Before My Heart Starts to Burn
Title: Before My Heart Starts to Burn
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2500
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them.
Summary: Dean shows up at Stanford. To make sure his little brother is alright. Not because he has some mysterious illness or anything.
Written for the Dean-focused h/c Tags Challenge on hoodie_time. I was unhappy to see Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on my list of prompts. Unhappy, but also very intrigued. This is a couple days late, but I'm still pretty proud I managed to finish it at all.
Also, this is a fill for 'Hiding an Illness/Injury' in my hc_bingo card.
Special thanks go to nwspaprtaxis who held my hand through this and talked me out of abandoning it completely.
His lungs are burning, his heart is thumping away in his throat, doing its best to fight its way out of his chest.
Dean raps his knuckles against the door one last time before he falls sideways against the close wall.
He tries to push back against the angry buzzing that's clogging up his ears, keeps waiting for the tell-tale sound of bare feet padding across cheep linoleum floor. He could pick the lock, sure, no problem. Except he is completely worn out from the effort it took to climb all those stairs and his fingers are trembling and he'd probably pass out against the wooden door midway through forcing it open.
Trust Sammy to pick a dorm room six flights of stairs above the ground.
He forces himself to stand up straight again when light flickers through the small gap under the door.
"Dean?"
Sam's hair is standing up in all sorts of ridiculous ways, his eyes tiny and squinty with sleep. Dean feels his knees begin to buckle and suddenly he has Sam's long arms wrapped around his shoulders, hard fingertips digging deep into his hurting muscles.
"Dean?" Sam pants into his ear, voice rasping high with sudden, barely contained panic. "Shit, Dean, what's wrong?"
Dean's mumbled answer gets muffled in the fabric of Sam's shirt against his face.
Sam curses under his breath and starts pulling the two of them into his room. "Where're you hurt?"
Dean shakes his head. He tries to lift his feet high over the threshold. His boots are rocks tied to his legs and he quietly apologizes when he drags them clean through where he knows the salt line lies.
"It's okay," Sam pants and Dean looks down, doesn't see a mess of rock salt strewn all across the room. "Where're you hurt?"
Everywhere.
"'m okay."
It's not real hurt, so it doesn't count.
"What happened?"
Sam's hands are flying over Dean's back, long fingers pressing against his neck, spine, skull. Dean shakes his head.
Sam stops his frantic search for wounds that aren't there and stares at Dean, too-long bangs falling into his eyes. "Is it Dad?"
Dean isn't sure what that means, but he shakes his head. No, Dad didn't hurt me. No, Dad isn't hurt.
"Can I just crash here?" he asks quietly. His voice hurts, rasping in his throat like the words have to find their way through barbed wire. His heart is finally slowing down, the throbbing in his muscles dying down to a distant ache. "'m totally beat from drivin' all night."
:: :: ::
Sam shoulders his way through the door, several boxes of Madam Hu's Wok Shop Noodles balanced on top of a large pizza box.
"Dude, get that shit away from me."
Sam turns around, finds his brother curled up on the couch in front of the TV, just where he left him this morning. "You alright?"
Dean swallows convulsively, shifts slightly and returns his attention to the small screen.
Sam calls his brother's name again and Dean looks up for a second to glare at the take out food Sam put on the table. One hand is hovering protectively over his abdomen.
"You sick?" Sam asks
Dean's dark glare shifts and settles on Sam. "Fine," he says. "Gimme some pizza."
Sam shakes his head, tries not to roll his eyes. "Okay, I believe you. Don't need to prove it, okay?"
Dean swallows again, his adam's apple bobbing under pale skin that looks like it's stretched too thin.
He closes his eyes, throws his arm up over his face and curls up into an even smaller ball of misery.
Scooby-Doo keeps flashing over the muted TV, the bright colors dance across Dean's pale face.
:: :: ::
Dean insists they go out and have dinner the second day. Sam mentions the mountain of take-out menus in the kitchen, but Dean punches him in the arm, weak and kinda pathetic and Sam agrees to go out, just to stop this desperate campaign to prove that Dean isn't sick.
Sam watches his brother scowl at the menu, his hand keeps traveling over the bridge of his nose, across his jaw, down the side of his face.
He's still pale, under the bright smile he plasters onto his face once he notices Sam's gaze.
"We can still leave," Sam suggests when the jukebox springs to life and Dean winces.
Dean waves at the waitress with a poor copy of his trademark charming smile pulling at his lips.
"You okay, hun?" the waitress asks and the grin on Dean's face gets stretched even thinner at her obvious concern.
"I'm fine," he grinds out through grit teeth. "Get me whatever's on tap, will ya?"
He glares at Sam, daring him to comment on his order, but the threat kinda loses its effect under the thin sheen of sweat and the dark circles under his eyes.
Sam orders a beef wrap for himself and decides not to be too concerned when Dean claims he isn't hungry. Drinking on an empty stomach when you're obviously sick seems like the exact kind of thing Dean would have picked up from Dad.
Sam starts talking about his day at school and Dean's eyes glaze over. He keeps nodding along, lets out strangled little u-huh's every couple of minutes.
He takes a deep gulp off his beer as soon as it arrives, winks at the waitress with barely contained disinterest.
"I'll have that wrap to go," Sam tells her before she can place his plate in front of him.
She looks annoyed for a second, but one glance at Dean's complexion that has gone from chalk-white to pale green in the course of two seconds is enough to have her face melt into a good-natured, mothering smile. "You got it," she says with one final pitying look in Dean's direction and saunters off to get a doggy bag.
Dean keeps apologizing for ruining Sam's night until he finally passes out on the couch.
:: :: ::
Dean is staring up at the ceiling. It still feels strange, sleeping on his back. Every time he closes his eyes he has to tell his body to keep breathing. A pillow smashed against his nose is the last thing he needs.
He thinks about the small plastic bag he keeps stuffed into his spare pare of boots.
60$ for an eighth. Prices in Palo Alto are freaking ridiculous.
:: :: ::
Sam keeps rattlin' on and on about some college bar he wants to go to.
"You're barely twenty," Dean mumbles. Feels like they're back in that crappy apartment in Nebraska and Dean is coming up with bullshit reasons why they can't go and see Jurassic Park.
Except it's nothing like that, because this time Dean's heart isn't in it and Sam can see right through his crap, like maybe he took a course in that or something. Or maybe Dean's just gotten worse at the bullshitting part.
"You bought me my first beer when I was thirteen."
"Well, I apologize for being such an irresponsible older brother."
"I...I'm...c'mon, I didn't..."
Sam is stammering and Dean rubs two fingers along the bridge of his nose. "I just wanna stay in tonight," he says softly. The persistent ache right between his eyes is quickly building, throbbing and pulsing and burning until it's the only thing he can focus on.
Sam lets out a heavy sigh, slumps down on the couch next to Dean. "There'll be Kappa Gammas," he tries, a hopeful grin lighting up his face and Dean feels the headache spread. "Whaddaya say? You were always talking about drunk co-eds."
Dean sighs. His tongue shoots out to wet his dry lips.
"C'mon, man. Take some Tylenol and get up."
Dean is way past Tylenol. Stuff stopped working weeks ago.
:: :: ::
Dean is going through his duffel, looking for his old, faded-grey Led Zeppelin T-shirt when Sam turns on the TV and Dean's entire body jerks at the loud, obnoxious laugh track that's suddenly filling the room.
The bag slides from his fingers, his hands trembling, like he's in the middle of having a panic attack.
"What're you doing?" Sam calls from the couch and suddenly Dean's fingers grow heavy and jittery and with every piece he stuffs back into his duffel, two more slide past his clammy grasp.
"Nuh-" his breath catches in his throat as he's falling to his knees, scrambling to stuff everything back into his duffel. "Nothin'. Just dropped some stuff, I'll...I uh..."
It used to be easy to lie to Sam. Dean could do it in his sleep, come up with bullshit stories about why Dad wasn't home yet and why he wasn't eating more than a spoon full of cereal at time, but now his knees are throbbing from the hard drop on the floor and his mind is slowing down and he just can't.
"Dean?"
Sam is standing above him. Dean still isn't used to his baby brother moving around like a tornado, flying from one end of the apartment to the next with a speed Dean can only dream of.
"What's this?" Sam asks as he picks up an almost empty orange bottle. His eyes are drawing into slits, staring down at Dean.
"You can read," Dean growls hoarsely. Fear and anger twirl around each other, pulse through his body, weigh down his legs and arms until his breathing gets heavy.
"What do you need Vicodin for?" Sam asks in that way he used to ask Dad about his drinking.
"Newsflash, Sammy," Dean snaps irritably. "Sometimes I get hurt."
Sam just keeps looking at him. Without even trying he's putting together the pieces Dean himself can't ever hope to understand in the first place.
Sam's hand shoots forward, grabbing the small bag by Dean's feet. "Okay," he says with an angry huff. "What do you need this for?"
Dean avoids his brother's accusatory glare, focuses on the small bag of weed that's dangling from his fingers instead.
Sometimes I hurt.
:: :: ::
Sam finds Dean at the bottom of the second story stairwell. His arms wrapped around his drawn up knees, head pulled between his legs.
A shudder runs through Dean's entire body and Sam flies up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. His book bag slides off his shoulder, falls back down until it crashes into the far wall.
"Dean?" Sam pants, panic starting to close up his throat.
He touches Dean's heaving shoulder, immediately pulls back his hand when Dean escapes a pained whimper.
Sam curses under his breath, both hands hovering over his brother's back. "Fuck, Dean, what's wrong?"
"Hurts," Dean pants out in between desperate gulps of air.
He raises his head until he can focus glassy, red-rimmed eyes on Sam. Sweat is pouring down his forehead, his hair slick and dark against his forehead, his pupils dilated to the point where Sam can barely make out any trace of green.
Sam's hands fly for his jeans pocket. He fumbles with his cell phone, tries to punch in the number without moving his eyes from Dean's scared face.
"What..." Dean asks. His right arm moves to still Sam's hands, but falls back down when Dean has to bite back another yelp. "Don'needadoctor."
Sam seriously doubts that.
"I'll be f-fine. Jus'..."
He starts moving his head left and right and Sam's heart speeds up until it's about ready to jump out of his chest. This isn't supposed to be happening. This isn't Dean.
The phone slides from his fingers, his hands already shivering almost as bad as Dean's.
"Sammy?" Dean's voice stumbles over the word, his arm moves again until his fingers settle on top of Sam's, both their palms slick with sweat. "'m...'m gonna be okay. Jus' go upstairs 'n get my duffel."
He doesn't say what it is he needs, painkillers or pot and Sam is glad he doesn't know when he stumbles up the stairs to his dorm.
:: :: ::
"Does Dad know about this?" Sam asks that night when they're sprawled on the couch, beer bottles lining up in front of them.
Dean doesn't meet his eyes, starts twisting the bottle in his hands until the label gets stuck under his fingernails.
Pull yourself together, boy.
You're no good to me like this.
If you don't wanna pull your own weight nobody's stoppin' you from leaving.
"Said to lay low for a while," he says quietly. "'Till I'm back on my feet."
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Sam studying him.
Dean takes another deep gulp of off his El Sol.
His cell phone has been silent for days now. Even Bobby's given up. Figures they'd stop looking for him eventually.
:: :: ::
"Dean?" Sam asks carefully. He's brooding over his laptop. Some new, slender thing that's nothing like the heavy piece of crap Sam tried to talk Dad into buying at that garage sale. "Do you have unusually painful bowel movements?"
"Do I have what?"
"Well, do you?"
Dean feels his entire face curl up in disgust. "I'm not talking to you about my shit."
Sam just shrugs and turns back to his computer. A pen is bobbing up and down on the frayed legal paper by his right arm. Dean steps close enough to make out a couple of neat lists. CFS. Fybromyaglia. Chronic Depression.
"What'cha doin'?" he asks with a big, casual smile plastered all over his face.
Sam meets his eyes for about half a second before he looks back at the glowing screen. "Have you ever heard of CFS?"
"Some new drug you college kids've been messin' with?"
It hurts to keep the smile in place.
"It's a medical disorder," Sam explains quietly. His eyes are running up and down one of his little lists now, focusing on everything except for Dean. "It's uh...the most common symptoms are chronic exhaustion, un-refreshing sleep, uh...muscles weakness. You got all those, don't you?"
"What're you saying?" Dean rasps. He is surprised how calm his voice comes out, when on the inside he is screaming and raging and he wants nothing more than to walk over there and punch Sam in the face.
"I'm just..." Sam is squirming in his seat now, his right index finger taping away just next to Shortness of Breath. "Something's wrong with you."
"Oh, fuck you."
"No, no, I'm not saying..." Sam runs a slightly unsteady hand through his hair. Kid need's a haircut.
"Well, keep it that way," Dean growls and stiffly makes his way back to the couch.
:: :: ::
Sometimes he wakes up and isn't sure if he's still alive.
He has to feel deep down into his chest to make sure he heart is still beating and by the time he finds his pulse his lungs are burning because he has forgotten to breathe.
Sometimes he wakes up and knows he isn't dead because every part of his body is screaming at him, pulsing and burning and begging him to make the pain go away.
He misses those moments when he thinks he is dead.
:: :: ::
"Something's not right," Dean mumbles quietly into his red curry.
It's days after Sam first brought it up the disorder idea and they've both been pretending it never happened.
"Okay," Sam says. He has a small veggie egg-roll spiked on his fork, hovering halfway between the take-out box and his mouth. "We'll get you help."
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2500
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them.
Summary: Dean shows up at Stanford. To make sure his little brother is alright. Not because he has some mysterious illness or anything.
Written for the Dean-focused h/c Tags Challenge on hoodie_time. I was unhappy to see Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on my list of prompts. Unhappy, but also very intrigued. This is a couple days late, but I'm still pretty proud I managed to finish it at all.
Also, this is a fill for 'Hiding an Illness/Injury' in my hc_bingo card.
Special thanks go to nwspaprtaxis who held my hand through this and talked me out of abandoning it completely.
His lungs are burning, his heart is thumping away in his throat, doing its best to fight its way out of his chest.
Dean raps his knuckles against the door one last time before he falls sideways against the close wall.
He tries to push back against the angry buzzing that's clogging up his ears, keeps waiting for the tell-tale sound of bare feet padding across cheep linoleum floor. He could pick the lock, sure, no problem. Except he is completely worn out from the effort it took to climb all those stairs and his fingers are trembling and he'd probably pass out against the wooden door midway through forcing it open.
Trust Sammy to pick a dorm room six flights of stairs above the ground.
He forces himself to stand up straight again when light flickers through the small gap under the door.
"Dean?"
Sam's hair is standing up in all sorts of ridiculous ways, his eyes tiny and squinty with sleep. Dean feels his knees begin to buckle and suddenly he has Sam's long arms wrapped around his shoulders, hard fingertips digging deep into his hurting muscles.
"Dean?" Sam pants into his ear, voice rasping high with sudden, barely contained panic. "Shit, Dean, what's wrong?"
Dean's mumbled answer gets muffled in the fabric of Sam's shirt against his face.
Sam curses under his breath and starts pulling the two of them into his room. "Where're you hurt?"
Dean shakes his head. He tries to lift his feet high over the threshold. His boots are rocks tied to his legs and he quietly apologizes when he drags them clean through where he knows the salt line lies.
"It's okay," Sam pants and Dean looks down, doesn't see a mess of rock salt strewn all across the room. "Where're you hurt?"
Everywhere.
"'m okay."
It's not real hurt, so it doesn't count.
"What happened?"
Sam's hands are flying over Dean's back, long fingers pressing against his neck, spine, skull. Dean shakes his head.
Sam stops his frantic search for wounds that aren't there and stares at Dean, too-long bangs falling into his eyes. "Is it Dad?"
Dean isn't sure what that means, but he shakes his head. No, Dad didn't hurt me. No, Dad isn't hurt.
"Can I just crash here?" he asks quietly. His voice hurts, rasping in his throat like the words have to find their way through barbed wire. His heart is finally slowing down, the throbbing in his muscles dying down to a distant ache. "'m totally beat from drivin' all night."
:: :: ::
Sam shoulders his way through the door, several boxes of Madam Hu's Wok Shop Noodles balanced on top of a large pizza box.
"Dude, get that shit away from me."
Sam turns around, finds his brother curled up on the couch in front of the TV, just where he left him this morning. "You alright?"
Dean swallows convulsively, shifts slightly and returns his attention to the small screen.
Sam calls his brother's name again and Dean looks up for a second to glare at the take out food Sam put on the table. One hand is hovering protectively over his abdomen.
"You sick?" Sam asks
Dean's dark glare shifts and settles on Sam. "Fine," he says. "Gimme some pizza."
Sam shakes his head, tries not to roll his eyes. "Okay, I believe you. Don't need to prove it, okay?"
Dean swallows again, his adam's apple bobbing under pale skin that looks like it's stretched too thin.
He closes his eyes, throws his arm up over his face and curls up into an even smaller ball of misery.
Scooby-Doo keeps flashing over the muted TV, the bright colors dance across Dean's pale face.
:: :: ::
Dean insists they go out and have dinner the second day. Sam mentions the mountain of take-out menus in the kitchen, but Dean punches him in the arm, weak and kinda pathetic and Sam agrees to go out, just to stop this desperate campaign to prove that Dean isn't sick.
Sam watches his brother scowl at the menu, his hand keeps traveling over the bridge of his nose, across his jaw, down the side of his face.
He's still pale, under the bright smile he plasters onto his face once he notices Sam's gaze.
"We can still leave," Sam suggests when the jukebox springs to life and Dean winces.
Dean waves at the waitress with a poor copy of his trademark charming smile pulling at his lips.
"You okay, hun?" the waitress asks and the grin on Dean's face gets stretched even thinner at her obvious concern.
"I'm fine," he grinds out through grit teeth. "Get me whatever's on tap, will ya?"
He glares at Sam, daring him to comment on his order, but the threat kinda loses its effect under the thin sheen of sweat and the dark circles under his eyes.
Sam orders a beef wrap for himself and decides not to be too concerned when Dean claims he isn't hungry. Drinking on an empty stomach when you're obviously sick seems like the exact kind of thing Dean would have picked up from Dad.
Sam starts talking about his day at school and Dean's eyes glaze over. He keeps nodding along, lets out strangled little u-huh's every couple of minutes.
He takes a deep gulp off his beer as soon as it arrives, winks at the waitress with barely contained disinterest.
"I'll have that wrap to go," Sam tells her before she can place his plate in front of him.
She looks annoyed for a second, but one glance at Dean's complexion that has gone from chalk-white to pale green in the course of two seconds is enough to have her face melt into a good-natured, mothering smile. "You got it," she says with one final pitying look in Dean's direction and saunters off to get a doggy bag.
Dean keeps apologizing for ruining Sam's night until he finally passes out on the couch.
:: :: ::
Dean is staring up at the ceiling. It still feels strange, sleeping on his back. Every time he closes his eyes he has to tell his body to keep breathing. A pillow smashed against his nose is the last thing he needs.
He thinks about the small plastic bag he keeps stuffed into his spare pare of boots.
60$ for an eighth. Prices in Palo Alto are freaking ridiculous.
:: :: ::
Sam keeps rattlin' on and on about some college bar he wants to go to.
"You're barely twenty," Dean mumbles. Feels like they're back in that crappy apartment in Nebraska and Dean is coming up with bullshit reasons why they can't go and see Jurassic Park.
Except it's nothing like that, because this time Dean's heart isn't in it and Sam can see right through his crap, like maybe he took a course in that or something. Or maybe Dean's just gotten worse at the bullshitting part.
"You bought me my first beer when I was thirteen."
"Well, I apologize for being such an irresponsible older brother."
"I...I'm...c'mon, I didn't..."
Sam is stammering and Dean rubs two fingers along the bridge of his nose. "I just wanna stay in tonight," he says softly. The persistent ache right between his eyes is quickly building, throbbing and pulsing and burning until it's the only thing he can focus on.
Sam lets out a heavy sigh, slumps down on the couch next to Dean. "There'll be Kappa Gammas," he tries, a hopeful grin lighting up his face and Dean feels the headache spread. "Whaddaya say? You were always talking about drunk co-eds."
Dean sighs. His tongue shoots out to wet his dry lips.
"C'mon, man. Take some Tylenol and get up."
Dean is way past Tylenol. Stuff stopped working weeks ago.
:: :: ::
Dean is going through his duffel, looking for his old, faded-grey Led Zeppelin T-shirt when Sam turns on the TV and Dean's entire body jerks at the loud, obnoxious laugh track that's suddenly filling the room.
The bag slides from his fingers, his hands trembling, like he's in the middle of having a panic attack.
"What're you doing?" Sam calls from the couch and suddenly Dean's fingers grow heavy and jittery and with every piece he stuffs back into his duffel, two more slide past his clammy grasp.
"Nuh-" his breath catches in his throat as he's falling to his knees, scrambling to stuff everything back into his duffel. "Nothin'. Just dropped some stuff, I'll...I uh..."
It used to be easy to lie to Sam. Dean could do it in his sleep, come up with bullshit stories about why Dad wasn't home yet and why he wasn't eating more than a spoon full of cereal at time, but now his knees are throbbing from the hard drop on the floor and his mind is slowing down and he just can't.
"Dean?"
Sam is standing above him. Dean still isn't used to his baby brother moving around like a tornado, flying from one end of the apartment to the next with a speed Dean can only dream of.
"What's this?" Sam asks as he picks up an almost empty orange bottle. His eyes are drawing into slits, staring down at Dean.
"You can read," Dean growls hoarsely. Fear and anger twirl around each other, pulse through his body, weigh down his legs and arms until his breathing gets heavy.
"What do you need Vicodin for?" Sam asks in that way he used to ask Dad about his drinking.
"Newsflash, Sammy," Dean snaps irritably. "Sometimes I get hurt."
Sam just keeps looking at him. Without even trying he's putting together the pieces Dean himself can't ever hope to understand in the first place.
Sam's hand shoots forward, grabbing the small bag by Dean's feet. "Okay," he says with an angry huff. "What do you need this for?"
Dean avoids his brother's accusatory glare, focuses on the small bag of weed that's dangling from his fingers instead.
Sometimes I hurt.
:: :: ::
Sam finds Dean at the bottom of the second story stairwell. His arms wrapped around his drawn up knees, head pulled between his legs.
A shudder runs through Dean's entire body and Sam flies up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. His book bag slides off his shoulder, falls back down until it crashes into the far wall.
"Dean?" Sam pants, panic starting to close up his throat.
He touches Dean's heaving shoulder, immediately pulls back his hand when Dean escapes a pained whimper.
Sam curses under his breath, both hands hovering over his brother's back. "Fuck, Dean, what's wrong?"
"Hurts," Dean pants out in between desperate gulps of air.
He raises his head until he can focus glassy, red-rimmed eyes on Sam. Sweat is pouring down his forehead, his hair slick and dark against his forehead, his pupils dilated to the point where Sam can barely make out any trace of green.
Sam's hands fly for his jeans pocket. He fumbles with his cell phone, tries to punch in the number without moving his eyes from Dean's scared face.
"What..." Dean asks. His right arm moves to still Sam's hands, but falls back down when Dean has to bite back another yelp. "Don'needadoctor."
Sam seriously doubts that.
"I'll be f-fine. Jus'..."
He starts moving his head left and right and Sam's heart speeds up until it's about ready to jump out of his chest. This isn't supposed to be happening. This isn't Dean.
The phone slides from his fingers, his hands already shivering almost as bad as Dean's.
"Sammy?" Dean's voice stumbles over the word, his arm moves again until his fingers settle on top of Sam's, both their palms slick with sweat. "'m...'m gonna be okay. Jus' go upstairs 'n get my duffel."
He doesn't say what it is he needs, painkillers or pot and Sam is glad he doesn't know when he stumbles up the stairs to his dorm.
:: :: ::
"Does Dad know about this?" Sam asks that night when they're sprawled on the couch, beer bottles lining up in front of them.
Dean doesn't meet his eyes, starts twisting the bottle in his hands until the label gets stuck under his fingernails.
Pull yourself together, boy.
You're no good to me like this.
If you don't wanna pull your own weight nobody's stoppin' you from leaving.
"Said to lay low for a while," he says quietly. "'Till I'm back on my feet."
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Sam studying him.
Dean takes another deep gulp of off his El Sol.
His cell phone has been silent for days now. Even Bobby's given up. Figures they'd stop looking for him eventually.
:: :: ::
"Dean?" Sam asks carefully. He's brooding over his laptop. Some new, slender thing that's nothing like the heavy piece of crap Sam tried to talk Dad into buying at that garage sale. "Do you have unusually painful bowel movements?"
"Do I have what?"
"Well, do you?"
Dean feels his entire face curl up in disgust. "I'm not talking to you about my shit."
Sam just shrugs and turns back to his computer. A pen is bobbing up and down on the frayed legal paper by his right arm. Dean steps close enough to make out a couple of neat lists. CFS. Fybromyaglia. Chronic Depression.
"What'cha doin'?" he asks with a big, casual smile plastered all over his face.
Sam meets his eyes for about half a second before he looks back at the glowing screen. "Have you ever heard of CFS?"
"Some new drug you college kids've been messin' with?"
It hurts to keep the smile in place.
"It's a medical disorder," Sam explains quietly. His eyes are running up and down one of his little lists now, focusing on everything except for Dean. "It's uh...the most common symptoms are chronic exhaustion, un-refreshing sleep, uh...muscles weakness. You got all those, don't you?"
"What're you saying?" Dean rasps. He is surprised how calm his voice comes out, when on the inside he is screaming and raging and he wants nothing more than to walk over there and punch Sam in the face.
"I'm just..." Sam is squirming in his seat now, his right index finger taping away just next to Shortness of Breath. "Something's wrong with you."
"Oh, fuck you."
"No, no, I'm not saying..." Sam runs a slightly unsteady hand through his hair. Kid need's a haircut.
"Well, keep it that way," Dean growls and stiffly makes his way back to the couch.
:: :: ::
Sometimes he wakes up and isn't sure if he's still alive.
He has to feel deep down into his chest to make sure he heart is still beating and by the time he finds his pulse his lungs are burning because he has forgotten to breathe.
Sometimes he wakes up and knows he isn't dead because every part of his body is screaming at him, pulsing and burning and begging him to make the pain go away.
He misses those moments when he thinks he is dead.
:: :: ::
"Something's not right," Dean mumbles quietly into his red curry.
It's days after Sam first brought it up the disorder idea and they've both been pretending it never happened.
"Okay," Sam says. He has a small veggie egg-roll spiked on his fork, hovering halfway between the take-out box and his mouth. "We'll get you help."