A/N: So.. This was supposed to be a oneshot. A simple, uncomplicated oneshot that would leave me alone. Thing is, though, that asthmatic Dean came back to haunt me, and then I got all philosophical about the differences in siblings and.. Here you go. While I know this could use a read through, I'm not exactly writing the bible here. I'm sure you guys can deal. ^^
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I earn nothing. I'm merely borrowing the title ( /Marc Bolan) and the Supernatural characters.
Get it on (Bang a gong)
Sam is the youngest. He's, undeniably, the baby of the family. And in a sense, that's something that never leave you. So even after he's left Stanford, even after he's lost his girlfriend and his parents, a simple head cold will bring him painfully close to being a whining five year old.
He supposes it's the way it has to be.
As long as the people around you are still the ones who wiped your nose when snot was dribbling down your lip as a kid, you never do seem to grow up when a fever catches hold or whatever injury you're nursing sends out pain and misery. You'll always be that kid who had to hold still while a sour smelling wash cloth or rough paper towel wiped your face clean.
So Sam doesn't feel embarrassed to admit it when his head hurts, or when his chest aches. No one has ever told him he should be he should act like a big boy and suck it the fuck up. Walk it off. Act like a man.
Whatever.
When Sam feels bad and someone asks him, he'll tell them quite willingly that yes, yes he does feel like shit. Utter and complete total shit. And then he'll moan, whine and complain that his pillows aren't soft enough, or that his body is itching to move and aching with fever at the same time.
No one ever told Sam that it's really fucking annoying to be around grown men who whine and bitch and moan when they feel under the weather.
Thing is... Someone did tell Dean.
Sam doesn't think anyone did it on purpose, really.
Thing is, that in raising a kid you only see a month out of the year, as was the case of most of the people who babysat them early on wherever John would drop them off, it's difficult to have any sort of plan on how to do it. And so, when both get sick, and the nine year old is vomiting as much as the five year old, but the nine year old sees it as his mission in life to clean up after the five year old it's much easier to tell the big one to lie down and drink some water and focus on getting the five year old to stop crying. Heartbreaking cries punctuated by gagging, which are so much worse than the tears running down the face of a nine year old leaning over a toilet.
And Dean already knows, of course, to rinse his mouth out with water afterwards. And to wait a little before actually drinking anything, but when Sam looks back on it, he supposes it would've been nice if someone was there to tell Dean anyway.
He views it pragmatically. Knows it was more important for the babysitter to get through it right then and there than imprint some kind of important life lesson, and while he understands that he still can't help feeling a bit bitter on his brother's behalf.
When Dean breaks his leg, and John still needs to leave town (though Sam will dispute the "need" to leave to this day), Dean is still in charge. Because Sammy is eight, and doesn't even make his own lunch yet. Dean did when he was eight, because there was no one around to do it for him. Dean does it for Sammy, because he's around to do it, and because an eight year old doesn't have any concept of letting Sammy do it on his ownso he can learn.
There is a distinct difference between being the older Winchester and the younger Winchester.
At least, there was. Until Sam left.
Sam was gone for two years. Two years where normal family values were dangled in front of him like a goddamned carrot on a stick, and he became uncomfortably aware that when people went nostalgic over what their parents would do for them when they were kids ("Imagine someone doing your laundry!") compared to what's being done for them now that they've left home, he would remember Dean.
Dean, who at the age of ten knew which kind of laundry detergent worked the best.
Sam still thinks of Dean when he uses the blue fabric softener, and wonders if that was something someone taught his brother to use, or if it was just something Dean decided he liked.
He becomes uncomfortably aware suddenly that his brother is only four years older than him, because there are people in his study group who are four years older than Dean, and Sam still sees them as his own age. Dean, however, is still old. He wonders if he's confusing age with stability.
When they watch Jess' niece for a day it's clear to him that kids really are just kids, and that eight year olds really aren't that old. At all.
And yet, by that time Dean was staying home on his own with Sam while their father chased ghosts and ghouls and demons.
So Sam made an effort with Dean when he came back, to act more like an adult. He wanted to prove that he didn't blow up at every little comment, and that he was perfectly capable and aware of the things that needed to be done.
And it all falls down like a house of fucking cards when he gets sick.
The first time Dean gets sick after Sam leaves Stanford is right after he saved the kid in the lake. Right after Sam quit school. He was still broken up and filled with regret and sorrow so deep he could drown in it, but his brother was quite literally drowning in his own lungs.
It starts with a fever, and Sam realises his brother has been quiet for a couple of days. Calm and lethargic and slow.
So he starts observing. Watches as Dean waves away every attempt at help and coddling, and finds himself wondering why. Why doesn't he accept a cup of tea? Why does he insist on driving when he's clearly miserable?
And Sam realises that it's really and truly not that Dean minds Sam doing any of these things, or that he in some misguided attempt at being immortal refuses to admit to anyone, even himself, that he's sick. Dean knows perfectly well that he's sick, and if it was Sam he would be stopping at the closest motel and showing Tylenol down his throat until they're coming out the other end, it's just that Dean is embarrassed.
Like he thinks it's something shameful, to admit that you're not feeling bad. He doesn't mind Sam coddling him just a little bit, he just feels shameful that it's needed. Dean never realised that he's no longer the only thing that keeps their whole operation going, and that Sam is perfectly capable of taking the wheel.
They're an hour away from Bobby's when Dean finally gives in, eyes closing one last time as the rain pats gently against the windows and Sam steers the car confidently in the right direction. He doesn't want to drive. Didn't even want to get out of bed that morning, but there really isn't much choice. Life really does go on, however much he'd prefer it to freeze entirely so he could spend the rest of it hiding under a cheap motel comforter.
They're just an hour away from Bobby, and Sam is apprehensive. He hasn't seen Bobby in a long time, and while he sees the logic in going to college, he doesn't know if the way his dad viewed it ("You left us!") is the way hunters view it. Or if it was just his dad.
Congested breathing fills the car with the kind of noise that makes Sam knuckle his own chest in sympathy, and Dean's clammy skin is visible even under the lights from oncoming traffic.
When he pulls up in Bobby's yard, Dean doesn't even shift in his seat. Sam cuts the engine, but Dean's sleep is too deep, and already too disturbed by warped senses and slime clogged ears to notice.
Bobby waits in the kitchen, hands around a warm cup of coffee. The weather is damp and miserable, on the edge of winter but still in the autumn-region, and they're all hating it.
Bobby has put clean sheets on their beds. Sam digs out an ancient hot water bottle, sticks it under the sheets and wonders if he should put a snail on Dean's pillow to neutralise the kindness. He almost crawls in himself, almost stops giving a crap. ("You're such a girl, Sammy")
By the time he's stacked a box of Kleenex, a pill bottle with Advil stamped across the front, one bottle of nose spray and a thermometer on the night stand, Dean is stumbling into the room.
Sam winces at the look of him.
Dean doesn't look like he cares what Sam's been doing, or when they arrived, or even why he wasn't woken up. His eyes are on the bed, filled with a kind of dull intensity that only comes with the kind of influenza that makes you lie down on the floor to get your pants on because standing is too much of an effort, and then leaves you wondering how in the name of all that's holy how you're ever going to get up again.
Where there's just no strength left, and your body screams "Dude, I'm not giving you a choice here, you have to lie down. Now. Because I'm going to sleep." Bone deep, miserable exhaustion not even sleep can fix.
Sam clears his throat, points to the tiny bathroom and shoves the clammy shoulder of his brother's fleece jacket in the right direction.
Five minutes later, Dean emerges in flannel sleep pants and white t-shirt, teeth freshly brushed and stomach recently emptied.
Sam doesn't say anything, just to give Dean the chance to pretend no one really cares that he's sick.
He leaves the room before Dean can crawl underneath the covers to find them already warm, but comes back in with a cup of camomile tea a moment later.
Turns out Bobby is a lot more mother hen inclined than he lets on. But then, everyone needs to know they're a favourite somewhere, and he supposes Bobby's is that place for Dean.
The next three days, Dean only gets out of bed to use the bathroom. Which isn't often, because he's sweating so much there's really no need.
Painkiller goes down, twenty minutes later sweat is pouring off, a couple of hours later the fever goes back up. It doesn't fail.
Sam checks Dean's temperature every two hours, because he's worried as hell, and his brother is hallucinating.
Badly.
For five hours his brother stared at the space between the night stand and the other bed, where Sam sleeps. From his mutterings Sam realises there's a murderer behind there. Waiting to slaughter his brother. His feverish brother, who asks why there's a heart monitor in the room. Claims that he can see his pulse throbbing in front of his eyes, a long green line against the black backdrop of the night darkened room, falling and rising with every beat of his heart. Sam turns the lights back on, ignores his brother's flinch at the brightness.
It removes the nightmares, makes the night a little less dark. Jess disappears. So does the murderer.
The wheeze comes back on the second day. Long, thin squeaks of air being pulled through tight lungs makes Sam rifle through everything they own as well as every single cabinet in Bobby's house before he admits defeat and realises that there is no medication around. Nothing at all. That his brother has, yet again, run dry and forgotten to get more.
Really, for someone who's lived with a potentially lethal disease his entire life, Dean is remarkably calm about choking to death in his own mucus.
On day four, after Dean has used every chest muscle, every stomach muscle and every back muscle available to pull oxygen in and out of his lungs until they're trembling with effort, Sam gives in. Bobby calls a doctor, doctor calls an ambulance.
Slowly. Not the siren kind, more of the "We need transportation with oxygen. Twenty minutes? That'll be fine." kind. The kind, Sam tells himself, that shuttles people forth and back from home to hospital or to nursing home if they're not well enough to be crammed into a taxi.
And Sam finds himself with his brother in the shape of an in-patient this time, watching as Dean is laid up in a careful position in bed, pillows stacked in odd places and masks covering more of his face than he's ever seen before in an attempt to alleviate his breathing.
There was no waiting in an ER this time, and the nurses are all actual nurses. They fetch blankets and fold up personal belongings carefully. Measure out medications and check temperatures with the kind of clinical precision that comes with practice.
Dean doesn't flirt. Sam is glad, but he wishes his brother would quit his Casanova act because he's tired of it, not because talking makes his face go blue.
His eyes are firmly closed, every breath careful and measured as he lies sweating against the cushions, neck stretched out obscenely.
Sam knows, from experience, that Dean never sits down when the asthma takes over. Walks around aimlessly until it passes, face upturned and laboured breaths visible while his chest rises and falls like an ancient, broken vacuum cleaner filled with dust, lint and coins.
"You say he went swimming? In a lake?"
Sam nods, mentally replaces the dust and the coins with leaves and dirt. Neither he or the doctor thinks Dean needs someone to make medical decisions for him, but his voice is almost gone, breathy and painful after struggling for air in a sore throat for too long.
"Is it possible that he inhaled any water?"
Sam watches, as if a video is being played in his head, as Dean emerges from the water. Gasping. Spluttering. Coughing. Then it fast forwards to flashes of Dean staying in bed a little longer than usual, or coughing as he comes out of the bathroom after a shower. Rubs his chest, sighs in a grunting sort of way. Wheezes when he suddenly inhales so deep he has to stretch his upper body upwards, like an extra breath was necessary in between all the others.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's possible."
It's another week before he gets to pour his brother into bed again, hot water bottle back in its original spot against his belly. Only this time he doesn't suspect his brother is drowning in his own lungs anymore, and the shiny new inhalers on his nightstand are only two of six in total, the rest hiding in the trunk of their car.
The duvet cover is printed with little flowers, horribly clashing against the interior of Bobby's house, which is otherwise covered in symbols and devil traps. Their bedroom, oddly, is still the same as it always was. Dean's side has two drawers underneath the bed where Sam knows Dean keeps the junk he wants to keep, but doesn't have room for in the car.
Sam has the same in a box on top of the wardrobe still filled with clothes he's outgrown.
There's a trashcan, mid eighties-style with a race car printed on the front, in front of Dean on the narrow bed, used tissues and instructions from the doctor on the rickety night stand between their beds. Two dead flies between the two layers of window, and a spot of bird crap stuck on the outer one.
Dean breathes evenly. Not quite as easy as normal, but better. Shallow, but better. He could be twelve again, Sam thinks. Twelve, flu ridden and sick as a dog. If it wasn't for the crow's feet and the scars.
Realistically, Sam knows his brother will never wake him up in the middle of the night to let him know there's something wrong. At least not unless something is wrong.
And that's a good thing, because Sam likes his sleep, and doesn't particularly fancy playing nursemaid to a whining, complaining brother who just needs to wipe his nose. He jolts at the irony, because he knows that's what Dean deals with whenever Sam goes down.
Which, thankfully, isn't nearly as often as his larger than life big brother ends up in the ER with inflamed lungs and blue tinged lips.
And really, it's probably better that way, because Sam even irritates himself when he's sick.
-Fin-