I'm back! Hope everyone had a great weekend and are getting everything together for the holidays! Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed so far :) This one was requested by lenail125 who wanted a Teen!Chester with a side of Sick!Sam and Dean making sure he had a good Christmas anyway. Hope you enjoy this!

Looking After You

For lenail125

It was Christmas Eve and Sammy was sick.

John had been gone for over two weeks on a hunt and their funds were already running low and now Sam had gotten a flu or something and Dean was just about ready to go frantic with cabin fever being cooped up in the motel room with a sick little brother who had been looking forward to a holiday with the three of them. But as usual, John was a no-show and Dean was left to pick up the pieces.

Yeah, Sam had pretty much given up on the idea of having family holidays the year he had figured out what their dad really did for a living, but even now at twelve, Sam still tried to pretend they could have a little normal, and Dean, even though he knew it was an impossibility in their lives, wanted that for Sam so he tried as best as he could to make it happen. And now he couldn't even get his dad to come home for Christmas; not even call. He wished John had taken them to Bobby's house like their surrogate uncle had suggested, but John had said it was too far a haul when he had a job on the other side of the country.

So they were stuck here and Sammy was sick and his disappointment was probably only making it worse. Dean had spent the last two days nursing his fever and making sure he was comfortable and warm—it was not warm in the motel room at all, which was probably another reason Sam had gotten sick. Dean had tried to tell the manager that their space heater was on the fritz, but no one had ever looked into it, probably not thinking that Dean was going to be able to pay for the room another week once the pre-payment John had already made went up in four days—and they would be right. Hopefully John was back by then, but Dean wasn't holding his breath. He would have been out hustling pool at the bar across the street already if it hadn't been for Sammy.

Dean was mixing up a can of chicken and stars when Sam woke groggily, his fever still higher than Dean wanted it to be. "What time is it?" he asked.

Dean looked over at him. "About six pm. You slept pretty much all day, dude."

"Did Dad call?" Sam asked, rubbing his eyes and shivering as he huddled on the bed, pulling the blankets over him.

Dean gnawed his lip. "No. I tried calling him earlier, left a message. He'll get it eventually."

"Whatever," Sam said tiredly, slumping back to the bed.

"Hey, you need to eat something, don't go back to sleep yet," Dean told him, trying to stay upbeat. "Soups almost done, and I bet there's some sort of Christmas special on TV that we can watch."

"Okay," Sam said tiredly.

Dean crossed the room to prop him up, adding pillows from the other bed too. Sam seemed too weak to sit on his own. Dean knew it was just a result of the fever, but it still worried him. He knew Sammy hadn't had enough nutritious food lately, and hardly enough of what they had been eating. The soup would be good, though and hopefully would help. At least they still had orange juice too. For now.

"Here you go, kiddo," Dean said, putting a TV tray into Sam's lap with the bowl of soup on it. "Eat all of that, if you can. You need to keep your strength up."

Sam sighed, but he picked up the spoon and started to eat slowly, as Dean turned on the TV and found a Christmas movie, grabbing his own bowl and sitting beside Sam on the bed.

"Shouldn't sit so close," Sam told him. "You could get sick too."

Dean snorted. "If I was going to get sick, I would have by now. This one's all you, Sammy."

"It's Sam," the younger boy replied.

Dean fought against the smile as he heard a little life come back into Sam's voice. "Not when you're sick and I have to tuck you in and bathe your brow, Sammy."

Sam shot a half-hearted glare at him. "Jerk."

"Bitch," Dean replied and continued eating, watching out of the corner of his eye to make sure Sam was doing the same. He had managed almost all of the bowl before he stopped.

"I can't eat any more, Dean," he said.

Dean let him off. "That's okay, Sam, you did a good job."

"Bite me," Sam snorted as he turned back to the TV.

Dean cleaned up the dishes and then measured out some more of the cold medicine he had been giving Sam. The younger brother made a face as he saw it, but drank it all the same then allowed Dean to take his temperature, which had thankfully gone down a little bit. Finally. Maybe Sammy was on the road to recovery after all.

"I'm cold, Dean," Sam said with a sigh, as he continued to shiver on the bed, this having nothing to do with the fever.

Dean bit his lip and grabbed the comforter from the other bed, wrapping it around Sam's shoulders. He didn't care if he froze, as long as Sammy was warm.

Sam's shivers finally stopped and he dozed off during the second movie they watched and Dean started looking at the phone more and more, waiting for the call he knew wouldn't come. Finally, as he saw Sam was deeply asleep, he got up and wrote a quick note, then grabbed his coat and left the hotel room, heading out into the cold. It had snowed earlier, and looked like it was going to again. He hoped it wasn't too late to go to the super market on Christmas Eve, but he saw it was open when he got there and breathed a sigh of relief. He could at least try to make Christmas a little special for Sammy, even if he was sick.

He checked his funds, seeing there wasn't much there at all, but he was going to make due no matter what. He grabbed a basket and looked around heading toward the bakery section. There wasn't much left, but there was one pumpkin pie and he grabbed it eagerly, knowing it was one of Sammy's favorites. Then he picked up some pre-packaged sliced ham and instant mashed potatoes for their Christmas dinner. He still had a bit of money left and looked around for something to get Sam.

Finally, he spotted some soft fleece blankets and picked one up, hoping it might keep Sam warmer than the ratty motel ones. He used the very last of his money to pick up pancake mix and chocolate chips for their breakfast, and then went to check out. He would get more money in a couple days hustling pool, if Dad hadn't come back by then.

Sam was still asleep when he got back and he used that opportunity to decorate a little. He had secretly clipped some branches from the tree in the motel lobby and stuck them into a pot of soil in a strange, makeshift little tree, then decorated it with some ornaments and tinsel he had also liberated from the lobby (it was the back of the tree, no one would know until they took it down). Then he made newspaper snowflakes to hang around the room. Then he wrapped the blanket with more newspaper and set it on the table with the pie.

He glanced hopefully at the phone one more time, before he decided it was time to go to bed, exhaustion stealing over him. Now that Sam seemed to finally be sleeping peacefully for the first time in the last couple days, he was going to enjoy a good night's sleep too. But he still climbed into Sam's bed to make sure he didn't sleep through anything his little brother needed. Besides, the kid had all the blankets.

The next morning, Sam woke to the smell of pancakes and chocolate. It actually smelled really good and he opened his eyes, looking over at Dean's grinning face as he flipped pancakes at the stove.

"Rise and shine, Sammy! Merry Christmas!"

Sam looked around, seeing the snowflakes and the pitiful tree and smiled slightly. "Dean, where did you get all this stuff?"

"Oh, uh, most of it I took from the lobby. But I made a run to the store last night when you were sleeping and got stuff for Christmas dinner. Look, pie!"

Sam carefully slid out of the bed, arms wrapped around himself from the sudden cold as he went to sit at the kitchen table.

"And look, Santa came," Dean said, motioning to the poorly wrapped present on the table as he put a couple pancakes onto a plate for Sam.

Sam smiled. "Dean, you didn't have to…"

"Hush, don't make this a chick flick moment, Sammy," Dean told him, putting the plate in front of him and feeling his forehead before Sam shoved his hand away.

"I'm making this a chick flick moment?" Sam replied sarcastically.

"Your fever's gone," Dean said, pleased. He grabbed more pancakes for himself and sat down. "Come on, open your present."

Sam grabbed it and tore off the paper, smiling as he saw the blanket. "Thanks Dean, this is really great." He unrolled it and wrapped it around himself.

"Can't have you getting sick again, and this place is a freaking tomb," Dean said, shrugging as he ate his pancakes, but he was secretly pleased. "Look, Sammy, I'm sorry we didn't get to spend Christmas with Dad and Uncle Bobby this year like you wanted to."

"It's not your fault, Dean," Sam told him. "Besides, it's all right. We have pie and everything, right? And… thanks for taking care of me."

"That's my job, Sammy," Dean told him quietly, then cut the sober attitude and grinned. "And who says we can't have pie for breakfast too? What do you say?"

"Sounds good," Sam grinned.

It may not have been the best Christmas ever, but as long as he had his brother with him, Sam knew it would never be that bad after all.

I'm going to be posting one a day from now through Christmas Eve so the next one will be up tomorrow :)

The next story is for AnastaziaDanielle