FIC: "Superman vs The NyQuil" for help_queensland
Written for:reapertownusa for her generous bid over at help_queensland
Superman vs The NyQuil
Seven-year-old Dean was a superhero.
He never cried, never paled-never even had a sniffle. Seven-year-old Dean was loud and brave and a hundred feet tall. No one messed with Dean. Dean was invincible. At least to his little brother.
“Dean, maybe we should stop for the night.”
Twenty-seven year old Dean is a little clammy, a lot glassy-eyed, and the kind of sickly pale that usually precedes projectile vomiting or a death rattle.
He shoots Sam a sideways glance that takes a little while to focus. “Why? M’fine.”
At four years old, Sam would have believed him, no question. Now, he knows better.
“Dean, you’re not fine. You’re exhausted.”
Dean makes a bitch face and turns back to the road, opening his mouth to spew some retort that most likely includes the words ‘mommy dearest’ and ‘fuck off, Sam,’ but Sam cuts him off.
“I’m exhausted. Let’s just find somewhere to stop, huh?”
They both know he’s right, but usually, Dean would drive for another hour anyway before even starting to look for a motel-just to prove Sam wrong. The fact that he sighs and swings the Impala towards the first sign they come across sets Sam’s nerves on edge.
“Yeah, alright,” he says, although it comes out kind of muffled through his partially congested airways and a hacking cough follows Sam all the way to the front office.
Two days ago, they hunted an Ashray terrorising a camp site on Lake Erie. It was a pretty easy kill, as kills go. The hard part had been finding it - it being primarily translucent, strictly nocturnal, and residing mostly underwater. Killing it had been by the book, except for the part where Dean had spent a majority of the cool mid-February night waist-deep in the water, keeping it trapped on the riverbank until the sun rose.
The Ashray had evaporated at the first lick of sunlight. Dean’s flu had persisted for the forty-eight hours after, much to his absolute disdain. He doesn’t get sick very often, but when he does, he tends to be kind of tetchy about it. They’re not allowed to purchase any more liquid than they normally would or even slow down when passing a pharmacy, and trying to get him into bed to sleep it off is kind of like trying to wrap a badger in a Snuggie. Or so Sam is starting to recall.
“Maybe I’ll just lie down for a second,” Dean says as Sam shoulders his way into the room and drops their duffel on the ratty, threadbare green carpet. There are sickly yellow drapes on the windows and the bathroom smells like someone has been buried behind the bathtub for quite some time. Dean doesn’t seem to mind as he falls face-first onto the nearest bed and stifles a groan into the pillow.
“Do you want some water?” Sam offers, perching on the opposite bed and watching Dean tilt his head so half his smushed-up face can glare at him with a bloodshot eye.
“M’not sick!” he insists, although his rapidly drooping eye and the off-colour mucus leaking from his exposed nostril counter the comment.
Sam nods and falls back onto the mattress. “Okay.”
He lets his own eyes drift closed to the sound of rattled breathing.
He wakes up to the sound of retching. The alarm reads 2:13 in red neon and there’s a sliver of light coming from under the bathroom door.
“Dean?” he calls tentatively, once the retching has subsided to gags. There’s silence and then Dean’s muffled voice filters though the wood.
“I’m fine, Sammy.”
He doesn’t sound fine at all and Sam sighs when a faucet turns on, lies still as it fails to cover the coughs and sputters. He tries to remember the last time Dean was sick, but he can’t quite place it. He never had chickenpox, never had mono or ear infections or fevers. He used to say it was because he took after their mother.
“Mom was never sick,” Sam remembers him saying once, because he’d do that sometimes. Practically claw Sam’s throat out whenever he dared mention her name, but occasionally, if Dad wasn’t around, he’d say something breezily like that-like it was something they talked about all the time. Like Sam should already know.
Now Sam realises that Dean probably did have all those things at one point. All kids have them. Just like all Moms have migraines sometimes.
They just don’t usually bother their four-year-olds with them.
The retching stops and then reignites behind the door, and the faucet keeps on running. Sam waits ten minutes before reaching for the Impala keys on the bedside table and heading for the door.
Dean’s curled up on his bed when Sam clicks the door shut. He could be asleep, but Sam knows he’s not. A watery eye blinks open when Sam shadows his side of the bed and turns the bedside light on. The clock blinks 3:34.
“Where’ve you been?” Dean rasps, and Sam watches his eyes settle suspiciously on the brown bag that Sam’s got balanced in his arms.
“The pharmacy.” He reaches into the bag, pulls out a bottle of NyQuil, and sets it on the table in front of Dean’s nose.
Dean stares at the bottle in something like horror and then scoffs, tugs the sheet further up his arm and shuffles over onto his other shoulder. It’s probably the first bottle of cold medicine Dean’s seen in years, Sam knows.
They don’t make a habit of wasting five dollars on things like sniffles and sneezes. Never missed training for anything less than a concussion or a hairline fracture. Rub some dirt in it, walk it off-never complain. It’s the Winchester way.
“You’re such a fucking pansy, Sam,” Dean mumbles into the pillow. But Sam can hear the unspoken mantra that’s really running through his head.
It’s the same thing that had been running through Sam’s during the first cold he caught in California, when Jess had poked him awake during the night and passed him two Tylenol and a cap full of cough syrup.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, boy!
When Sam was nine, he caught a stomach virus and started throwing up everything he’d ever eaten in twenty minute intervals. His dad was irritated that they kept having to pull the car over, hot on the tail of something fast and nasty, and eventually pulled over at a motel, put Dean in charge, and told them he’d be back to pick them up in two days. Sam moped on the shabby bathroom tile for six hours before Dean appeared with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and a bag full of animal crackers and ginger ale. He slid onto the cold tile beside where Sam was slumped, miserable and sweaty and gross, and twisted the lid off the medicine bottle.
“Here.” He handed the bottle over with one hand and used the other to reach over Sam’s head and flush the toilet. Sam eyed the bottle critically.
“How’d you get that?”
Dean shrugged and pushed the bottle insistently into Sam’s shaky fingers. “The emergency stash. Here, drink it.”
“Dad’ll be mad,” Sam said knowingly, but drank it down anyway as Dean pulled open the cracker box between them. Sam had a feeling they’d be living on crackers for the next two days.
“Well I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Sam sets two bottles of Gatorade beside the cold medicine and then digs around in the bottom of the bag for the ibuprofen the checkout girl threw in there. “Dean, just take the NyQuil.”
Its 3:30 AM, Sam hasn’t slept in almost two days, and he’s just spent the last hour and a half trying to find the only twenty-four hour pharmacy in a fifteen mile radius.
Dean shuffles onto his back and glares up at Sam through the fuzzy motel light. “No!”
Sam stares at him for a beat and dampens the urge to swipe all the lined-up bottles clean off the ledge. “Fine,” he breathes, forcing calm into every note. “Fine, Dean. Maybe you can just suffocate on your own mucus instead. See if I give a shit.”
“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” is the muffled reply before Sam shuts his eyes and wills himself into unconsciousness.
6:37 AM and Sam blinks awake. The bathroom door is shut again, muffled coughs and sputters coming from within.
Sam swings his legs over the side of the bed, swipes the NyQuil bottle off the cabinet, and pads to the door. Dean’s sitting on the closed toilet seat when Sam pushes the door open, wrapped in one of the shabby motel sheets, blowing into the scratchy toilet paper. He blinks owlish, glassy eyes at the intrusion and Sam has a feeling he hasn’t slept at all.
He walks over and nonchalantly puts the medicine on the side of the basin, watching Dean glance at it out the corner of his eye as he swipes up his toothbrush.
It’s ridiculous, really. They’ve seen each other hooked up to IVs, crying blood, breaking bones. They’ve stitched each other back together and popped shoulders back into sockets without even batting an eye, yet now they’re in some sort of silent argument over a bottle of fucking cold medicine-arguing over an opinion that isn’t even there to matter.
Pain is temporary, son. Pride is forever, a voice echoes in the bathroom, and Sam smirks at himself in the mirror. It’s funny what sticks after all these years.
Beside him, Dean sighs like the bottle sitting there is a nuisance on his consciousness and reaches out swipe it up off the side of the sink.
“Such a fucking pansy,” Dean mumbles as he tips a healthy dose of the liquid down his throat and winces.
At four years old, Sam thought Dean was invincible. Now, at twenty-two, Sam knows better. No one’s invincible. Not even Mary Winchester.
Sam looks down at his brother and grins around his toothbrush. “Well I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Even Clark Kent can catch a cold.
Superman vs The NyQuil
Seven-year-old Dean was a superhero.
He never cried, never paled-never even had a sniffle. Seven-year-old Dean was loud and brave and a hundred feet tall. No one messed with Dean. Dean was invincible. At least to his little brother.
“Dean, maybe we should stop for the night.”
Twenty-seven year old Dean is a little clammy, a lot glassy-eyed, and the kind of sickly pale that usually precedes projectile vomiting or a death rattle.
He shoots Sam a sideways glance that takes a little while to focus. “Why? M’fine.”
At four years old, Sam would have believed him, no question. Now, he knows better.
“Dean, you’re not fine. You’re exhausted.”
Dean makes a bitch face and turns back to the road, opening his mouth to spew some retort that most likely includes the words ‘mommy dearest’ and ‘fuck off, Sam,’ but Sam cuts him off.
“I’m exhausted. Let’s just find somewhere to stop, huh?”
They both know he’s right, but usually, Dean would drive for another hour anyway before even starting to look for a motel-just to prove Sam wrong. The fact that he sighs and swings the Impala towards the first sign they come across sets Sam’s nerves on edge.
“Yeah, alright,” he says, although it comes out kind of muffled through his partially congested airways and a hacking cough follows Sam all the way to the front office.
Two days ago, they hunted an Ashray terrorising a camp site on Lake Erie. It was a pretty easy kill, as kills go. The hard part had been finding it - it being primarily translucent, strictly nocturnal, and residing mostly underwater. Killing it had been by the book, except for the part where Dean had spent a majority of the cool mid-February night waist-deep in the water, keeping it trapped on the riverbank until the sun rose.
The Ashray had evaporated at the first lick of sunlight. Dean’s flu had persisted for the forty-eight hours after, much to his absolute disdain. He doesn’t get sick very often, but when he does, he tends to be kind of tetchy about it. They’re not allowed to purchase any more liquid than they normally would or even slow down when passing a pharmacy, and trying to get him into bed to sleep it off is kind of like trying to wrap a badger in a Snuggie. Or so Sam is starting to recall.
“Maybe I’ll just lie down for a second,” Dean says as Sam shoulders his way into the room and drops their duffel on the ratty, threadbare green carpet. There are sickly yellow drapes on the windows and the bathroom smells like someone has been buried behind the bathtub for quite some time. Dean doesn’t seem to mind as he falls face-first onto the nearest bed and stifles a groan into the pillow.
“Do you want some water?” Sam offers, perching on the opposite bed and watching Dean tilt his head so half his smushed-up face can glare at him with a bloodshot eye.
“M’not sick!” he insists, although his rapidly drooping eye and the off-colour mucus leaking from his exposed nostril counter the comment.
Sam nods and falls back onto the mattress. “Okay.”
He lets his own eyes drift closed to the sound of rattled breathing.
He wakes up to the sound of retching. The alarm reads 2:13 in red neon and there’s a sliver of light coming from under the bathroom door.
“Dean?” he calls tentatively, once the retching has subsided to gags. There’s silence and then Dean’s muffled voice filters though the wood.
“I’m fine, Sammy.”
He doesn’t sound fine at all and Sam sighs when a faucet turns on, lies still as it fails to cover the coughs and sputters. He tries to remember the last time Dean was sick, but he can’t quite place it. He never had chickenpox, never had mono or ear infections or fevers. He used to say it was because he took after their mother.
“Mom was never sick,” Sam remembers him saying once, because he’d do that sometimes. Practically claw Sam’s throat out whenever he dared mention her name, but occasionally, if Dad wasn’t around, he’d say something breezily like that-like it was something they talked about all the time. Like Sam should already know.
Now Sam realises that Dean probably did have all those things at one point. All kids have them. Just like all Moms have migraines sometimes.
They just don’t usually bother their four-year-olds with them.
The retching stops and then reignites behind the door, and the faucet keeps on running. Sam waits ten minutes before reaching for the Impala keys on the bedside table and heading for the door.
Dean’s curled up on his bed when Sam clicks the door shut. He could be asleep, but Sam knows he’s not. A watery eye blinks open when Sam shadows his side of the bed and turns the bedside light on. The clock blinks 3:34.
“Where’ve you been?” Dean rasps, and Sam watches his eyes settle suspiciously on the brown bag that Sam’s got balanced in his arms.
“The pharmacy.” He reaches into the bag, pulls out a bottle of NyQuil, and sets it on the table in front of Dean’s nose.
Dean stares at the bottle in something like horror and then scoffs, tugs the sheet further up his arm and shuffles over onto his other shoulder. It’s probably the first bottle of cold medicine Dean’s seen in years, Sam knows.
They don’t make a habit of wasting five dollars on things like sniffles and sneezes. Never missed training for anything less than a concussion or a hairline fracture. Rub some dirt in it, walk it off-never complain. It’s the Winchester way.
“You’re such a fucking pansy, Sam,” Dean mumbles into the pillow. But Sam can hear the unspoken mantra that’s really running through his head.
It’s the same thing that had been running through Sam’s during the first cold he caught in California, when Jess had poked him awake during the night and passed him two Tylenol and a cap full of cough syrup.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, boy!
When Sam was nine, he caught a stomach virus and started throwing up everything he’d ever eaten in twenty minute intervals. His dad was irritated that they kept having to pull the car over, hot on the tail of something fast and nasty, and eventually pulled over at a motel, put Dean in charge, and told them he’d be back to pick them up in two days. Sam moped on the shabby bathroom tile for six hours before Dean appeared with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and a bag full of animal crackers and ginger ale. He slid onto the cold tile beside where Sam was slumped, miserable and sweaty and gross, and twisted the lid off the medicine bottle.
“Here.” He handed the bottle over with one hand and used the other to reach over Sam’s head and flush the toilet. Sam eyed the bottle critically.
“How’d you get that?”
Dean shrugged and pushed the bottle insistently into Sam’s shaky fingers. “The emergency stash. Here, drink it.”
“Dad’ll be mad,” Sam said knowingly, but drank it down anyway as Dean pulled open the cracker box between them. Sam had a feeling they’d be living on crackers for the next two days.
“Well I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Sam sets two bottles of Gatorade beside the cold medicine and then digs around in the bottom of the bag for the ibuprofen the checkout girl threw in there. “Dean, just take the NyQuil.”
Its 3:30 AM, Sam hasn’t slept in almost two days, and he’s just spent the last hour and a half trying to find the only twenty-four hour pharmacy in a fifteen mile radius.
Dean shuffles onto his back and glares up at Sam through the fuzzy motel light. “No!”
Sam stares at him for a beat and dampens the urge to swipe all the lined-up bottles clean off the ledge. “Fine,” he breathes, forcing calm into every note. “Fine, Dean. Maybe you can just suffocate on your own mucus instead. See if I give a shit.”
“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” is the muffled reply before Sam shuts his eyes and wills himself into unconsciousness.
6:37 AM and Sam blinks awake. The bathroom door is shut again, muffled coughs and sputters coming from within.
Sam swings his legs over the side of the bed, swipes the NyQuil bottle off the cabinet, and pads to the door. Dean’s sitting on the closed toilet seat when Sam pushes the door open, wrapped in one of the shabby motel sheets, blowing into the scratchy toilet paper. He blinks owlish, glassy eyes at the intrusion and Sam has a feeling he hasn’t slept at all.
He walks over and nonchalantly puts the medicine on the side of the basin, watching Dean glance at it out the corner of his eye as he swipes up his toothbrush.
It’s ridiculous, really. They’ve seen each other hooked up to IVs, crying blood, breaking bones. They’ve stitched each other back together and popped shoulders back into sockets without even batting an eye, yet now they’re in some sort of silent argument over a bottle of fucking cold medicine-arguing over an opinion that isn’t even there to matter.
Pain is temporary, son. Pride is forever, a voice echoes in the bathroom, and Sam smirks at himself in the mirror. It’s funny what sticks after all these years.
Beside him, Dean sighs like the bottle sitting there is a nuisance on his consciousness and reaches out swipe it up off the side of the sink.
“Such a fucking pansy,” Dean mumbles as he tips a healthy dose of the liquid down his throat and winces.
At four years old, Sam thought Dean was invincible. Now, at twenty-two, Sam knows better. No one’s invincible. Not even Mary Winchester.
Sam looks down at his brother and grins around his toothbrush. “Well I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Even Clark Kent can catch a cold.