The Family Business
Title: The Family Business
Author: familybizness
Summary: Dean's falling in love or something, maybe. Demons get involved.
Word Count: 4619
Author's Note: This is the hinted-at "Demon Blood In The Water" fic. I hope you like it.
Lately, Dean feels like he’s seventeen years old.
Except not really. Seventeen was never like this. Seventeen was never this fucking relaxing.
Seventeen was Dad barking orders at him, but now Dean’s his own boss down at the auto shop, and he can take time off when he needs to, and he has his own little office above the shop floor with a door he can close and a phone he can use to make personal calls. He has regulars who call him Dean and regulars who call him Mr. Winchester and he worries about things like how to turn a new customer into a regular and what kind of motor oil to use in a 1997 Dodge Stratus.
“10w30,” he tells Sam, fingercombing through his brother’s messy hair. Sam likes hearing about Dean’s work. He asks all these ridiculous questions, like oil changes are this fucking fascinating thing he’s never seen before.
Being normal like this is a fucking fascinating thing he’s never seen before. Dean gets it.
Seventeen was worrying all the time about his shaky, wheezing, unhappy little brother, and yeah, Dean still worries all the time, and Sam’s still wheezy and so, so shaky, but he’s happy now, and holy fuck, it makes such a difference.
He ties and unties and reties his tie.
“Let me do that.” Sam steps behind him, reaches around his shoulders and fixes the damn thing. “You’re so bad at this, you idiot, look at you.”
“Ties?”
Sam cuffs his ear. “Girls.”
“Hey!”
Sam takes a collared shirt off a hanger. “Wear this. It brings out your eyes.”
“It brings out my eyes?” Seriously, who the hell is this kid?
“He’s right, Dean.” Castiel’s watching from the bed. “The subtle green tones are very flattering.”
“For god’s sake,” Dean grumbles, but he changes shirts, and they’re right. He does look good.
Seventeen was lying about his age and pulling nameless girls into the alley behind whatever bar was local, pressing against them, whiskey on their breath and whiskey on his brain, but now he is two months sober and his girlfriend’s taking him out to celebrate tonight.
Sam grabs Cas’s arm and swings it like a pendulum. “Dean’s in love, he says, and giggles like he’s twelve (like Dean’s seventeen).
“Shut up, Sammy.” But the thing is, Dean is.
***
Christa.
She’s five foot nothing of way too much personality to be just one woman: sweet and patient with Sammy in their therapy sessions; playful and wise with her daughter; sarcastic take-no-prisoners bossy with Dean and he fucking loves it.
She’s also hot. He watches her walk away from him into the kitchen and sort of wishes the kitchen were farther away. Goddamn, the woman can walk.
The kitchen’s full, because Christa’s brother is there to look after the kid and Kylie’s got My Little Ponies laid out all over the floor in a way that looks deliberate and Dean’s trying not to mess them up by kicking them, so it’s a minute before he spots the bloodhound. Long enough for the thing to get close. Long enough for it to stick out its tongue and breathe hot all up against his hand, and fuck, fuck, he knew they had a dog, and he’s breathing deep and hard the way he tells Sam to do but his ears are screaming and his chest is ripping open -
“Dean.”
- there are teeth all the way through him and he’s being dragged through the dark -
“Dean, honey.”
- lightning electricity and shrieky laughter and the dog is snarling snarling snarling -
There’s a small hand on his arm, a high quiet voice saying his brother’s name.
Sammy.
Okay. Breathe. Slow this down.
“Hey. You hearing me now?”
“Yeah.” His voice isn’t hoarse from screaming. His mouth isn’t full of blood.
She hands him a bottle of water. “You scared of dogs, honey?”
And the thing is, his first inclination is to laugh. Dogs aren’t what he’s scared of. Hellhounds aren’t fucking dogs. Dogs are friendly. Dogs are lolling tongues and curious faces, not slavering straining clenching dragging things.
But she’s looking at him with those I so totally understand eyes, this girl who holds Sammy when he sobs about spiders and cages, and Dean’s not going to fucking mess that up for his brother. He’s not going to scare her away with stories about monsters. Sam needs Christa.
Who the fuck is he kidding? He needs Christa.
He needs his girlfriend who loves him and visits him at the auto shop and tells him he’s the best caretaker she’s ever met, and she’s a doctor, she’s known plenty, (and Dean has always known he’s good with Sammy, but no one but Sammy has ever actually said it and it feels fucking wonderful.)
He loves her.
And everyone who’s ever known about that fucking other side of Dean’s life has ended up sucked into it.
So he drinks water from the bottle and nods, because afraid of dogs is the only way to explain all the weird fucking things he really is.
***
What do we tell Christa has been less of a conversation than Dean would have expected. The night before their first therapy appointment (which wasn’t with Christa, but some Eastern European woman who peered at Sam over her glasses like he was an experiment), they cuddled together under Sam’s pink blanket and came up with a story.
“We have to say - “ Dean doesn’t like to say rape because he can’t say it without fucking thinking about it, and he wasn’t with Sam in the cage for very long but he was there for long enough that it is really fucking easy to picture, but Sam knows what he means when he trails off like that.
“We have to say it.” Sam indulged him. They felt indulgent that night. “That’s kind of the point of this.”
They came up with a story which Dean felt - still feels - strains believability, but is a lot more credible than the truth - Sam was kidnapped. By humans. Held prisoner for a year. Et cetera. They decided to tell the therapist that Dean rescued him, took care of things, the police were never involved. Christa’s never questioned it. Maybe it’s not as incredible as he thought.
Kind of fuck the world, sometimes.
“What are we going to tell her about you?” Sam asked.
“Why do we have to tell her anything about me? She’s not my therapist.”
“I’m probably going to talk about you, Dean.” Sam glanced up at him and Dean quirked his mouth into a smile to show it didn’t bother him. You talk about whatever you need to, Sammy.
“So just tell her I’m your cooler older brother and I fix cars.”
“Uh huh, and when I want to talk about waking you up from nightmares and holding you on the kitchen floor when there’s a lightning storm?”
“Do you need to talk about that?”
“I just don’t want to feel like there’s shit I can’t talk about.”
“Non-angel shit.”
“Right.”
So Dean’s cover story is that he was in the military (which feels reasonably true most days, and he can draw on stories his dad used to tell) and that he was a POW. Christa doesn’t ask why that means he’s afraid of dogs.
She doesn’t ask Dean many therapisty questions. She asks him things like how long have you been a vegetarian? which she doesn’t realize is about the most psychoanalytical thing she could fucking say to him. But that’s fine. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to lie.
“Since I was in high school.” She knows he dropped out. You can’t really fake a college transcript. Actually, Dean probably totally could, but why bother. He works at a garage. She's not with him for his brain.
“Is it a health thing?”
“Nah. Just don’t really like meat.”
“Is Sam allergic to lobster?”
“Very.”
“I’ll have the spare ribs,” she tells the waiter, and Dean digs his nails into his thigh and smiles at her like he’s a rational human being and orders plain spaghetti, because he can’t handle red sauce.
He doesn’t think about ribs cracking and sloppy red lips sucking the meat from the bones, he looks at Christa’s hair. Demons don’t have hair. Okay.
She gets tap water and smiles at him like it’s an achievement (which it is) when he orders a soft drink.
He loves her.
***
He drops her off - doesn’t go in with her like he wants to because she’s not feeling well, because Kylie’s there, because Sam’s waiting for him to come home.
Because she has a fucking dog, but they don’t talk about it.
He squeezes her hand and says “feel better.” He doesn’t try to kiss her. She won’t want to kiss him when she’s feeling sick.
And then she leans in and fucking kisses him.
Seriously, this woman.
Sam pounces on him the moment he walks in the door. “What was she wearing? Where did you go? Did you kiss her? Did you sleep with her? Are you guys getting married?”
Dean tugs himself out of Sam’s arms and reverses the embrace. “You do know you’re ridiculous, don’t you? Where’s Cas?”
“Missouri. Getting me a free-range chicken. Where’s Christa?”
“At her house taking care of her daughter.”
“Have you slept with her yet?”
“Give me a break.” Sam knows he has. They talked about it beforehand, how he was afraid he might get flashbacky and hurt Christa or scare her, and Sam played with his fingers and said you are always so gentle.
He gets out Sam’s parade of nightly meds, all the -zepams and -asones, and arranges them in clusters of three on the table because that’s how Sam likes them. He fills a disposable Dixie cup with enough water for a few swallows.
Cas flutters back into the kitchen with a raw chicken under his arm. “Where do you want this, Sam?”
“Fridge.” Sam swallows the last set of pills and scrunches the cup in his fist. “Dean was just telling me all about how in love with Christa he is.”
“I’m not in love with her, Sam.”
“I’m pretty sure he is,” Cas says, all seriously, like he’s reporting scientific findings.
“He totally is,” Sam laughs.
And then frowns.
And says, “Dean?”
And, fuck, that’s how he says Dean, I’m having a reaction and Dean I see spiders and I don’t know where I am and Dean, I can’t breathe, and Cas has him in a chair so fast Dean almost can’t register the movement.
“Sammy?”
Sam looks up at him. “What’s going on? I don’t - I feel - “
He’s not wheezing. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel like I’ve been using.”
And Dean can’t, literally can’t connect the dots, and maybe he just doesn’t want to see the picture, but it’s not until Cas pries the crushed Dixie cup from Sam’s hand and sniffs at it (like a bloodhound) and says “demon blood” that Dean understands.
***
The fever spikes quickly - it always does with demon blood; it’s the hardest damn thing in the world to get out of your system, and Dean’s an alcoholic, so it’s not like he doesn’t know a thing or two about the subject of withdrawal, y’know?
So Sam shakes and clings to Dean while Cas turns on the tap in the bathroom and then turns it right the fuck off and fucking snarls, “we can’t put him in a bath, Dean, it’s in the water.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam says over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Dean, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want it, I swear, I swear.”
“I know, Sammy.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam gets on these desperate kicks of apologizing for everything, and telling him he doesn’t have to be sorry just makes him apologize for apologizing, this fucked up self-perpetuating loop. Dean tucks him into bed and wraps a hand around his forehead to hold him still for the ear thermometer. He’s already up to 103. Fuck.
Cas comes back into the room, tense and angry. Sam whines a little and burrows into Dean’s neck.
Yeah, no.
“You stay put, Sammy.” He puts a pony Kylie left behind last time she was here - maybe on purpose, the kid does stuff like that - in Sam’s hands and pulls the hair between Sam’s fingers until Sam starts braiding, good brother, and then he grabs Cas by the collar and hauls him into the hall.
Cas lets himself be dragged away. He doesn’t have to. He could absolutely break Dean’s grip - hell, he could break Dean if he decided to take things in that direction - but he doesn’t. And yeah, it’s fucking fucked-up terrifying that this powerful creature who really doesn’t cede many decisions to Dean is sleeping with Sam in any sense of the phrase (and never mind the fact that he’s a fucking angel, some days Dean feels like the worst brother in the world just for letting him in the house.)
But he’s not gonna take these choices out of his brother’s hands, he is just not ever gonna do that.
He slams Cas into the wall - it won’t hurt him, and Dean needs to fucking slam something into a wall right now - and growls, “you need to get it under control.”
“They drugged my Sam…”
“Yeah, and he doesn’t need this from you right now. Shape it up, Cas, I mean it. You can be pissed off later.”
For all the power in Castiel, he’s kind of absurdly bad at calming himself down. He breathes in and out hard through his nose over and over and Dean rubs his arms and nods when the tension finally starts to leave Cas’s muscles.
“I’m sorry.” Cas learned the art of apology from Sam. He’s seen them spend half an hour going back and forth trying to figure out who’s the most sorry for some non-offense.
“It’s fine, Cas. Let’s just get back in there, okay? He’s gonna freak out if we make him be alone.”
Cas frowns. “What about Christa?”
“What about her? D’you think we need her?”
“It’s in the water, Dean.”
“So?”
And then all these pictures are coming into his mind - Christa clinking her glass of water against his Coke, Christa asking for extra ice, Christa shaky and feverish in the car on the way home, Matt mixing up orange juice from concentrate for Kylie, fuck, and Cas is backing him into the opposite wall, holding him up with one hand and growling keep it together, Dean in his face, but nothing’s felt so much like the end of the world since it was actually ending and what the fuck is he going to do?
***
Santa Rosa’s a ghost town. The streets are deserted. Businesses are closed down. Dean’s doing ninety through downtown and he knows, he just fucking knows, he’s not going to get pulled over.
If he turned on the radio he’d probably hear all kinds of totally wrong crap about the plague (and he’s shaking and wondering how far it extends - all of Santa Rosa? All of California? The country? The world?) but he’s just punching redial over and over on his phone, and Christa’s not answering, she’s not fucking answering.
Come on come on come on.
“You’ve reached Christa Simmons, please leave a -“
“God damnit!” He throws the phone at the dash so hard he’s worried for a moment it might crack the windshield. She better be okay. She has to be okay. Fuck.
The phone rings.
He scrabbles around on the floor, car swerving all over the place, who fucking cares, there’s no one on the road. “Hello?”
“Dean?”
Shit. Her voice is wavering all over the place. Baby.
“Christa? You sick? How’s Kylie?” He’s going too fast, he’s going to freak her out. There’s no way this isn’t going to end with her being freaked out.
“Flu, I think.” So shaky. “I hope I didn’t get you sick…Dean…shouldn’t have kissed you…” and she’s crying, she’s crying.
“Don’t be crazy, honey. I loved it. I’m fine. I don’t get sick.”
“The incubation period is, um…”
“Christa, don’t worry, okay? Don’t worry. I’m on my way.”
“Coming over?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there so soon, you just lie down and don’t - don’t drink anything. Hear me?”
“S’posed to stay hydrated, Dean.”
“I’m gonna take care of that. Don’t drink anything until I get there.”
She sniffles. “All gross. Don’t come.”
“Come on, remember what you told me? I’m a good caretaker. I got this.”
“Y-yeah.”
“You in bed? Tuck in. Is Kylie sick?”
She sobs a little. “Fever’s so high, Dean. My baby.”
He swallows the panic. “I know. It’s okay. I’m gonna fix it, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Don’t drink anything.”
“Kay…”
“Go to sleep. I’ll be there soon.”
He doesn’t bother knocking, just picks the lock on the front door and lets himself in - he’s gonna have a lot more to account for than his lockpicking skills before this is over - grabs two of the bottled waters from the fridge and makes his way to the staircase.
She’s got a washcloth pressed to Kylie’s forehead, and they’re both whimpering with the cold, and Dean panics for a moment before his mind starts working and he remembers he’s had demon blood all over his hands thousands of times and just touching it isn’t going to make this worse.
He wraps his arms around her from behind and she turns and presses her face into his neck. “Dean.”
God. She’s sobbing.
She’s crying like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it, like it’s just coming out of her like breathing. It’s kind of unclear whether she even knows he arrived, but he’s here, so that’s the important thing.
He picks her up, puts her in bed and rocks her a little, twines his fingers with hers and pets Kylie’s hair (it’s not his first fever and she’s not his first kid) while they wait for the thermometer to beep.
“Brave girl,” he says, to both of them.
“You’re gonna get sick.” She shivers against his shoulder, tucked up under his arm.
“No. It’s in the water. It’s okay now.”
“Bacteria?”
“Yeah.” What else is he supposed to say?
The thermometer beeps and he pulls it away from her to read, because she doesn’t need to see fucking 103.9, because even though Cas texted and reported Sammy at 109.2 (and that’s not a mistake, this shit fucks his addict brother up), this is probably one of the highest fevers she’s ever seen.
And Kylie’s over there about to shake right off the bed and huffing out these whiny little breaths that make him think of Sam, Sam who he left to be with these girls, Sam who cried I’m sorry as Dean was running out the door and maybe thinks he’s the reason Dean went away, and how is he possibly going to explain this shit to perfect sweet safe Christa, Sammy never told Jess and they still lost her and they can’t lose Christa, they can’t.
He gets a number on Kylie (104.6, baby girl) and cradles her against his chest and she cries and says “Daddy, Daddy.”
***
He’s got Kylie shivering against one shoulder and the phone against the other while he feeds her grape juice from a sippy-cup that was in the very back of their cupboard like it hadn’t been used in a while, and he’s never handled a fever on a kid who wasn’t clingy and trusting and wanting him more than anyone else in the world.
“How are they?” Cas asks. He sounds tired. God, it’s a bad day when Cas sounds tired.
“It’s leveling off, I think.” In his lap, Christa stirs a little and blinks up at him. He drags a smile onto his face. “How’s Sam?”
“Coming down. He’s stronger.”
“It’s not a fucking competition, Cas.”
Cas is quiet for a minute. “I just meant his body knows how to handle this.”
He means Sam is used to demons.
He means Christa isn’t.
“Yeah,” Dean says, and shifts the phone to his other ear so he can check Kylie’s fever against his cheek. She whines and pulls away from him, which Sam’s never done no matter how high the fevers got, and it’s not as if he can blame her, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to handle this normal kid, these normal people, this completely not-normal fever.
In the background, Sam says something.
“Let me talk to him.”
“He’s in the bath.” When detox fever breaks, it breaks hard, Sammy’s probably dropping a degree a minute and probably roasting in his hundred and whatever degree body, and Dean’s sitting here with a woman he’s known less than a year across his lap and a kid who’s not his kid in his arms.
But it’s Christa.
She rolls over and presses her face to the flat of his stomach and breathes against him. Okay. Sam used to do this (even though it was really stupid for Sam, yeah, limit your airways more than they already are, dummy) when he got so hot that the air was just too cold.
Christa, Christa, Kylie, Sam.
Kylie fusses at his shoulder. “I’m hot.”
“I know, Ky.”
“Deeean.”
Her back’s wet against his hand, and then she’s screaming how hot she is, and he sprints for the bathtub and dunks her in, clothes and all, until she sputters and cries and reaches for him and he’s just seeing Sam Sam Sam the first time he ever gave the kid a bath, all bright eyes and need.
He scoops her out and wraps her in a towel and crushes her against him.
It’s just that Sam is the only thing he’s ever really loved.
***
“Mommy?” Kylie touches her shoulder.
“Here. Hold this on her wrists.”
Kylie gathers Christa’s arms into her lap and presses the washcloth against them. “She’s sick, huh?”
“Yeah.” He’s got her cradled between his legs, against his chest, and he’s giving her sips of juice from Kylie’s cup, and she’s trying to fucking smile for the kid but it keeps shaking off her face. “Shh, honey.”
Kylie kisses her arms. “You’ll be okay, Mommy.” She glances up at Dean. “Right?”
“Absolutely.”
Fifteen minutes later Christa’s fever breaks, and Kylie runs back and forth to the bathroom rewetting towels while she gasps in Dean’s arms and he gives her juice and cools her down.
“You’re great,” he says. “You’re awesome. You’re amazing. I love you. You’re gonna be fine now.”
“Kylie?”
“She’s right here.” He catches her wrist and pulls her close. “See, everyone’s okay.”
“You’re not sick?”
“Told you, I don’t get sick.”
“Sorry I kissed you.”
“Hey.” He mock-frowns at her. “Don’t ever apologize for that.” And he kisses her all over her face while Kylie cheers.
Her arms come up and thread around his neck - Dean doesn’t like being held still, and he doesn’t like holding people still unless they are Sammy, this shouldn’t be okay, why is this okay, but she whispers “I love you too,” in his ear, oh yeah, that’s why. Fuck. He’s in love with his brother’s therapist.
“I heard that,” Kylie yelps.
“Kylie,” Christa says, “Would you give us some privacy?”
“For what? Are you going to have sex?”
Christa raises her eyebrows. “Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t.”
“Gross.”
“Go put Bowser in the yard, okay?” She glances at Dean, and so does Kylie, and fuck, he completely forgot there was a dog in the house.
***
“What’s that look?”
“What look?” He knows what look.
“You know what look. That I’m-waiting-for-you-to-talk look.”
“I’m waiting for you to talk.”
“Is there anything in particular you’re waiting for me to say?”
He palms her forehead, stalling. The fever’s dropping more slowly than he’s used to with Sam. She’s probably hovering around 101. But she’s definitely feeling a lot better than she was fifteen minutes ago, and if she’s not going to ask him what the hell happened, maybe he can get out of here without tearing up the only normal thing in their lives. “Nothing in particular, no.”
She says, “You know I sent Kylie out so you could talk about it, right? We’re not actually going to have sex.”
“Are you sure? That sounds way more fun.”
“Dean.”
“Talk about what?”
“Dean.”
“I mean, shouldn’t you be using some kind of secret therapist technique to extract secrets from me?” He’s not looking at her. He can’t look at her.
“I’m not your therapist,” she says. “I’m your girlfriend and I love you and I know something’s on your mind.”
He’s not going to say it.
He’s not going to say it.
He’s not going to -
“Demons are real and they poisoned the water with their blood and it makes people sick. Tomorrow you’re going to read in the papers about some twenty-four hour plague, but it’s not gonna be that, it’s gonna be fucking demon blood in the water, and I don’t know why they did it, but I know it has something to do with me and Sam, because we fight them, and you and Kylie are sick because of me and I’m sorry.”
Well. Shit.
So much for Sam’s therapist (so much for Christa).
He turns away from her, braces both hands against the dresser, does not want to see her react.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he says. “I know you don’t believe me.”
In the quiet while he comes up with something else to say, she doesn’t yell for him to get off her fucking property. She doesn’t tell him he’s psychotic. She doesn’t recommend a colleague of hers who’s really good with this sort of thing.
She says, “You fight them?”
Like that’s the important part (like she maybe believes him).
“I don’t know. I did. We did. We’re retired. Sort of. Do you believe me?”
“I haven’t decided. It…makes sense of some things Sam’s said.”
“What did Sammy say, Mom?”
Dean’s head snaps up. Kylie’s standing in the doorway. Fuck.
Christa takes it in stride. “Is Bowser outside?”
“Yup.”
“Come on downstairs, then, and we’ll lie on the couch and Dean can tell us all about demons.”
Seriously. This fucking woman.
***
It’s easier than it should be. Something about Sam, hell, probably everything about Sam, has her primed to believe the unbelievable. She’s skeptical, but she’s ready to hear it.
They pretty much blow right by demon blood in the water because who knows why the fuck demons would do something like that, it’s just fucking nonsense. She’s more interested in hunting.
“What else?” she asks, curled up in his lap, fever tapering off. “What else did you hunt?”
“Oh, everything. Werewolves, shapeshifters, rougarous….”
“What the hell is a rougarou?” Kylie pipes up from the floor, surrounded by cookie crumbs and Tonka trucks.
Dean says, “A flesh-eating monster” and Kylie laughs and laughs like this is the greatest thing she’s ever heard.
***
“I told her.”
“Shit, you didn’t.”
“I had to, Sammy, she knew something was up.”
“You didn’t have to. Cas turned on the news and this is all over the city. You gonna go door to door and tell everybody?”
“Well, no. Of course not.”
“So why couldn’t she just not get an explanation?”
He doesn’t have an answer.
“Because you love her,” Sam says, and it’s gentle.
***
The demon blood’s out of the water the next morning.
Dean doesn’t think about it again for a long time.
Author: familybizness
Summary: Dean's falling in love or something, maybe. Demons get involved.
Word Count: 4619
Author's Note: This is the hinted-at "Demon Blood In The Water" fic. I hope you like it.
Lately, Dean feels like he’s seventeen years old.
Except not really. Seventeen was never like this. Seventeen was never this fucking relaxing.
Seventeen was Dad barking orders at him, but now Dean’s his own boss down at the auto shop, and he can take time off when he needs to, and he has his own little office above the shop floor with a door he can close and a phone he can use to make personal calls. He has regulars who call him Dean and regulars who call him Mr. Winchester and he worries about things like how to turn a new customer into a regular and what kind of motor oil to use in a 1997 Dodge Stratus.
“10w30,” he tells Sam, fingercombing through his brother’s messy hair. Sam likes hearing about Dean’s work. He asks all these ridiculous questions, like oil changes are this fucking fascinating thing he’s never seen before.
Being normal like this is a fucking fascinating thing he’s never seen before. Dean gets it.
Seventeen was worrying all the time about his shaky, wheezing, unhappy little brother, and yeah, Dean still worries all the time, and Sam’s still wheezy and so, so shaky, but he’s happy now, and holy fuck, it makes such a difference.
He ties and unties and reties his tie.
“Let me do that.” Sam steps behind him, reaches around his shoulders and fixes the damn thing. “You’re so bad at this, you idiot, look at you.”
“Ties?”
Sam cuffs his ear. “Girls.”
“Hey!”
Sam takes a collared shirt off a hanger. “Wear this. It brings out your eyes.”
“It brings out my eyes?” Seriously, who the hell is this kid?
“He’s right, Dean.” Castiel’s watching from the bed. “The subtle green tones are very flattering.”
“For god’s sake,” Dean grumbles, but he changes shirts, and they’re right. He does look good.
Seventeen was lying about his age and pulling nameless girls into the alley behind whatever bar was local, pressing against them, whiskey on their breath and whiskey on his brain, but now he is two months sober and his girlfriend’s taking him out to celebrate tonight.
Sam grabs Cas’s arm and swings it like a pendulum. “Dean’s in love, he says, and giggles like he’s twelve (like Dean’s seventeen).
“Shut up, Sammy.” But the thing is, Dean is.
***
Christa.
She’s five foot nothing of way too much personality to be just one woman: sweet and patient with Sammy in their therapy sessions; playful and wise with her daughter; sarcastic take-no-prisoners bossy with Dean and he fucking loves it.
She’s also hot. He watches her walk away from him into the kitchen and sort of wishes the kitchen were farther away. Goddamn, the woman can walk.
The kitchen’s full, because Christa’s brother is there to look after the kid and Kylie’s got My Little Ponies laid out all over the floor in a way that looks deliberate and Dean’s trying not to mess them up by kicking them, so it’s a minute before he spots the bloodhound. Long enough for the thing to get close. Long enough for it to stick out its tongue and breathe hot all up against his hand, and fuck, fuck, he knew they had a dog, and he’s breathing deep and hard the way he tells Sam to do but his ears are screaming and his chest is ripping open -
“Dean.”
- there are teeth all the way through him and he’s being dragged through the dark -
“Dean, honey.”
- lightning electricity and shrieky laughter and the dog is snarling snarling snarling -
There’s a small hand on his arm, a high quiet voice saying his brother’s name.
Sammy.
Okay. Breathe. Slow this down.
“Hey. You hearing me now?”
“Yeah.” His voice isn’t hoarse from screaming. His mouth isn’t full of blood.
She hands him a bottle of water. “You scared of dogs, honey?”
And the thing is, his first inclination is to laugh. Dogs aren’t what he’s scared of. Hellhounds aren’t fucking dogs. Dogs are friendly. Dogs are lolling tongues and curious faces, not slavering straining clenching dragging things.
But she’s looking at him with those I so totally understand eyes, this girl who holds Sammy when he sobs about spiders and cages, and Dean’s not going to fucking mess that up for his brother. He’s not going to scare her away with stories about monsters. Sam needs Christa.
Who the fuck is he kidding? He needs Christa.
He needs his girlfriend who loves him and visits him at the auto shop and tells him he’s the best caretaker she’s ever met, and she’s a doctor, she’s known plenty, (and Dean has always known he’s good with Sammy, but no one but Sammy has ever actually said it and it feels fucking wonderful.)
He loves her.
And everyone who’s ever known about that fucking other side of Dean’s life has ended up sucked into it.
So he drinks water from the bottle and nods, because afraid of dogs is the only way to explain all the weird fucking things he really is.
***
What do we tell Christa has been less of a conversation than Dean would have expected. The night before their first therapy appointment (which wasn’t with Christa, but some Eastern European woman who peered at Sam over her glasses like he was an experiment), they cuddled together under Sam’s pink blanket and came up with a story.
“We have to say - “ Dean doesn’t like to say rape because he can’t say it without fucking thinking about it, and he wasn’t with Sam in the cage for very long but he was there for long enough that it is really fucking easy to picture, but Sam knows what he means when he trails off like that.
“We have to say it.” Sam indulged him. They felt indulgent that night. “That’s kind of the point of this.”
They came up with a story which Dean felt - still feels - strains believability, but is a lot more credible than the truth - Sam was kidnapped. By humans. Held prisoner for a year. Et cetera. They decided to tell the therapist that Dean rescued him, took care of things, the police were never involved. Christa’s never questioned it. Maybe it’s not as incredible as he thought.
Kind of fuck the world, sometimes.
“What are we going to tell her about you?” Sam asked.
“Why do we have to tell her anything about me? She’s not my therapist.”
“I’m probably going to talk about you, Dean.” Sam glanced up at him and Dean quirked his mouth into a smile to show it didn’t bother him. You talk about whatever you need to, Sammy.
“So just tell her I’m your cooler older brother and I fix cars.”
“Uh huh, and when I want to talk about waking you up from nightmares and holding you on the kitchen floor when there’s a lightning storm?”
“Do you need to talk about that?”
“I just don’t want to feel like there’s shit I can’t talk about.”
“Non-angel shit.”
“Right.”
So Dean’s cover story is that he was in the military (which feels reasonably true most days, and he can draw on stories his dad used to tell) and that he was a POW. Christa doesn’t ask why that means he’s afraid of dogs.
She doesn’t ask Dean many therapisty questions. She asks him things like how long have you been a vegetarian? which she doesn’t realize is about the most psychoanalytical thing she could fucking say to him. But that’s fine. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to lie.
“Since I was in high school.” She knows he dropped out. You can’t really fake a college transcript. Actually, Dean probably totally could, but why bother. He works at a garage. She's not with him for his brain.
“Is it a health thing?”
“Nah. Just don’t really like meat.”
“Is Sam allergic to lobster?”
“Very.”
“I’ll have the spare ribs,” she tells the waiter, and Dean digs his nails into his thigh and smiles at her like he’s a rational human being and orders plain spaghetti, because he can’t handle red sauce.
He doesn’t think about ribs cracking and sloppy red lips sucking the meat from the bones, he looks at Christa’s hair. Demons don’t have hair. Okay.
She gets tap water and smiles at him like it’s an achievement (which it is) when he orders a soft drink.
He loves her.
***
He drops her off - doesn’t go in with her like he wants to because she’s not feeling well, because Kylie’s there, because Sam’s waiting for him to come home.
Because she has a fucking dog, but they don’t talk about it.
He squeezes her hand and says “feel better.” He doesn’t try to kiss her. She won’t want to kiss him when she’s feeling sick.
And then she leans in and fucking kisses him.
Seriously, this woman.
Sam pounces on him the moment he walks in the door. “What was she wearing? Where did you go? Did you kiss her? Did you sleep with her? Are you guys getting married?”
Dean tugs himself out of Sam’s arms and reverses the embrace. “You do know you’re ridiculous, don’t you? Where’s Cas?”
“Missouri. Getting me a free-range chicken. Where’s Christa?”
“At her house taking care of her daughter.”
“Have you slept with her yet?”
“Give me a break.” Sam knows he has. They talked about it beforehand, how he was afraid he might get flashbacky and hurt Christa or scare her, and Sam played with his fingers and said you are always so gentle.
He gets out Sam’s parade of nightly meds, all the -zepams and -asones, and arranges them in clusters of three on the table because that’s how Sam likes them. He fills a disposable Dixie cup with enough water for a few swallows.
Cas flutters back into the kitchen with a raw chicken under his arm. “Where do you want this, Sam?”
“Fridge.” Sam swallows the last set of pills and scrunches the cup in his fist. “Dean was just telling me all about how in love with Christa he is.”
“I’m not in love with her, Sam.”
“I’m pretty sure he is,” Cas says, all seriously, like he’s reporting scientific findings.
“He totally is,” Sam laughs.
And then frowns.
And says, “Dean?”
And, fuck, that’s how he says Dean, I’m having a reaction and Dean I see spiders and I don’t know where I am and Dean, I can’t breathe, and Cas has him in a chair so fast Dean almost can’t register the movement.
“Sammy?”
Sam looks up at him. “What’s going on? I don’t - I feel - “
He’s not wheezing. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel like I’ve been using.”
And Dean can’t, literally can’t connect the dots, and maybe he just doesn’t want to see the picture, but it’s not until Cas pries the crushed Dixie cup from Sam’s hand and sniffs at it (like a bloodhound) and says “demon blood” that Dean understands.
***
The fever spikes quickly - it always does with demon blood; it’s the hardest damn thing in the world to get out of your system, and Dean’s an alcoholic, so it’s not like he doesn’t know a thing or two about the subject of withdrawal, y’know?
So Sam shakes and clings to Dean while Cas turns on the tap in the bathroom and then turns it right the fuck off and fucking snarls, “we can’t put him in a bath, Dean, it’s in the water.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam says over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Dean, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want it, I swear, I swear.”
“I know, Sammy.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam gets on these desperate kicks of apologizing for everything, and telling him he doesn’t have to be sorry just makes him apologize for apologizing, this fucked up self-perpetuating loop. Dean tucks him into bed and wraps a hand around his forehead to hold him still for the ear thermometer. He’s already up to 103. Fuck.
Cas comes back into the room, tense and angry. Sam whines a little and burrows into Dean’s neck.
Yeah, no.
“You stay put, Sammy.” He puts a pony Kylie left behind last time she was here - maybe on purpose, the kid does stuff like that - in Sam’s hands and pulls the hair between Sam’s fingers until Sam starts braiding, good brother, and then he grabs Cas by the collar and hauls him into the hall.
Cas lets himself be dragged away. He doesn’t have to. He could absolutely break Dean’s grip - hell, he could break Dean if he decided to take things in that direction - but he doesn’t. And yeah, it’s fucking fucked-up terrifying that this powerful creature who really doesn’t cede many decisions to Dean is sleeping with Sam in any sense of the phrase (and never mind the fact that he’s a fucking angel, some days Dean feels like the worst brother in the world just for letting him in the house.)
But he’s not gonna take these choices out of his brother’s hands, he is just not ever gonna do that.
He slams Cas into the wall - it won’t hurt him, and Dean needs to fucking slam something into a wall right now - and growls, “you need to get it under control.”
“They drugged my Sam…”
“Yeah, and he doesn’t need this from you right now. Shape it up, Cas, I mean it. You can be pissed off later.”
For all the power in Castiel, he’s kind of absurdly bad at calming himself down. He breathes in and out hard through his nose over and over and Dean rubs his arms and nods when the tension finally starts to leave Cas’s muscles.
“I’m sorry.” Cas learned the art of apology from Sam. He’s seen them spend half an hour going back and forth trying to figure out who’s the most sorry for some non-offense.
“It’s fine, Cas. Let’s just get back in there, okay? He’s gonna freak out if we make him be alone.”
Cas frowns. “What about Christa?”
“What about her? D’you think we need her?”
“It’s in the water, Dean.”
“So?”
And then all these pictures are coming into his mind - Christa clinking her glass of water against his Coke, Christa asking for extra ice, Christa shaky and feverish in the car on the way home, Matt mixing up orange juice from concentrate for Kylie, fuck, and Cas is backing him into the opposite wall, holding him up with one hand and growling keep it together, Dean in his face, but nothing’s felt so much like the end of the world since it was actually ending and what the fuck is he going to do?
***
Santa Rosa’s a ghost town. The streets are deserted. Businesses are closed down. Dean’s doing ninety through downtown and he knows, he just fucking knows, he’s not going to get pulled over.
If he turned on the radio he’d probably hear all kinds of totally wrong crap about the plague (and he’s shaking and wondering how far it extends - all of Santa Rosa? All of California? The country? The world?) but he’s just punching redial over and over on his phone, and Christa’s not answering, she’s not fucking answering.
Come on come on come on.
“You’ve reached Christa Simmons, please leave a -“
“God damnit!” He throws the phone at the dash so hard he’s worried for a moment it might crack the windshield. She better be okay. She has to be okay. Fuck.
The phone rings.
He scrabbles around on the floor, car swerving all over the place, who fucking cares, there’s no one on the road. “Hello?”
“Dean?”
Shit. Her voice is wavering all over the place. Baby.
“Christa? You sick? How’s Kylie?” He’s going too fast, he’s going to freak her out. There’s no way this isn’t going to end with her being freaked out.
“Flu, I think.” So shaky. “I hope I didn’t get you sick…Dean…shouldn’t have kissed you…” and she’s crying, she’s crying.
“Don’t be crazy, honey. I loved it. I’m fine. I don’t get sick.”
“The incubation period is, um…”
“Christa, don’t worry, okay? Don’t worry. I’m on my way.”
“Coming over?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there so soon, you just lie down and don’t - don’t drink anything. Hear me?”
“S’posed to stay hydrated, Dean.”
“I’m gonna take care of that. Don’t drink anything until I get there.”
She sniffles. “All gross. Don’t come.”
“Come on, remember what you told me? I’m a good caretaker. I got this.”
“Y-yeah.”
“You in bed? Tuck in. Is Kylie sick?”
She sobs a little. “Fever’s so high, Dean. My baby.”
He swallows the panic. “I know. It’s okay. I’m gonna fix it, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Don’t drink anything.”
“Kay…”
“Go to sleep. I’ll be there soon.”
He doesn’t bother knocking, just picks the lock on the front door and lets himself in - he’s gonna have a lot more to account for than his lockpicking skills before this is over - grabs two of the bottled waters from the fridge and makes his way to the staircase.
She’s got a washcloth pressed to Kylie’s forehead, and they’re both whimpering with the cold, and Dean panics for a moment before his mind starts working and he remembers he’s had demon blood all over his hands thousands of times and just touching it isn’t going to make this worse.
He wraps his arms around her from behind and she turns and presses her face into his neck. “Dean.”
God. She’s sobbing.
She’s crying like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it, like it’s just coming out of her like breathing. It’s kind of unclear whether she even knows he arrived, but he’s here, so that’s the important thing.
He picks her up, puts her in bed and rocks her a little, twines his fingers with hers and pets Kylie’s hair (it’s not his first fever and she’s not his first kid) while they wait for the thermometer to beep.
“Brave girl,” he says, to both of them.
“You’re gonna get sick.” She shivers against his shoulder, tucked up under his arm.
“No. It’s in the water. It’s okay now.”
“Bacteria?”
“Yeah.” What else is he supposed to say?
The thermometer beeps and he pulls it away from her to read, because she doesn’t need to see fucking 103.9, because even though Cas texted and reported Sammy at 109.2 (and that’s not a mistake, this shit fucks his addict brother up), this is probably one of the highest fevers she’s ever seen.
And Kylie’s over there about to shake right off the bed and huffing out these whiny little breaths that make him think of Sam, Sam who he left to be with these girls, Sam who cried I’m sorry as Dean was running out the door and maybe thinks he’s the reason Dean went away, and how is he possibly going to explain this shit to perfect sweet safe Christa, Sammy never told Jess and they still lost her and they can’t lose Christa, they can’t.
He gets a number on Kylie (104.6, baby girl) and cradles her against his chest and she cries and says “Daddy, Daddy.”
***
He’s got Kylie shivering against one shoulder and the phone against the other while he feeds her grape juice from a sippy-cup that was in the very back of their cupboard like it hadn’t been used in a while, and he’s never handled a fever on a kid who wasn’t clingy and trusting and wanting him more than anyone else in the world.
“How are they?” Cas asks. He sounds tired. God, it’s a bad day when Cas sounds tired.
“It’s leveling off, I think.” In his lap, Christa stirs a little and blinks up at him. He drags a smile onto his face. “How’s Sam?”
“Coming down. He’s stronger.”
“It’s not a fucking competition, Cas.”
Cas is quiet for a minute. “I just meant his body knows how to handle this.”
He means Sam is used to demons.
He means Christa isn’t.
“Yeah,” Dean says, and shifts the phone to his other ear so he can check Kylie’s fever against his cheek. She whines and pulls away from him, which Sam’s never done no matter how high the fevers got, and it’s not as if he can blame her, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to handle this normal kid, these normal people, this completely not-normal fever.
In the background, Sam says something.
“Let me talk to him.”
“He’s in the bath.” When detox fever breaks, it breaks hard, Sammy’s probably dropping a degree a minute and probably roasting in his hundred and whatever degree body, and Dean’s sitting here with a woman he’s known less than a year across his lap and a kid who’s not his kid in his arms.
But it’s Christa.
She rolls over and presses her face to the flat of his stomach and breathes against him. Okay. Sam used to do this (even though it was really stupid for Sam, yeah, limit your airways more than they already are, dummy) when he got so hot that the air was just too cold.
Christa, Christa, Kylie, Sam.
Kylie fusses at his shoulder. “I’m hot.”
“I know, Ky.”
“Deeean.”
Her back’s wet against his hand, and then she’s screaming how hot she is, and he sprints for the bathtub and dunks her in, clothes and all, until she sputters and cries and reaches for him and he’s just seeing Sam Sam Sam the first time he ever gave the kid a bath, all bright eyes and need.
He scoops her out and wraps her in a towel and crushes her against him.
It’s just that Sam is the only thing he’s ever really loved.
***
“Mommy?” Kylie touches her shoulder.
“Here. Hold this on her wrists.”
Kylie gathers Christa’s arms into her lap and presses the washcloth against them. “She’s sick, huh?”
“Yeah.” He’s got her cradled between his legs, against his chest, and he’s giving her sips of juice from Kylie’s cup, and she’s trying to fucking smile for the kid but it keeps shaking off her face. “Shh, honey.”
Kylie kisses her arms. “You’ll be okay, Mommy.” She glances up at Dean. “Right?”
“Absolutely.”
Fifteen minutes later Christa’s fever breaks, and Kylie runs back and forth to the bathroom rewetting towels while she gasps in Dean’s arms and he gives her juice and cools her down.
“You’re great,” he says. “You’re awesome. You’re amazing. I love you. You’re gonna be fine now.”
“Kylie?”
“She’s right here.” He catches her wrist and pulls her close. “See, everyone’s okay.”
“You’re not sick?”
“Told you, I don’t get sick.”
“Sorry I kissed you.”
“Hey.” He mock-frowns at her. “Don’t ever apologize for that.” And he kisses her all over her face while Kylie cheers.
Her arms come up and thread around his neck - Dean doesn’t like being held still, and he doesn’t like holding people still unless they are Sammy, this shouldn’t be okay, why is this okay, but she whispers “I love you too,” in his ear, oh yeah, that’s why. Fuck. He’s in love with his brother’s therapist.
“I heard that,” Kylie yelps.
“Kylie,” Christa says, “Would you give us some privacy?”
“For what? Are you going to have sex?”
Christa raises her eyebrows. “Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t.”
“Gross.”
“Go put Bowser in the yard, okay?” She glances at Dean, and so does Kylie, and fuck, he completely forgot there was a dog in the house.
***
“What’s that look?”
“What look?” He knows what look.
“You know what look. That I’m-waiting-for-you-to-talk look.”
“I’m waiting for you to talk.”
“Is there anything in particular you’re waiting for me to say?”
He palms her forehead, stalling. The fever’s dropping more slowly than he’s used to with Sam. She’s probably hovering around 101. But she’s definitely feeling a lot better than she was fifteen minutes ago, and if she’s not going to ask him what the hell happened, maybe he can get out of here without tearing up the only normal thing in their lives. “Nothing in particular, no.”
She says, “You know I sent Kylie out so you could talk about it, right? We’re not actually going to have sex.”
“Are you sure? That sounds way more fun.”
“Dean.”
“Talk about what?”
“Dean.”
“I mean, shouldn’t you be using some kind of secret therapist technique to extract secrets from me?” He’s not looking at her. He can’t look at her.
“I’m not your therapist,” she says. “I’m your girlfriend and I love you and I know something’s on your mind.”
He’s not going to say it.
He’s not going to say it.
He’s not going to -
“Demons are real and they poisoned the water with their blood and it makes people sick. Tomorrow you’re going to read in the papers about some twenty-four hour plague, but it’s not gonna be that, it’s gonna be fucking demon blood in the water, and I don’t know why they did it, but I know it has something to do with me and Sam, because we fight them, and you and Kylie are sick because of me and I’m sorry.”
Well. Shit.
So much for Sam’s therapist (so much for Christa).
He turns away from her, braces both hands against the dresser, does not want to see her react.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he says. “I know you don’t believe me.”
In the quiet while he comes up with something else to say, she doesn’t yell for him to get off her fucking property. She doesn’t tell him he’s psychotic. She doesn’t recommend a colleague of hers who’s really good with this sort of thing.
She says, “You fight them?”
Like that’s the important part (like she maybe believes him).
“I don’t know. I did. We did. We’re retired. Sort of. Do you believe me?”
“I haven’t decided. It…makes sense of some things Sam’s said.”
“What did Sammy say, Mom?”
Dean’s head snaps up. Kylie’s standing in the doorway. Fuck.
Christa takes it in stride. “Is Bowser outside?”
“Yup.”
“Come on downstairs, then, and we’ll lie on the couch and Dean can tell us all about demons.”
Seriously. This fucking woman.
***
It’s easier than it should be. Something about Sam, hell, probably everything about Sam, has her primed to believe the unbelievable. She’s skeptical, but she’s ready to hear it.
They pretty much blow right by demon blood in the water because who knows why the fuck demons would do something like that, it’s just fucking nonsense. She’s more interested in hunting.
“What else?” she asks, curled up in his lap, fever tapering off. “What else did you hunt?”
“Oh, everything. Werewolves, shapeshifters, rougarous….”
“What the hell is a rougarou?” Kylie pipes up from the floor, surrounded by cookie crumbs and Tonka trucks.
Dean says, “A flesh-eating monster” and Kylie laughs and laughs like this is the greatest thing she’s ever heard.
***
“I told her.”
“Shit, you didn’t.”
“I had to, Sammy, she knew something was up.”
“You didn’t have to. Cas turned on the news and this is all over the city. You gonna go door to door and tell everybody?”
“Well, no. Of course not.”
“So why couldn’t she just not get an explanation?”
He doesn’t have an answer.
“Because you love her,” Sam says, and it’s gentle.
***
The demon blood’s out of the water the next morning.
Dean doesn’t think about it again for a long time.