Life's Fitful Fever
Title: Life's Fitful Fever
Author: Innocent Culprit aka solosundance
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean
Wordcount: 1,179
Disclaimer: Always and forever not mine
Summary: Dean's feverish, Sam's gone shopping
A/n: written to a prompt for persistent fever by hoodietime for the current Dean-focused h/c commentfic meme hosted at hoodie_time and also for mad_server who asked for feverish, fainting Dean way back when :)
It had been way too long since cornflakes, Sam decided.
Easy to eat, a modicum of nutrition. And, he reminded himself, the addition of ice-cold milk was satisfying and fun. Not to mention a vital, possibly life-saving source of fluid.
Willingness to attempt late-night grocery shopping was something Sam did. Mostly because the alternative sucked. John had always approached supermarkets like hunting - loudly, aggressive, leaving no aisle unexplored, while Dean’s preferred method was random swiping at items near the checkout which almost never amounted to a whole meal.
The warmth, light and company of ordinary human beings was comforting. Even the music interspersed with announcements about frozen parmesan chicken and spillages at the fresh fish counter.
Sam needed comforting.
Although not, he realized, as much as Dean did. Which was why cornflakes.
He sucked in deep lungfuls of the fresh-baked bread aroma and set about thinking of what else might work. He knew he couldn’t spend too long wandering about in here, squeezing melons and searching out two-for-one deals. Back at the motel Dean was sleeping, and when he woke up, Sam’s mission for the day was to get some food inside him.
“This room is weird,” Dean had announced when they’d arrived. Sam supposed his brother had been seeing it too big or too small, all swimmy colors and slanty walls.
Dropping the duffles, he’d tugged Dean’s sleeve, got him to sit on the bed. The usual routine unfolded, one he no longer carried out with any hesitation. It was easy enough because Dean was too sapped to resist, had been for weeks. Just a palm to the forehead, backs of the fingers to one cheek and then a touch to Dean’s chest. It was a swift one-two-three. Sam could get underneath the t-shirt now without any trouble at all, and he hated that so much time had passed since Dean last had him by the wrist and into a half-Nelson before he was within any kind of temperature-guaging distance whatsoever.
Sam huffed a little as he turned the corner into fruit juice. Fruit juice reminded him that sugary liquid was an absolute essential that he was going to have to address bigtime once he got back to the room.
Thanks to a mouthful of infectious crap spewed up by something that Dean claimed was a ghoul but Sam couldn’t even classify, fever had been a constant for upwards of a month now. Some days just a small discomfort, Dean’s hands icy even in the warm. Other days saw a terrifying climb, a body temperature Sam could barely touch. Unclassified, ghoulish fevers were resistant to anti-pyretics, it seemed, resistant to just about everything. Tubs had been filled with ice. Beds had been filled with ice for fuck’s sake. But nothing worked and Dean frequently lay for hours with his brain boiling. It would spike eventually, and Dean would quakingly descend once more from delirious to regular burning up and then right down to slightly feverish, which is where he would stay for the next several days.
They could hunt with a slightly feverish Dean. Who knew? Sam could tell Dean was wobbly most of the time, but until distortions and fatigue set in, he could keep his feet. Sometimes the spots of bright in his eyes made him look scary and that had worked in their favor, once or twice. Anything above slightly feverish, though, and they were in trouble.
You need to eat too.
The voice in Sam’s head sounded like Dean.
“Yeah I know,” Sam said out loud, snagging apple juice. God knows why Dean liked apple juice all of a sudden. Wouldn’t go near it when he was lucid. Hadn’t been keen on anything with apples in since the scarecrow.
Sam steered around the corner again, heading back to fresh fruit and vegetables.
And he brought the cart up short.
Just for a second Sam thought maybe he was so worried, so freaked out of his mind by this whole never-ending fever crap, that he was hallucinating himself.
Dean was standing in front of the tomatoes.
He was barefoot and wearing only a t-shirt and jeans.
Even before he began moving, Sam knew without a shadow of doubt that Dean had no idea he was here. He’d wandered, followed the beacon that never stopped winking in his head. Find Sam, find Sam. There was a slightly anxious look on his face, which was a disturbingly pale color flushed with red.
Dean made an awkward turn sideways and abruptly grabbed at a passing cart. It spun out of the grip of its owner, making a rumbling half circle on the tiles. Dean hung on, turning with it. The front end clipped a display of glassware, shifted it off its axis with an ominous sway.
Sam broke into a gallop, leaving the cornflakes behind him.
The cart had completed a 360 degree turn before he got there. Dean’s weight dragged it directly into the tomatoes and all four boxes tipped sideways and cascaded on to the floor while the woman whose cart had been unexpectedly hijacked began to shriek.
Watched by some twenty people, Dean did the most spectacular faint Sam could remember ever having witnessed, spinning round at the last in the opposite direction to the still-trundling cart, and collapsing next to it with an almighty crash. A young guy with tattoos made a last-minute attempt to break his fall, probably saving his head from impacing with the floor, but, in general, it couldn’t have been messier and more hazardous if he’d planned it out for days.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck!” The word became louder with each utterance, the third fuck more of a bellow than anything. Sam did an ungainly long-legged skid into the mess, came to a halt with both hands already clutched into Dean’s t-shirt. Overhead there was a booming announcement for security to attend fruit and vegetables as a matter of emergency.
The shrieking woman had kept up her shrieking at a steady rate but most of the rest of the crowd were just standing with their mouths open. Thursday nights at EZ-Mart didn’t get much better than this.
When Sam touched him, Dean rolled his head. His lashes fluttered open and he delivered a glittering stare of delirium directly over Sam’s shoulder before beginning to mutter at something unseen.
Sam had never been so glad to hear such a stream of fretful nonsense in his life. Unconsciousness had been fleeting, thank God, but jesus Dean was hot. And flat on his back in a sea of broken glass and squashed tomatoes.
“Holy shit,” breathed the tattooed guy. “That was awesome.”
“Awesome,” Sam agreed, wiping away a splat of fibrous gloop from the side of Dean’s face. “My brother is one hundred per cent, totally off the scale freakin’ awesome and believe me I am going to strangle him for it one day.”
The young guy gave a nervous grin. He was squatting on Sam’s other side, shoving pieces of broken glass away with the side of one of the tomato boxes. “What a fuckin’ mess,” he said. “Think they called an ambulance.”
“Damn,” Sam said, looking around with a hunted air. He gave a tight smile up at the friendliest of the watching faces. Ambulances weren’t welcome, much as the thought of trained professionals hooking Dean up to drips and flooding his system with state of the art antibiotics really felt like a good idea right now.
There was something that would cure Dean, Sam was sure of it. Bobby was pretty sure of it as well. It just needed to be discovered. Maybe it was cornflakes. Tomato juice. Eye of newt and horn of freakin’ toad. Time and rest and gentle handling would help too. Whatever it was, Sam knew it was down to him. He just had to keep reminding his brother.
Zoning out the music and lights, the knees of the tattooed guy, the murmur of curious voices and the bark of an approaching security man, Sam cupped one hand round Dean’s jaw, molded his other palm across the burning forehead.
“Hush up, bro,” he whispered. “I’m here. Gonna take care of you but you gotta keep still. Freakin’ glass everywhere, Dean.” He glanced up quickly at the young guy, took a chance on him. “Listen,” he said. “I need to get him out of here without a big performance. Can you help me out?”
“Sure.” The guy was easy. “Can he walk? He seems kind of out of his head.”
“You wouldn’t believe what he can do when he’s out of his head,” Sam said through gritted teeth.
“’Kay. Let’s do it.”
Dean was a bundle of twitches by the time they got back to the motel, although miraculously the only damage from the broken glass were a few small cuts on his forearm. The young guy left them at the door, as cool and calm as if he helped pick up raving strangers from partially-destroyed food retails outlets every day of the week.
“You left your groceries,” he said.
“I’ll think of a plan. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. Hope your brother’s all right.”
All right had always been a relative concept with Dean.
Sam let Dean melt on to the bed, shut and locked the door, then thought fleetingly of his own empty stomach and the empty refrigerator.
“What were you after?” he asked, wrapping one hand around the block of ice that was his brother’s right foot and rubbing it absently. “Coming to look for me? Shit, I’m sorry, man, I was just out finding you something to eat. Shouldn’t have left you alone.” He scooted up the bed, aware that Dean was now shivering like a wet puppy. Sam shifted his butt in next to the pillow and hoisted Dean’s head and shoulders up and against his chest. Then he crossed his arms over him and rested his chin on the top of his head.
“Back back back, here here, no no no,” Dean stuttered.
“I won’t do it again,” Sam said as if they were actually having a conversation. “Don’t worry, Dean. Whatever you do, don’t worry.”
He cast his eyes across the room, squeezed his elbows in tight.
Morning was about five hours away. He figured he’d walk to the gas station for cornflakes and milk, maybe handcuff Dean to the bed this time.
“Don’t need to come looking for me,” Sam whispered. “Whatever, Dean. You never need to come looking.”
-ends-
Author: Innocent Culprit aka solosundance
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean
Wordcount: 1,179
Disclaimer: Always and forever not mine
Summary: Dean's feverish, Sam's gone shopping
A/n: written to a prompt for persistent fever by hoodietime for the current Dean-focused h/c commentfic meme hosted at hoodie_time and also for mad_server who asked for feverish, fainting Dean way back when :)
It had been way too long since cornflakes, Sam decided.
Easy to eat, a modicum of nutrition. And, he reminded himself, the addition of ice-cold milk was satisfying and fun. Not to mention a vital, possibly life-saving source of fluid.
Willingness to attempt late-night grocery shopping was something Sam did. Mostly because the alternative sucked. John had always approached supermarkets like hunting - loudly, aggressive, leaving no aisle unexplored, while Dean’s preferred method was random swiping at items near the checkout which almost never amounted to a whole meal.
The warmth, light and company of ordinary human beings was comforting. Even the music interspersed with announcements about frozen parmesan chicken and spillages at the fresh fish counter.
Sam needed comforting.
Although not, he realized, as much as Dean did. Which was why cornflakes.
He sucked in deep lungfuls of the fresh-baked bread aroma and set about thinking of what else might work. He knew he couldn’t spend too long wandering about in here, squeezing melons and searching out two-for-one deals. Back at the motel Dean was sleeping, and when he woke up, Sam’s mission for the day was to get some food inside him.
“This room is weird,” Dean had announced when they’d arrived. Sam supposed his brother had been seeing it too big or too small, all swimmy colors and slanty walls.
Dropping the duffles, he’d tugged Dean’s sleeve, got him to sit on the bed. The usual routine unfolded, one he no longer carried out with any hesitation. It was easy enough because Dean was too sapped to resist, had been for weeks. Just a palm to the forehead, backs of the fingers to one cheek and then a touch to Dean’s chest. It was a swift one-two-three. Sam could get underneath the t-shirt now without any trouble at all, and he hated that so much time had passed since Dean last had him by the wrist and into a half-Nelson before he was within any kind of temperature-guaging distance whatsoever.
Sam huffed a little as he turned the corner into fruit juice. Fruit juice reminded him that sugary liquid was an absolute essential that he was going to have to address bigtime once he got back to the room.
Thanks to a mouthful of infectious crap spewed up by something that Dean claimed was a ghoul but Sam couldn’t even classify, fever had been a constant for upwards of a month now. Some days just a small discomfort, Dean’s hands icy even in the warm. Other days saw a terrifying climb, a body temperature Sam could barely touch. Unclassified, ghoulish fevers were resistant to anti-pyretics, it seemed, resistant to just about everything. Tubs had been filled with ice. Beds had been filled with ice for fuck’s sake. But nothing worked and Dean frequently lay for hours with his brain boiling. It would spike eventually, and Dean would quakingly descend once more from delirious to regular burning up and then right down to slightly feverish, which is where he would stay for the next several days.
They could hunt with a slightly feverish Dean. Who knew? Sam could tell Dean was wobbly most of the time, but until distortions and fatigue set in, he could keep his feet. Sometimes the spots of bright in his eyes made him look scary and that had worked in their favor, once or twice. Anything above slightly feverish, though, and they were in trouble.
You need to eat too.
The voice in Sam’s head sounded like Dean.
“Yeah I know,” Sam said out loud, snagging apple juice. God knows why Dean liked apple juice all of a sudden. Wouldn’t go near it when he was lucid. Hadn’t been keen on anything with apples in since the scarecrow.
Sam steered around the corner again, heading back to fresh fruit and vegetables.
And he brought the cart up short.
Just for a second Sam thought maybe he was so worried, so freaked out of his mind by this whole never-ending fever crap, that he was hallucinating himself.
Dean was standing in front of the tomatoes.
He was barefoot and wearing only a t-shirt and jeans.
Even before he began moving, Sam knew without a shadow of doubt that Dean had no idea he was here. He’d wandered, followed the beacon that never stopped winking in his head. Find Sam, find Sam. There was a slightly anxious look on his face, which was a disturbingly pale color flushed with red.
Dean made an awkward turn sideways and abruptly grabbed at a passing cart. It spun out of the grip of its owner, making a rumbling half circle on the tiles. Dean hung on, turning with it. The front end clipped a display of glassware, shifted it off its axis with an ominous sway.
Sam broke into a gallop, leaving the cornflakes behind him.
The cart had completed a 360 degree turn before he got there. Dean’s weight dragged it directly into the tomatoes and all four boxes tipped sideways and cascaded on to the floor while the woman whose cart had been unexpectedly hijacked began to shriek.
Watched by some twenty people, Dean did the most spectacular faint Sam could remember ever having witnessed, spinning round at the last in the opposite direction to the still-trundling cart, and collapsing next to it with an almighty crash. A young guy with tattoos made a last-minute attempt to break his fall, probably saving his head from impacing with the floor, but, in general, it couldn’t have been messier and more hazardous if he’d planned it out for days.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck!” The word became louder with each utterance, the third fuck more of a bellow than anything. Sam did an ungainly long-legged skid into the mess, came to a halt with both hands already clutched into Dean’s t-shirt. Overhead there was a booming announcement for security to attend fruit and vegetables as a matter of emergency.
The shrieking woman had kept up her shrieking at a steady rate but most of the rest of the crowd were just standing with their mouths open. Thursday nights at EZ-Mart didn’t get much better than this.
When Sam touched him, Dean rolled his head. His lashes fluttered open and he delivered a glittering stare of delirium directly over Sam’s shoulder before beginning to mutter at something unseen.
Sam had never been so glad to hear such a stream of fretful nonsense in his life. Unconsciousness had been fleeting, thank God, but jesus Dean was hot. And flat on his back in a sea of broken glass and squashed tomatoes.
“Holy shit,” breathed the tattooed guy. “That was awesome.”
“Awesome,” Sam agreed, wiping away a splat of fibrous gloop from the side of Dean’s face. “My brother is one hundred per cent, totally off the scale freakin’ awesome and believe me I am going to strangle him for it one day.”
The young guy gave a nervous grin. He was squatting on Sam’s other side, shoving pieces of broken glass away with the side of one of the tomato boxes. “What a fuckin’ mess,” he said. “Think they called an ambulance.”
“Damn,” Sam said, looking around with a hunted air. He gave a tight smile up at the friendliest of the watching faces. Ambulances weren’t welcome, much as the thought of trained professionals hooking Dean up to drips and flooding his system with state of the art antibiotics really felt like a good idea right now.
There was something that would cure Dean, Sam was sure of it. Bobby was pretty sure of it as well. It just needed to be discovered. Maybe it was cornflakes. Tomato juice. Eye of newt and horn of freakin’ toad. Time and rest and gentle handling would help too. Whatever it was, Sam knew it was down to him. He just had to keep reminding his brother.
Zoning out the music and lights, the knees of the tattooed guy, the murmur of curious voices and the bark of an approaching security man, Sam cupped one hand round Dean’s jaw, molded his other palm across the burning forehead.
“Hush up, bro,” he whispered. “I’m here. Gonna take care of you but you gotta keep still. Freakin’ glass everywhere, Dean.” He glanced up quickly at the young guy, took a chance on him. “Listen,” he said. “I need to get him out of here without a big performance. Can you help me out?”
“Sure.” The guy was easy. “Can he walk? He seems kind of out of his head.”
“You wouldn’t believe what he can do when he’s out of his head,” Sam said through gritted teeth.
“’Kay. Let’s do it.”
Dean was a bundle of twitches by the time they got back to the motel, although miraculously the only damage from the broken glass were a few small cuts on his forearm. The young guy left them at the door, as cool and calm as if he helped pick up raving strangers from partially-destroyed food retails outlets every day of the week.
“You left your groceries,” he said.
“I’ll think of a plan. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. Hope your brother’s all right.”
All right had always been a relative concept with Dean.
Sam let Dean melt on to the bed, shut and locked the door, then thought fleetingly of his own empty stomach and the empty refrigerator.
“What were you after?” he asked, wrapping one hand around the block of ice that was his brother’s right foot and rubbing it absently. “Coming to look for me? Shit, I’m sorry, man, I was just out finding you something to eat. Shouldn’t have left you alone.” He scooted up the bed, aware that Dean was now shivering like a wet puppy. Sam shifted his butt in next to the pillow and hoisted Dean’s head and shoulders up and against his chest. Then he crossed his arms over him and rested his chin on the top of his head.
“Back back back, here here, no no no,” Dean stuttered.
“I won’t do it again,” Sam said as if they were actually having a conversation. “Don’t worry, Dean. Whatever you do, don’t worry.”
He cast his eyes across the room, squeezed his elbows in tight.
Morning was about five hours away. He figured he’d walk to the gas station for cornflakes and milk, maybe handcuff Dean to the bed this time.
“Don’t need to come looking for me,” Sam whispered. “Whatever, Dean. You never need to come looking.”
-ends-