Fic: Epiphany [6/9]

[faege]

It rains for the next week. Coincidence or Sam's doing, Dean doesn't know, but it fits the dark mood he wakes up in when he realizes what day it is. When they were kids, John used to rent some sort of apartment or duplex near a school and then take off on hunts for longer periods of time until he was gone for most of October. Invariably, though, he'd be back by November second, stumbling drunk or well on his way, tearful and sullen in turns, and they could always bet that as soon as he was sober they'd hit the road.

November was always a month to pack things into, a month to ride out on back-to-back hunts linked by too much booze. They never talked about the fire or anything to do with Mary's death--but they also never forgot it. Which is exactly what Sam does.

Dean goes to the garage early enough that Rick isn't even there, and he sits at the gate with the truck idling in the rain until the rest of the guys arrive. He appreciates the monotony of the job today especially, pours himself into the busywork in a way that he wouldn't need to before. They'll probably have something comfort-food related for dinner, the one night they eat at home since Sam doesn't work at Stairway on Tuesdays, and they can sit around the TV with a couple of beers and pretend to watch whatever's on and not talk about the event that brought their life to this in the first place. His throat is perpetually tight, too, which is just the icing on the freaking cake, and if Sam gave him his cold he's going to strangle him with his own scarf.

-

Bobby's call around noon isn't unexpected. He tends to keep tabs on them on the 2nd, even if he doesn't overtly say so. Usually he opens with questions about a hunt. Today, though, he's more direct.

"Are you with Sam?"

"Sam's at home. I'm at work. Why, what's going on?"

Bobby sighs over the phone. "Maybe nothing. I just called his cell and, I don't know, maybe I'm a fool for worrying, but he sounded fine. Asked why I was calling. It caught me off guard so I just straight-up told him that I'm calling because it's the second and...he asked me why."

Dean pauses a minute. "But he sounded fine."

"He asked me why."

"All right, I'll talk to him."

"The kid's not in trouble, Dean, and kudos to him if he really is feeling that good. I'm just asking because of the three of you Sam was the one who remembered that date like it was somebody's birthday."

"Yeah, that was the one day he wouldn't bother Dad."

There's a pause where Dean can practically hear Bobby considering. "Maybe I'm crazy for thinking something's up."

"No," Dean says, "no, you're not. I'll talk to him."

Bobby grunts, then asks, "How's he doing?"

Dean laughs and drags a hand over his face. "I don't know, Bobby, I can't tell if anything we're doing is helping."

"It is," Bobby says firmly.

"I don't know."

"You think he'd be better off facing the kinds of monsters you boys chew through each week without his head screwed on straight? He needs this, son. Give him some time."

"That's what I think we're running out of." Dean lowers his voice as one of the guys walks past him. "We talked to Missouri Moseley. She said Sam has to say yes or it'll get so bad he'll wish he had. I don't know what kind of timeframe we're working with but me and Sam have pretty much nothing as far as a cure goes, and it's kind of hard to poke around without raising people's suspicions."

"Well. I'll keep looking. Keep your heads down, you hear?"

Dean promises they will and hangs up. He could head into town for a sandwich and a pack of cough drops but the five-minute drive seems longer than is worth it, especially with the rain, and he's got plenty to chew over.

-

Dean stops by the diner on the way home and orders meatloaf sandwiches for both of them, jogging through the rain from the truck to the house with the take-out bags shoved under his jacket.

"Hey," Sam greets him at the door. "Thanks for picking up dinner."

"No prob." Dean kicks the door shut, unpacking the bags while Sam grabs two plates and sets them on the counter.

"Want ketchup?"

"Sure."

The food's not hot but it's warm, cheese melting down the sides of the meatloaf. It's artery-clogging for sure, but about as comforting as food can get, and they need it. They eat in silence, the patter of the rain on the roof adding a warm undercurrent to the meal.

"Bobby called," Dean says when he's halfway through his sandwich.

Sam's eyebrows lift. "Did he? I thought he'd call today, but I hadn't heard from him."

Dean stares. "He called you first."

Sam's forehead creases. "No, he didn't."

"Sam, you talked to him. He said he called like he always does and you asked him why."

"Why?" Sam puts his sandwich down and swallows. "What do you mean why?"

"Like you didn't know what day it was."

"It's the second. November second, I know what day it is. I've known this day my entire life."

"I don't know, man."

Sam stares at Dean for a second longer and then gets up, stalking upstairs and returning with his phone. He begins to recite the list. "Today I have received a call from Abby Chamberlin, a call from Tyler Rockwell, a call from--" Sam's fingers clench around the plastic. "Bobby Singer."

"Just before noon?"

Sam nods numbly.

"Sam," Dean says quietly, "you're serious, you don't remember?"

"I don't. And it's not like I wouldn't look at a calendar, I know today's the second and I know why he'd... Why did he think I forgot Mom's--what day it was?"

"I don't know."

"Have I..." Sam hesitates. He pockets his phone and sits back down at the counter although his hands are loose fists framing his cooling dinner. "Have I been forgetting things? I mean, I know I've been forgetting things, I just..." His forehead creases. "I can't remember what they are."

"I don't know, Sam. I wasn't here."

"What about earlier? Before today."

"You remember Missouri?" Dean asks cautiously, but Sam nods.

"Yeah, I remember her. I remember forgetting her, too, but after that it all starts running together." He pushes aside his plate and brackets his head with his hands. "God, I can't even remember what I've forgotten. I don't even know. What if this is what happens, what if I'm just blindly going through my day, thinking everything's fine, and I'm supposed to be doing something or going somewhere, and I don't even know that I don't know what it is or where it is or who--"

"Sam, whoa," Dean says and pulls at Sam's wrists until his fingers unclench from his hair. "Listen, you have to calm down. You know how people go crazy? They think of stuff like that."

"But, Dean, you could be dead somewhere." Sam puts a hand over his mouth like he's actually going to be sick. "And I could just get in the truck and drive off, go see Bobby or something, because I don't remember."

"You wouldn't, because there's one thing you would remember, and that's that there's no way you're allowed to operate heavy machinery unless you've asked my permission first."

Sam snorts a wet laugh. "That rule stopped applying when I was fifteen."

"Why do you think you always ride shotgun, then? Huh?" Dean makes a ridiculous face and stabs a finger at Sam's forehead. "It's because your subconscious knows that I'd kick your ass if you ever tried to take my place behind the wheel."

"My subconscious is messed up."

"Yeah, so what else is knew." Dean turns back to his sandwich and nudges Sam with an elbow until Sam pulls his own plate back over and takes a hesitant bite.

After a while asks, "What did I forget? Besides Missouri. And today," but the pinched look of fear is gone from his face so Dean answers.

"You forgot that I like M&Ms."

A smile quirks Sam's mouth and he takes another bite. "M&Ms are practically a character trait with you."

"And, like the rest of me, are unforgettable."

"Apparently not," Sam quips.

-

Dean's attempt to keep his cold under wraps is apparently thwarted when Sam lets him sleep late on Saturday and makes him tea instead of coffee when Dean finally does come downstairs. Dean makes a face but dutifully sips on it after tossing back a couple of the vitamins left over from Sam's bout.

"Not feeling good, huh?" Sam makes a sympathetic face.

Dean shrugs. "Feel fine," he says but the first part comes out in a whisper and the second part in a croak. Yeah, so maybe not as fine as he thought. "Except for you giving me your friggin' cold."

It's not like he had big plans for the weekend anyway, though, aside from driving to one of the bigger towns nearby and taking a look at their libraries, and it'd be scary that that's his idea of a good time these days but for the way Sam is warm and present in the chair next to him and Dean would like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

Sam sets them up at a corner table, somehow manages to find every book on the supernatural that the library has, and piles them on the table. Dean pulls on a hoodie and idly sucks on a cough drop as he turns the fragile pages of the book Sam sweet-talked the crusty librarian into letting them handle. He doesn't notice Sam watching him until he crunches through the last bitter piece of the candy and fumbles another out of its wrapper and into his mouth.

"What?"

Sam shakes his head, caught, but smiles. "Nothing. Cherry?"

Dean fishes the packet out of his back pocket and checks the label. "Good guess."

"They make your breath pink."

Dean's eyebrows rise. "Pink?" he says and breathes out in a long, slow stream, as if he can see it too. "You're making this up."

Sam rolls his eyes and gets back to work and doesn't even make a joke when he passes Dean a packet of tissues later.

-

They leave with five books each, Dean making copious notes on napkins during his lunch breaks and then typing them up at night when he gets home. Sam watches him, face inscrutable, but he doesn't say anything when Dean ignores his suggestions to stop.

On Wednesday, though, Sam's angry, and not in the silent, brooding, clench-your-jaw-and-glare kind of way. It's more in the loud, insistent, if-you-read-another-page-I'm-going-to-burn-the-book kind of way. In Dean's opinion, it gets out of hand when Sam actually jerks the book of his hands and growls, "It'll still be here in the morning. Go--to--sleep."

"Since when do you choose what time I go to bed?" Dean grumps.

"Since this is the third time I've come down here and it's two in the morning," Sam snipes, and now that Dean looks at him, Sam does look rumpled in the way that only people who keep getting out of bed to check on their sick brothers do.

"Fine, fine," Dean grouses and goes upstairs.

He's up at five, though, on the phone with one of Bobby's contacts, and then again the next day, squinting at the laptop with puffy eyes.

On Saturday, Dean rolls from his bed to the floor and lays there in a pathetic heap until Sam wakes up and declares, "You're sick."

"'M not," Dean protests, "it's a cold," but it sounds weak to his own ears, muffled like he's underwater.

"Denial isn't going to make it better. A doctor's visit is. Get up."

His head comes up at that and Sam offers him a hand up. "Can't we just do the chicken-soup-hot-tea route?"

"Not for pneumonia," Sam answers.

Dean looks affronted at the mere suggestion. "It's not pneumonia," he says, sounding scandalized.

Sam drives them to the clinic and they make Dean sit on a paper-covered table. Dean hates it when Sam's right.

-

Sam calls the garage on Monday and tells them Dean won't be in. Dean hacks his way through the rest of the week, spending most of his time either in bed or draped over the couch, reduced to grunts and eloquent finger gestures. Abby stops by on her way back to Georgetown with the ramen cups that Dean loves and Sam refuses to buy, but Sam meets her at the door without letting her come in and doesn't even bother dodging the balled up tissue Dean throws at him.

"You really want her to see you like this?" Sam says, casting a pointed look at the tissues littering the couch and the blanket pulled around Dean's shoulders. "Besides, she steps foot in this house and she'd probably get it herself. It'd be like The Stand."

Bossy as Sam is, it's not a total loss: Sam seems to be holding things together just fine, although he laughs whenever he sees Dean with cough drops, and whenever he thinks Dean's asleep he smooths a hand over Dean's forehead like he's checking for a fever and Dean feels a little better.

He's back to work on Friday and everybody calls it miraculous. Dean tries not to think about it too hard.

-

The principal of the high school finally calls that weekend and says that the school board would like to meet with Sam on Monday to review the tutoring situation. Sam doesn't eat the day before and changes his tie twice before giving up and going without one. Dean doesn't offer to drive him, just gets the truck started and waits for Sam in the driveway. They drive to the school in silence and he watches as Sam straightens his shoulders in front of the big brick building, lifting his chin and striding through the doors with his lawyer face on.

Dean drives to the post office, then stops by the diner for a piece of pie, chatting with Beth about the recent cold snap. It's an hour and thirteen minutes before his cell phone vibrates in his pocket and he gets in the truck before he answers it.

"What'd they say?"

"I start tutoring again on Wednesday," Sam says, relief in his voice.

A smile breaks over Dean's face. "You're sure they didn't fire you for real?" He can practically hear Sam rolling his eyes.

"I told them I'm having trouble regulating a medical condition and my doctor switched me to new medication. Hence the seizure."

"Did they call Bobby?"

"Yeah, he was great." Sam's grin is palpable over the phone. "I guess he pulled in some favors with a couple of doctor friends and spewed enough medical jargon that all they said they wanted were some fax records."

"That's awesome. Hey, we should go crazy or something. Hit the bars, pick up some girls."

"Except I work at the only bar in town and all the girls you see tonight you're gonna have to see tomorrow."

"Darn," Dean says, grinning. "So, movie?"

"I'll let you whip me at poker if it makes you feel better."

"Throw in some pie and you're on."

It strikes Dean as he drives to the school that between him and Sam, they've carved a niche for themselves in this town so wide it's going to be hard to crawl out of.

-

When Dean wakes to a veritable snowstorm, he groans and lets a hand drop to the floor in a half-hearted attempt to find a shoe or sock--anything to hit Sam with. He finds one of the slippers he jokingly got Sam a month ago and lifts his head long enough to chuck his chosen missile with unerring aim at Sam's mop of hair. Sam bolts upright.

"Dean, what the--"

"Snow." Dean is facedown in his pillow again but his finger is pointing accusingly at the window where tiny drifts have built up on the sill. "Snow, Sam."

Sam's eyes are puffy with sleep but they widen comically once he focuses where Dean's pointing. "Oh my god, look at it! Holy crap!"

Dean grimaces. Sam's face is going to have that five-year-old glow where he looks at something that he thinks is too wonderful to be real and Dean's going to feel guilty about crapping all over his happiness but, seriously. "Snow. Snow." He draws the word out in a groan that he's sure Sam couldn't decipher even if he didn't have a mouthful of pillow.

"Dean." That's Sam, shaking his foot, the floorboards creaking as he bounds to the window. "Dean, look at it, there's a ton--I bet school's canceled!"

"You're twenty-freaking-seven, Sam, you don't go to school."

"Who cares?" Sam's already down the hall, thudding down the stairs and--there, a pause while he gets on his boots and coat, good boy--out the door.

It's only ten minutes before Dean pulls on a couple shirts and his jeans and heads downstairs far less exuberantly than Sam to find his brother sitting at the counter with two steaming mugs, his hair curling from the damp.

"Hot chocolate?" Dean asks.

"Yours is half coffee, and you're welcome." Sam hands him a mug and squirts more whipped cream over the top of his own, swiping at his upper lip after he takes a sip. "Really coming down out there."

"Freaking November," is all Dean says. The hot chocolate-coffee-whatever isn't half bad, but there's no way he's going to admit to enjoying anything before eight o'clock in the morning.

"Yeah, weird. Think you'll get work off?" Sam continues hopefully.

"Nah, it's not bad enough to keep the garage closed, but it'll make it a bitch to get home. I'd better go shovel the drive, see if the street's too bad." He gets up and grabs his coat from the hook, then freezes with one arm in the sleeve. "Holy crap."

"What?"

"Holy crap," Dean repeats. "You did this."

"I did what?" Sam asks but understanding dawns on his face before he finishes. "No. Dean, I swear, I can't control it like--" Sam has his hands out as Dean advances but his grin is too wide for Dean to think of anything but putting his little brother in a headlock.

"You did, you little punk! What'd you do, stay up all night doing your dorky little snow dance? I have to shovel the drive!"

"I didn't mean to, I swear," Sam laughs breathlessly, his words muffled in Dean's shirt. "God, Dean, did you even shower?"

Dean releases him and retrieves his coat from the ground, making a show of dusting it off. "That's the smell of a man."

"That's the smell of a jerk."

"Bitch."

"Yeah, whatever." Sam pushes at his shoulder and slurps at the remains of his hot chocolate. "Besides, I like snow. You can't blame me. It's the weather, Dean."

"I know who's the cause of this!" Dean shouts from the front door. "And if I pull something from shoveling the drive, I know who gets the beatdown!"

"Just go already!"

So Dean goes.

Sam joins him a few minutes later, a shovel of his own slung over his shoulder. "Like I'm gonna let you shovel the drive yourself in your delicate condition."

"Shut up."

"You just recovered from pneumonia, Dean."

"And it was miraculous, everyone says so, so I say a little snow isn't gonna hurt me any," Dean says. He bumps Sam's shoulder, trying to take over the patch of snow that Sam's shoveling and it becomes less about clearing the drive and more about shoving each other into the drifts. Sam shakes his hair like a dog, drops of melted snow spraying everywhere, and tilts his head back, tongue out to catch the flakes falling from the sky.

"Never knew you were such a freak about snow," Dean says, watching him.

"Shut up," Sam says and nails him with a snowball to the face.

So yeah, if Sam wants to like snow, Dean's not going to stop him. In fact, he'll make himself an hour late for work, because some things in life you don't pass by and stuffing snow down your brother's pants is one of them.

-

Dean's funneling oil into a beat-up Mustang when Abby calls his cell phone saying that Sam's gone.

"What do you mean gone?" Dean demands.

"I mean, we were having coffee and then he just took off running. He said he had to check something, I don't know what."

"Damn it. Which direction did he go?"

"Your house, I think, but Dean, he's not thinking straight. He might--"

"Abby, listen, I'm going to drive home and see if I can catch him. Keep your phone with you and I'll--"

"--call if you need anything, got it," Abby says.

Dean snaps the phone shut and strips off his coveralls, tossing them into the locker room and snagging his keys off their hook.

Fifteen minutes later, he's out in the field, following a pair of Sam's tracks that run from the back corner to the trees at the field's edge. The trail ends when the snow does, Sam's footsteps hidden by the dirt and leaves under the pine trees' wide branches. He swears and turns back to search the house again, cell phone pressed to his ear.

Sam doesn't pick up.

-

Rick closes the garage for the day and sends the guys out in teams, each picking a direction and combing the town and outlying neighborhoods for any glimpse of Sam. Dean picks up Abby and they drive to the high school, checking Sam's usual classroom, the break room, the gym.

"How the hell do you lose someone who's six-four?" Abby mutters.

It's like a joke that Dean's heard too many times.

-

An hour later, Dean checks the house for the third time and finds nothing. He calls Rick as he backs out of the driveway, palming the wheel with one hand, movements jerky with adrenaline.

"Where was the last place he talk--"

"I don't know," Dean shouts, "I have no idea where the hell--"

And then Sam pushes his way through the trees.

"Rick, I found him."

He's out of the truck and bearing down on Sam before he can blink.

"Where the hell were you," he snarls, lips pulling away from his teeth, before grabbing Sam's jacket and crushing Sam against him, hand on top of Sam's head like it could still fit under his chin.

"Johnson's Pond," Sam chatters against him.

"The hell were you doing there?" Dean pulls away and casts a sharp eye over him. "You look like a wreck." He strides over to the truck and reaches in to turn off the ignition, then nods a head to the house. "Shower. Then we'll talk."

-

Sam does shower and then finds himself on the couch with a bowl of hot soup pushed into his hands. Dean drags a chair in from the kitchen and sits with his hands laced, forearms propped against his knees. "All right," he says. "Today I got a phone call from Abby who said that you guys were having coffee together and then you took off. No one knows where you are. You're not at home, you're not in town, you're not even in the friggin' field you're always freaking out about. So talk. You went to the pond. Why?"

"I knew there was something out there," Sam says, watching Dean's face. "I don't know what it was. I've never seen something like that before."

"How'd you know about it if you were in town?"

"I know if anything happens out there," Sam says. "I just... I know."

Dean's eyes narrow. "You want to elaborate on that statement any, or am I not going to like what you have to say?" When Sam doesn't answer, he nods to himself. "That's what I thought. So you knew there was something out there and went to check it out. Doesn't explain why you look like death warmed over, hypothermia boy."

"I found it--whatever it is. I've never seen something like it before, Dean, it's like light that changes shapes. Skeletal, almost. I came to the field but it had already left, so I went to the pond."

"You saw it there?"

Sam nods.

"Could be a water nymph."

"Maybe. It's not like any water nymph we've ever fought, but I don't have any other--" Sam breaks off, eyes trailing across Dean's face. He's still long enough that Dean nudges him.

"Sam," he snaps. "Focus."

"Sorry, I just..."

Dean sits up and takes the empty bowl from Sam's hands. "Yeah, I know, you just. You're an idiot for taking this hunt in the first place."

"I was right," Sam says, pushing himself to his feet slowly. "There is something out there."

"And the only person it's attacked is you," Dean says. He's still standing at the edge of the couch, still in Sam's space, glaring at him and using the bulk of his body to make a point. "Until we have some dirt on this thing, you're dropping it right now. I don't care if that thing is dragging you out there--you stand up and tell it to stick it where the sun don't shine."

"Dean--"

"Giving in to this is leaving your subconscious wide open to a big fat yes, Sam. You're saying no, we agreed on that."

"I am saying no."

"Digging up trouble and using your powers is like saying no and whispering yes. Which one do you think your powers are going to want to hear?" Sam doesn't answer, just stands there with his jaw set. Dean drags a hand down his face. "Forget it. Hit the hay. I'm going to be up a while."

"Doing what?" Sam challenges.

"Embedding a microchip in you so you don't get lost again," Dean snaps.

-

Sam's powers pick up after that. Dean would like to blame it on the hunt, but he doesn't know if it's that--Sam's been sporadic enough that Dean wonders if the hunt doesn't ground him somehow, give him some sort of goal to move toward rather than sinking in his own head. It makes a horrible sort of sense, in Dean's mind: it's November, the worst month for as long as either of them can remember. Traditionally it starts off with a bang on the 2nd and the tragedy just keeps going until Thanksgiving rolls around and slaps them in the face. This year, somehow, he thought would be different. This year, when everything is crazy to begin with. If anything's going to break the chain, it's going to be this year.

But it doesn't.

Because last year might have had them fighting the apocalypse and trying to work in a meal of KFC take-out in a parody of Thanksgiving dinner, but this year has Sam carrying around a baggy of aspirin in his pocket just in case and unable to get through a day, usually, without needing Dean to pull him out of his own head and ground him in reality.

They go shopping and Dean finds Sam standing stock-still in an aisle, holding a pickle jar or studying the lemons on display. He thinks maybe Sam's being his geeky self, lets himself imagine for a moment that Sam will spout some little known fact about citrus fruits or glass factories. But there's something in the way Sam holds himself during those times, something sharp and alien, stiff in a way that Sam never is, that tells Dean it's not all Sam in there. He puts a hand on Sam's arm and gives him a little shake, waits until Sam's eyebrows knit and he looks down at Dean for a minute and finally blinks. "Get the cereal, huh?" Dean says and Sam's fine, goes with him willingly, acts like it didn't happen at all. Maybe because, to him, it didn't.

Half the time, Sam doesn't even know he checked out.

Sam folds over with a migraine at the Finleys when he goes over to help Carol rake the dead leaves from the lawn. Carol calls Dean and doesn't bother to hide the worry in her voice. No, it came on sudden, she says. Yes, he's responding to his name. He's on the couch right here, he won't take the phone. Dean doesn't expect him to. Sam is determined to keep as much control as he can, and if that means refusing to calm big brother's fears in order to stand on his own two feet, then Dean will give him that.

When Sam collapses right in front of Dean, dropping a mug of coffee on the living room floor, it's to muscle spasms that keep him corded and shaking for ten minutes on the floor, Dean kneeling next to him.

"Swear it," Sam gets out between clenched teeth. "I swear it. Haven't said yes."

"I believe you, Sam, it's okay," Dean soothes. "It's just your mind, it's fighting back. Just relax, huh? It's gonna be okay."

Sam thrashes a little, seeming to gain some control, before another spasm holds him still and trembling. His right hand is in a tight fist on his chest but his left is shaking, fingers jerking as his hand opens and closes.

"Keep going, Sam, you're doing good," Dean says, resting a hand on Sam's chest. "They're gonna give up in a second, hang on."

Sam's jaw locks, his throat working. "F-f-fighting." The word tapers off until it's a guttural sound in Sam's throat. A tear leaks from the corner of his eye and threads into the hair at his temple. Dean nods, rubbing his hand in circles on Sam's chest.

"Yeah, you're doing it. You're doing good, Sammy, c'mon. Make 'em back off."

Sam's eyes skip from Dean's to the ceiling, then back again. The spasms are slowing, Sam's mind giving him back some control of his limbs. His right fist unclenches, blood rushing back to the knuckles. Another minute passes and finally Sam gasps in a breath, then another, his lungs expanding more each time. Dean draws in air with him and sits back, pulling a hand down his face.

When Sam's breathing returns to normal and his eyes are closed, every muscle limp, Dean says, "Your subconscious is putting up a hell of a fight."

"Sucks," Sam says, the word slurred. There are lines bracketing his closed eyes, around his mouth. He's going to want aspirin.

Dean licks his lips and says, "It's getting worse."

"I know." Sam chuckles mirthlessly, eyes still shut. "Believe me, I know. I can feel them. They're all behind this door in my head. It's cracked a little bit, enough for some to leak through the bottom, but I can hold them for now. As long as I push against the door, they can't do anything to me."

"Are you kidding, Sam?" Dean pushes his hands through his hair, then again, leaving his palms covering his eyes. "They are doing things to you. They're messing all this up. Our cover, our life, our... Everything."

He feels a hand curl around his ankle.

"I'm still me," Sam says in a small voice and Dean curses in his head because Sam hasn't been fully Sam since Heaven got its claws in him and if they're right then Sam will keep disappearing a piece at a time until Dean's got nothing left.

-

That night, Dean wakes up and he doesn't know why. There's a moment where he lies in bed, eyes wide in the darkness, not moving. Just listening. Then he realizes: he can't hear Sam breathing. He's up with one hand on Sam's bed where Sam's body should be when he realizes there's a low whistling noise through the house, like wind coming through an open window.

"Crap."

He pulls on jeans and stuffs his feet into boots, clumping his way downstairs without worrying about the noise.

The front door is open.

He jogs outside and blinks before he realizes what's in his face: snow. It's scattered like powdered sugar on the walkway and as he watches the flurries seem to fall faster and thicker. "Sammy!" he hisses, turning in a circle to scan the yard.

Sam is standing by the maple tree in his pajama pants and a T-shirt without even socks on his feet. His head whips around when Dean calls his name and he gives a violent shiver, like he just realized the weather was below freezing.

"Dean," Sam greets him as Dean grabs his arm and starts hauling him inside. "What are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same question, you gigantic idiot. Are you freakin' crazy? It's 2 a.m. and twenty degrees out!"

"It's...what?"

Dean gets Sam inside and unceremoniously strips off his shirt, giving him a shove upstairs. "Put on something dry. We got a heating pad or anything?"

"B-bottom drawer," Sam chatters, gripping the railing as he shivers his way upstairs. "Dresser."

"Perfect." Dean slides past him and digs the heating pad out of the drawer, unwinding the cord and plugging it in on its highest setting. "Probably should start you on this gradually but you're practically blue, man. What the hell were you doing out there?"

Sam sits on the bed like it hurts, slowly pulling his hoodie over his head. "Don't know."

"Tell me you have more than one layer on."

Sam nods.

"You put on socks?"

Sam nods again.

"We'd better do something about that hair," Dean grumbles. "Carol mention any other gifts that came with the rent, say, a hairdryer or something?"

"Th-think there's on in the h-hall cl-cl--"

"Yeah, I got it."

He keeps blow-drying long after Sam's hair is dry, until Sam stops shivering and his eyes are dropping under the warm rush of air. Then he winds up the cord and puts it away in the dresser with the heating pad, a sick feeling in his gut like they'll be needing those two again. He gets them both in bed and he lays there in the dark again, counting the steady rhythm of Sam's breaths.

"You don't know why you went outside?" he asks, not expecting an answer.

Sam answers anyway. "I couldn't help it. There was something pulling and I needed to see what it was. It felt...felt like I could breathe, out there." Dean winces at the relief in Sam's voice. "Like there was this weight off my chest."

Dean doesn't have an answer for that one.

-

It may be the first time it happens, but it's not the last. Later, Dean figures they should have seen this coming: Sam's mind is most vulnerable when he sleeps, of course his powers are going to choose then to hit hardest. Eventually they piece together that Sam stumbling outside isn't a precursor to a seizure or part of those thirty-second lapses when Sam loses track of things. They're something completely different, pieces of everything that Sam can do and everything that Sam is fighting against, all rolled together. Sam's face isn't expressionless because he's forgotten where he is--it's because Sam isn't Sam, he's something else. And whatever Sam might say about not being able to control the weather, Dean can't help but notice the way that snow always comes in light flurries after Sam has an episode, and Missouri's words press at the back of his mind--the world will bend to you.

And it doesn't stop there.

That week is the week they discover what grounds Sam. They'd been looking since Missouri, trying charms and routines without any idea of what might actually work, but that week they run into Marge at the gas station, and while Dean fills up her Oldsmobile as a favor, Sam takes the small prayer card from her hand.

"We're so glad everything turned out all right," she says and Dean looks over to see Sam duck his head like he did when he was a kid and embarrassed at the attention.

"Me too," Sam says. He opens the door for her and waves as she pulls out of the station. After Dean's done filling up the truck, he gets in and tucks the card into the visor.

"You keeping that?" Dean asks, disapproval in his tone.

"I want to check out the church," Sam says in answer and Dean gives him a look but drives them there. He pulls in front of the church with its white spire and follows Sam into the sanctuary, where Sam's eyes slide close in relief.

"It helps?" Dean asks, voice echoing against the stained glass.

"Yeah."

For whatever reason, church seems to snap Sam out of his head faster and keeps the seizures at bay. The first few times it happens, Dean spends the fifteen minute drive home ranting about the irony that hallowed ground is enough to drive the angel from Sam's system. He grudgingly sits in a pew and listens as Sam whispers prayers in Latin, the same ones he's heard Sam whisper after a hunt, in the dark when he thinks Dean's asleep.

Dean can't get the words out even though he's tried in secret, in the gray mornings before the heater comes on, when the cold seeps in under the door and settles deeper than his bones. He doesn't want to have to pray.

Then there comes a time when Sam doesn't snap out of it immediately and Dean paces up and down the aisle, watching Sam sit stiff and unnatural in the pew, and finally curses, packs his little brother in the car with trembling hands, and pulls over to vomit on the asphalt when Sam finally sucks in a deep breath and murmurs Dean's name.

After that, Dean is just glad that Sam's there.

-

One night, after a long shift at Stairway, Sam falls in the shower. Dean's downstairs on the laptop when he hears the muffled thump. He bounds up the stairs and has his hand on the bathroom door before he remembers the way Sam used to scream after his nightmares and he makes himself stop, clenching the doorknob until his fingers go numb. He waits until he hears another thump and Sam's voice calling, "Dean."

He turns the knob and squeezes in the bathroom door. Sam is on the floor, looking like something dropped him there then propped him up. He has a red bump on his forehead and he's holding his ribs but he waves away Dean's hands.

"Just bruised. Got distracted. Not as graceful as I used to be," Sam says, trying to grin, but the joke falls flat at the look in Dean's eyes.

"You all finished?" Dean asks.

"There's probably still conditioner in my hair." Sam ignores Dean's hand combing through the strands. "At this point, I don't really care."

"Wouldn't have this problem if you weren't the only guy on earth who uses conditioner."

"Wouldn't have this problem if I wasn't X-Men angel-bait," Sam quips back, getting to his feet with Dean's help.

Dean shakes his head slowly. "Don't joke."

Sam lists a little and Dean tightens his hold. Sam's eyes are staring at the corner of the bathroom mirror but his fingers find the top of Dean's head and squeeze in a clumsy attempt at comfort. "I'm not."

It wasn't even a bad day, Dean can't help but think, automatically calculating the last time that he found Sam wandering around downstairs or standing in the doorway and letting the cold in. He clears his throat and asks, "Everything look okay?"

"Peachy. Except for the fact that you've got lasers shooting out of your eyes. And there's something in our water."

"There's nothing in our water, Sam," Dean says, already weary.

"There is." Sam follows easily as Dean leads them out of the bathroom, steers him to his bed. "Today it's squiggly and purple. Last time the water was blue."

"Water's always blue."

"Water's clear. For everyone else." Sam lays back and closes his eyes, ignoring the damp spot he'll leave on the quilt. "Everyone else but me."

Dean throws a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt at Sam and goes back downstairs. He stays up that night poring through the books Bobby sent to him and reading the articles Sam's bookmarked on the laptop. After five hours of nothing, he drinks a whole bottle of whiskey and calls in sick to work.

-

When Dean shows up at the garage around noon, Rick doesn't look too surprised.

"Cary said you called in today."

"Yeah, false alarm. Thought I had the stomach flu."

It's a lame excuse, flimsy as hell and practically see-through, but Rick doesn't seem put off. He leans on the fender of the car Dean's working on and runs a hand down his mustache.

"Cary also said you cut your hours."

Dean doesn't look up. Sam doesn't know, would hate to think that Dean did it because of him, but the truth is that Sam cut his own hours at Stairway to a couple nights a week, claiming to have trouble focusing because he's tired, and Dean's not stupid. He watches Sam tracking things that Dean can't see, watches Sam pinch at his skin to keep himself grounded, watches Sam jerk himself to alertness when he starts to slip away. It'll be tight, and the money that Bobby gave them months ago will be handy in a way that Dean never thought it would, but Dean'll be damned if he sits this one out and lets Sam fight alone.

"How's he doing?" Rick asks and Dean has to hold his breath before he can answer in a steady voice.

"It's better when I'm home," he answers. "Gets worse when he's by himself for too long. But, uh, staying busy, y'know--he's got his meetings at the school, a college thesis he's looking over."

Rick nods. "I keep thinking I'll see him at Stairway one of these days but I don't run into him as much as I used to."

"He's working less. You'd think he's the one with finals, the way he studies these kids' papers, but...he says he's gonna pick up his regular nights again in the spring. Mostly he just gets tired."

Rick nods again, shifting against the car and folding his arms across his chest. "I wondered when you couldn't find him the other day," he begins, then stops.

"He has a condition." The words fall from Dean's mouth like stones. He's not good at this, it's not like lying normally is. He should put emotion behind the words, he thinks, condition, but it's worse than that, worse than one word can hold, and talking about a condition isn't half as bad as saying cureless.

"My, uh, my wife's brother had cancer," Rick says and a chill washes down Dean's spine. "Lasted two years before he went."

Dean doesn't say anything, can't. His arm keeps moving mechanically, picking up pieces, fitting them together. His brain is frozen.

Rick asks, "When was he diagnosed?"

Cancer, Dean thinks and almost laughs. That's about right. Deadly, inescapable, final. That's the word he was looking for--not condition, cancer. Something unnatural. Something you want to cut out. Dean clears this throat. "Uh, earlier this year. We've only known for about three months, actually."

"Too fast for chemo?"

"Chemo isn't gonna help."

"There're other things out there," Rick says quietly. "My wife checked out all these natural remedies. Sometimes I think they helped her more than her brother."

"We've looked into some of that. Still looking, actually. And Sam's a fighter, he's not giving up. It's just...gotten worse recently. He'll pick back up."

Rick's hand closes over his shoulder and squeezes. "It's not a pretty thing, and God knows it's tough. Just don't run yourself into the ground trying to fix it. I know it's hard and my wife would've tried anything if she thought it would help, but ultimately, we don't choose these things. Sometimes life throws you curve balls. You either hit 'em out of the park or strike out." Rick hesitates. "Don't worry about taking a day off if you need it. Just call in, let one of the guys know. You do good work, Dean."

"Yeah, thanks," Dean gets out.

"You're doing a good thing with your brother. I know it's tough."

Dean runs his teeth over his top lip, desperately wishing he had some way to get rid of the tears clogging his throat. "Well, he puts up with a lot."

"He's a good kid," Rick agrees, letting Dean go and heading into the office.

Dean stays under the hood of that car for the rest of the afternoon and no one says anything when he leaves that night and the work's not done.

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