"Vomit and I'll kill you."
"Mhm," Sam says.
"You got any idea how unbelievably stupid you are."
"Hmh," Sam warbles.
"Jesus fucking Christ." Dean slows unusually steadily before the upcoming red light, because sudden movements wouldn't be good for the upholstery right now. "Did you think about this at all? How we're gonna explain this to Dad?"
Sam scoffs.
"Fucking talk to me, dude."
"I don' feel good." He does sound miserable, but that's what you get.
"Yeah, well, I hope you're having a learnin' experience. What were you thinkin'?"
"No'much."
Oh, Dean's gonna strangle the kid. "Just figured a normal sleepover is below you, or what."
That's what it'd been supposed to be, just a sleepover with some kid from his class, normal stuff. Sam had went there directly from school after a parking lot check-in with Dean and that had been that until his phone had rung a few hours later. It took him a few minutes of back-and-forth to get a location out of Sam, then a while to get to him somewhere a good way out of the suburbs he was supposed to be at. When Dean had arrived, Sam was sitting at the edge of a field with his bag toppled beside him and a bottle of booze he got God knows where – probably stolen, hopefully not from his friend's parents.
"You gettin' drunk," Sam slurs, "e-ve-ry week-end."
"I am not thirteen. "
"An'a half."
"See if that makes a difference to Dad." Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel as he accelerates. "God, Sammy, I don't get you. You wanna be normal so bad, it's all about that, fucking always, and then you do shit like this. You're weirder than I ever was."
"'M not."
Dean turns to him and Sammy's bangs are sticking to his forehead, he looks like hell and reeks like a distillery, and if that wasn't bad enough he also looks like he's about to cry, tremblin' chin and all. A fucking kid and so out of it. Something's seriously wrong with him, because Dean never pulled stunts like this even if he was a fucking mess – this is worse, this he needs to keep an eye on because what kind of eight-grader gets fucking wasted on a Tuesday just for the hell of it.
"Hey, 's alright," Dean says lowly, gaze back on the road. It's really not, but it can be for tonight, and they'll fight about it tomorrow when Sam looks less like he's dying. "Just… I'm worried aboutcha, yeah? This ain't…" he trails off. Normal. Healthy. What is? It's not healthy to get body-slammed by ghouls and bitten by imps, but that's not stopping them. It's not normal to grow up half in the backseat of a car and half in dingy motel rooms and squats, but guess where this fucking road is going. Fuck. Sam's so young.
Silence from Sam, who's got his eyes closed and his head bobbing gently against the window with the bumps of the road. Streaks of streetlight are painting his features, shadow and light washing across his hair and it makes him look like something out of amber.
Dean turns round a corner and stops the car in the driveway of the shabby rental they're living in. "You need some air?"
"I don–" Sam starts, but his voice breaks, he tries again, "dunno what's wrong."
Dean pulls the keys from the ignition and scoots a little closer to Sam, awkwardly reaching over him to roll down the window and then, when he leans into Dean, open the door. When he pulls back he can't help but tug Sam against him in something that isn't really more than an attempt of a hug. They used to be better at this.
"Wrong with what?" Dean asks and Sam says, "me," in that tone of his, like it's obvious and the entire world knows what he means, everyone except Dean, and he digs a weak hand into Dean's flannel.
"Shit, Sammy." That's all he can think of. It's not enough, but he can't think of anything better to say or to do because this isn't a situation he ever thought of dealing with, which is just how he got Sam into this mess, how he fucked him up in the first place, failing as support.
A head-shake in the crook of his neck where Sam's face has slid. "Nah," he mumbles because he can read Dean's mind and doesn't know he's supposed to be treated better or what a stable family life even looks like.
Fresh air from outside wraps them up into a bundle of two. "Wanna tell me what happened with that friend of yours?"
Another shake of the head.
"He do anything to you? His folks?"
"De." That means yes, which means Dean is gonna get his knuckles bloodied.
"Which one?"
"No."
"I'll ask him, then."
"God." That's an acoustic eye-roll. "Don't. 's bad 'nough."
"Not for him it ain't."
"Don't."
Sam's pulling away again and lets his head drop back against the seat, too quickly by the nauseous look on his face. Dean still crowds his space, unsure what to do.
"We should go in."
"Think Dad will," Sam says, eyes on the window of their house and hands clenched into his denim, "think he'll kill me?"
"Not if you keep your trap shut and let me tell him I put you up to it," Dean says and pulls the key from the ignition. He pockets it and takes the bottle he took off Sam earlier from the footwell, unscrews it and takes a swig, leaving it in his mouth for a second before swallowing the burn. "Then he might get bored off assault and battery before he gets to you. It'll be fine, dude, I'm joking. C'mon."
