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The door slammed shut, leaving him with nothing but the creaking of the old motel bed to break up the silence. He sat there, staring at the door, measuring the number of pulses in his skull per minute as he tried to figure out what he was going to do.
He’d started feeling dizzy when they were still on the road, but he didn’t say anything because you just didn’t do that, you didn’t tell people when something was wrong. Thinking it was nothing but the stop-and-go traffic that was making him feel off-kilter, he’d ignored it as best he could. The window was nice and cold against his head, and the music from his Walkman put him to sleep soon enough.
When he woke up, they were already in town, and things were slowly turning sour. He had to clench his teeth to stop them from chattering, but that didn’t help the incessant trembling in his legs. Everything was warm, on the cusp of being unpleasant, and it was getting hard to swallow.
That couldn’t be good.
He and Dean had gone to the room while John finished checking them in. Without the threat of his father chastising him, he was able to relax a little. But Dean was still around, and Dean was a problem.
“What’s going on, Sammy?”
Sam froze in the middle of cleaning one of the shotguns. “What?”
“Your hands are shaking real bad.”
He instinctively tightened his hands into fists. “I’m okay.”
Dean’s eyebrows pulled together, and he tossed the hunting knives he’d been sharpening back into the duffel bag. “Let’s try for some honesty here, Sam.”
He decided he’d rather have to deal with being made fun of than deal with Dean being pissed. “Just not feeling so good, it’s no big deal.”
“It’s a big deal if you can’t aim your gun ‘cause you’re shaking so much,” Dean argued. “Why didn’t you say something to Dad?”
Sam looked up at him, full of exasperation and fatigue.
“Right, right, ask a bitchy question, get a bitchy answer.” Dean sat down on the bed opposite him. “My point still stands; you shouldn’t be out there tonight.”
“But Dad—“
“I’ll talk to Dad.”
And he had. It hadn’t gone well, but that wasn’t Dean’s fault. If anything, it was Sam’s. He was weak, and weakness was not something that Winchesters stood for. Guilt bubbled in his stomach as he listened to John, murmuring the occasional “yes sir” to show he was paying attention. He would apologize, but Winchesters didn’t do that, either.
“If you’re not coming on the hunt, you will sit here and get your school work done. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” He hated himself, he hated himself, he hated himself.
“We’ll try to be back before sunrise. Don’t wait up. And if you hear anything—“ John pulled a gun out of the duffel bag and set it on the bedside table. “—You use that.”
“Yes, sir.”
He watched them go, relief seeping through him because that hadn’t gone nearly as bad as he’d imagined, but then John had to turn around in the doorway.
“And Sam?” The quiet anger in John’s face had Sam’s blood running cold and a chill racing down his spine—or maybe that was from him being sick. “Try and man up while I’m gone.”
-
Now he sat there alone, introspecting while he stared at the stucco wall and pushed down the nausea twisting in his gut. It was times like these that made him feel truly useless, as opposed to the rest of the time where he could feel useless while he killed things because his dad told him to. At least that involved doing something productive. He supposed focusing on not throwing up on the ugly motel carpet could also be considered productive. It was definitely taking a lot of effort.
He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself. He unzipped his backpack and began searching for his homework and a pencil with an actual tip.
Things like algebra and classic American literature seemed pointless when you knew that there were more than a hundred different types of monsters out there trying to kill you. Sure, it was humbling, and it put things into perspective, but it made doing anything else very, very hard. He kept finding himself asking why it mattered, what all this would do for him in three years. It wasn’t like he’d be going to college. He had a better chance of being dead by the time he was eighteen than going to somewhere like Stanford.
He’d been staring at a blank sheet of paper for the last thirty minutes. He needed to stop introspecting and start… whatever the opposite of introspecting was. Outrospecting.
Did he have a fever? Was he delirious? These would have been good things to know.
He shook the thoughts out of his head and started to work.
-
Lying down while he worked had been a bad idea, because now he was waking up with no homework done and no perception of how long he’d been out.
Great start so far, Sam.
He fumbled for the alarm clock next to the bed and squinted at it (had everything always been so bright?). It was a few minutes past midnight; Dean and John hadn’t even been gone four hours. He still had time to finish his work, he could still pull this off.
But when his stomach constricted in a cramp, he knew that nothing would get done tonight.
He pushed his stuff to the other end of the bed as he curled up on his side with a moan. One of his hands dug into the space just below his ribcage, trying to alleviate some of the discomfort. He closed his eyes against his swirling surroundings, breathing sharply through his nose and exhaling slowly from his mouth. He would not let whatever this was take him down. He was better than this.
Then came the god-awful sensation of bile crawling up his throat, and he was lurching for the trashcan tucked in the corner. He wasn’t granted any scramble time, not even a preliminary dry-heave, and that was his excuse for why he totally missed. Vomit dribbled down his chin and stained the side of the mattress, forcing him to lean further over the edge of the bed to avoid more mess. His hair hung in his face as he gagged and retched, and the mattress springs were digging into his already upset stomach.
With gratuitous effort, he pushed himself up onto his knees and pulled the trash along with him. It was a comfort—a minimal one, but a comfort all the same—to have something to wrap himself around as he choked and coughed up what felt like his entire digestive tract. It was also a comfort to know that he could openly whimper and shed tears because no one was around to scold him for it.
Right. No one was around. He was on his own in a motel room that barely had a functioning lock, and he couldn’t even use the gun he’d been given to protect himself with because, as Dean had said, his hands were shaking real damn bad. And to top it all off, he’d just been violently ill, everywhere.
He sat there with his head over the trashcan for minutes—hours—days—time was an illusion created by mankind to establish order and it was irrelevant—riding out the waves of nausea before a lull came. By then, he was wiped out and barely had enough strength to get the phone and drag himself into the bathroom, but he managed.
Without thinking, he dialed his dad’s number with trembling fingers. He rested his head against the lip of the bathtub, the cold porcelain soothing his fevered skin as he waited (prayed) for someone to pick up. When a familiar gruff voice sounded from the other end of the line, Sam’s shoulders sunk with relief.
“Dad?”
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt--?”
“Dad, I think I’m sick,” Sam said, knowing how childish he sounding and not even caring. “Really sick. And I need help.”
There was a long pause, and Sam began regretting picking up the phone.
“Samuel, do you know what I’m doing right now?”
Samuel? Fuck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—“ Don’t apologize, you moron-- “I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I don’t know what to do.”
“There’s a spare first aid kit in my bag, right?”
“… Well, yeah, but—“
“Then you’ll be fine.”
“Dad, please--!”
“Don’t waste my time like this again, Sam.”
The line went dead, and Sam let the phone slip out of his hand and clatter to the floor. He didn’t know why he’d expected anything different; paternal love had been slim to come by for years now, and it wasn’t about to make a resurgence just because he’d thrown his guts up on a motel bed. He knew that, he accepted that, and yet his lower lip was quivering and tears were dripping down his fever-flushed cheeks.
Try and man up.
Sam grabbed the phone and hurled it out the bathroom door and at the motel room wall.
-
The next two hours were a blur of crying, stripping to his underwear because it was hot and covering himself in blankets because it was cold, trying his hardest to aim for the toilet when he vomited, and amplifying the buried distrust he had for his father. But it was mostly just him puking and crying.
Reason said he should clean himself up and get into the clean motel bed outside the bathroom, but his legs didn’t want to be legs anymore and he could barely hold his head up, let alone his whole body. So he resigned himself to pressing his cheek against the rim of the toilet and pulling his mound of blankets around his shoulders. He wouldn’t sleep here; it was only for a moment, only so he could rest his eyes while he had the chance.
That moment quickly faded, and he was gagging into the water for the umpteenth time. As he struggled to regain control of his stomach, he heard noises at the front door. Fear took over his sick body and sent a rush of much-needed adrenaline through him. He shed the blankets and staggered out of the bathroom, reaching for the gun on the bedside table. He stood around the corner, one finger on the trigger, listening for the door to open.
Never mind that he was in nothing but his underwear and he was liable to collapse at any given moment. Thank God for the flight or fight response and the fact that the “flight” part didn’t exist for him anymore.
The door burst open and Sam jumped out from behind his hiding spot, pointing the gun as steadily as he could at the intruder.
“Jesus fuck, Sammy, it’s me!”
“Dean?”
Dean, who prided himself on emotional strength and always getting the job done; Dean, who jumped at any opportunity to call his little brother a pussy; Dean, who was the epitome of masculinity and rejected the idea of ever being soft; Dean, who feared their father more than God and would never question his orders, was standing in the doorway.
“Yeah, it’s me.” There was blood that wasn’t his splattered on his jacket and his hands were raised above his head. “You wanna put the gun down?”
It took a moment for Sam’s fevered brain to register, but he let the gun drop to the floor and pulled his shaking hands to his chest. He was suddenly very aware of how naked he was.
He’d been about to shoot his own brother.
That thought alone had his knees buckling, and he would’ve fallen if not for Dean’s lightning-fast reflexes. He caught Sam around the armpits and slowly guided him to the floor.
“Alright, Sammy, you’re okay.”
“Why’re you back?” Sam managed. “Dad said—“
“Dad can eat a bag of dicks right now, as far as I’m concerned,” Dean said. “He should have followed through when you said you needed help. You wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t serious.”
The sick feeling was returning, and he took a deep breath to steady himself. “I’m sorry I pulled you away from that hunt.” Again with the apologizing. How about instead of saying you’re sorry, you actually do something about it? “I—I promise it won’t happen again, I’ll be stronger next time—“
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean brushed the hair out of Sam’s face to get a better look at him. “You didn’t pull me away. I had to fight Dad to come back. Wouldn’t even let me take the car.”
“You… you came all the way back here on foot?”
“Yeah, and I’m glad I did. You look terrible.”
His gut took that as a cue to flip into his throat, and he slapped a hand over his mouth as he pitched forward on a dry-heave.
“Oh, shit—okay, this is happening—“ Dean hauled Sam to his feet and ushered him into the bathroom as quick as Sam’s legs would allow. Sam made it, but it didn’t matter by this point; there was nothing to bring up, no more mess to make. Now the muscles in his throat were contracting against nothing, grating against each other until they were raw.
He was vaguely aware of Dean’s hand resting on his back, aiding him through the painful process. He swallowed and looked over at him, not bothering to wipe the tears from his eyes because that was the least of his problems.
“Make it stop,” he begged, hoarse and wavering. That plea, that pathetic whimper for help that only worsened his need to cry, had Dean snapping into action.
“Okay, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” His hand was on his forehead, checking for a fever Sam knew he had. “You’re gonna finish this, I’m gonna get you some water, and then you’re taking a bath.”
Sam groaned at the prospect of putting things in his stomach, and then groaned louder at the prospect of moving. “Dean, I can’t.”
“You gotta at least try for me, kiddo. C’mon, I’ll help you—you done?”
“I think so…”
He pulled Sam to his feet and put the toilet seat down so Sam could sit on it. “You feel steady? I don’t want you falling over and cracking your skull open or something.”
Sam nodded and watched as Dean hurried back and forth between the bathroom and, presumably, the first aid kit from John’s bag. Pill bottles stacked up on the sink counter, and when Dean came back with a cup of water that he gave to Sam, he went through them all.
“What sounds good to you, Sammy? We got Advil, Tylenol, and a whole bunch of other shit I don’t know how to pronounce.”
“I don’t want any medicine.” What he did want was one of the blankets from the floor. It had gotten so cold, and he’d started to shake again.
“You need to work with me here, man.”
“I’m sorry,” he forced out, wrapping his arms around himself to get warm. “I can’t, I can’t right now, it’ll just come right back up and I don’t—“
“Hey, hey…” Dean knelt down in front of him and held him by the shoulders. “It’s all fine. You can take them when you feel up to it. But maybe choose one now so I can put the rest away?”
He sounded so gentle. Why didn’t he always talk like that?
Sam reached out and picked up the yellow colored bottle, not even knowing what it was, and handed it to Dean.
“Awesome. Thanks, Sam.”
He didn’t know what he was being thanked for. Being a total disaster of a kid didn’t seem like something that deserved praise.
Dean grabbed the first aid kit and started cramming the rest of the pill bottles back inside. “I’ll let the pills slide, but no bargains about the water, yeah? You’ve been puking too much to not drink anything.”
He looked down at the cup in his hand, utterly miserable. He didn’t want to drink the water. He didn’t want to need someone to take care of him. He was almost sixteen; he should have been able to look out for himself.
He took a few cautious sips and waited to see if it would fight its way back up. When it didn’t, he took a bigger drink of water and then set it down on the toilet tank, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist.
“Better?”
Sam nodded.
“Good, this is good, Sammy. You’re doing great, now sit tight for a second.”
Dean pulled open the shower curtain and fiddled with the shower faucet for a couple of minutes until he deemed it acceptable. The cuff of his shirtsleeve was soaked, but Dean didn’t notice.
“Alright, it’s not too cold. Go ahead and hop in so we can get that fever down.”
There was no reason for it, but Sam suddenly felt afraid. “N-no, I don’t want to.”
“Sammy, please. Your fever can’t get any higher or else I’ll have to drive you to a hospital. Please do this for me.”
He wanted Dean to stop looking so scared, and he wanted to prove he was stronger than this, but that was only a small piece of him. The rest of him was quite adamant about not getting underneath that stream of water.
“No, I won’t, I can’t, no, no—“
When Dean resorted to scooping him up in his arms and forcing him into the shower, Sam was kicking and screaming. He squirmed in Dean’s grip, hit his back with his fists, shoved himself away, but Dean was stronger.
Dean had always been stronger.
The water hit his back, and it felt like icicles stabbing his skin, and his screams of protest morphed into screams of pain.
“Dean, please,” Sam sobbed. “Please let me go, I don’t want—“
“I know, I know. I know you don’t want it.” Dean’s fingers were running through his quickly dampening hair, trying to quiet him, to soothe him. “But I’m not letting you fry yourself from the inside out.”
“It hurts,” he whimpered into Dean’s shoulder. “It hurts, it’s so cold.”
“I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m so sorry.” He lowered Sam to his feet but continued to hold him tight as they both stood underneath the spray. “You make sure to keep breathing, alright? Nice and slow, like this…”
With his head pressed against his chest, he could hear Dean’s heartbeat without having to strain at all. The slow rhythm of Dean’s lungs expanding and compressing was calming him, helping him steady his own breathing. With his voice muffled from the soaked fabric of Dean’s shirt, he asked if they could sit down, and he could practically feel Dean’s relief seep out of him. Yes, yes, they could absolutely sit down.
Dean leaned up against the back of the tub and Sam sat back against his chest. He reached for Dean’s arms, and without him having to say a thing, Dean pulled him closer.
The water was still freezing, his head was pounding from the effort it had taken to scream and cry, and his stomach was still upset, but at least he wasn’t scared anymore.
They stayed in the water long enough for Sam’s fingers to prune and for exhaustion to finally kick in. He was limp as Dean carried him out of the shower and sat him down on the motel bed. He’d started to sweat as Dean ran a towel through his hair and dried off the rest of him; did that mean the fever had broken, or that it was getting worse?
“I’m sorry I made you do that, kid,” Dean murmured. “But it did you some good, believe me.”
So things were turning up.
None of his muscles were working at full capacity, and getting dressed was slow going. Dean helped him into a large faded AC/DC shirt and a pair of loose-fitting boxer shorts, and didn’t tease him when Sam grabbed his shoulder to keep upright.
As Dean was pulling the soiled sheets from the other bed and indulging Sam’s repeated apologies, Sam said aloud to himself, “I didn’t get any homework done.”
Dean turned around and looked at him, bewildered. “You’re seriously thinking about your damn homework?”
“Dad told me to finish it before you guys got back.”
Dean seemed ready to throw his hands in the air, but his arms were loaded with a bundle of blankets. “You were throwing your guts up and you were half-delirious. Don’t worry about that, okay? Focus on getting better.”
The sheets were clean and soft, and combined with Dean’s soft humming of “Seven Bridges Road,” it was difficult to stay awake for long. Dean must have noticed, because he was sliding into bed next to him and putting an arm around his shoulders.
“Getting tired, kiddo?”
Sam mumbled incoherently and shifted closer to him.
“Alright, I gotcha.”
-
When John returned to the motel at three in the morning, he found his two sons curled up on one motel bed with the other one stripped down to the mattress. The scent of illness permeated the entire room. The cheap television was playing ABC World News, but the volume was quiet. Sam was tucked under Dean’s arm, sleeping soundly, but Dean was wide awake; his eyes were right on John the second he walked in.
The look on Dean’s face would put the devil to shame.