How long does it take two tall guys to walk from the end of our driveway to our front door?

Pretty long, if Dean and Sam were anything to go by.

There were five more bags of groceries left in the car. I probably could've carried them all in at once but I wanted to make it take as long as they were taking to come into the house. When I went to grab the first two bags, Sam was out of the car but not walking anywhere. He was telling Dean that he shouldn't stay here, it wasn't safe, they should call somebody named Cas to get him, get Sam, to Bobby's.

Dean was saying he kept calling Cas but he wasn't answering, that it'd been ten hours since they left the convent and Sam hadn't gotten any worse so it probably wasn't going to get as bad as 'the other day', so they were okay.

When I came back for the next two bags , Dean and Sam were about ten feet closer to the house. Dean had a big green duffle bag over his shoulder and he was telling Sam they could at least take a break for half an hour and Sam was saying he was sorry because he knew Dean needed the break.

And then it got kind of weird, with Dean kind of reading Sam's mind. Sam was just saying,

"I'm sorry, Dean. I know you're exhausted. I don't even know how long you've been awake, trying to find me. You deserve the rest. I can just -."

But that was as much as he said and Dean cut in,

"No, you're not staying in the car."

"Okay, then -."

And that was as much as Sam said, again, and I saw Dean take a really deep breath.

"Right, I'm gonna leave you alone in a motel room, somewhere. Not happening, Sam. C'mon."

He turned and started walking to the house and I took the bags in fast in case he might think I was listening in. Which I was, okay, but I didn't want him to think that.

Mom wasn't putting the groceries away like I thought she'd be, like she usually did as soon as we got home from the store. She wasn't even in the kitchen. I looked around, wondering where she was, and I saw a pillowcase laying down our bedroom hallway.

"Mom?"

I grabbed the pillowcase and went looking for her. She was in her room, making her bed. The old sheets and blankets were yanked off onto the floor and she was putting new ones on, the ones I remembered seeing on the top of the laundry basket that morning.

"Are all the bags in?" She asked me that with a pillow tucked under her chin, trying to push it into a pillow case.

"Uh - one more."The pillow went in the case and got tossed on the bed and she waved that I should toss her the other pillowcase.

"Where're Dean and Sam?"

"Still coming in. Sam's -." Well, maybe I shouldn't say Sam was saying he didn't want to stay here. That didn't seem nice. I didn't know how Mom would take that. "Sam's walking slow. What're you doing?"

"Making the bed up for Sam."

"He can stay in my room." Because if he stayed in my room, I could sleep out on the couch and watch TV after Mom went to bed.

"Sam's too tall to fit in your bed. And no, you're not going to sleep on the couch so you can watch TV all night."

Like she could read my mind. Weird.

I went to get the last bag, but it was already coming in the house, in Dean's hand. He had one hand carrying the plastic grocery bag, and the other hand he had holding onto Sam's arm, like he was helping him get into the house. Maybe he was. Sam was still white and pasty and sweaty, and he was walking hunched like he was in pain or afraid of whacking his head on something.

"Mom's in her room, changing the sheets." I told them. Dean smiled like it was good news. Sam looked like I said Mom found mice in the cereal.

"Great." Dean said and handed me the plastic bag. "Where's that?"

I pointed him down the hallway and ran the bag into the kitchen to shove onto the cupboard and when I got to Mom's room, Dean and Sam were there, and Dean still had hold of Sam's arm and he was saying to Mom,

"I'm gonna have Sammy hit the showers, okay?"

"Next door down the hall." Mom told him. "There're towels under the cabinet. Fresh soap too." They were talking like this was normal, like it wasn't some out-of-the blue, never-happened-before thing, like they'd done this before a lot, or like there was some adult code language they both understood for getting stuff like this done.

"Great, thanks. C'mon, Sam."

"Need to sit down." Sam said. I could hardly hear him. "Dean, I need to sit down."

And Mom shoved the old sheets and blankets out of the way and Dean pushed-pulled-shoved-dragged Sam to the bed and Sam sat down on the fresh-made mattress like his legs just stopped holding him up. Then Dean crouched down in front of him.

"You need to lie down, Sammy?"

I thought Sam looked so bad that if there was something more down than laying down, I'd say he needed it. He was still pale, still sweating, and now his eyes were shut.

"No, no. I just - I just -" He was doing that swallow-swallow thing like he was one swallow away from hurling. "Dean?"

"All right, all right. C'mere, c'mon." Dean started scooping Sam's legs up onto the bed and steering his head down onto the pillows in the fresh pillowcases and Mom started pushing me out of the room and away from Dean and Sam.

"Mom - but Mom - I can help - "

"Yeah, you can help by getting a pail in case Sam gets sick." She got my shoulder in a grip and spun me around and shoved me toward the kitchen. "Unless you want to help by cleaning up what happens if he gets sick without a pail."

Eww - gross - no.

"Fine. I'll get the pail. "

I looked one last time into the room before I went to get the pail. Sam was curled up so small he practically wasn't there, and Dean was sitting there next to him, leaning down in, telling him,

"Hang on, hang on. You can throw up in a minute. Just hang on."

I raced to the kitchen to the broom closet and raced back with the mop pail. It was rectangular and kinda smelled like stale mop but it was all the pail we had. I got it back to Mom's room just in time too. I gave it to Mom and she gave it to Dean and he put it on the floor and just as Mom shoved me out the bedroom door, Sam started getting sick all into the pail.

Mom shoved me all the way out of the room, "Go," and I didn't need to hear it twice.

I was nearly to the kitchen before I couldn't hear Dean saying, "It's not that bad, Sammy, it's not even that bad."

to be continued