A/N 1: I'm sorry if I've been mostly AWOL from stories and answering reviews. My family has taken a few more hits. A couple of weeks ago a family friend died in a freak 3-car pile-up on a quiet country road 3 miles from my house. My nephew, my brother's son, tried to kill himself. A friend of mine was at the Boston Marathon and is having some very strong PTSD. And to top it all off, there's a family drama going on that I can't get into, but which has been very hard on us. So – I apologize for being out of contact.
A/N 2: On a happier note, I got the idea for this story from the scene in "Goodbye Stranger" when Sam is drinking some reddish liquid in the Bat Cave, and I wondered what it might be.
Coughing.
Sam is coughing.
Dean hears it. It doesn't matter that it's the middle of the night, that Sam's room is three rooms down from Dean's, or that Dean is sound asleep. Sam coughs – Dean hears it.
It goes on longer than it should, longer than Dean wants it to. It's not the longest Sam has coughed since he started "Trial Coughing," but Dean can only imagine that it'll get progressively worse and he's not going to leave Sam alone with it.
He gets out of bed and pulls on his 'dead guy' robe and walks out into the hallway. Sam is already out of his room, empty glass in his hand, heading for the kitchen for a refill of cherry juice, probably. Dean catches up with Sam like he's standing still and pulls the glass from his hand.
"Go back and sit. I'll get it for you."
Sam doesn't even argue, he wheezes "Thanks" and coughs blood into one of the paper towels he always has with him now and turns back to his room.
Cherry juice. Sam's been drinking that since before Dean found out he was coughing up blood. When he did find out, Dean looked it up online to see if cherry juice helps with blood loss. It doesn't, it doesn't have iron, but it's supposed to help ease pain and promote sleep. And Sam says it cuts the taste of blood in his mouth better than anything else.
So Dean makes sure they always have a good supply.
He fills Sam's glass with cherry juice, pours himself some orange juice, grabs the Oreos out of the cupboard and carries it all back to Sam's room.
Where he finds Sam sitting on the edge of his bed, looking pale, clearing his throat, and rubbing his chest like it hurts.
"Need painkillers?" Dean asks, before he sets anything down.
"I took some when I woke up." Sam tells him. He sounds hollow. "Just waiting for them to kick in."
Then, before Dean can say how much he doesn't like that answer, Sam asks,
"Oreos?"
Dean shrugs.
"When you donate blood, they give you orange juice and Oreos. I figured – "
He lets it go at that because saying anything else, anything more, feels like too much. He hands Sam his cherry juice and lets the package of cookies slide out of his fingers onto the mattress. He sits down and doles out a few cookies each.
"You've donated blood?" Sam asks. He sounds surprised.
"Yeah." Dean answers, surprised that Sam is surprised. He's about to remind him, 'you and the ghouls, remember?' but decides instead that he doesn't want to think about anything unpleasant. Not right now. "Did you ever?"
"No." Sam says. "I tried a couple of times in college, but whatever they do, they drop a drop of blood into some solution to see if it's – I don't know what – whatever that is, they never took me."
He takes a bite of Oreo and sighs.
"Just as well, I suppose. Considering."
And they're thinking unpleasant things anyway, no matter what Dean wanted.
"You know what's weird?" He asks. Changes the subject.
"A lot of things, what'd you have in mind?" Sam asks back. He's deliberately being a smart-ass so he's feeling better. So Dean makes a face like he's annoyed.
"That we have a HotPoint refrigerator and a Frigidaire stove. Who thought that made sense?"
"People who made a lot more money than we ever will." Sam says. He bites off most of a cookie in one go, drinks some juice, and finishes the cookie. He looks a little better. Not quite so pale. Not quite so dying.
"Hey, what do you say tonight we drive down to Kanapolis and go to the Drive In?" Dean asks. It's a drive of a couple hours which is nothing, they've done it before. And then Sam can enjoy a movie or two without worrying about coughing all the way through it and disturbing the rest of the audience.
"Yeah, sure. Sounds good." Sam says. He eats an entire cookie all at once and finishes his glass of juice. He grabs the package of cookies and Dean's empty glass. "I'll take these back out. I'll see you in the morning."
And he looks and sounds so restored, Dean doesn't even argue. He goes back to his room and goes back to bed.
When he wakes up, there's a glass of orange juice and three Oreo cookies on his nightstand.
The End.