I Think I'm Gonna Like it Here (Supernatural, Sam)

[sierraplaid]

Title: I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here

Fandom: Supernatural

Characters: Sam, Dean (gen)

Summary: Kinda sorta a fix-it for the episode of the same title, so spoilers / this won’t make any sense if you haven’t watched it yet.

Timeframe: Beginning of Season 9

Warnings: Just Ezekiel stuff

(Also, in case anyone is interested, I'm also on livejournal now, same name, and will be cross-posting all my fic over there. )

I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here

Dean drives them straight from the hospital to a nice hotel—one with an actual star rating, a pool, with totally out-of-place palm trees, for chrissake, and decorative rocks. At the glossy reception desk Dean hands over someone else’s credit card and then asks how much it’ll set him back. $95 plus tax a night, and, god, that sounds cheap. Dean scrawls a signature on the printed receipt and smiles at the clerk as he takes the key.

Getting from the car to their room is the most walking Sam has done in a week. It’s almost more than he can manage, but Dean is strong and patient, bracing Sam’s arm over his shoulders, his own arm gripping Sam’s waist, and they make it, like they always do.

“All right,” Dean says, not even out of breath. “Almost there.”

Clean sheets and a coffee pot, soft mattresses and a thermostat. Heaven on earth for a hundred bucks a night—who knew? The oddest thing is that it feels like theirs, as soon as they walk through the door. It feels like a fresh start, like the crisp white linens and downy white comforters and off-white walls and sand-colored carpet are an invitation for them to write a healthy beginning on a pure, blank slate. The hospital existed in some sterile dream, some unearthly fevered hallucination of Sam’s that swallowed Dean with it, but now they’re both breathing free air, and Dean just watches Sam sleep and feels like maybe things are going to be all right. This is back to basics now. There’s no timetable, no program. Just Sam getting well.

This is the room where Sam will recover. The room that Dean will bring soup and rented DVDs back to, where he’ll plug in a heating pad and limber up ice packs, change the bandage on the cut across Sam’s palm, line up Sam’s meds along the bedside table. Where two days from now Sam will wake slowly from a nap to catch Dean watching the home improvement channel. Where three days from now he’ll be breathless with giddy laughter when Dean calls the curtains “taupe.”

Dean told him, of course. He told him before they left the hospital.

“He says his name’s Ezekiel,” Dean told him, and Sam had listened quietly before saying, “I remember letting him in. He looked like you.”

Dean’s throat felt tight. “You trusted him?”

“I wanted to live. And he looked like you. If I didn’t want him in me, he wouldn’t be in me, Dean. That’s how angels work.”

How Sam could sound so earnest when he was barely strong enough to speak was beyond Dean completely.

“I said yes, and now I’m awake,” Sam had gone on slowly. “Soon as I’m good, he goes. That’s the deal, right?”

“Yeah.”

An hour later Dean was wheeling him out to the car.

The first three days are good, all things considered, but they have a rough morning on the fourth day. It doesn’t start out much different from the others. When Dean goes to take a shower Sam’s fine, gently asleep beneath blankets pulled to his chin, but when he steps back out into the bedroom his brother is hunched into a shivering ball with all the covers pushed down and twisted at his feet, the fever they thought they’d seen the last of spiking out of nowhere. Sam’s lucid but really uncomfortable, and Dean’s on him in a second.

“Sam? Hey, hey, hey. Sam. You with me?”

“Yeah,” Sam croaks. “Yeah, just—” he breaks off with a whimper and tosses over onto his stomach.

It’s bad. Not ice bath bad, but bad enough and sudden enough that it spooks them both. Dean wears a path in the carpet between Sam’s bed and the bathroom sink carrying cold washcloths to and warm washcloths away from his brother while Sam grips the sheets, burrows under the blankets, throws them off again and lies panting hot into the pillow.

Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the fever breaks.

Sam’s bed is damp all over with sweat and water from the washcloths so as soon as Sam seems stable but before he slips off into exhausted sleep Dean slides an arm under his shoulders and helps him sit up, get dried off and changed, and moved over to Dean’s bed.

“You okay?” Dean asks as Sam melts into the mattress.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Dean folds the heavy comforter down to the foot of the bed, covering Sam with just a sheet and the lightest blanket.

Sam groans and mumbles into Dean’s pillow, “Don’t tuck me in.”

“Don’t give me any grief.”

It’s not until Sam wakes up from an hour of peaceful rest that they can talk about it, when Sam is sitting up and sniffling and taking small sips of orange juice, and Dean’s beside him on the edge of his bed clutching a mug of coffee he’s too shaky to drink.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, I just woke up feeling really crappy.” Sam sniffs and clears his throat, a little hoarse.

Dean doesn’t even want to think about it but he says anyway, “You think the angel checked out for a second?”

“Maybe.” Sam’s surprisingly calm, and then he twists away and sneezes wetly into the elbow of his sweater.

“I’d like your old immune system back now, please,” Dean grumbles. “Are you getting sick from that somehow?”

“Don’t think so,” Sam sniffs. “Just sort of… generally under the weather?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean agrees bitterly. “You know, once you kick him out, there’s no way of knowing what… I mean, this could keep happening.”

“Yeah.” Sam looks across at the bed that Dean stripped. “I know. But that doesn’t change anything.”

Dean grimaces and studies the mug in his hands but it’s not as if he was expecting Sam to say anything else. He takes a minute and Sam gives it to him, pulling a couple of tissues from the box on the bedside table and swiping them under his nose, sniffling softly. Then Dean says, “When you ditch him, you want to do it at a hospital? We could drive there, sit in the parking lot, you send him packing, then we’re right there if we need it.”

Sam leans back against the pillows. “I want to do it at home.”

“Really?”

“Besides, we can’t afford another hospital. Or this hotel room either, for that matter.”

“Exactly, good thing somebody else is affording it for us. You think we’re footing the bill for this? Where have you been for the past eight years?”

Sam smiles, shakes his head. “I’m ready to be home.”

And Dean can’t argue with that.

They hole up one more day with dumb movies and tissues and hot liquids and each other and Sam thermoregulates properly and everything, so it’s time for them to move. Dean’s a little vague all day, not really following the plot, scalding his tongue on the coffee, losing his boots in the room then finding them then losing them again. He’s got plenty on his mind—he knows what’s coming, and he’s preparing himself, building nerves and endurance to see it through.

“I like it here,” Sam says as they’re packing up to go.

“Yeah, I’m gonna miss the wall art.”

Sam smirks and throws a parting glance at the hideous white-on-white abstract mixed media thing they’ve been making fun of for a week.

“So steal it then.”

Dean gets this look on his face like he’d never thought of that.

When Sam wakes up twenty-seven hours later, cotton-mouthed, head pounding, hot and hurting all over, in his own bed, it’s the second thing he sees, after Dean.

***

End

[Anilkex]

Jesus, this was great.

First off, thank you for fixing that episode. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Second,

Sam groans and mumbles into Dean’s pillow, “Don’t tuck me in.”

“Don’t give me any grief.”

Loved that.

You think we’re footing the bill for this? Where have you been for the past eight years?”

HA!

I love how sweet this is - simple and clean, without the mess of that season. (Sorry - was not fond of it. At. All.) They are brothers here, like now in 11, and I likes it.

This was genius:

So steal it then.”

Dean gets this look on his face like he’d never thought of that.

Love all the stuff you're posting!

[gingerdean]

Ah, this was lovely. And I agree, a vast improvement from the direction that episode went. Awesome job on this!!

[sierraplaid]

Jesus, this was great.

First off, thank you for fixing that episode. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Second,

Sam groans and mumbles into Dean’s pillow, “Don’t tuck me in.”

“Don’t give me any grief.”

Loved that.

You think we’re footing the bill for this? Where have you been for the past eight years?”

HA!

I love how sweet this is - simple and clean, without the mess of that season. (Sorry - was not fond of it. At. All.) They are brothers here, like now in 11, and I likes it.

This was genius:

So steal it then.”

Dean gets this look on his face like he’d never thought of that.

Love all the stuff you're posting!

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your letting me know which parts you liked. I'm completely with you on Season 9. Honestly the whole season needs a fix-it, if you ask me. :/

Ah, this was lovely. And I agree, a vast improvement from the direction that episode went. Awesome job on this!!

Thanks! I'm so glad you enjoyed!

[starpollen]

Beautiful. I especially love the ending.

Edited January 31, 2016 by starpollen

[sierraplaid]

Beautiful. I especially love the ending.

Ahh, thanks so much!! So glad you liked the ending.

[27jj]

I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE THIS FIC

see what I did there

Also I did like it very much. <3

[sierraplaid]

On 2/3/2016 at 6:02 PM, 27jj said:

I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE THIS FIC

see what I did there

Also I did like it very much. <3

hee, I'm so glad you liked!