Holding Things Together

[SexualOddity]

Hey guys, this one is for Tg's birthday. It's a month late... which is kinda early by my standards. It also has a low sneezing:story ratio - just a heads up in case that's not your thing.

--

It happened right about the time when things looked like falling apart. Right when John didn’t talk on hunts and when the Impala was feeling more and more like a pressure cooker. It was when Sam was eighteen years old and still spending every waking minute studying for his SATS (Dean was pretty sure he’d heard that you couldn’t even study for them).

John wasn’t saying a whole lot about it. Even though he knew that Sam ought to be graduating this year and that wrapping himself up in studying was just a waste of everyone’s time. Sam had been kept back in school once in his life. He’d had a really bad bout of mono. (Horny bastard. Dean never did find out who he’d caught it from.) Dean had been held back every year, save for a couple when he was a kid, before he realised that bargaining for answer sheets was a waste of time and that test scores only lasted as long as your, inevitably temporary, stay in a district. Dean graduated at eighteen. He had described this strategy to Sam, more than once, actually; had explained that travel made them academically invincible. Sam only ever nodded blankly and turned away to read his book. People said the kid was smart... honestly.

Sam was stressed, and sick, which was never a good start. And their Dad hadn’t noticed, which was worse. Not that Dean blamed him. It was a tough one to spot, coming on slowly and right in the worst part of allergy season. He’d only picked up on it himself after five hours in the car listening to Sam sneezing in the back. It wasn’t the quantity, that was pretty much standard for Sam on a windy day in late Spring, but it was something about the sound of them, the way that he’d gasp at the air right before with these great big shaky breaths that would swell out his ribs and rattle in his chest. Dean only knew for sure, though, when the rain hit the following day and Sam didn’t get any better. To be fair, John probably ought to have picked it up at that point, except his mind was occupied by the latest hunt, and God forbid Sammy ever tell anyone how he was feeling.

Dean had taken a little detour to a pharmacy when he was meant to be dropping Sam off at school that morning. He’d thrust a paper bag full of cold supplies into his brother’s hand. Granted, Sam had just stood and stared at him for a while, but then he took a swig from the bottle of Dayquil. It was good enough.

He seemed to remember that John had briefly asked Sam to come and back them up that night, but it hardly seemed significant. Every week or so the pair of them would come out of their angry little cocoons and snap at each other, usually about the fact that John thought Sam ought to be hunting, and Sam, frankly, didn’t care. Eventually though, they would retreat back to the standard hostile silence. Actually, on reflection, it was an unpleasant, but comfortable, sort of balance. Dean kinda misses it.

The eventual change was down to Dean, actually. He was the reason why they couldn’t keep on trundling though unhappily. It was a fuckwit move, to begin with, and, God, after all this time Dean ought to have known better. Suffice to say, he saw a chance to corner a ghoul and he took it. If he had have waited a second to check around him, he would have missed it, but then the second one would have missed him, too.

He lost blood. A lot of blood. He was too out of it at the time to know how much, but the ride back into town, getting past the reception desk and up onto the bed, all passed in something of a blur. Waking up when Sam got home was a little clearer. Dean learned later that that was after about two hours of their Dad running around and fretting and trying to staunch the bleeding long enough to patch him up.

He was only just blinking awake when their Dad was tearing to the door, screaming questions at his brother.

“I was at the library...” Sam’s voice sounded off. “Dean? God, Dean!”

Dean took in his own condition pretty much along with Sam, as his brother came to crouch alongside his bed. His feet were propped up on a ton of clothes, bags, pillows... he shivered and felt along the edges of the mattress with his fingertips. Everything felt sick and wavy and insubstantial.

“Fuck!” Sam croaked by his ear. “What the hell happened?”

“Ghouls.” Dean’s own voice sounded strange, far away.

“Clear out.” John barked and closed in on Dean with water and fresh bandages. Dean didn’t see much of Sam for the rest of the night.

--

“HehhhESHHH’SHAHhh!”

Sam announced himself by sneezing outside the door the next day before Dean even heard the key turn in the lock. Dean was relieved. It had been a long day of trying to entertain himself. He wondered fleetingly whether Sam had brought back quarters for the magic fingers.

The door swung open.

“Hey.” Sam coughed. “How you feelindg?”

“Shitty. You?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m finde.”

“How come you’re all wet? I thought you’d be in the library.”

Sam snorted, which only made him cough. “I dond’t sdtudy andy bmore. I traind.” Slamming a bag down on the table he sent a canister of salt tumbling onto the carpet. He swore and stared at it for a minute before bringing a fist up against his nose.

“HNng...HUHHhh’EHHTCH’yew! K’SHHH’shyew! KSHH’SHYEW! HuHT’CHSHhhYEW! Fuck!” He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve before crouching down to rescue the canister and scrape up the excess salt into his hands. “Hehh...ISHH’YEW! ISHH’YEW! H’ISHHH’AH! God! Every... “Huh’ISHYEW! Every fucking thindg is mbakindg me snuhhh... hehhhh... sndeeze today... “HEH’ISHH’SHYEW! ESHHH’UH! HUSH’SHHHH!”

“Hey... Okay now...” Dean shuffled in his bed, planting one foot at a time on the floor.

Sam reached for the wastepaper basket with his free hand and dumped in his palmful of spilled salt. He drew up his left hand into his sleeve and held it to his face with his right, fabric crushed up against his mouth and nose as his breath began to quicken in anticipation of another fit.

“HhhMMP’USHHH! MP’USHHH! Eshh’SHAH! TCH’YAH! M’mmESHH! ESHHH! H’ESHH! H’ESHH! Huhhhsh’SHAH!”

It was only after he sniffed and looked up, bleary-eyed, that he seemed to notice Dean. Just sitting on the edge of the bed was making Dean’s head spin. He reached for the wall with one hand and pressed the other against his gut, trying to push back at the sickly feeling.

“Dond’t gedt ubp.” Sam said instantly.

Dean raised his eyebrows.

“Dond’t... USHHHah! Dond’t gedt ubp,” Sam repeated, his sleeve still held tight against his running nose, “Whadt do you ndeed?”

“Nothing. I was gonna help you.”

“Dond’t.”

It came across a little short.

“I’ll gedt you sombe fresh water.”

Sam didn’t say another word as he messed around in the bathroom, blowing his nose, washing his hands, filling Dean’s glass. Dean just watched him silently as he cleaned up the rest of the salt, dug his notebook out of his bag and clambered into bed with a flashlight.

“You not gonna put on some dry clothes?” Dean interrupted at last.

Sam just cleared his throat and shuffled on his bed. “I gotta get this donde.”

--

John came back later that night, with a lead on his case and a pack of tablets for Dean. Apparently they were meant to stimulate the production of blood cells. All Dean knew is that they made him sleep. All the damn time. He swallowed what John gave him and then remembered very little until him shaking him awake the next morning, helping him to re-medicate and then to stumble to the bathroom to get washed up. He’s pretty sure he passed out again just about as soon as he was back on his bed, because the next thing he knew their Dad was gone and he was stirring awake to the sound of Sam fucking hacking, curled over a test paper with a flashlight and a pen.

He reached up instantly to flick on the light.

“Ehhh...Hahhh...HUHH’ESHHhhYew! Fuck! EHhHTSH’SCHYEW! EHTSH’TSHYEW! HuhhEHTSH’YEW!”

Dean winced. The string of sneezes sounded grating and uncomfortable in Sam’s chest.

“God! You told mbe you were gondda warnd mbe before you did thadt!”

“You sound fucking awful.”

Sam pressed a knuckle against his nose. “Well, the light isnd’t helbpindg.”

Dean pushed himself up on the bed, and credit to his meds, they seemed as though they were doing something, because he could sit completely upright and the worst that he felt was a wave of lightheadedness.

“Sam, are you... are you soaking again?”

Sam just sniffed and coughed against his fist. “Weather’s sdtill crabppy.”

“There any cough syrup in that bag of meds I gave you?”

Sam cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“Are you taking it?”

“Yeah,” Sam grunted.

Dean shuffled towards the end of the bed. “Okay, you gotta listen to me. You’re sick. You’re getting into some dry clothes.” He moved to stand up, but the floor lurched below him and he found himself slumping back against the bed.

Sam, finally, for the first time in all of this, shut the goddamn textbook and looked up at Dean. But just as Dean indulged in a gullible second of optimism, he recognised that defensive fire in his brother’s eyes. It was getting all too familiar, but up until now it had mainly been reserved for John.

Sam was on his feet.

“Deand,” he coughed. “The second Dadd gedts hombe he’s gonnda wandt mbe to clear away all of this sdtuff. I have two days before my test. Two... days.” He gasped and broke into another fit of coughing, clasping his fingers at his chest while he leant a supporting hand on the table.

“Does Dad even know that you’re sick?”

Sam shrugged. “You tell mbe.”

“Well have you told him?”

“I ndever had to tell you.”

“God, Sammy, will you just fucking get over yourself?” Dean gripped the wall this time, as he raised himself to his feet. He wobbled, but he kept his balance. “Dad gets a little crazy sometimes, but he sure as hell doesn’t wanna see you like this. You tell him you’re sick, you need to be out of the storm; you take your test; you train afterward when you’re healthy. What is the Goddamn problem?”

Sam’s expression hardened in that stupid stubborn grimace. He held out him arms in this pigheaded gesture of innocence.

“Hey. Dad told mbe he wandted mbe to traind. I’mb ondly...” He blinked rapidly and rubbed his palm in circles at the tip of his nose. “HUH’Ngggh’Shhhh!” He wrapped a hand at his chest again, and brought his wrist up to his face as he dissolved into a fit of coughing. When it finally slowed he grabbed a bunch of Kleenex, pressed them to his mouth, scooped up the books in his free hand and stalked towards the door. “I’m gondda go. You godtta sleebp. I’ll be ind Dad’s room if you dneed andythindg. Phonde mbe, okay?”

Dean flops back down on the mattress. Sam’s gotta be an idiot, because the walls in all these places are fucking paper-thin. He sits for a half hour of listening to Sam coughing and wheezing and gasping for air before he messages his Dad. And Dean feels like a dick. Because there’s a certain amount of pride and fraternal confidence that Sam has invested in him. But ultimately, he’s learnt over a long, long time, that when things look like falling apart, it’s down to him to hold them together.

He doesn’t want to see Sam any sicker, doesn’t want to see his Dad falling to pieces over the guilt. He types out a message to John and hopes that his instinct was right when it told him that this was the best thing for the family.

--

It happened right when everything was looking like falling apart. It was Sam’s last shot at the SATS. He’d planned to take the very first test because he knew the kind of shit that happened to them. There was always something, every single time: they’d pissed off the authorities and they needed to quit town quickly; people were about to die and they needed all hands on deck; Dean and his Dad were too Goddamn impatient for a hunt to let Sam stay back in a town for two fucking days while he got through his exams. Always. Something.

For them, life was measured in hunts. You either were killing something, or you were celebrating killing something. There was no time for anything else. Sometimes he wondered what his mum would have been like, if she were around. He couldn’t imagine her nodding along to the pair of them pulling the family from misery to misery. Couldn’t imagine having to fight her this hard just to get some Goddamn qualifications.

He had always known that the life they were living was idiotic, but he’d never been smacked so firmly in the face with it, until he strolled in the bedroom to see his brother, drip white and bleeding through his bandages. Sam had seen Dean in some spots, but he’d never seen him so gone. So scared, but still so absent from his own face.

Sam didn’t know what to do. He could hear his Dad behind him, still firing questions and accusations, but he was exhausted. Too weak to comment and too lost in horror over the emptiness that he saw in his brother.

When John sent him out of the room night, he did a lot of thinking.

--

Sam had always known that he wasn’t gonna be able to live like this, fighting and fighting and waiting for the next stupid fight. He’d always seen something else for them. Now it seemed more important than ever. Dean shouldn’t be bleeding to death at twenty-two. He should be in a job, or finishing up at College. Sam had met his share of hunters, and the story was usually the same, they’d survived, but everything save from revenge had gone out of the window. There was more than one way in which the monsters took your life. They were wrong, all of them. Sam didn’t understand why John and his Dad couldn’t see it. It sucked what happened to them, to all of them as a family, but, Jesus, if the demon had wrecked their lives then it was the pair of them that had kept it in ruins.

John had come by later, full of a whole lot of ideas about how Sam had let them down, about how he could have been there as backup for his brother. Sam dug his fingernails into his palms as John railed at him. He nodded though, called his Dad ‘Sir’ even though he couldn’t meet his eyes, agreed to be on call for hunts and to carry out every last drill that his father prescribed for him, but when he slunk back into his room beside Dean, he popped an Asprin to dampen down the marching band that had taken up residence behind his eyes and shuffled under the covers with a textbook and a flashlight. That was what was really going to save their family.

**

When he woke up the next morning Sam felt crappy. The cold that had just been nipping around his heels for the past couple of days seemed to have taken hold with a vengeance. He pressed at his cheeks and the bridge of his nose; against the swelling in his sinuses that suggested he could collapse into a sneezing fit at a moment’s notice. His lungs felt goddamn wretched, as though he ought to cough and cough just to clear out his chest. For the moment though, he didn’t want to wake his brother, so he pressed a fist to his ribs and tried to swallow back the irritation.

His Dad had left him a training plan on the coffee table. He resolved to follow it to the letter, to leave himself irreproachable as far as his Dad was concerned, but then to come right home and get himself through his SATS, even if it meant studying through the night. He had to. He’s the only one who can see past what happened in the nursery that night. He’s the only one who can get them to a place where they’re safe. And so, when everything looks like splitting open, he’s the one who has to press on harder to keep it all together.

**

It’s an unpleasant walk back to the motel for John that night. This ought to have been a one of the good ones. He’s taken out a vengeful spirit and a pack of ghouls all in one town, and God only knows the lives that he’s saved. But now he’s walking down the sidewalk, pharmacy bags in hand, one full of antibiotics from the local drugstore, another full of hypovolemia tablets that Calan picked up from God-only-knows-where.

At the motel, he unlocks the door in the dark and dumps his bag by Sam’s bed. Dean is quiet, but he can still hear his youngest coughing through the walls. He sinks down on to the mattress, sets an alarm on his watch to wake Dean up for his next dose of meds, and takes a breath before heading through to what was his own room to check on Sam. Sam is damn near as pale as his brother and, predictably, still not speaking to him, because he won’t let him drag his fluid-filled lungs into school to take that idiotic test.

Sam is shivering, sat up in bed with his head cocked against the wall. There is already a paper-bag full of shop-bought medicines spilled out across the nightstand, God knows where they came from. Sam just lifts his head wearily to look at him before screwing shut his eyes and bringing the heel of his hand up against his nose.

“Huhhh... Hu’UH’R’HEHTCHu! HuhhHEHHTCH’YEW! HuhhH’ESHHH!”

Sneezing makes him cough, and the coughing goes on just about forever. It’s deep and grumbling, scraping against his lungs. Sam fumbles on the bed for sheets of toilet roll, which he presses up against his mouth. John just stands there and feels useless. When he’s finished finally, John holds out the bag of meds.

“Two of these three times a day.”

Sam takes them wordlessly, and John doesn’t know what else he can say. Sam doesn’t remember the three of them in the room that night, flames tearing down the walls, doesn’t remember the empty shell of a home that was left when the firefighters had finished their job, doesn’t remember Mary or what the demon took from them. He takes the bottle of whisky from the floor by the bed and carries it with him back to the twin room. It’s still light enough that he can get a good look at his eldest, flat out beneath his blanket. He’s peaceful, which is something, but he looks thin too, and white. It’s not very long before the coughing starts up again in the room next door.

John doesn’t bother to get himself a glass, just slugs his whiskey straight from the bottle. Remembering that night with the demon, and sitting here with his sons so helpless around him, he feels as though everything might just fall apart again around them.

He needs to keep them stronger, to keep them safe. He shuffles back onto the bed, leaning his head back against the wall, and lets his mind turn over endurance tasks and training programmes. He has to keep the boys strong, to keep them safe. When everything looks like falling apart, it’s down to him to keep it all together.

[SpookyScarySkeleton]

Personally long plots arnt of my taste but I'm sure someone would appreciate that much detail, I read about half and it's really good.

[Sneezypeezy]

Loved it <3333

[sadie22233]

Aw this was so so good! Such a nice capture of the family dynamic

[sneezysammy345]

Awww. Poor Sammy. At least John gave him some medicine. My chest hurt just reading this.

[VividBubbles!]

This was amazing. Just wow. I love how the boys and John all think it's their job to keep the family going, keep it together, because it's so true. The in-depth understanding you have of these guys is just, well, literally awesome. And it's also great to have some sick!Sammy and hurt!butworried!Dean thrown in too.

Amazing job, Oddity.

BYE!

[All Time No]

It's great! Please continue this!

[cupkake]

That was really good, it captured the Pre-Stanford period really well. I just loved how there was really so much more to this story than the sneezing.

[Skyler]

Wow, I loved this! Especially the way they all think they are the ones that hold the family together

[Naraya]

Fantastic!