger and fries. He tipped the box conspicuously toward his brother to show Sam that, yes, he has food. Sam looked like he wanted to argue about Dean eating on his bed, but finally looked back at his own food and kept his mouth shut.

It was a pretty good burger, Dean thought after the first bite. Nothing in Purgatory was soft the way bread was, everything stony solid and razor-sharp edges. Nothing like these crisp vegetables, because stuff didn’t grow right there. But there was meat, he reflected, looking at the burger. Torn and mauled and bloody, strewn across the ground in poisonous rivulets. He looked away and forced a second bite, choked on a third, took a deep breath as his stomach roiled, the kind of faint shriek that preceded meat in Purgatory. He set the burger down, poked through the french fries looking for the crispiest ones because the mush of potato reminded him of soil in his mouth, ate exactly five of them, and set the box aside, laying back even though this wasn’t his bed. It wasn’t much, but he could probably hold this much down, if he really concentrated on not thinking.

“Dean.” Dean sat back up slowly, shooting an annoyed glance at Sam and his goddamn puppy eyes. He choked down a few more bites of burger, a couple more fries. Because maybe it would make Sam happy, even if it meant he’d probably have to puke later. And then he lay back and closed his eyes, folding his hands on his stomach instead of clutching it the way he needed.

“Shut up, Sam.” He didn’t even open his eyes because he knew exactly what Sam was doing. They’d had this conversation so many times, he didn’t even have to look to know Sam was wearing his concerned face.

“You can’t be full already.” Another challenge clothed in disbelief.

“Well, I am,” Dean snapped, opening his eyes to glare at the ceiling, dropping one of his hands to the bed, clenching his fists in the sheets. He pressed the other a little harder against his stomach. Not just full, actually. Nauseated. Exactly as he was every time he tried to eat anything substantial.

“Dean, you’ve lost so much weight,” Sam tried again. “I can count your ribs through your shirt.” Dean looked down at his chest and raised his eyebrows because couldn’t really argue with that. “What are you trying to do?”

“Not trying anything, Sammy. Just not hungry,” Dean said tiredly.

Sam gave one of those ridiculous sighs again, and Dean closed his eyes once more. “Can you at least not sleep on my bed?” Sam snapped, like he was indignant instead of worried. Dean didn’t know why they bothered with these stupid masks anymore.

Dean rolled off the bed, and his stomach lurched. He scrambled toward the bathroom, barely making it in time to lose his so-called dinner in just a couple quick heaves. He stayed for a long moment, breathing heavily, trying to let his stomach settle, before straightening up, wiping his mouth and flushing. He turned to brush his teeth, only to find Sam standing in the doorway because he hadn’t even had time to close the damn door. “Ever heard of privacy?” he rasped, irritated.

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam said softly. “Jesus.”

He was doing the goddamn puppy dog eyes again and Dean could feel himself crumbling. It made him want to shove Sam back a step, startle him enough to knock that look off his face, just long enough for Dean to leave. But the stupid eyes were working on him and instead he leaned heavily on the sink, hanging his head.

“Ever since I got back…” Dean trailed off, waved his hand in a motion he hoped would encompass puking his guts out every time he ate, when he could eat at all.

“You’ve been doing this since you got back?” Sam asked, a weird accusing lilt to the guilt in his voice.

“Not doing anything, Sam,” Dean said tiredly, before running a toothbrush quickly around his mouth to kill the taste.

“No, I meant….Christ, Dean.”

Dean leaned down to spit out his toothpaste, studiously avoiding Sam’s stupid wounded expression.

“I thought you were starving yourself because…” Sam mumbled then paused. “I don’t know why,” he added in a rush like Dean wouldn’t notice it was a lie.

“Not a fucking girl,” Dean griped. He did shove Sam now, more to get out of the bathroom than anything. The puking had left him feeling weak and shaky, and he just wanted to go to bed and ignore this whole damn conversation.

“I wasn’t trying to…” Sam trailed off as Dean kicked off his boots and laid on his bed, fully dressed. He heard Sam say something else, but he didn’t listen, closing his eyes and curling around his aching stomach. A moment later, the light clicked off and Sam’s hand brushed lightly on his shoulder. Dean fell asleep to the mechanical clicking of the laptop keys and he dreamed of Purgatory, of a million eyes blinking at him as his body shrank under their scrutiny no matter how hard he fought.

-SPN-

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sam asked as soon as Dean opened his eyes. Sam sat on the opposite bed, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees so that his face was approximately a foot from Dean’s.

“The fuck?” Dean groaned, rolling to face away from Sam. “Do I have to teach you about personal space too? Jesus Christ.”

“I was thinking this whole time you were doing this on purpose, or something,” Sam pressed. “You should have told me.” Like it was something you just came out and said. Like you could admit you couldn’t do the most basic goddamn thing in the world, to your brother who thought you were a needy bitch and had been glad to be rid of you.

“You could have asked,” Dean muttered instead, pushing himself up until he was sitting against the headboard.

Sam paused, frowning at him. “I’m sorry. You’re right,” he said finally and before Dean could think the world was ending because there was one fucking thing in this world that wasn’t his fault: “But you should have told me.”

“I can take care of myself, Sam. Been doing it for years.”

“I can help you,” Sam insisted. “I read about this, last night.”

“What, you found online support for Purgatorian stomach bugs?” Dean asked, hauling himself out of bed and heading for the shower, turning it on so Sam would stop talking.

“It’s not a stomach bug,” Sam said over the sound of creaking pipes. “It’s called Refeeding Syndrome.”

“I don’t have some fucking syndrome,” Dean retorted.

“Dean, would you just listen to me for one minute, please?” Sam demanded, and Dean stopped. He looked at Sam for a long moment, then waved at him to continue.

“It happens when you’ve been fasting or malnourished. It’s like your body can’t just accept normal food again,” Sam said in a rush. “And it can be really dangerous. But it’s easy to treat.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” Dean said, folding his arms.

“We just have to start slow. Give you stuff that’s easy to digest, stuff with a lot of minerals in it because yours are probably depleted. Work back up to cheeseburgers and stuff.”

Which sounded a lot more pleasant than what it actually was. Dean had pictured all the times he was sick as a kid, being fed his dad’s stew and milkshakes. But, according to Sam, milkshakes were far too rich and Dad’s stew had too much protein. What he actually got was “Scrambled eggs. No bacon, no sausage. Just scrambled eggs.” Dean jabbed his fork at the offending yellow substance.

“Easy to digest,” Sam said earnestly and for just a second, Dean remembered that exact look on his brother’s face when he was twelve, bringing him the right tools to tinker with cars in Bobby’s yard, and Dean crumbled.

“Fine,” he mumbled through a mouthful of eggs, washed down with a glass of milk – “Has a lot of phosphate, it’ll help get your metabolism on track,” Sam had explained, trying, and failing, to hand Dean some sort of ridiculous diagram to prove his point.

It wasn’t actually that bad, and when he didn’t have to pull over to throw up, he considered it a win.

Sam attacked Dean’s alleged syndrome with the same intense approach he used for all other aspects of his life. He read every single thing he could find on the internet, scoured the library, wrote out meal plans and then annoyed the hell out of Dean until he complied with the gospel of Sam. For five solid days, Sam was pushing some kind of snack at Dean every two hours on the hour, even to the point of pausing halfway through digging a grave to tell Dean it was time for a banana, which was conveniently left resting on top of the weapons duffle. Dean threw it at Sam’s head instead.

-SPN-

Despite Sam’s ridiculously over the top attempts at taking care of him, Dean had to admit defeat at a gas station in some Podunk town in Montana. Because he felt like complete crap and after driving five hours through Jack Frost’s temper tantrum because Sam insisted there was a case up in this godforsaken part of the country that couldn’t wait until it thawed a bit, Dean was in no shape to continue driving. Already he’d nearly spun them off the road when a wayward sneeze caused him to jerk the wheel over a patch of ice. He might be falling apart and this was sure to make Sam call him on it, but damned if his baby was going to suffer with him.

While Sam was still inside primping in the mirror or whatever girly shit he did that took so goddamn long, Dean finished filling the tank and planted himself firmly in the passenger seat, trying to convince himself of some residual Sam body heat left in the seats despite the icy weather. When Sam finally came out of the gas station, he looked at Dean curled in the passenger seat, then pointedly around at the snow piling up and the ice slicking the roads, and back at Dean, because they both knew Dean didn’t trust anybody with his baby in this kind of weather. Dean gave him the most menacing glare he could muster under the circumstances, and Sam had the good sense to get in the driver’s seat and shut the hell up.
After an uncomfortably silent twenty minutes, punctuated only by the occasional painful sneeze from Dean because Sam would apparently rather listen to him suffer than turn on the damn radio, Sam finally said “Snack time.”

“Not hungry,” Dean muttered, refusing to take the apple Sam was trying to hand him, instead turning his head to rest on the passenger door.

“Dean, c’mon. You’ve been doing so well.” He had too, although it wasn’t as though eating was a particularly complex skill. He’d even been feeling a little better overall, less weak and dizzy than he’d been since getting back topside. Until, that was, he started feeling like complete shit again.

“Not now, Sam,” Dean said as firmly as he could, but his voice cracked at the end as he broke off into a harsh cough. He turned away from the window again, looking for some water or coffee or something liquid to quash the fire erupting in his throat. Sam handed him a bottle of water and Dean took a few gulps before capping the bottle and leaning back against the seat, closing his eyes and trying to catch his breath.

A second later, though, he felt Sam’s palm on his forehead. “Shit, Dean, you’ve got a fever.” The hand was gone before Dean could even muster the strength to push it away, and he sort of missed the coolness of Sam’s skin against his own.

“Fuck,” Sam muttered, and Dean felt the car slow. He blinked his eyes open and noted the motel sign up ahead.

“Don’t stop,” he said and his voice broke. He coughed shallowly, trying to clear his throat. “We gotta make Trego by nightfall.”

“Trego will still be there when you don’t have a fever.”

“Not what you said this morning,” Dean muttered.

“You’re sick,” Sam insisted, parking the car in front of the office. “The poltergeist can fucking wait.”

“It’s just a fever,” Dean grumbled.

“Dean, you’re borderline underweight, you’re malnourished. Your immune system is compromised.” Sam said it urgently, like Dean was fucking dying or something, which he wasn’t. He just had a stupid fever. “If it’s just a fever, it’ll be gone by tomorrow and we can get to Trego then. Okay?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I’m not underweight.” But Sam was already out of the car, the sound of the door slamming drowning out Dean’s protests.

-SPN-

“You have to say sorry,” Dean murmured, tugging his blankets down enough to glare at Sam with one eye.

“I’m not apologizing to you, Dean,” Sam said as he rooted through their first aid kit, not even bothering to notice all the effort Dean had put into this cyclops glare.

“Not to me,” Dean said, then paused as Sam rattled a pill bottle loudly. “To Baby.”

“Fuck, Dean, there is nothing in this stupid box,” Sam griped, like he it was Dean’s fault, when they both knew who usually restocked the damn thing. And for that matter, Dean thought uncharitably, Sam had had plenty of time to buy cold pills while Dean was in Purgatory.

“I’m serious, Sam.” Dean shivered again, coughed painfully, and pulled the thin blanket back over his head. It didn’t help. “You slammed the door.”

Another ridiculous sigh from Sam. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“No, you have to go tell Baby,” Dean insisted, pulling the blankets back down to look at Sam imploringly, teeth chattering uncomfortably.

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Sammy? While you’re out there apologizing, go buy soup.” He sneezed in what he hoped was a convincing way.

“Oh, now you’re hungry?” Sam snarked, and actually threw his hands up like he was in some overacted junior high play.

“No,” Dean said. “I’m fucking freezing.”

Sam sighed again, but this time it wasn’t the huge gust of exasperation. It was the softer huff of resignation. Sam snatched the sheets and blankets off his own bed and settled them over Dean, sitting lightly on the edge of the bed to tuck them in all around, then running his hand lightly along Dean’s back and up to cup the back of his neck. “Fever’s gone up,” he said softly. “Okay. I’m gonna go out real quick. I saw a store not that far from here. I’m gonna get us some stuff to make it through the next couple of days.”

“No,” Dean said then broke into another coughing fit. “Trego tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam smoothed his hand over Dean’s head like he was pushing his hair back from his forehead even though Dean didn’t have that ridiculous mop Sam did, but Sam’s hand was gone before he could get his arm out of the blankets to swat him away. He scowled instead, but Sam was standing up to grab the keys and missed it.

He turned the TV on, flipped through the channels until he found Dr. Sexy MD, and tossed the remote onto the bed by Dean’s face. “Don’t die while I’m gone. I don’t feel like dealing with any more dead bodies this week,” Sam said, which really meant that he was worried.

“Be careful with my car,” Dean said when he really meant ‘be careful with my brother.’

-SPN-

True to his word, Sam was back after less than one episode of Dr. Sexy, but it was a close thing. Dean had actually started considering the best way to change the channel without emerging from his blankets might be to use his tongue, figuring that the germs he might pick up couldn’t be that much worse than whatever he already had, and quite frankly, his entire body hurt too much to consider much else.
Thankfully, just as the credits appeared, Sam stumbled in the door coated in white like a sugar doughnut, weighed down with several plastic grocery sacks. Dean blinked gummy eyes up at him and sneezed. Sam slammed the door and dropped the bags on the table.

“Trego, Sam,” he coughed. “The fuck is all that?”

“Fuck Trego,” Sam muttered darkly. “Damn poltergeist is probably under six feet of snow by now. Radio said this storm isn’t letting up any time soon. We’re fucking stuck.”

“You’re the one –” The cough came on so suddenly Dean almost choked, spluttering and coughing all the more as his throat was torn raw and his mouth began to taste faintly of blood. His brother was at his side in an instant, pulling him up until he was sitting cradled against Sam’s chest, coughing uncontrollably, barely able to wheeze a breath between bouts of hacking.

“Jesus fuck, Dean!” Sam said, rubbing his back and that fucking hurt, his goddamn skin hurt and Sam was raising bruises alone the knobs of his spine but he couldn’t even catch his breath to tell him. His vision started to darken at the edges and he lost track of what Sam was cursing, the only sound the crackle of his lungs collapsing as he desperately tried to breathe.

Slowly, the coughing subsided and Dean sagged, gasping shallowly, against Sam who was holding him tightly, rocking him back and forth gently, one hand running carefully through Dean’s hair. He took a couple more shallow breaths and weakly pushed Sam away so he could flop back down onto the mattress, wincing as the contact made his muscles ache.

Sam hesitated for a moment where he sat on the edge of the bed, half reaching for Dean like he was going to hold him again but seeming to realize that wasn’t going to do anything helpful at all and instead muttering, “Drugs.”

“Cocaine with a side of heroin,” Dean ordered weakly. “Nothing I have to smoke.”

Sam rolled his eyes but the lines crinkling his brow weren’t quite as deep when he returned holding what for Dean would have been a handful of pills.

“The fuck, Sammy?” Dean rasped. “I was kidding, I’m not trying to overdose tonight. I’ve puked enough lately.”

“Tylenol, NyQuil, and a fuckton of vitamin C,” Sam said, forcing the pills into Dean’s hand. “Just take them, okay?” And then the puppy dog eyes. Sam turned away and started doing something in the kitchen while Dean took the pills one at a time, wincing as each dragged along his sore throat.

Sam returned, shuffling between the beds to stand in front of Dean with a hot water bottle, an icepack wrapped efficiently in a towel, and a thermos. He tugged Dean’s blankets away and Dean made a mortifyingly pathetic noise of protest, then an equally humiliating hum of content as Sam settled the warm rubber bag against his belly. Sam tucked the blankets back around him, then walked around the bed and sat next to Dean, back against the headboard, swinging his legs up and kicking off his boots. Dean rolled over onto his back, dragging the water bottle with him and stared up at Sam.

Sam handed him the thermos. “Soup. You’ve got to eat something. Can’t lose the progress we already made, okay?” Dean wriggled one hand out from under the blankets and took the thermos, staring at it from his reclined position like he could take off the lid and move the soup to his mouth with just his brain. But that had always been Sam’s area of expertise, not Dean’s.

Wordlessly, Sam slid an arm behind Dean’s shoulders, wincing as shoulder blades dug into his arm, and pulled Dean up enough to prop several pillows behind his back. Dean settled back into them, immediately breathing easier. Sam unscrewed the top of the thermos for him because Dean was still unwilling to move any more body parts out of his blanket cocoon. Dean frowned as he felt Sam’s arm worm its way beneath the top pillow and then Sam’s arm was sort of wrapped around him, his hand holding the cloth-covered icepack to Dean’s forehead. Which meant, despite the fact that he couldn’t really feel Sam’s arm through the pillow or feel Sam’s anything through the layers of blankets, he was basically nestled in his brother’s arms and that was just a little weird.

“Sam…” he protested quietly, glancing up to find his brother staring determinedly at the procedural cop drama that had taken the place of Dr. Sexy.

“Shut the fuck up and drink your soup, Dean.” He said it nicely though, no edge or undercurrent at all. And maybe this was weird and touchy-feely and entirely too chick flick, but damn if it didn’t help. He wasn’t shivering anymore and the aching in his joints was already abating. He hadn’t quite noticed the flush of fever in his face but the ice was making it feel a hell of a lot better. The soup even actually tasted good.

And maybe he could feel the ridges of his ribs pressing up where his arms were crossed over his chest, maybe he was sicker than he’d been in years. But he wasn’t in Purgatory, alone with no one looking for him. And maybe Sam hadn’t looked for him. But Sam did go out into a blizzard for him. And maybe he was still hurt and betrayed and angry. But right here, with the feel of Sam alive and breathing at his side Dean wasn’t angry at all.

He gripped the remote through the blankets and tossed it into Sam’s lap. “Change the channel, bitch. Fucking hate CSI.”

Chapter Text

The NyQuil didn’t even get a chance to work. Not half an hour after Sam settled on an X-Files rerun, Dean was shoving Sam’s arm off of him and stumbling for the bathroom. At least this time he had the presence of mind to slam the door behind him.

Not that it stopped Sam. Before Dean was even halfway through the dry heaving, Sam was sitting on the edge of the tub, hand resting on Dean’s spine, exactly where it was already bruised from Sam’s earlier ministrations.

Dean spat one last time and shrugged Sam’s hand off. “I already let you snuggle with me,” he said roughly. “That’s enough goddamn bonding. I’m not in the mood to put out tonight.”

“I should call an ambulance,” Sam said drily. “If you’re not in the mood for sex, you’re either dying or the world is ending. No wait, I remember when the world was ending and I spent plenty of nights in the car.”

Dean tried to summon a cocky grin but it was more of a grimace before it was interrupted with a fit of coughing that left him gagging, hunching over the toilet again. And Sam’s hand was bumping along the pebbled path of Dean’s spine, warm and soothing. Dean didn’t even have the energy to shake him off again, just slumped over as soon as he was done, his head coming to rest against Sam’s knee like he was some sort of damn Labrador. And then Sam’s hand moved to his hair.

“Don’t…” Dean tried to order but then his voice just stopped, something Sam’s hand neglected to do.

“Don’t what?” Sam asked, his fingers still stroking through Dean’s hair.

“Stop petting me,” Dean murmured with exactly zero percent of the ire he had planned.

“I’m not,” Sam said, even though he was. Dean considered getting up and kicking his brother’s ass on principle alone. He even cracked one eye open as the first step in the plan to deliver the beat down, but the stupid white walls and fuzzy fluorescent lights hurt his head and he found himself turning his face against Sam’s knee and giving up. The petting wasn’t actually so bad.

Dean shivered. Without the blankets and sheets and hot water bottle, he was left with the t-shirt he’d been wearing all day, possibly since yesterday, and boxers. And the vinyl of the floor, while surprisingly not sticky, was still unpleasantly cold. Of course, Sam noticed.

“C’mon, man,” Sam said softly, in that deeply caring voice he used on old ladies. “Back to bed.” And the petting ceased.

Dean opened his eyes while simultaneously trying to stand up, and received a searing pain through his retinas as a reward. He ended up kind of dragging himself to his feet by clawing his way up Sam’s shirt, like his brother was some kind of ladder. Which, Dean reflected, was close enough as to be true. He didn’t even notice he was falling until Sam’s arms came in swift, painful contact with his ribs, and he ended up doubled over, hacking uncontrollably with Sam’s arms wrapped around his chest to hold him up.

Sam was as gentle as he could be about lowering them both to the floor, but with Dean’s hunched posture and general uselessness to the cause of movement, it was more of a controlled collapse than a sitting down. Sam ended up on his knees, Dean sprawled across his lap with his face pushed into Sam’s abs.

“Okay, that’s obviously not going to work.” Dean squirmed to roll himself so his face wasn’t pressed into Sam’s sweaty flannel, and Sam took charge, arranging Dean so he was sitting on the tile, leaning against Sam’s chest. Dean wondered how he kept getting into these situations, cuddling with his overgrown brother against his will. He flailed a little, trying to get away, and Sam wrapped an arm around his chest, and then, of all things, started rubbing gentle circles on his chest.

He felt Sam reach back and heard the shower turn on. “I already…told you,” he wheezed. “I’m not…up for….fucking tonight…Not even…in the shower.”

“Could you stop being a jerk for two seconds so you can start breathing again?” Sam snapped. So Dean stopped talking and let Sam cuddle him, because maybe this was stupid and weird and more than a little girly, but he was freezing and he really couldn’t breathe and those stupid circles actually seemed to be helping a tiny bit, while the little room slowly filled with steam.

“Here,” Sam said, tossing a box of tissues into Dean’s lap, startling him out of the half-sleep he’d settled into. “Blow.”

“Dude, I know,” Dean said, indignant. “I used to do this for you.”

He could almost feel Sam’s eyes roll. “Just shut up and do it.”

Ten minutes later, Dean was breathing easier, and the unpleasant crackle in the top of his lungs had settled somewhat. He was warm and pretty comfortable and damn sleepy, which of course meant that Sam had decided it was time to move. He heard Sam say something to that effect but was planning on completely ignoring it. Sam, however, clearly didn’t need Dean’s help or care for his input and Dean felt Sam’s hands under his arms hauling him unceremoniously to his feet. Dean wavered a little but remained upright, blinking through the steam at Sam. And when the steam suddenly dissipated, Dean realized that the shower was already off and the steam he had seen was his own blurry vision. Maybe it had been more than ten minutes.

Sam sort of shuffled Dean out of the bathroom, Dean stumbling clumsily and wondering why his stupid body didn’t work right anymore. He figured he could at least get it to fall onto the bed and made to move in that direction, but Sam stopped him with disturbing ease.

“You need to change,” he said all sincerely serious, and Dean blinked at him.

“People don’t change,” Dean joked pathetically, deflecting. “Especially not when they’re dying of the fucking flu.”

“Not you, as a person,” Sam said, exasperated. “You need to change your damn clothes.” He knelt by Dean’s duffle and pulled out a pair of boxers that was probably clean and threw them at Dean, who embarrassingly reacted to catch them only after they were draped over his shoulder. Then Sam moved to his own duffle and started digging around, and Dean decided to take advantage of Sam’s inattention and change his boxers before he Sam tried to help. Damned if he was going to let Sam that close to his junk if he didn’t have to.

By the time Sam turned around with a bundle of clothes in hand, Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed in the clean boxers and the old t-shirt, hoping against hope Sam would let him keep the sweaty disgusting shirt he was already wearing. But no dice.

“Shirt off,” Sam ordered.

“Sam, you know I don’t swing that way,” Dean said halfheartedly, but Sam was already reaching out to try to tug the shirt over Dean’s head. “Okay, okay.”

He looked straight at Sam’s eyes while Sam looked straight at his bones. Watched them widen, watched that wrinkle form between them, watched them rove over his exposed body. Sam had nagged enough that Dean was absolutely sure he knew Dean was too thin. In all his usual layers, Dean wasn’t that much smaller than he used to be, but in a t-shirt the weight loss was more noticeable, and shirtless there was no disguising it at all. Dean’s stomach had gone a little concave, his spectacularly defined abs matching his defined ribs. His hipbones were sharp over the waistband of his boxers, which felt a little loose. He folded his arms over his chest, cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Dean didn’t know how much he had weighed when he landed in Purgatory, but he’d guess he’d probably lost a good thirty pounds since then. He was a big guy, when he wasn’t standing by Sam, and all in all, thirty pounds wasn’t that much. Barely noticeably in clothes. Certainly nothing to freak out over. He allowed himself a violent shiver, because the room was damn cold, and Sam blinked, then shook himself, not just his head but his whole body, like a dog.

“Right, uh, here,” Sam said, handing Dean a pair of Sam’s sweatpants, which Dean put on compliantly because Sam still had that worried wrinkle and he wanted to cover up the cause of it. When he was done, Sam reached around him to wrap Dean in his charcoal hoodie, and Dean tried to scowl at him because he could dress himself, but the hoodie was so fucking soft he couldn’t even find it in himself to be upset. He wasn’t comforted by the Sam-smell of the clothes because he’s not a dog, but even he could not deny that Sam had the better clothes to wear when sick. Dean has manly, practical clothes like jackets with knife pockets and well-worn jeans he can run in. Sam has pretentious fluffy things like fleece-lined sweatpants that bunch at Dean’s ankles and hoodies that envelope him.

Sam guided Dean back to the bed, tucked him back into the blankets. He sprawled out too, propped against the headboard, as he had before, but this time Dean faced away from him, Sam’s hip against his spine. Sam held a new icepack to his forehead, after dosing Dean with more NyQuil, Tylenol and another fuckton of vitamin C. The hot water bottle had been refilled, pressed against his belly once more, and Dean curled around it, shivering miserably. The murmur of the TV was almost inaudible, and Dean’s only real connection left to the world was Sam, his fingers gently brushing the back of Dean’s neck to check his fever, his breathing, the slight shift of the bed when he moved. And with that mooring to pull back to, Dean let himself drift.

Life didn’t stop in Purgatory, he’d learned. It wasn’t like Hell, where the physical only existed as a convenience for the mental. It was a physical place, with rivers and trees, an overexposed day and a night like gravity, just drawing you closer. It was hunger and thirst and running, sore muscles and blood and killing. And Dean had gotten sick, committed the cardinal sin of Purgatory, because there, if you stopped killing, you would be killed.

For what amounted to five days, he was too weak to even get up, lying curled as tightly as he could, head tucked against his knees, sweating and trembling and falling apart. Benny was there, caring for him as much as he could, and Dean hated himself for needing it. For needing the water Benny brought, what little food he could find. For allowing Benny to carry him to a safer place because he didn’t have any more psychic powers in Purgatory than he did on Earth. For letting Benny hold him the way Sam used to when he was sick, except Sam did it for comfort, and Benny did it to disguise the smell of human, because in Purgatory, human was synonymous with food.

Dean remembered, in those hazy days and nights of fever and weakness, of the scratchy wool of Benny’s coat against his face, Dean remembered dreaming of Sam’s hoodie every time he slept. Purgatory had nothing soft but flesh, nothing warm except blood and bodies and blistering sun. He remembered the feel of Sam’s hoodie against his skin years ago, of Sam’s hands on his shoulders, guiding him, and it made him hate himself. Because when he was sick in Purgatory, the most comforting thing he could remember was dying on Earth.

He felt Sam’s fingers brush gently through his hair and he shifted a tiny bit, startled out of his remembering. Sam froze, fingers still resting lightly on the crown of Dean’s head. Dean forcibly relaxed his body and he felt Sam’s hand resume its motion.

Benny hadn’t done this. He’d kept Dean alive, had loved him like a brother, fought at his side, but this was different. He didn’t know why. Benny had never let him down, cared for him when he didn’t have to. Sam chose a demon over him, chose school over him, chose girls over him. Sam would die for him, but didn’t want to live with him. But it was Sam who would pet his hair, wrap him in a hoodie, find a bad zombie movie on TV in the dark of night for him.

Dean hadn’t ever asked how long Benny had been a vampire, but he could tell it had been a while. Maybe he couldn’t remember what it was to be so fragile because it had been so long since Benny had been delicate the way humans are. He was too far removed from being taken care of to remember what he would want.

But Sam and Dean were far removed from those days as well. With decades of hell under each of their belts, a stint in Purgatory for Dean, several deaths each, the days of being cared for were long past. But Sam had never forgotten that Dean liked tomato rice soup because their mom made it, that their father used to put his huge hand on the crown of their heads when he was proud, that Dean used to pet Sam’s hair when he was sick. And he guessed that was the difference. Benny would always be there for him, but Sam already had been.

Dean sneezed himself back to awareness and found that the icepack was gone, the hot water bottle was no longer hot, and Sam was sitting halfway up, having been startled awake by the sneeze. Dean rolled over to look up at Sam.

“Sammy?” he asked and was immediately mortified at how pathetic and congested he sounded. He looked back at the TV and found an infomercial for some workout video, the zombie movie long over. “How long have I been out?”

“Few hours,” Sam yawned, checking his watch. “NyQuil hit you pretty hard, I think.”

“Mmm,” Dean agreed. A coughing fit overtook him and he rolled away from Sam, hacking uncontrollably. Sam patted him on the back very lightly.

When Dean was done, he turned back to look at Sam, but found Sam had gotten up, was moving over to the kitchen. “Sam?”

“Time for you to eat,” Sam said, starting to heat something up.

“Not hungry,” Dean said weakly. Sam just shook his head, didn’t even pause.

A couple minutes later, Dean was propped up, holding his thermos of soup again, and Sam was sitting on the bed next to him, watching him expectantly. Dean took a couple of sips under Sam’s watchful eye. Sam raised his eyebrows and Dean drank a little more, but he could already tell this was a bad idea. He finished half the thermos before he felt sick enough to even resist Sam’s puppy dog eyes, and he lay back, clutching his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, and he really did look it. He looked it so much, in fact, that Dean closed his eyes because it hurt to look at him.

“It’s okay, Sammy.” He clenched his teeth, concentrating on keeping the soup down.

“I know it’s…” Sam trailed off. “But you have to…”

“I know,” Dean murmured. And he did know. He was trying, really hard. But it was less than fifteen minutes before he failed, on his knees in the bathroom, losing the soup and the water and whatever strength he had left.

Sam practically had to carry him back to the bed, Dean supporting almost none of his own weight, and this too was different, because Benny had just scooped him up like it was nothing, and instead of feeling safe he felt vulnerable, knowing everything here was stronger than he was.

Sam wrapped him in the blanket once more as Dean shook violently, teeth clacking together. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably, his face pressed against Sam’s chest. Sam rubbed his back through all the blankets.

“Stop. I know you can’t help it. You’re not disappointing me. You know that, right?” Sam asked.

“Don’t…” Dean coughed again, directly into Sam’s shirt.

“I’m serious, Dean. I’m not upset with you,” Sam insisted, not even looking upset about Dean breathing his germs all over the place.

“Don’t,” Dean said louder, “inflict chick flick moments on me when I’m too weak to get up and leave.”

Sam laughed abruptly, loud and sudden and Dean felt it echo through his chest, smiled a little into Sam’s shirt so he couldn’t see.

They fell silent for a while, save for the muted drone of the TV. Dean’s trembling slowly abated, leaving him exhausted and he was almost dozing off when he heard Sam speak quietly.

“Why didn’t you tell me how bad it was?” His hand traced the line of each of Dean’s ribs along his back, circled each notch of his spine.

“Didn’t think you cared,” Dean said hoarsely. Dean turned over so his back was to Sam again, burrowed further under his blankets so Sam would stop feeling his bones.

“How could you think that?” Sam asked.

Because Sam didn’t look for him. Sam left him. Sam didn’t want this life. Didn’t want Dean.

But Sam took care of him. Stayed. Chose this life. Dropped everything for Dean.

He couldn’t reconcile those things, the Sam that didn’t look for him with the Sam who took care of him. Didn’t know what he did to flip that switch. Couldn’t see the moment when the Sam he helped with homework every night became the Sam who left him to do homework somewhere else, the moment when the Sam who killed demons at his side every day became the Sam who drank blood and turned his eyes black. Never knew when that switch would flip again.

Dean didn’t say anything.

Sam sighed. “I didn’t have to look for you.”

Well, obviously, because he hadn’t.

“You vanished. And then I walked out of that building and the first thing I saw was your car, and I remembered Dad dying and Cas going off the deep end and you fixing that car. I remembered you teaching me how to fix it because you were going to Hell.” Sam paused and Dean felt him take a deep breath. “I spent weeks fixing the car, and the whole time all I could think of was how you would do it, without all the stuff I had to look up online, without all the cuts and bruises I got trying to figure it out. And then I was driving and I thought of how you never needed a map because you always just somehow knew, and every diner I passed I wondered if you’d like their burgers or if they had pie. Every time Led Zeppelin came on the radio, I remembered how you would always sing along off-key.” He took another shuddering breath. “The first book I opened, trying to figure out what happened to you, I couldn’t get past the first sentence because you weren’t there chewing with your mouth open on my bed or tapping your pen or distracting me.”

“Sammy…” Dean started, but Sam cut him off.

“I didn’t have to look for you,” he said deliberately. “Because you were every goddamn place I went.”

From the moment he fell into Purgatory, Dean was fighting. Not just killing and running, but fighting. Not just against the predators of the realm, but toward something. From the second Dean woke up in Purgatory, he was fighting to go back to Sam.

When Sam was about four, Dean told him that if he ever got lost, to just stay right where he was. Wait for me, he said. I’ll find you.

When Sam left for college, Dean came and got him. When Sam died, Dean brought him back. When Sam chose Ruby, Dean followed him. When Sam left for Stull Cemetery, Dean showed up to save him.

Sam was always the one who left, but Dean was always the one who came back.

Dean cleared his throat, looking for words, still shivering uncomfortably in Sam’s embrace. It was far too late for the joke, but he made it anyway: “I’m going to remind you of this next time you complain I’m distracting you from the research.”

He felt Sam’s chuckle rumble through his chest and abruptly it was okay. “Seriously, Sammy. I can be more annoying any time you need.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Sam said, a smile in his voice.

They were quiet a long while after that, the comfortable kind of silence that settled after long hours in the car, between two people who had a lifetime to say what needed to be said, could afford to wait until the time was right.

“You know I’ll always find you, right, Sam?” Dean said softly.

“Mhmm,” Sam hummed, half-asleep. They were silent for a long moment.

“You know there’s another bed, don’t you?” Dean asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Any reason you’re still on mine then?”

“No blankets,” Sam said, and Dean remembered Sam had wrapped him in both sets.

“You can have some,” Dean said, shifting to make them more accessible. He felt a tug on the blankets, a brief moment of cold air and then Sam’s warm body against his back.

“I meant you can take them to your bed,” Dean groused.

“Shut up, Dean.” His arms wrapped around Dean’s waist, pulled him close, and the last of Dean’s chills vanished.

“Sam?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re still not getting any.” And Dean let himself drift to sleep, dreaming not of Hell or Purgatory, but of the open road, the Impala rumbling under his hands, Sam laughing in his ear.

Chapter Text

The gun was in his hand, cocked and trigger half-pulled, aimed right between Sam’s eyes before Dean’s were even open. When he pried them open, blinking blearily, Sam’s face, slightly exasperated, a little sad, but remarkably unphased, stared back at him. Dean loosened his grip, lowered the gun, flipped the safety back on.

“Jesus, Sam. Fuck,” he croaked, rubbing one hand over his eyes as the other dropped his gun on the bedside table.

“I thought you were asleep enough I could slip out for a minute,” Sam said, sounding more resigned than perturbed. “I mean, fuck, Dean, I didn’t even get the door open yet.”

Dean peered between his fingers to look at Sam’s hand, still resting on the unturned door knob. He just almost put a bullet through his brother’s brain for the sin of touching the damn doorknob, and the fact that Sam was neither surprised nor concerned was a testament to just how fucked up their lives actually are, and possibly just how paranoid Dean had been since Purgatory. In place of some kind of apology, Dean offered a strangled sort of wheeze before doubling over to cough, a gasping, gurgling hack.

Sam was at his side in an instant, patting gently at his back as Dean pressed his face against his blanketed knees and tried to tell his lungs to calm the fuck down. When the coughing finally died to a low, rumbling gasp, he spat into a tissue Sam handed to him, balled it up and tossed it toward the side of the room he thought the trash can might be on, and rested his forehead against his knees again. “Where were you going, anyway?” he tried to say, but it came out more as a piteous rasp. Sam understood anyway.

“I’m gonna ask the office for some more blankets,” Sam murmured. He gave Dean one last awkward pat before Dean felt his weight lift from the bed and he nearly toppled with the lack of support. “The cold is making you worse.”

“This was your fucking idea,” Dean grumbled accusingly, finally uncurling long enough to flop back against the mattress, cautiously, trying to avoid jarring anything else loose in his lungs.

“I’ll be right back,” Sam said, but hesitated at the door. “Try not to fall asleep before I get back, okay? If you’re going to shoot someone for leaving, I don’t even want to know what you’d do to someone who tried to come in.”

“Ha ha,” Dean coughed humorlessly. He burrowed under the blankets as Sam opened the door, feeling the temperature drop several degrees in the seconds it took Sam to get outside and tug the door shut against the wind.

The snow kept the world dark outside the window. Dean hunted around for the clock, for some indication of what time it was, how long he had been dead to the world. The clock blinked twelve o’clock, four searing red digits repeated every second and he stared at it so long he still saw them etched into his vision when he redirected his vision to the black television. It irritated him, not knowing, like he was existing outside of time against his will. Even Purgatory had time, a light and a dark, a time when you could see predators and a time when they could see prey, eyes glowing through the night. Hell, even Hell had time, Dean thought darkly, a time for torturing and a time for nightmares, seconds between counted by how many times he died and came back before Alastair started talking deals with the devil. He hated not knowing night from day, one minute from the next, how many demons had crawled out of Hell in the time since he last opened his eyes.

Whatever the hell time it was, it was time to get out of bed and stop acting like an invalid. Dean threw his blankets back and nearly tumbled into the other bed as the vertigo hit. He blinked, slowly, but the room persisted in wavering maddeningly. He clenched his teeth hard, felt his way along the edge of the bed to walk forward, but at the foot of the bed, with nothing left to hold onto, he misestimated the location of the floor, lurched to his left, found said floor with a jarring impact to his shoulder, and decided there was nothing wrong with crawling as long as no one saw him.

He only made it to the trash can, not even on the side of the room he thought it was on, before he threw up, coughing haltingly between heaves, scarcely able to draw breath. There wasn’t even anything left to throw up, he thought in an admittedly whiny tone, but the goddamn room was rocking like a ship in his vision and he was more than a little motion sick. He was still collapsed there on the floor, legs folded awkwardly beneath him and trash can hugged to his chest, trying and failing, miserably, to bring anything up, when another gust of wind signaled Sam’s return.

“Shit, Dean,” Sam dropped a heap of blankets just inside the door, kicked it shut, and knelt next to his brother, rubbing a warm hand up and down his arm, right over the newly blossoming bruise on his shoulder, muttering some stupid shit about it’s okay and let it out like Dean was a hysterical woman instead of a slightly incapacitated warrior.

Dean spat one last time and leaned heavily against the wall next to him, eyes dropping closed. He felt Sam tug the trash can away from him, so he let go, hugging his arms to his chest instead. Sam was back in just a minute, kneeling next to him, hands on Dean’s shoulders.

“Dean? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Is that why you were out of bed?”

Dean nodded without opening his eyes, and immediately stopped because he could feel the goddamn world spinning.

“Okay. I’m going to help you, okay?” Dean didn’t do much toward starting to move, despite Sam tugging at him. “Can you stand if I help you? C’mon,” Sam muttered, hauling Dean bodily up from the floor. Dean fumblingly got his feet under him, most of his weight leaning against his brother. Sam looped an arm around his waist and guided him into the bathroom, still mumbling a series of questions and encouragements and other random disjointed words Dean wasn’t really listening to until, “Can you stand here on your own? Do I need to hold you up?”

Dean waved his arm at Sam. “Got it from here,” he said with more confidence than he really felt, and for good measure, “Been doing this since before you were born.”

“Open your eyes before you start,” Sam suggested, and Dean flipped him off, eyes still closed. Dean heard him back away, pulling the door most of the way shut. Dean carefully opened one eye, relieved to find the only light coming from the cracked door, the spinning slowing somewhat in the darkness. He did his business as quickly as possible, stumbled the one step to the sink and sort of draped himself over it so he could splash some water on his face and rinse his mouth without actually supporting his own weight.

Sam apparently decided Dean didn’t need any more privacy and walked back in, steering Dean back to the bed, depositing him gently under several new layers of blankets. He tucked them in all around Dean’s shivering body, then handed him the TV remote.

“Why is it so fucking cold?” Dean griped, and he could feel the cold air whistling into his lungs through narrowed passages. He looked at the remote but couldn’t make his frozen fingers press the buttons, so he dropped it onto the bed and put his hands in his armpits.

“The power’s been flickering,” Sam said. He dug through one of the many grocery bags that still sat out on the table, pulling out flashlights and batteries and hand warmers and all kinds of crap like he had known this was coming and Dean was very suddenly and very powerfully pissed off.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam,” he started, before a cough cut him off, crackly and loud and fucking productive to use the word he always heard doctors use, like he was making some kind of great contribution to the world by hacking up bits of phlegm and blood into the handful of tissues Sam was holding in front of his face. The interruption only served to fuel his rage and by the time he was done spitting gunk into the tissues and catching his breath, he was ready.

“This is why we don’t take jobs in fucking Montana and we don’t do it in the goddamn winter with the snow and the ice and the fucking power outages,” Dean exploded, as loud as his stupid sore throat and cough would let him, which was exactly one hoarse notch above a whisper. “Now we’re fucking stuck here in the cold and I feel like absolute shit and Baby is out there getting scratched up by the goddamn ice crystals, all to save the four people in the world who don’t have enough goddamn sense not to live in fucking Montana!”

Sam started to roll his eyes, looked like he thought better of it, and just sighed instead, sitting on the edge of the bed and patting Dean’s back through the next coughing fit. “I’m pretty sure more than four people live in Montana, Dean.”

“Nobody lives in Montana,” Dean countered almost literally breathlessly between coughs. “Because there is nothing here.”

“This motel,” Sam started but Dean interrupted.

“Is owned by some slumlord living in California. The bastard that owns this motel is probably laying on the beach right now counting his cash out to some hooker, and it’s your fault, Sam.”

“It’s my fault he lives in California, or it’s my fault she’s a hooker?” Sam asked, eyebrows raised.

“All of it,” Dean insisted. The power flickered again, the lights of the room resuming with a dull hum, the heat kicking on with a disheartening clatter. “And so is that.” Because Sam was the one who had wanted this hunt to begin with, and he was the one who chose a motel with power lines that were obviously above ground, the one place in all of Montana that apparently didn’t think they got snow.

Sam sighed, loudly, but Dean could practically hear the smile in it and he wanted to be pissed off at that too, damn it all, but he had really fucking missed this, being an asshole and listening to his brother’s put-upon sigh even as he cared and comforted and stayed. “You got something to say?” he demanded.

Sam sighed again. “Did you know you’re really kind of bitchy when you’re sick?”

“I’m not the bitch here, bitch,” Dean retorted, but he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep a straight face.

Sam did roll his eyes at that, and stood up. “I think we should get some fluids in you. You’ve got to be dehydrated, and maybe it’ll help your fever too. And maybe if we can get your fever down, you won’t be so nauseated. Or cranky, Christ.”

Dean started to snap that he was not cranky, but the irony of that was too much even for him. He huffed instead, hacked a couple of times for good measure, and nodded his assent.

Sam frowned at him thoughtfully, then moved back to the heap of blankets by the door, gathering it all up in a tangled bundle and tossed it on the other bed, and extracted a couple of flat motel pillows. “Come here, sit up.”

He didn’t actually wait for Dean to coordinate his limbs into a concerted effort, just forced an arm behind Dean’s shoulders and tugged him up to sitting. Dean found himself propped against Sam’s chest as he created a precarious mountain of pillows behind him, and thought briefly on the fact that he had had more contact with his brother in the last twenty-four hours than he had in probably the whole year before Purgatory.

“I think you have pneumonia,” Sam said when Dean was settled against the pillows, breathing a little easier.

Dean coughed miserably by way of agreeing with Sam’s assessment, bringing his elbow up to catch the little flecks of blood, then held his arm out to show Sam.

“I know. Hence the diagnosis.” Sam put a hand on Dean’s forehead like he hadn’t been all over him enough in the last few minutes, and Dean swatted his hand away irritably. “Fever’s up.”

Dean flipped him off and muffled another cough into Sam’s hoodie. Sam rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. He moved to the little kitchen, put some water to boil on the tiny stove and dug in the small refrigerator to pull out a bottle of Gatorade. “Think you could do some broth, too?”

Dean grunted something sounding vaguely negative and pulled the blankets higher. Sam shook his head and brought the Gatorade over, twisting the cap to break the seal before handing it to Dean to drink.

“I hate this shit,” Dean grumbled, but took an obedient sip anyway. The cold soothed his throat for the first half second, then made it ache all the more.

“Really? I wouldn’t know from the way you bitch about it every time you get sick,” Sam said lightly, not even sparing his brother a glance as he retrieved the hot water bottle from under the bed and moved to the kitchen to refill it.

“What the hell is this flavor, anyway?” Dean continued, pretending pointedly that he hadn’t heard Sam’s sass at all. “It’s white. It looks like I’m drinking fog.” He paused. “Or a ghost.”

“It’s cherry,” Sam said, instead of telling Dean to read the goddamn bottle like he usually would have. “You like cherry.” He lifted the edge of the covers and settled the water bottle next to his brother.

“No, I don’t.” Dean coughed abruptly, sloshing some Gatorade over his hand. “Fuck.” He swiped at the fluid with a corner of the sheets.

“You like cherry pie,” Sam countered, sitting on the bed next to Dean, laptop settled on his knees.

“That’s pie, Sam. This is a bottle of chemicals.”

“Yeah, and here’s some more,” Sam said, dropping a bunch of pills into Dean’s hand. “We’ve got some antibiotics still. Should get you through til we can get to a clinic and get you a new scrip.”

Much as he hated tapping into their limited store of medication, coughing blood was a little much even for him to just brush off. He knocked the pills back with another sip of Gatorade, let the closed bottle fall onto the bed somewhere, and slouched further into his pillows, pressing his frozen fingers against the hot water bottle, letting his eyes fall closed and trying to doze off again. After a couple of minutes of no success, he leaned over to peer at the laptop screen. Sam was researching pneumonia. Dean didn’t know which was sadder, the fact that Sam was researching it, or the fact that Dean hadn’t expected anything else.

“You know we’ve both had this like six times, right?” Dean coughed again and Sam passed him a tissue without even looking up.

“You’ve had it six times. I only had it twice.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Sam. I needed to feel worse about my lungs.”

“Shouldn’t have smoked so much as a teenager,” Sam murmured absently, scrolling quickly through the page.

“I didn’t smoke that much,” Dean said. He let his head drop back to the pillow and shivered a little. In the quiet, he could hear the wind picking up, and the room shook a little with a particularly strong gust. Sam glanced up at the ceiling like he expected it to cave in, and then promptly went back to his research, as only a geek could.

Dean found the remote and the TV flicked on, reception fuzzy with static, all the voices muffled and distorted. “Sam, what time is it?”

“Three in the afternoon,” Sam replied. He glanced over at Dean, the corners of his lips quirking up in a tiny smile. “Oprah isn’t on yet.”

“How would you even know that?” Dean asked, raising his eyebrows. “Were you a stay at home mom to that dog you hit? Did you watch The View, too?”

Just as Sam opened his mouth to reply, the room went black, the static of the TV replaced with the psithurism of the storm. “Coming from the guy who watches Dr. Sexy MD,” Sam offered weakly, far too late for a retort.

“Fucking perfect,” Dean wheezed, then broke into a coughing fit, rolling onto his side away from Sam. He coughed so hard he thought he would throw up, and Sam seemed to have the same thought, because he was suddenly crouched in front of Dean, trash can in one hand, the other on Dean’s shoulder.

“Come on, Dean. Breathe. It’s okay. Come on,” Sam murmured and Dean glared at him even though he was certain Sam couldn’t see it in the darkness, but slowly gained control of his lungs, finally able to draw a breath. He slowly uncurled his body, settling back into his pillows, breathing rapidly and shallowly.

Sam let out a deep breath and Dean irrationally felt that his brother was mocking him with his healthy lungs. He scowled.

Sam left the trash can on the floor by the bed, reached over Dean and grabbed the Gatorade. He twisted the cap off and held it to Dean’s lips, not even bothering to offer to let him do it himself. Dean took as tiny a sip as he could, and shook his head when Sam tried to offer more.

“Gotta,” he paused to clear his throat and wheeze a little. “Gotta keep the antibiotics down.”

There was a pause. “You might need something on your stomach, or the antibiotics will make it worse. And you’re dehydrated.”

“Sam, if I eat anything else, it’s definitely going to be worse.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. Dean saw the outline of Sam stand in the darkness, shift around to the other side of the bed, and heard the click of a flashlight.

Dean glanced over at his brother, who stared straight ahead at the circle of light on the wall, chewing his lip.

“Fucking Montana,” Dean offered, and Sam quirked one corner of his mouth, before settling back into his decidedly worried face.

“C’mon, Sam…” Dean trailed off, unsure what to say. Unsure what exactly Sam was upset about. “Dirty shadow puppets?” he asked, weakly.

Sam glanced over at him, raised his eyebrows. Dean grinned. Sam rolled his eyes and flipped Dean off, hand in front of the flashlight. Dean watched the shadow of it form on the wall, remembered all the nights of motel power outages, teaching Sam how to make an eagle, a dog, a duck, a swamp monster. “It’s on, bitch.”

Needless to say Dean won. And not just because Sam surrendered, saying Dean looked too tired, which he was. He was already winning way before that.

They sat quietly side by side, Sam still resting against the headboard, Dean propped on his mountain of pillows. Without the distraction of coming up with obscene hand contortions, he had nothing to focus on but the roiling of his stomach, the whistling in his lungs, the body-wide aching. Dean doubted the temperature in the room had dropped that much, but his hot water bottle was no longer hot and he was starting to shiver again. He rolled onto his side, facing away from Sam and toward the trash can again, just in case. He felt Sam shift over, heard his spine pop as he slid down and under the pile of blankets Dean was currently inhabiting.

“What are you –“ Dean started to demand, ready to protest even more cuddling, but a cough cut him off and in the time it took for him to stop gasping for breath, Sam was pressed up against his back, and he was so fucking warm that Dean immediately stopped shivering.

“I’m cold,” Sam lied, blatantly.

“Just trying to mooch off my fever,” Dean muttered, but accepted Sam’s excuse. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on breathing shallowly, not coughing, and not throwing up.

He wasn’t doing a very good job. Every two minutes or so, another cough rumbled up from his chest and he hunched forward with the force of the coughing. His stomach was cramping intermittently and between that and the coughing, Dean found himself so curled up his knees were pressing against his chest within twenty minutes. Sam shifted closer, and his hand crept over the tower of pillows to palm Dean’s forehead.

“Jesus, Dean,” he muttered. “Can you drink a little more? Please?”

Dean shook his head, jaw clenched tight. He was shaking, hard, muscles aching with exertion, and he was so close to being sick again that he was afraid to open his mouth at all. Sam squeezed his shoulder carefully.

Dean shuffled closer to the edge of the bed as they next wave of coughing hit, hanging over the side to lose the three sips of Gatorade and the antibiotics into the trash can. Sam rubbed his back lightly as Dean continued to cough and gag, before slumping back, exhausted.

“Dean…” Sam said, his voice small. Dean remembered this voice from their childhood, from the time just after Sam had learned about monsters, from the time their father was almost killed on a job, from the night Jessica had died. That small, scared, broken voice, the one that said Sam’s world was crumbling, and Dean hated that he was causing it. He unwrapped his arm from his stomach to fumble for Sam’s hand, squeezed it as reassuringly as he could, trying to send his words in some shorthand one-beep Morse code: it’s okay, I’m okay, we’re okay, please, just don’t use that voice.

Sam cleared his throat and squeezed Dean’s hand back, then dropped it. “Guess the antibiotics weren’t good on an empty stomach,” he murmured, voice hoarse.

Dean shrugged with one shoulder. “Guess not.”

“I’m sure,” Sam’s voice caught, and he cleared his throat again. “I’m sure the snow will stop soon and we can get you some drugs.”

Dean hummed something vaguely affirmative, trying to suppress another shiver. He felt Sam’s forehead press against the back of his shoulder, breath ghosting over the fabric of his hoodie, Sam’s hand land on his side. Dean inhaled deeply, feeling his skin stretch over his ribs, Sam’s fingers slotting between the bones. Two points of contact, not quite a hug, nothing compared to Sam’s earlier snuggle attacks, but Dean was suddenly desperately uncomfortable, hemmed in by the brother who had been his constant companion for thirty years. He allowed the next wave of coughing so he could curl away from his brother, letting Sam’s hand slip off his ribs, stop fondling his bones.

Sam rolled away suddenly and Dean just barely managed to keep his hold on the blankets. There was a moment of cold as Sam escaped, and then his brother was tucking him in again, before stomping around the bed to his pile of storm supplies. Dean felt Sam drape the last couple of blankets over him, muttering something about “no insulation” that Dean took to be a statement on the building rather than his own pitiful physique, even though he knew better.

“Did you eat anything at all in Purgatory, Dean?” Sam groused, but he sounded more worried than angry and Dean mentally sighed that they were back to this weird game Sam liked with the masks and sniping at each other. Because angry is easier than worried or scared or jealous, betrayed, hurt. He rustled the covers in a semblance of a shrug.

“Bet Benny didn’t go hungry,” Sam mumbled, with enough actual venom to make it audible.

“What?” Dean snapped, and paid for it with a full minute of wheezing coughs and flecks of blood he couldn’t make out in the darkness, though he could feel them on his lips.

Sam had his hand on Dean’s shoulder, then his cheek, then brushing his hair back to palm his forehead, sliding gently through his hair. “Nothing. I’m sorry.” And it was easier. Angry is so much easier than sitting under an undoubtedly pitying gaze, and Dean was too exhausted for anything but the easy way.

“If you’ve got something to say, then say it,” Dean insisted, pushing Sam’s hand away. “You’re not a teenager anymore, okay, Sam? You’re too old for this muttering under your breath bullshit.”

“Fine,” Sam said it flatly, refusing to rise to Dean’s anger. “Fine. I won’t say anything.”

“No, go ahead.” Dean paused to cough again, and after regaining his breath. “I want to know why you’re so gung-ho to let monsters go when they’re your friends, or hell, people you don’t even know, but the second I think a guy deserves a chance after saving my fucking life, you’re all for killing him!”

“It’s not like that!” Sam protested.

“Then what is it?”

“Maybe I just don’t like the idea of some vampire riding my brother out of Purgatory like a goddamn meatsuit!” Sam kicked something and stomped a few steps away from the bed. “Maybe I don’t like the idea of somebody calling you ‘brother’ one minute and sucking your blood the next!”

“Why do you have such a problem with it?” Dean retorted. “What’s it matter what I did for him?”

“Because he’s using you, Dean!” Sam exploded. “You don’t think it’s suspicious that he wants to be ‘brothers’ with the only thing in Purgatory that can get him out? That doesn’t make him your brother!” So much easier than worried, hurt, jealous, betrayed.

“Everybody uses everybody, Sam,” Dean said tiredly, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to quell the ache behind his eyes. “Brothers included.”

“What kind of fucked up worldview is that?” Sam demanded.

“All anyone cares about is what you can do for them,” Dean said, his tone haunted even to his own ears. “They do stuff for you so you do stuff for them. And when you aren’t around or they don’t need you, it’s over. That’s all it is, Sam. That’s all any of it is.”

“Dean, that’s not…” Sam paused and Dean could hear him pace a few steps. “That’s not how it is. Maybe some people, but not everybody. Not your family.”

Dean shook his head, started to speak, but a cough bubbled up, and the rest of his words were swallowed in the strangled gagging as he tried not to choke as he wheezed. He felt Sam’s hands hauling him up to sitting, propping him against the headboard, patting his back, voice issuing a rapid-fire stream of something apologetic.

Dean finally stopped coughing in order to better gasp for breath. Suddenly he was pulled forward, face pressed into Sam’s shirt, Sam’s chin resting on top of his head, arms trapped between their torsos.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” Sam admonished. “Look, just forget I said it, okay? Benny’s fine. He’s great. I love vampires. I read all the Twilight books or whatever. Just don’t do that again, okay?”

Dean squirmed. “If that line about Twilight was true, I’m gonna need you to let go of me,” he said, weakly.

Sam chuckled, the relief evident, and Dean could feel it rumble from Sam’s chest to his own. “Seriously, Sam. You’ve hit your chick flick moment quota for the decade. Lemme go.”

Sam loosened his arms and helped Dean back under the heap of blankets, but stayed seated on the edge of bed, pressed against Dean’s hip.

“I meant it, though, Dean. Not everyone is like that. You’re not like that,” Sam said, voice low but firm. “I’m not…” he paused. “Look, if this is about you and me…”

“Enough, Sam,” Dean groaned. He was suddenly far too exhausted for this argument. “I can’t fight off pneumonia and your hormones at the same time.”

“Dean, I’m serious.”

Dean thought about making another joke, pushing Sam off the side of the bed, turning on the stupid flashlight and making another dirty shadow puppet. But Sam’s voice was that small, broken, little kid voice that had no business coming out of his gargantuan brother, and God or whoever help him, he couldn’t let Sam’s voice sound like that.

“Maybe I need you for stuff, and maybe sometimes you need me too,” Sam murmured. “But it doesn’t have to be us using each other. We’re not. I would do everything I could for you even if you never did anything back. I know…I know, I didn’t look for you and I wasn’t the one who brought you back from Hell and I couldn’t break your deal and I’m sorry, but I would go to the ends of the Earth for you, if I knew how to save you. And you’ve already proved you’d do the same for me, and you didn’t get anything back at all. So how can you think that’s all any of it is?”

“I wasn’t trying to...Look, I’m…” Dean fumbled uncomfortably, because what could he even say? Sure, Sammy, everything is all better, the world is brighter and I have hope again? No. He cleared his throat, coughed painfully, and finally said, “Would it make you feel better if I use you as a heater and promise not to ever try to do anything in return?”

Sam snorted. “I guess it’s a start.” He pushed at Dean’s hip until he scooted over enough for Sam to stretch out, then he ducked under the covers with Dean so they were laying side by side.

He listened to Sam breathing for a while, waiting until it has almost evened out in sleep before he said, “I wasn’t talking about you, you know. I wasn’t even saying…I don’t know what I was saying. I know you’re not…whatever.”

“I know you’re not whatever too,” Sam mumbled, shifted to get more comfortable. “Think the storm stopped. Probably can go to the hospital in the morning.”

Dean grunted his agreement, turned his head to cough into Sam’s shirt.

“Don’t get any worse before then, okay?” Sam said, sounding worried. He felt Dean’s forehead for the five hundredth time.

“Sure, I’ll just tell the bacteria in my lungs to pause all reproduction until tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help out.” Dean shivered, inched incrementally closer to Sam.

“Did you know King David, from the Bible, had one wife who was just a space heater?” Sam asked, tucking the blankets a little more securely around Dean.

“What the fuck, Sam?”

“It’s true, I read it. He got old and couldn’t stay warm, so they found a virgin, this chick named Abishag, and she kept his bed warm. He never even fucked her, just used her for her heat.”

“If he didn’t fuck her, who the fuck cares if she was a virgin?” Dean coughed into Sam’s shirt again.

“She was hot, too,” Sam said, not answering the question at all.

“Well, of course,” Dean said.

“Of course?”

“Even if he’s not fucking her, he’s still got to look at her.”

“There’s something wrong with you.” Dean could almost hear Sam rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, there is. I’m fucking freezing. What do you say you make like Abishag and help a guy out?”

Sam pulled Dean even closer, wrapped his arms around his brother tightly. Dean’s face was pressed into Sam’s chest, and he drew his knees up and curled a little to keep certain parts of his body from being a little too intimate with his brother. He shivered one more time and Sam held him even tighter, enveloping Dean in the scent of Sam, the sound of his breathing, the heat of his body, and Dean relaxed, let it lull him to sleep.

In the morning, as soon as it was light enough to see, Sam was awake and bundling Dean into enough layers that he could no longer move his arms, packing him into the Impala and driving to the hospital. Dean used his brother as a pillow in the waiting room of the ER, drooling on his shoulder because he couldn’t breathe through his nose. He used Sam as a crutch to hobble his way to an exam room, and then he used Sam as a coat rack for most of his layers so the doctor could listen. He let Sam explain away his prominent bones, his pale skin and weak immune system. He let Sam hold all the brochures he was given about eating disorders, trauma, and vitamin C. He used Sam as a chauffeur to the pharmacy, and from there out of town, bidding farewell to that godforsaken motel that still didn’t have any fucking power. He let Sam ply him with medications and sports drinks and snacks.

Dean used Sam over and over again as a brother, and all Sam asked in return was for Dean to be his brother back. And Dean realized his theory didn’t account for everything. It didn’t account for Sam being his Abishag, or Sam buying him pie when he finally worked up to real food. It didn’t account for Dean selling his soul way back when, and it didn’t account for him stopping the trials to save his brother again. It didn’t account for brothers who cared and comforted and stayed even when the rest of the world had left.

Turns out, Dean’s theory didn’t account for much of anything real.

“Because brothers don’t let each other wander in the dark alone.” – Jolene Perry