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Dean is twitchy when he comes back. Really twitchy. Like, punch Sam in the mouth twitchy. It happens on a bright October morning about a week after Dean doused him and hugged him, and all because Sam brings Dean a donut too quietly. Sam sees stars, Dean looks miserable, Sam starts apologizing. Sam is the one bleeding and Dean is the one shaking his fist out, but whatever, Sam gets it. Sam came back with Lucifer as baggage, for fuck’s sake, so if Sam needs to telegraph Dean’s sugar cravings to him loud and clear from this point on, so be it. Least he can do.
Only that’s not the worst of it. It quickly dawns on Sam that the twitchiness extends beyond throat clearing to hand Dean things and foot stomping to take them back. No, it extends to Sam. To Sam in bed, to the way they sleep, to the way they goof around, and to all the pats and squeezes Sam has taken for granted his whole life with his brother. Even before they went to bed together on a wing and a...well, not so much prayer, more of a fuck-you-all after Sam got his soul back.
Sam remembers being the neediest reborn soul on the planet back then. He couldn’t get enough of Dean near him, in him, on him...every preposition possible. Only now, if Sam so much as bumps shoulders with Dean going in a door together, Dean tenses. Sam is fake coughing a lot, noticing how uncertain Dean gets with too many choices, and trying to find rooms with carpets for when Dean has to sit on the floor. But all that is doable, indulgences he can make routine for however long Dean needs. What’s killing him, is that they get separate beds every night now. Dean’s back is an unmoving, statue-like line from dusk till dawn. His nighttime breathing pattern has also changed – Sam can barely hear him anymore, he holds himself so tightly and breathes so shallowly. And when they’re awake, Sam has to be careful not to forget and lean in too close, grab his neck, cup his face, or hug the living shit out of him. His fingers have started aching at the distance, especially at night. Sometimes, he quite literally sits on his hands.
“What?”
Like now. Dean is on his bed with his legs stretched out, washed in light from the laptop.
“Nothin’.” Sam drops his gaze and tries not to flush. He was staring again. It’s the only thing he has now.
“You hungry?” Dean’s face is soft, open, a muscle in his jaw going a mile a minute at the effort.
Sam swallows and nods, appreciating that he’s not alone in knowing this sucks.
“Sure. I...yeah, what would you like?”
Dean thinks about it, really thinks about it, seemingly savoring a choice for once. His finger arcs slowly through the air as his mouth opens, closes, then opens again. Sam thinks about risking a black eye and hugging the asshole anyway.
“Chinese, man! Yeah... Chinese.”
Instead he gets him shrimp wontons.
A month later, and Sam catches a break.
Kevin is in the wind yet again, and they’ve come off a fairly straightforward salt and burn. So straightforward that it takes Sam a couple of hundred miles to realize all might not be well. Well, not that all might not be well. Rather, that Dean might not be well. Never the most communicative of souls on a winter morning, Sam counts back and realizes Dean hasn’t said a single word since breakfast. He’s driving one handed, slouched down as far as is legal, he’s wearing shades and surest tell of all, Zepplin is not giving Sam a headache.
“Dean, it’s November and it’s pretty gray out there.”
Dean turns his head enough to glare. Not that Sam can actually see the glare, but he knows Dean.
“It’s Thursday, I’m wearing a jacket, and you’re an ass. Anything else, Captain Obvious?”
“Yeah. You’re getting sick.”
“What? Am not.” So affronted.
“Dude, you are. And it’s okay, by the way. I’m amazed you haven’t yet, honestly. Since you came back, I mean.” He hand waves, the word still a little weird between them. Dean sang like a bird about it that first night back and then has clammed up in true Winchester put-it-behind-me style ever since.
There’s silence. And not the comfortable kind.
Sam looks out the window. “So, did you ever...? I mean, in Purgatory?”
Dean’s hand goes out, Zepplin goes in, and Sam once again thinks about being careful what to wish for.
Sam keeps a watchful eye all day, but he can’t really do much. It’s Dean, after all, the guy who turned stoic into an Olympic sport. He sways once when they get up from lunch and Sam puts a hand out. Sam has just gotten him back from Purgatory, he’s not about to let Dean brain himself on a table in a crappy diner, no matter the flinching.
“You okay?”
Dean shrugs him off – but slowly. He also clears his throat noisily. “’Course I am. Let’s go.”
Sam notes that Dean’s cheeks are cherry apple red. Which should not be as enticing as it is because it clearly means a fever. That and the slow blinking means Sam is going to be sitting on his hands again tonight. Maybe Dean will let him rub his back, though, if his cough gets—
Sam stops. He looks around, like maybe some of that came out aloud.
He sighs, starts walking again. All the hands-off-Dean-deprivation is getting serious.
Sam stops them early that day, feigning a headache. Dean grouses, but he started coughing mid-afternoon so Sam figures it’s mostly for show. Sam books them in and on an impulse he’ll probably regret, he gets a room with only one large bed in it.
“Sorry, dude. Only room left.”
Dean is eyeing the bed like it’ll bite him. “Fine,” he growls – croaks. “Go get me some—
He coughs into the crook of his arm.
“Juice?” says Sam.
“—beer,” finishes Dean, hand flapping his outrage.
Sam leaves Dean coughing over the laptop and finds the kind of health store he remembers from Stanford. He comes back with a few power bars, orange juice, tomato soup, whole wheat crackers, and Ho Hos. He figures the last one as dessert will get Dean through the first four.
“What the fuck d’you do?” asks Dean when he sees what Sam is putting in front of him. He sounds genuinely bewildered.
“Shut up. You’ll thank me later. And enjoy those Ho Hos, by the way. The company making them has gone out of business. It’s all over the internet.”
Dean’s drops his spoon at that, sending soup everywhere.
Sam has no choice but to crack up, just a little.
When they actually get to being in the same bed that night, Sam takes a chance and rolls over to talk to Dean’s back. Dean is facing the door, as always, and pretty much hugging the edge.
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“You feel bad in the night, you wake me up okay?”
“Yes, Florence.”
Sam smiles. That was much more eye-rolling smartass than traumatized twitcher.
Sam wakes an undetermined amount of time later to find Dean inching toward him in the dark. Irony of irony, he flinches and sends Dean in a spastic crab-crawl back to his side of the mattress.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Dean’s voice is awful. “No, no... Jesus, Dean. Shit, what can I do?” He puts a hand across the bed without thinking. It finds cold, clammy skin and Dean jerks back and groans.
Sam blinks himself awake fast. “Fuck. Sorry, Dean. Sorry, I just—
“No! Fuck that, Sammy. I’m the one that’s fucking sorry. None of this is you, you gotta know that. It’s all me and the fucked up shit that happened down there—
“Dean...”
“No! I gotta say this. I want things...with you, y’know? I’m fuckin’ dyin’ over here most days, man. But it’s not fair, Sammy. There’s all this crap in my head, all this weird crap telling me to stay strong, stay alert. And I don’t know if... if I can...” He hiccups a shaky breath in and Sam can hear the fever tears.
“Dean. God, really, it’s okay.” It’s always better to cut Dean off before he talks himself into a corner he never meant. Even if it is a fever loosening the words out of him. Especially if it’s a fever doing that.
Sam sits up just as Dean shivers, head to toe, and Sam is suddenly over not using his hands on his brother anymore. He pitches his voice low. “Dean? I’mma try something, just wait a sec, okay? Be right back.”
He gets up, keeps his movements deliberately smooth and unhurried, and goes over to click on the lamp by the TV. It’s a cheap orange glow, but it’ll do fine. He turns back to find Dean watching, his face pale and eyes bright. Sam goes to the door and jams a chair under the handle. He re-does the salt line, adds some Enochian to the sigil already there, and, on a whim, balances a beer bottle between the chair and the door handle for good measure.
Dean says nothing to any of it as Sam gets back on the bed and lies on his right side, facing Dean. Sam moves cautiously to the middle of the bed and holds his left arm out. “Nothing’s coming in, Dean, and you need to get warm. So I want you to come here. I promise, me getting you warm and well is all this is.” Sam holds his breath and keeps his expression as neutral as he can, his heart all the while thumping like a mad thing. He prays he’s pitched this right.
He has.
Seconds later, he’s got an armful of shivering older brother.
“Sammy, Sammy...” Dean murmurs, all the while burrowing in and pulling at the back of Sam’s t-shirt like he’s trying to wear it, too. “God, you’re so fucking hot...”
Sam is going to remind Dean of that at precisely the right moment tomorrow. Right now, he’s going to close his eyes and savor every sound and touch, no matter the weirdo it makes him by relishing a Dean this sick. Dean’s t-shirt is soaked through and Sam should probably make him change it. But hell, one issue at a time. He’s careful not to grip Dean too hard and trigger anything untoward, but damn he’s missed this. He concentrates on making long, slow sweeps of Dean’s back with the flat of his palms, pausing every time Dean shudders.
It seems like hours, but it’s probably minutes when the tremors start to smooth out. Sam manages to ease from his side to his back, taking Dean with him. He keeps his right arm loose around Dean’s shoulder just in case, but for now he seems undisturbed by lying half-draped across Sam, his head pillowed on Sam’s right shoulder. Sam swallows and risks a kiss to Dean’s sweat-soaked forehead. He knows the dry heat of a fever is probably on its way, but this second he’ll make the most of having his brother this close again.
“Okay?” Sam asks softly.
Dean smacks his lips, rubs his cheek on Sam’s chest. “Tired, Sammy. Ssshhh.”
Just before Sam drifts off, Dean stretches up to press his lips to Sam’s neck for a count of about five seconds, and Sam has the crazy thought that maybe a year’s worth of grief just dissolved in the single, most perfect kiss ever.
******