SPN Fic: Chocolate Cake
Title: Chocolate Cake
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: G-13 for language and mention of exploding body parts
Word-count: 2212
Spoilers: Set early S6 (pre-6.07), with major spoilers for the end of S5.
Disclaimer: Not min; just hunting Sera Gamble's fictional deer.
Summary: Dean spikes a fever in the middle of a hunt and ends up in a diner which, for some reason, contains no pie.
There's too much in him.
Blood. Heat. Thoughts. Noises. Words, running through his head.
There isn't room for it all.
He's gonna explode from the pressure, his head just softly popping open into a gentle spray of hot, ugly wetness. He can imagine the bits splattering onto the counter, a brilliant red dusting the glaring side of the napkin canister. As if a bottle of ketchup had shattered spontaneously, succumbing to the intense, pressing power of the heat inside the crowded room. If he could see a thermometer, he'd bet everything in his pocket that the blood-red line would be shot up to the very end, straining at the thin glass for blessed release.
Fuckin' Florida.
He doesn't even know how he got here, when he stopped being on the way back to the motel from Joel Winters' house (lady there with a blue flowered dress and a scowl whenever he coughed, so he made sure to do it without quite covering his mouth) and started being slumped over the tacky diner counter, carefully watching the goosebumps crawling up and down his arms, the pale hair rising and falling as stray currents of cold and heat hitch his temperature up and down.
It'd almost be funny, the way his whole body seems out of step with the world, the way he can't stop bumping his elbows against the edge of the counter, the way the waitress's voice is so indistinct he just nods in response to whatever she says (he hopes he's not agreeing to anything more than a cup of coffee or the house special) - it'd be funny, except his head hurts and his shirt's sticking to his back like slick flypaper and he keeps thinking the room's jumping and flashing like something out of some crappy sci-fi flick where everyone gets zapped off to Mars in the middle of happy hour.
Be just his luck. Alien abduction mid-investigation. Come to think of it, he's not entirely sure why that hasn't happened to him yet.
“You gonna order anything, honey?” The waitress is back, her voice way too loud and he wishes all these people wouldn't call him honey. Like he's the minister's kid, blue-eyed, freckle-faced and about eight years old. He grimaces at the menu slapped in front of him, trying to make something out through the haze of blood pounding against his temples. He wonders what she'd think if he told her he ripped a girl's head off last Wednesday. Washed her out from under his fingernails for a week.
He squints at them now, wondering there's any dried blood left. He can't see any, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
“Just coffee,” he mumbles, hoping she'll leave him alone.
“Anything else, sugar?” Honey, sugar. She's gonna start calling him fucking sweetpea next.
“Nothin',” he mutters back, and thank God, she goes. The radio gets a notch louder, even though nobody's touched the dial, as far as he can see.
The song crowds into his brain, ramming like a blind animal against the inside of his skull, the words babbling in a panic and scrawling themselves on the walls like desperate prisoners trying to leave a last mark on the world before the whole diner goes up in green Vulcan flames. He can't understand a word, can't stop listening either. They're drowning out the voice that's been jabbering at him all evening, low and gentle and maddening, all Calm down and Stop doing this to yourself and You need to get some rest, Dean, you're gonna fall apart if you're not careful. It's a stupid voice, and he's not listening to it.
He's not sure if it's Lisa or Sam. He thinks it isn't Sam. He thinks nobody's Sam, anymore.
The coffee appears in front of him so suddenly he jumps, like somebody's broken through a glass panel in front of his face. He blinks, coughing into a fist as the waitress shoves a plate with a wedge of something sooty-black next to the sloshing oil-colored coffee. It looks like mud and blood and dark, packed feathers. There's a bloom of red peeking out underneath like a clod of guts.
“Thought you looked like you could use some cake,” the waitress explains nasally. He takes another look, and realizes the mud is fudge frosting and the feathery soot is chocolate cake, and the hint of viscera is actually an icing rose stuck onto the side of the cake. It's the kind of cake Sam used to demand every birthday, the kind he never got, ten layers thick and so dense with cocoa it made your head hurt just thinking about it. It's the kind Anna chucked herself out of Heaven for, and he doesn't know why that popped into his head right now, or why it makes his chest hurt as though someone just whacked him across the sternum with a two-by-four.
“Huh,” is all he says.
“Eat up, angel,” the waitress coos.
He jabs a fork into the cake and shoves it in his mouth, chews but can't swallow. His throat feels swollen shut, throbbing against something he can't name, shaking with the effort of the struggle. He tries again, but all that happens is a sudden slake of salty warmth down his face, and his lips curl against his will into an uncomfortable frown. The world stutters, and he closes his eyes, coughing as the sobs buck up through his chest and blurt through that stupid mouthful of chocolate. Putting his forehead onto the cool countertop, he gulps down the cake and chokes over the burning, hammering tears that plummet to the faraway cherry floorboards.
“Oh, darlin',” that voice is humming overhead, and he doesn't listen until a deeper one cuts through, light and curious and faintly amused.
“There you are,” it says.
He sits up, grabbing a handful of napkins out of the canister and smearing tears and chocolate across his face, hiccuping the last sobs away. Dizzy, he turns around to see the broad, plaid shoulders that shout in his face with their familiarity. His life, patiently coming back to collect him, the way people turn around to pick up the empty candy wrapper their kid drops, the shit their beagle leaves on the sidewalk. The way Dad once drove two towns back just to stop Sam screeching for the stuffed monkey he forgot under the motel blankets.
His body, perverse idiot that it is, shakes with relief so hard he's surprised. He didn't even know he was lost, but now that Sam's found him the terror of being abandoned tackles him full-on, knocks him to the ground breathless and leaves him choking on air.
“You were supposed to interview the wife, not eat cake,” Sam observes mildly. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“I was hungry,” Dean replies, even though he feels like he might just puke up that awful bite right on the scratched-up floor.
“Why were you crying?” Sam inquires, but it's not like he used to, all dog-eyes and careful squints like he thought Dean might whack his head off for even mentioning it. Now, it's just a question like any other, like it's not worth considering how Dean might react, like Sam can't see any reason to tread carefully around his brother any more.
“'Cause it tastes like shit,” he tells Sam. Sam's eyebrow quirks up, confused and half-laughing at the idiotic answer, but he doesn't care. He just wants out of this place, wants to curl up in the Impala and close his eyes and hope that when he opens them some tiny piece of the awfulness will have gone away.
“Why'd you order it then?” Sam wants to know.
“I didn't,” Dean says. Another chill slams through his body. The room dips, shimmers, comes back hot and bleary. Sam's blurring at the edges, distant as though he's looking at him through the wrong end of binoculars. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
“Whatever,” Sam says. “You look awful.”
“You're gonna have to work on your flattery if you ever wanna get laid, Sammy.”
“Stop babbling and let's go. Ghoul's just hit another victim; we've gotta get there before the cops do.”
“Sam, I don't...” He stops, mouth opening and closing on the words. The voice in his head's nodding insistently, waiting for him to speak up; he's trying to find something that doesn't sound too much like I don't think I can stay upright a lot longer or I don't wanna go look at some poor mook's guts laid out all over the upholstery because I'm gonna end up losing my lunch in their downstairs bathroom or I don't know if I can even trust you any more and it's scaring me out of my head.
“I don't feel great,” he finally settles on.
Sam stares, thinks, and then gives a tiny huff so Sam that it almost rocks Dean off balance. “Okay, I'll take you back to the motel. You know there's Tylenol in the green duffel, right?” he goes on. “You don't have to wait for permission to take some. I figured you were old enough to deal with that yourself.”
He doesn't even bother to respond, just shuts his eyes as Sam drags him off the barstool and herds him out of the diner, leaving a couple of fives on the countertop next to the unfinished cake and coffee. He doesn't speak as they climb into the Impala, Sam automatically pushing Dean into the passenger seat and filching the keys from his pocket, frowning in disgust as his hands brush against the sheen of sweat on Dean's skin. Underneath Dean, the car surges awake, swerving unconcernedly out of the parking lot as he squints into blackness, staring blindly at the blistering dark behind his eyelids. The interior of the Impala is a single unbroken brick of suffocating leather-flavored air. His stupid, cautious, three-seconds-at-stop-signs little brother is driving way too fast, and Dean can feel the hard swallow of cake knocking at the back of his throat, hot and bitter.
Fucking Florida. Ghouls and sweetie-pie and dying a hundred times he can't even remember, and the worst damn cake he's ever eaten in his life. He should've taken the hint the last time they came. Trust him to slam his head up against the same brick wall again, just to see if it hurt as much as the first time.
No wonder Sam's given up on him. He'd give up, too. He would have years ago.
“You want me to pull over?” Sam asks. Dean shakes his head, even though that makes his stomach jump so vigorously that he thinks, yeah, maybe they should stop a while just to save the seats (he's never forgotten the time Sam got sick in the backseat and Dad yelled at him for days for not keeping an eye on his little brother, not warning him soon enough about the imminent six-year-old volcano). Motel, cool sheets, quiet, and Sam'll take off and he can just wait for the fever to burn its way through him. He clamps his mouth tighter, breathing slowly through his nose.
A huge hand descends on his forehead, startling his eyes open, his head jerking instinctively away from the touch - but Sam's arms are ridiculously long, and Dean can't duck out of reach. His brother's palm rests there, lifting after a moment to press thoughtfully at the side of his cheek, sampling Dean's face like a cheese tray.
“Dude, you can't let yourself get like this,” he remarks calmly. “That's gotta be a hundred and three at least. You're gonna kill yourself some day, stuffing your face in random diners when you oughta be in bed taking fever meds.”
“I'm fine, Sam.” Since lying is what they do, now. Because if his brother's going to claim nothing's wrong with him, Dean figures he might as well get with the spirit of things.
“Whatever. I'm taking you to the motel and we're getting you something for that fever. And if it spikes any higher, Dean, I'm taking you to a doctor.”
“Dude, just leave it.”
“No. If you're not going to take care of yourself, somebody has to.”
“Thought you had a crime scene to visit.”
“The ghoul can wait. I don't wanna come back to the motel room and find you dead in a pool of your own idiocy.”
Sam's really piling on the compliments tonight. But Dean's suddenly too tired to give a shit anymore, the ache behind his temples bleeding forward into his eyeballs, down his stuffed-up nose. Leaning back in the seat, he tries to forget that Sam's even there, to pretend he's just hurtling through space alone, that Sam's still just a memory that hurts in the pit of his stomach so bad that some mornings he can't eat breakfast, like he's been pregnant for over a year with the grief of watching his brother throw himself into hell.
Speeding through the night with the stranger beside him, he falls asleep with the taste of chocolate cake on his lips.
Characters: Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: G-13 for language and mention of exploding body parts
Word-count: 2212
Spoilers: Set early S6 (pre-6.07), with major spoilers for the end of S5.
Disclaimer: Not min; just hunting Sera Gamble's fictional deer.
Summary: Dean spikes a fever in the middle of a hunt and ends up in a diner which, for some reason, contains no pie.
There's too much in him.
Blood. Heat. Thoughts. Noises. Words, running through his head.
There isn't room for it all.
He's gonna explode from the pressure, his head just softly popping open into a gentle spray of hot, ugly wetness. He can imagine the bits splattering onto the counter, a brilliant red dusting the glaring side of the napkin canister. As if a bottle of ketchup had shattered spontaneously, succumbing to the intense, pressing power of the heat inside the crowded room. If he could see a thermometer, he'd bet everything in his pocket that the blood-red line would be shot up to the very end, straining at the thin glass for blessed release.
Fuckin' Florida.
He doesn't even know how he got here, when he stopped being on the way back to the motel from Joel Winters' house (lady there with a blue flowered dress and a scowl whenever he coughed, so he made sure to do it without quite covering his mouth) and started being slumped over the tacky diner counter, carefully watching the goosebumps crawling up and down his arms, the pale hair rising and falling as stray currents of cold and heat hitch his temperature up and down.
It'd almost be funny, the way his whole body seems out of step with the world, the way he can't stop bumping his elbows against the edge of the counter, the way the waitress's voice is so indistinct he just nods in response to whatever she says (he hopes he's not agreeing to anything more than a cup of coffee or the house special) - it'd be funny, except his head hurts and his shirt's sticking to his back like slick flypaper and he keeps thinking the room's jumping and flashing like something out of some crappy sci-fi flick where everyone gets zapped off to Mars in the middle of happy hour.
Be just his luck. Alien abduction mid-investigation. Come to think of it, he's not entirely sure why that hasn't happened to him yet.
“You gonna order anything, honey?” The waitress is back, her voice way too loud and he wishes all these people wouldn't call him honey. Like he's the minister's kid, blue-eyed, freckle-faced and about eight years old. He grimaces at the menu slapped in front of him, trying to make something out through the haze of blood pounding against his temples. He wonders what she'd think if he told her he ripped a girl's head off last Wednesday. Washed her out from under his fingernails for a week.
He squints at them now, wondering there's any dried blood left. He can't see any, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
“Just coffee,” he mumbles, hoping she'll leave him alone.
“Anything else, sugar?” Honey, sugar. She's gonna start calling him fucking sweetpea next.
“Nothin',” he mutters back, and thank God, she goes. The radio gets a notch louder, even though nobody's touched the dial, as far as he can see.
The song crowds into his brain, ramming like a blind animal against the inside of his skull, the words babbling in a panic and scrawling themselves on the walls like desperate prisoners trying to leave a last mark on the world before the whole diner goes up in green Vulcan flames. He can't understand a word, can't stop listening either. They're drowning out the voice that's been jabbering at him all evening, low and gentle and maddening, all Calm down and Stop doing this to yourself and You need to get some rest, Dean, you're gonna fall apart if you're not careful. It's a stupid voice, and he's not listening to it.
He's not sure if it's Lisa or Sam. He thinks it isn't Sam. He thinks nobody's Sam, anymore.
The coffee appears in front of him so suddenly he jumps, like somebody's broken through a glass panel in front of his face. He blinks, coughing into a fist as the waitress shoves a plate with a wedge of something sooty-black next to the sloshing oil-colored coffee. It looks like mud and blood and dark, packed feathers. There's a bloom of red peeking out underneath like a clod of guts.
“Thought you looked like you could use some cake,” the waitress explains nasally. He takes another look, and realizes the mud is fudge frosting and the feathery soot is chocolate cake, and the hint of viscera is actually an icing rose stuck onto the side of the cake. It's the kind of cake Sam used to demand every birthday, the kind he never got, ten layers thick and so dense with cocoa it made your head hurt just thinking about it. It's the kind Anna chucked herself out of Heaven for, and he doesn't know why that popped into his head right now, or why it makes his chest hurt as though someone just whacked him across the sternum with a two-by-four.
“Huh,” is all he says.
“Eat up, angel,” the waitress coos.
He jabs a fork into the cake and shoves it in his mouth, chews but can't swallow. His throat feels swollen shut, throbbing against something he can't name, shaking with the effort of the struggle. He tries again, but all that happens is a sudden slake of salty warmth down his face, and his lips curl against his will into an uncomfortable frown. The world stutters, and he closes his eyes, coughing as the sobs buck up through his chest and blurt through that stupid mouthful of chocolate. Putting his forehead onto the cool countertop, he gulps down the cake and chokes over the burning, hammering tears that plummet to the faraway cherry floorboards.
“Oh, darlin',” that voice is humming overhead, and he doesn't listen until a deeper one cuts through, light and curious and faintly amused.
“There you are,” it says.
He sits up, grabbing a handful of napkins out of the canister and smearing tears and chocolate across his face, hiccuping the last sobs away. Dizzy, he turns around to see the broad, plaid shoulders that shout in his face with their familiarity. His life, patiently coming back to collect him, the way people turn around to pick up the empty candy wrapper their kid drops, the shit their beagle leaves on the sidewalk. The way Dad once drove two towns back just to stop Sam screeching for the stuffed monkey he forgot under the motel blankets.
His body, perverse idiot that it is, shakes with relief so hard he's surprised. He didn't even know he was lost, but now that Sam's found him the terror of being abandoned tackles him full-on, knocks him to the ground breathless and leaves him choking on air.
“You were supposed to interview the wife, not eat cake,” Sam observes mildly. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“I was hungry,” Dean replies, even though he feels like he might just puke up that awful bite right on the scratched-up floor.
“Why were you crying?” Sam inquires, but it's not like he used to, all dog-eyes and careful squints like he thought Dean might whack his head off for even mentioning it. Now, it's just a question like any other, like it's not worth considering how Dean might react, like Sam can't see any reason to tread carefully around his brother any more.
“'Cause it tastes like shit,” he tells Sam. Sam's eyebrow quirks up, confused and half-laughing at the idiotic answer, but he doesn't care. He just wants out of this place, wants to curl up in the Impala and close his eyes and hope that when he opens them some tiny piece of the awfulness will have gone away.
“Why'd you order it then?” Sam wants to know.
“I didn't,” Dean says. Another chill slams through his body. The room dips, shimmers, comes back hot and bleary. Sam's blurring at the edges, distant as though he's looking at him through the wrong end of binoculars. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
“Whatever,” Sam says. “You look awful.”
“You're gonna have to work on your flattery if you ever wanna get laid, Sammy.”
“Stop babbling and let's go. Ghoul's just hit another victim; we've gotta get there before the cops do.”
“Sam, I don't...” He stops, mouth opening and closing on the words. The voice in his head's nodding insistently, waiting for him to speak up; he's trying to find something that doesn't sound too much like I don't think I can stay upright a lot longer or I don't wanna go look at some poor mook's guts laid out all over the upholstery because I'm gonna end up losing my lunch in their downstairs bathroom or I don't know if I can even trust you any more and it's scaring me out of my head.
“I don't feel great,” he finally settles on.
Sam stares, thinks, and then gives a tiny huff so Sam that it almost rocks Dean off balance. “Okay, I'll take you back to the motel. You know there's Tylenol in the green duffel, right?” he goes on. “You don't have to wait for permission to take some. I figured you were old enough to deal with that yourself.”
He doesn't even bother to respond, just shuts his eyes as Sam drags him off the barstool and herds him out of the diner, leaving a couple of fives on the countertop next to the unfinished cake and coffee. He doesn't speak as they climb into the Impala, Sam automatically pushing Dean into the passenger seat and filching the keys from his pocket, frowning in disgust as his hands brush against the sheen of sweat on Dean's skin. Underneath Dean, the car surges awake, swerving unconcernedly out of the parking lot as he squints into blackness, staring blindly at the blistering dark behind his eyelids. The interior of the Impala is a single unbroken brick of suffocating leather-flavored air. His stupid, cautious, three-seconds-at-stop-signs little brother is driving way too fast, and Dean can feel the hard swallow of cake knocking at the back of his throat, hot and bitter.
Fucking Florida. Ghouls and sweetie-pie and dying a hundred times he can't even remember, and the worst damn cake he's ever eaten in his life. He should've taken the hint the last time they came. Trust him to slam his head up against the same brick wall again, just to see if it hurt as much as the first time.
No wonder Sam's given up on him. He'd give up, too. He would have years ago.
“You want me to pull over?” Sam asks. Dean shakes his head, even though that makes his stomach jump so vigorously that he thinks, yeah, maybe they should stop a while just to save the seats (he's never forgotten the time Sam got sick in the backseat and Dad yelled at him for days for not keeping an eye on his little brother, not warning him soon enough about the imminent six-year-old volcano). Motel, cool sheets, quiet, and Sam'll take off and he can just wait for the fever to burn its way through him. He clamps his mouth tighter, breathing slowly through his nose.
A huge hand descends on his forehead, startling his eyes open, his head jerking instinctively away from the touch - but Sam's arms are ridiculously long, and Dean can't duck out of reach. His brother's palm rests there, lifting after a moment to press thoughtfully at the side of his cheek, sampling Dean's face like a cheese tray.
“Dude, you can't let yourself get like this,” he remarks calmly. “That's gotta be a hundred and three at least. You're gonna kill yourself some day, stuffing your face in random diners when you oughta be in bed taking fever meds.”
“I'm fine, Sam.” Since lying is what they do, now. Because if his brother's going to claim nothing's wrong with him, Dean figures he might as well get with the spirit of things.
“Whatever. I'm taking you to the motel and we're getting you something for that fever. And if it spikes any higher, Dean, I'm taking you to a doctor.”
“Dude, just leave it.”
“No. If you're not going to take care of yourself, somebody has to.”
“Thought you had a crime scene to visit.”
“The ghoul can wait. I don't wanna come back to the motel room and find you dead in a pool of your own idiocy.”
Sam's really piling on the compliments tonight. But Dean's suddenly too tired to give a shit anymore, the ache behind his temples bleeding forward into his eyeballs, down his stuffed-up nose. Leaning back in the seat, he tries to forget that Sam's even there, to pretend he's just hurtling through space alone, that Sam's still just a memory that hurts in the pit of his stomach so bad that some mornings he can't eat breakfast, like he's been pregnant for over a year with the grief of watching his brother throw himself into hell.
Speeding through the night with the stranger beside him, he falls asleep with the taste of chocolate cake on his lips.