Anatomy of a Squeak
Title: Anatomy of a Squeak
Author: Innocent Culprit aka solosundance
Genre: Slash
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean
Words: 1,589
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: Sam thinks Dean's funny, and then he doesn't
A/n: for callistosh65 *smish* and with thanks to ancastar *smish*
It was borderline sexy at first.
Over the course of an afternoon, Dean’s voice faded out like his battery was running down.
There was a weird fusion of Marlon Brando and Mickey Rourke with a forty a day habit going on. He kept doing this clap to the chest sort of thing, too, like he was about to recite a classical monologue.
“Oh God,” Sam said when his brother’s baritone rasp had finished explaining that apparently the reason the cold water was running yellow was that this was a really shit motel. “You sound kind of hot, Dean. Say something else.”
“Screw you, Sam.”
“Yes. God. Say that again.”
Sam was only half joking.
The next day there was no husk at all, just a generalized scratch. And a squeak. A definite squeak, especially high-pitched when Dean’s voice began to climb in rage or denial.
OK, so that was funny. Sam actually began looking forward to its appearance at all the wrong moments, with all the delicious accompanying tics of frustration and embarrassment it caused. It was a pretty good day, Sam reasoned, when he got to sit and laugh so hard just from the sheer pleasure of listening to Dean ordering coffee.
“You’re mean,” Dean grumble-squeaked.
Laughing at the afflicted was pretty low, Sam couldn’t deny it. But, then again there was the issue of payback. Being ridiculed at various stages of both mumps and chicken pox had left scars.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like you’re mean.” The last word hit a high C.
Sam squeezed one of Dean’s knees with both of his own under the table. “All right, maybe you’d better rest it now, dude.”
“Mean,” Dean mouthed at him.
Sam made up for it by tenaciously hunting down a lemon and a jar of honey.
Dean shook his head when a cup was handed to him, full of steaming honey-lemon water with added painkillers.
“Piss,” he commented in disgust, or at least, that was what Sam figured he was trying to say. “Bee crap.”
“They’re the good guys,” Sam assured him, already missing the squeak. He knew exactly what his brother thought of bees. “They don’t just swarm and sting you 'til you die, Dean. Really. Try this, it’ll help.”
Dean sat at his lap-top, sipping suspiciously. He yawned - leaned his head on one hand.
“So go to bed. Get some sleep.”
The hand slipped and Dean growled like a dog that’s been trodden on accidentally.
Still funny. Still funny and actually more than a little endearing when Dean crawled under the sheets and went out like a light, curled fists scrunched under one cheek.
Next day, the rasp, which was several degrees stronger than both the husk and the squeak, lent Dean’s newly-fledged bad temper an edge. He was impatient, restless and seriously ... hardly entertaining at all. Sam greeted classic sick Dean without enthusiasm. Nothing worse than his brother being irritable and on-the-ball at the same damn time. There was not a lot Sam could do with this kind of infirmity. Except nod and smile. The only consolation was that, apart from a persistent pallor, he seemed to be on the mend already.
Just as well, because they were busy. There was something malevolent and noisy living in a barn just outside of Dubuque, Iowa. Which was the small matter of seven hundred miles away.
“I could take over,” Sam said after two hundred.
Dean hadn’t been talking much. He’d cleared his throat a few times, that was about it.
“Yeah alright.”
After another hundred, he fell asleep. Another hundred later he scared the hell out of Sam by waking up with a yell and banging his fist on the window.
“Holy crap!” Sam shouted as he screeched the car to an emergency stop. At the very least he expected a pixie to have landed on the roof or something. Dean patted his neck with wayward fingers, frowned and looked across suspiciously.
“Wh’appen?” he asked.
Sam managed to confirm there was a concerning temperature situation only by trapping him against one wall of a gas station bathroom and holding his face in his hands.
“OK so you need to take something,” he said. “You need to.”
“So tired,” Dean told him. “So freakin’ tired, dude.” When he’d finished yawning his eyes were all watery. He didn’t put up a fight about a damn thing for the rest of the day. The fever waxed and waned.
By the following morning the voice was the same. Sometimes it sounded quite strong, sometimes it sounded like it couldn’t quite be bothered.
“Dubuque by lunchtime,” he croaked cheerfully. That was quite odd, because Dean wasn’t actually eating.
The Impala was in her version of cruise control ten miles out of Dubuque. They’d finally found a road that ran in a straight line and she seemed pleased with it. Dean seemed pleased, too. He even tried a bar or two of some god-awful track that was totally unsuitable for a vocalist without any vocals. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. Sam closed his eyes, lulled by the smooth forward motion, the comforting deep-throated thrum of the engine.
Something made him snap his eyes open again.
Not too far ahead a vehicle was stopped in the road. The Impala thrummed steadily on. And Dean wasn’t slowing down.
“Shit,” Sam said, and frowned. He flicked a look to the speedometer, his foot stamped down on an imaginary brake. “Shit, Dean. Dean? Shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiit ....”
It was a whole slow-motion car-wreck situation. Dean must have responded. He must have hit the brakes at some point, because all of a sudden the tires were squealing and smoking and when the Impala skidded to a sideways stop they were a whisker from having bent themselves around the back end of an empty, and rather large, pick-up. If Sam hadn’t been too frigging tall he’d have adopted the brace position. As it was, his criss-crossed elbows crunched into the dash before he slammed back into the seat.
For a few seconds Sam managed to do no more than sit staring forward with his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
When he looked over, Dean was hugging the wheel. His eyes were closed and he was still enough to make Sam want to scream. He knew Dean was breathing, though, because it was really loud. In fact, Dean wasn’t so much breathing as rattling. Loudly. And his face was gray.
OK, OK, so how the hell had this happened? How had the funny squeak become this terrifying descent into really, really sick?
Sam didn’t ask himself any more questions. He dialed 911 with his thumb, other hand clamped on the sizzling skin on the back of Dean’s neck. When he moved his brother off the wheel his head lolled in a sickening dead-person way. When the EMTs arrived he had him wrapped in a coat and two blankets. They were bundled up on the side of the road and Sam figured he’d said “breathe” into Dean’s ear about forty times. And “please” once or twice.
“What happened?” the hospital people kept saying. “What happened?”
Well, he had this squeak. It was funny. It was funny, for crap’s sake.
Viral infection, they said. Not seen one bad as this for a while.
“Went downhill pretty fast, right?”
Brake-lines cut. Seriously.
Dean’s face lost the gray only after two or three days on a machine. They pushed three different anti-pyretics before the fever decided to quit. Sam lost count of the number of times there was an unexpected crisis. He sat in an excruciating state of suspended animation by the bed, occasionally chewing Five-Hour Energy “no crash later” bars. His stimulant of choice. Dean preferred apple flavored Headshots and they’d had to make a pact never to take them at the same time because they just buzzed each other out.
Three days of alternately sitting like a statue and wandering faceless corridors like a lost soul. And then finally, finally it seemed to be agreed that the serious virus dude was doing better.
“He’ll need to rest at home,” they said. “Is there someone to take care of him?”
“Hey,” Sam said, “I can take some days off work. My boss is really cool about stuff like that.” Once he’d figured out the insurance scam he’d been quite enjoying these normal-life conversations.
When Dean opened his eyes he looked confused for all of two seconds, and then disgusted.
Sam moved his chair nearer than ever. “Don’t get sick again all right?” He fussed with the sheets, did as much hair-stroking as he damn well pleased because Dean was too tired to stop him. “I mean, like not ever, not even a little bit.”
Two nights later they made a heart shape in a motel bed, Dean’s arm flopped bonelessly across Sam’s waist.
“I feel like shit for laughing at you,” Sam said. “I won’t do that again.”
“Yeah you will,” Dean said. Sam drew his head towards him until their foreheads touched. Dean cleared his throat but it wasn’t to protest.
"Guess it's back to work tomorrow," Sam said as if he was talking fluent water-cooler.
Dean sighed. “Freakin’ poltergeist in a barn.” It was sleepy, whisper-quiet, but it was Dean’s voice.
Sam wanted to float away on the sound.
“Same old same old,” he murmured and Dean's toes twitched against the back of Sam’s heels.
He hugged a brief illusion of nine-to-five drudgery. His thumb brushed Dean’s cheek. They slept.
-ends-
Author: Innocent Culprit aka solosundance
Genre: Slash
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean
Words: 1,589
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: Sam thinks Dean's funny, and then he doesn't
A/n: for callistosh65 *smish* and with thanks to ancastar *smish*
It was borderline sexy at first.
Over the course of an afternoon, Dean’s voice faded out like his battery was running down.
There was a weird fusion of Marlon Brando and Mickey Rourke with a forty a day habit going on. He kept doing this clap to the chest sort of thing, too, like he was about to recite a classical monologue.
“Oh God,” Sam said when his brother’s baritone rasp had finished explaining that apparently the reason the cold water was running yellow was that this was a really shit motel. “You sound kind of hot, Dean. Say something else.”
“Screw you, Sam.”
“Yes. God. Say that again.”
Sam was only half joking.
The next day there was no husk at all, just a generalized scratch. And a squeak. A definite squeak, especially high-pitched when Dean’s voice began to climb in rage or denial.
OK, so that was funny. Sam actually began looking forward to its appearance at all the wrong moments, with all the delicious accompanying tics of frustration and embarrassment it caused. It was a pretty good day, Sam reasoned, when he got to sit and laugh so hard just from the sheer pleasure of listening to Dean ordering coffee.
“You’re mean,” Dean grumble-squeaked.
Laughing at the afflicted was pretty low, Sam couldn’t deny it. But, then again there was the issue of payback. Being ridiculed at various stages of both mumps and chicken pox had left scars.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like you’re mean.” The last word hit a high C.
Sam squeezed one of Dean’s knees with both of his own under the table. “All right, maybe you’d better rest it now, dude.”
“Mean,” Dean mouthed at him.
Sam made up for it by tenaciously hunting down a lemon and a jar of honey.
Dean shook his head when a cup was handed to him, full of steaming honey-lemon water with added painkillers.
“Piss,” he commented in disgust, or at least, that was what Sam figured he was trying to say. “Bee crap.”
“They’re the good guys,” Sam assured him, already missing the squeak. He knew exactly what his brother thought of bees. “They don’t just swarm and sting you 'til you die, Dean. Really. Try this, it’ll help.”
Dean sat at his lap-top, sipping suspiciously. He yawned - leaned his head on one hand.
“So go to bed. Get some sleep.”
The hand slipped and Dean growled like a dog that’s been trodden on accidentally.
Still funny. Still funny and actually more than a little endearing when Dean crawled under the sheets and went out like a light, curled fists scrunched under one cheek.
Next day, the rasp, which was several degrees stronger than both the husk and the squeak, lent Dean’s newly-fledged bad temper an edge. He was impatient, restless and seriously ... hardly entertaining at all. Sam greeted classic sick Dean without enthusiasm. Nothing worse than his brother being irritable and on-the-ball at the same damn time. There was not a lot Sam could do with this kind of infirmity. Except nod and smile. The only consolation was that, apart from a persistent pallor, he seemed to be on the mend already.
Just as well, because they were busy. There was something malevolent and noisy living in a barn just outside of Dubuque, Iowa. Which was the small matter of seven hundred miles away.
“I could take over,” Sam said after two hundred.
Dean hadn’t been talking much. He’d cleared his throat a few times, that was about it.
“Yeah alright.”
After another hundred, he fell asleep. Another hundred later he scared the hell out of Sam by waking up with a yell and banging his fist on the window.
“Holy crap!” Sam shouted as he screeched the car to an emergency stop. At the very least he expected a pixie to have landed on the roof or something. Dean patted his neck with wayward fingers, frowned and looked across suspiciously.
“Wh’appen?” he asked.
Sam managed to confirm there was a concerning temperature situation only by trapping him against one wall of a gas station bathroom and holding his face in his hands.
“OK so you need to take something,” he said. “You need to.”
“So tired,” Dean told him. “So freakin’ tired, dude.” When he’d finished yawning his eyes were all watery. He didn’t put up a fight about a damn thing for the rest of the day. The fever waxed and waned.
By the following morning the voice was the same. Sometimes it sounded quite strong, sometimes it sounded like it couldn’t quite be bothered.
“Dubuque by lunchtime,” he croaked cheerfully. That was quite odd, because Dean wasn’t actually eating.
The Impala was in her version of cruise control ten miles out of Dubuque. They’d finally found a road that ran in a straight line and she seemed pleased with it. Dean seemed pleased, too. He even tried a bar or two of some god-awful track that was totally unsuitable for a vocalist without any vocals. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. Sam closed his eyes, lulled by the smooth forward motion, the comforting deep-throated thrum of the engine.
Something made him snap his eyes open again.
Not too far ahead a vehicle was stopped in the road. The Impala thrummed steadily on. And Dean wasn’t slowing down.
“Shit,” Sam said, and frowned. He flicked a look to the speedometer, his foot stamped down on an imaginary brake. “Shit, Dean. Dean? Shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiit ....”
It was a whole slow-motion car-wreck situation. Dean must have responded. He must have hit the brakes at some point, because all of a sudden the tires were squealing and smoking and when the Impala skidded to a sideways stop they were a whisker from having bent themselves around the back end of an empty, and rather large, pick-up. If Sam hadn’t been too frigging tall he’d have adopted the brace position. As it was, his criss-crossed elbows crunched into the dash before he slammed back into the seat.
For a few seconds Sam managed to do no more than sit staring forward with his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
When he looked over, Dean was hugging the wheel. His eyes were closed and he was still enough to make Sam want to scream. He knew Dean was breathing, though, because it was really loud. In fact, Dean wasn’t so much breathing as rattling. Loudly. And his face was gray.
OK, OK, so how the hell had this happened? How had the funny squeak become this terrifying descent into really, really sick?
Sam didn’t ask himself any more questions. He dialed 911 with his thumb, other hand clamped on the sizzling skin on the back of Dean’s neck. When he moved his brother off the wheel his head lolled in a sickening dead-person way. When the EMTs arrived he had him wrapped in a coat and two blankets. They were bundled up on the side of the road and Sam figured he’d said “breathe” into Dean’s ear about forty times. And “please” once or twice.
“What happened?” the hospital people kept saying. “What happened?”
Well, he had this squeak. It was funny. It was funny, for crap’s sake.
Viral infection, they said. Not seen one bad as this for a while.
“Went downhill pretty fast, right?”
Brake-lines cut. Seriously.
Dean’s face lost the gray only after two or three days on a machine. They pushed three different anti-pyretics before the fever decided to quit. Sam lost count of the number of times there was an unexpected crisis. He sat in an excruciating state of suspended animation by the bed, occasionally chewing Five-Hour Energy “no crash later” bars. His stimulant of choice. Dean preferred apple flavored Headshots and they’d had to make a pact never to take them at the same time because they just buzzed each other out.
Three days of alternately sitting like a statue and wandering faceless corridors like a lost soul. And then finally, finally it seemed to be agreed that the serious virus dude was doing better.
“He’ll need to rest at home,” they said. “Is there someone to take care of him?”
“Hey,” Sam said, “I can take some days off work. My boss is really cool about stuff like that.” Once he’d figured out the insurance scam he’d been quite enjoying these normal-life conversations.
When Dean opened his eyes he looked confused for all of two seconds, and then disgusted.
Sam moved his chair nearer than ever. “Don’t get sick again all right?” He fussed with the sheets, did as much hair-stroking as he damn well pleased because Dean was too tired to stop him. “I mean, like not ever, not even a little bit.”
Two nights later they made a heart shape in a motel bed, Dean’s arm flopped bonelessly across Sam’s waist.
“I feel like shit for laughing at you,” Sam said. “I won’t do that again.”
“Yeah you will,” Dean said. Sam drew his head towards him until their foreheads touched. Dean cleared his throat but it wasn’t to protest.
"Guess it's back to work tomorrow," Sam said as if he was talking fluent water-cooler.
Dean sighed. “Freakin’ poltergeist in a barn.” It was sleepy, whisper-quiet, but it was Dean’s voice.
Sam wanted to float away on the sound.
“Same old same old,” he murmured and Dean's toes twitched against the back of Sam’s heels.
He hugged a brief illusion of nine-to-five drudgery. His thumb brushed Dean’s cheek. They slept.
-ends-