Catching up...
... on contributions to the hoodie_time fever-themed comment-fic meme--and posting all of them in this post so as not to spam anyone. I'm still debating whether to repost my ohsam comment-fics as well, but these are ones I definitely want to share. All gen, all PG for language, no real spoilers.
First, a piece that had been unfinished for a couple of years until maypoles requested feverish!Dean getting overly emotional while watching TV--in this case, the culprit is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (Do I need to warn for spoilers for LWW? Italicized text is adapted from the book to the BBC version; there's also one out-of-context quote from Voyage of the Dawn Treader.)
Entertaining Angels
December 23, 2009
It was Castiel’s turn to rent something to watch, as Dean was fighting an upper respiratory virus, Sam was in a funk, and both had agreed that there was nothing on worth watching. The three-stoplight Texas town where they’d stopped didn’t have a Blockbuster, but the local video store didn’t look too sketchy, so sticking his hand in his coat pocket and fingering the handful of bills Dean had given him, Castiel straightened his shoulders and went in. He’d chosen movies a time or two before with minimal instruction from Dean; he could do this.
“No,” whined a female voice as he walked through the door. “They’re kids’ movies, and I don’t like allegories.”
“It’s not an allegory!” replied another exasperated female voice. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s suppositional representational fantasy.”
Castiel blinked-he’d heard that phrase before. He glanced around and saw two young women, roughly Dean and Sam’s age, among the older DVDs. Curious, he made his way toward them.
“Easy for you to say,” groused the first voice, which belonged to a thin red-haired woman dressed according to the latest fashion. “You’re an English prof.”
“That has nothing to do with it!” cried the other woman, a blonde who looked oddly like Ingrid Bergmann in Casablanca. “All you have to do is read the books to see the difference!”
“And anyway, the visual effects are stupid.”
“They were made for TV in the ’80s. They’re still closer to the books than the Disney version.” She caught sight of Castiel and nodded in greeting.
“No,” came the stubborn reply. “I’d rather watch something else.”
“Like what?”
“... I dunno....”
The English professor rolled her eyes. Art majors, she mouthed to Castiel. Aloud she said, “Look, why don’t we make a day of it tomorrow and have our own Trilogy Tuesday?”
“No!” the red-head frowned. “Twelve hours of hobbits? Bo-ring.”
The blonde was simmering now. “Fine. You’ve got five minutes to pick something before I make you watch The Longest Day and Patton back to back. And no romantic comedies unless it’s got Cary Grant in or it’s something like Stardust.”
The red-head stomped off to the newer releases.
“Sister?” Castiel asked as he approached the blonde.
“Cousin,” she sighed. “I get spoiled having other Inklings fans around at school who actually understand these things.” She looked wistfully at the DVD set labeled The Chronicles of Narnia. “I have these on VHS, but I didn’t think to bring ’em down with me. Guess I should have.”
Castiel tilted his head and regarded her closely. “You enjoy them?”
She nodded. “Sure, the visuals are cheesy sometimes, and some of the actors are pretty over-the-top, and they did abridge Caspian a little too much... but there’s so much deep-seated theology in the books that the new versions just don’t seem to catch, and this version does. Spiritual comfort food, but no empty calories.” She in turn regarded Castiel closely. “You ever seen them before?”
“No,” Castiel admitted, looking at the box, “and I don’t think the friends I’m with have, either. How long are they?”
“Nine hours total. Three three-parters.” She paused. “Look, don’t ask me how I know this... but I think your friends need to see these. Call it a hunch, call it a word from the Lord....”
Castiel looked at her sharply. “You believe in such things?”
She seemed ready to apologize, but something flickered in her eyes that sent a sudden pang of homesickness through Castiel, and she stood a bit straighter. “Yes. I do. And I’ll tell you what else I believe.” She placed a gentle hand on Castiel’s shoulder and whispered, “‘Above all shadows rides the Sun / and Stars forever dwell; / I will not say the Day is done / nor bid the Stars farewell.’”
Castiel took a deep breath and nodded. “Thank you.”
She smiled and released him, then dug something out of the pocket of her own trench coat. “Here’s something else they might like,” she said, placing a small fabric bundle in his hand. It crinkled, and he opened it to find that it held several packets of tea. “Not many things better than literature and tea on a cold wet evening. Unless, of course, you add a dog and a roaring fire,” she added with a twinkle.
“Dean is ill,” Castiel confessed. “He doesn’t normally drink tea, but I think it would help him tonight. Again, I thank you.”
“Hey, you know anything about this Stargate: Continuum?” the red-head called.
The blonde’s eyes glittered deviously. “Excuse me,” she murmured to Castiel, then left.
Castiel looked again at the DVD set. He had met “Jack” Lewis once but heard him spoken of repeatedly, had heard countless redeemed souls mention this series as one that had set them on the path to salvation. Maybe this was what they needed, if only for the refreshment of their spirits.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he snatched the card and headed to the rental counter.
Both brothers were asleep when Castiel returned to the hotel, having finished the brisket he had brought them from across town before going to the video store. It took a call to Bobby for him to figure out how to heat plain water in the little coffee pot that was in the room, but by the time the sound and smell of popping corn roused Sam, he had succeeded in fixing a mug of tea for each of them and one for himself.
“Cas?” Sam said groggily as he sat up. “What’d you bring us?”
“I believe it is called suppositional representational fantasy,” Castiel replied, handing Sam the mug with Earl Grey. “Also tea.”
Sam raised a skeptical eyebrow but took the mug without protest. Castiel crossed to the other bed and shook Dean’s shoulder, which elicited an unintelligible groan cut off by a horrible coughing fit. Sam was halfway around Dean’s bed before Castiel could call him for help, and together they got Dean propped up at an angle that eased his breathing. As soon as Dean had caught his breath, Castiel pressed the mug of tea into his hand, and Dean gulped half of it down right away.
“Yech... I can’t taste a thing,” Dean wheezed. “What is this?”
“Lemon tea,” Castiel answered. When Dean stared at him, he continued, “You need Vitamin C, and I understand strong black tea contains a bronchiodilator as well as anti-inflammatories.”
Dean blinked and looked at Sam.
“Drink it,” Sam ordered. “It’s good for you.”
Dean grumbled and took another drink.
Satisfied, Castiel turned his attention to hooking Sam’s computer up to the TV. Dean had talked Sam into installing the right kind of connector just a few weeks before.
“You okay?” Sam asked quietly behind him.
“I’ll live,” Dean croaked.
“Cas brought popcorn. You gonna want any?”
“Nah. Thanks. Couldn’t taste it anyway, and with my luck, I’d start coughing and choke.” As if to prove his point, his attempt at a chuckle came out as a wheeze.
Sam’s “Okay” was barely audible.
Dean’s voice dropped an octave below its normal low register. “Hey. This ain’t your fault. Okay?”
Castiel turned just in time to see Sam nod glumly and get up to go back to his own bed.
“Cas?” Dean shot the angel a meaningful look.
Castiel retrieved the bag of popcorn from the microwave and presented it to Sam. When Sam looked away, Castiel said kindly but firmly, “I do not care for popcorn. I bought it for you.”
Sam looked back at Castiel, sighed, and took the popcorn bag from him. “Okay. Thanks.”
Castiel smiled and handed him the TV remote as well, then put the first DVD, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, into the computer’s DVD drive. By the time Sam got the TV turned to the right channel, Castiel had maneuvered past the opening menus and started the movie.
Castiel was still adjusting to having emotions, but no human language had a fitting word for the feeling that swept over him when the majestic French horn theme began. He very nearly burst into tears, but the theme was too short-and oddly enough, he sensed the same about Dean. When he glanced over at Dean, however, Dean had, with slight difficulty, stifled his desire to cry.
“Are you familiar with this movie, Dean?” Castiel asked.
Dean shrugged. “I think I saw it when I was nine.”
“Really?” Sam asked around a mouthful of popcorn. “Where was I?”
“Asleep, probably.”
Castiel took a drink of tea, savoring the variety of flavors in it before turning his attention fully to the screen. He was slightly confused as to why the story was beginning with four siblings on a train leaving London, given that the cover of the set bore a picture of the two girls riding a flying lion, but he kept his questions to himself and soon picked up where the story was headed once the eldest boy, Peter, suggested exploring the large house where they were staying. After that, at least for the next fifteen minutes or so, it seemed a straightforward fantasy adventure, so it surprised him when the youngest girl, Lucy, began crying over her siblings’ refusal to believe her story and he started hearing sympathetic sniffles from Dean.
“Dude,” said Sam, “are you crying?!”
“Shuddup,” Dean croaked. “That was you once upon a time.”
“Like you wouldn’t have gone off to have tea with a faun at that age.”
“Dude, shut. up.” And Dean sniffled again.
They left their banter there for the moment and kept watching... until the white-faced woman in the sleigh started offering the younger brother, Edmund, a hot drink and Turkish delight, and Sam started to squirm, more inwardly than outwardly. And then, toward the end of the first hour, there was an exchange between the brothers that sounded terribly familiar:
“Shouldn’t we be going that way,” began Edmund presently, “if we’re heading for the lamp-post?” He had forgotten for the moment that he must pretend never to have been in the wood before. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized that he had given himself away. Everyone stopped; everyone stared at him.
“So you were here,” Peter said, “and all the time you made out that Lucy was telling lies.”
There was a dead silence. “Of all the poisonous little beasts-” said Peter, and turned away and said no more. There seemed, indeed, no more to say, and presently the four resumed their journey; but Edmund was saying to himself, “I’ll pay you all out for this, you pack of stuck-up, self-satisfied prigs.”
And then they discovered that Edmund’s conversation with the White Witch had led to the faun’s arrest for treason.
Dean’s pain and anger at Sam’s betrayal was very close to the surface now, although he had genuinely tried to forgive and move on. Castiel glanced over at him and saw more tears spilling down his fever-flushed cheeks, tears that he would never have shed if he weren’t ill. And Sam looked like his guilt was trying to eat him alive. Castiel wondered whether this movie had been such a wise choice after all.
Most of the second hour was much the same, aside from piquing Castiel’s curiosity about the mysterious lion Aslan. Peter’s attitude and Edmund’s behavior and internal dialogue continued to mirror Dean and Sam uncomfortably well, down to Peter’s “All the same, he is our brother, even if he is rather a little beast. We have to go and look for him.” Castiel sensed rather than saw the awkward look that passed between Sam and Dean at that moment.
“I loved these books as a kid,” Sam confessed quietly during a part where the characters were traveling and not talking. “I never....” He sighed, unable to finish the thought.
Dean didn’t respond. But toward the end of the second hour, he was gripped by a terrible coughing fit, and when Sam crawled onto his bed to support him and rub his back, he stiffened only for a moment before allowing the touch. When the fit passed, Dean was too weak to do anything but slump against Sam. They were still sitting like that at the beginning of the third hour, when the children finally met Aslan.
“But where is the fourth child?” asked Aslan.
“O Aslan, he has tried to betray them. He has joined the White Witch,” said Mr. Beaver. And then something made Peter say,
“That was partly my fault, Aslan. I was angry with him and I’m sure that helped him to go wrong.”
And Aslan said nothing either to excuse Peter or to blame him but merely stood looking at him with his great unchanging eyes. And it seemed to all of them that there was nothing to be said.
“Please-Aslan,” said Lucy, “can anything be done to save Edmund?”
“All shall be done,” said Aslan. “But it may be more difficult than any of you can imagine.”
And Dean burst into tears.
“Aw, Dean,” whispered Sam brokenly, pulling Dean closer and letting him simply sob into his shoulder.
Dean’s tears had pretty well subsided by the time Peter had to fight the werewolf, but he kept sniffling through Edmund’s rescue, and he didn’t move away from Sam. And then:
When the other children woke up next morning (they had been sleeping on piles of cushions in the pavilion) the first thing they heard-from Mrs. Beaver-was that their brother had been rescued and brought into camp late last night; and was at that moment with Aslan. As soon as they had breakfasted they all went out, and there they saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court. There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation that Edmund never forgot. As the others drew nearer Aslan turned to meet them, bringing Edmund with him.
“Here is your brother,” he said, nudging Edmund forward, “and-there is no need to talk about what is past.”
Edmund shook hands with each of the others and said to each of them in turn, “I’m sorry”-and Castiel could just hear Sam whispering the same thing miserably to Dean.
“Sammy,” Dean whispered back, in much the same tone as Lucy was saying “Edmund!” as she hugged him-a tone that held far more love and forgiveness than the word itself could easily convey. And Castiel didn’t have to look to know that both brothers were crying now.
As soon as the White Witch showed up to talk to Aslan, Castiel finally understood what the English professor had meant by ‘suppositional representational fantasy’-supposing there were a world wherein creatures of legend not only existed (as they did in this reality) but were the majority (as they were in Narnia), Messiah might well take the form of a great lion in that world. But he found himself distracted from the revelation by the fact that Sam and Dean kept clinging to each other and sniffling... even sobbing outright during the night scene at the Stone Table. He could feel Dean’s fever climbing, and Dean’s defenses seemed to fall proportionately further; Sam, too, seemed more physically and emotionally exhausted than Castiel had realized after Carthage. Neither could keep the grief and remorse bottled up any longer. And not even the happy ending and the transformation of Edmund from bratty little brother to King Edmund the Just seemed to help much, since both brothers evidently wondered whether Sam would have to echo Edmund’s daring to break the Witch’s wand and his resulting brush with death to end the Apocalypse and redeem himself.
As the final credits rolled, Dean shivered and mumbled, “My fault, Aslan... ’m sorry, Sammy....”
“You were only an ass,” Sam replied sadly, and Castiel got the sense that he was quoting another book from the same series. “But I was a traitor.”
“Still m’brother, Sasquatch.”
“Jerk.”
“B-tzchoo!” The name was cut off by a violent sneeze, and Sam wasn’t able to dodge.
“GAH! Dean!!”
Dean deliberately wiped his nose on Sam’s shirt. Sam pretended more disgust than he actually felt. Dean grinned shakily... and suddenly the atmosphere felt much, much lighter.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, the writer of Hebrews had admonished his audience, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. But sometimes, Castiel reflected, something even greater than showing hospitality to an angel happened. Sometimes the right word from the right person made possible a miracle that no one else could recognize. And this measure of healing that Castiel could never give his friends through his own power? That was a miracle in his book.
Next, a sequel to Semper Fi, inspired by The King's Surgeon by surgicalsteel, for roque_clasique's prompt for feverish!permantently-injured!Dean forgetting his injury.
Phantoms
It was inevitable, Sam supposed. Now that Cas was no longer hanging around to keep the germs at bay, Dean was bound to catch something. They were just lucky it appeared to be a plain old garden-variety virus that would run its course in a matter of days and leave him not too much the worse for wear, too vanilla even to diagnose more precisely, and not something exotic like MRSA that would be hard to treat and could seriously hinder his ongoing recovery from the IED attack.
Unfortunately for Dean, the fever had gone on beyond zebra and was now pushing 104°. He wasn’t hallucinating that Sam knew of, but he wasn’t too with it, either, and sometimes his rambles got pretty funny, like the long one on Star Trek vs. Star Wars. The fact that he appealed to Jess for backup, even though Jess had no preference for either one, only made Sam laugh more. So it wasn’t too surprising when, in the course of watching TV in his bedroom, Dean tried to reach for the remote with his non-existent left hand and missed. Sam chuckled at Dean’s confused frown. Then Dean tried again, more deliberately, and missed again. Looking deeply disturbed, he tried and failed a third time.
Sam started to laugh. Dean started to scream.
Jess was at Dean’s side in a flash. “Dean? Dean, what is it? Talk to me.”
Dean’s eyes were fever-glazed and wild with terror. “I c-c-can’t... it w-went through my hand... J-Jess? What... why can’t I touch anything?” His voice rose hysterically. “What the hell kind of curse is this?!”
Sam guffawed.
Jess spun and glared at him, furious. “Out.”
“What? It’s-”
“OUT!”
“Okay, fine...” Sam conceded and left the room, closing the door behind him as Jess murmured soothing words to Dean that Sam couldn’t quite make out. And he stayed in the hall until she apparently got Dean calmed down and slipped quietly out of the room.
Her jaw clenched as soon as she saw him standing there. “It’s not funny, Sam,” she said quietly. “Phantom limb is a real phenomenon; the brain doesn’t always remember that a limb is missing and sometimes reacts as if it’s still there. He can probably still feel that hand even on a good day-maybe it’ll itch or hurt, maybe he thinks he’s drumming his fingers on the table. It’s disorienting enough without the fever, when he’s lucid enough to recognize that he can’t touch things with that hand because it’s gone and maybe even to laugh at himself for forgetting. Knowing the things you’ve hunted?” She shook her head. “He couldn’t figure out if he was out of phase or a ghost or what. Your laughing at him won’t help matters.”
Sam blinked. “He seriously felt like the remote went through his hand?!”
“Seriously.”
Sam tried to imagine what that would feel like and suddenly felt sick with guilt. “You’re right. That isn’t funny. Is... is he okay now?”
“Calmer. You can probably help him more than I can, though. You’ve known him longer. Sometimes massaging the stump helps, too, and I don’t think he’d accept that from me.”
Sam nodded. “Thanks for setting me straight.”
She kissed his cheek and went on to the living room, leaving Sam to steel himself to go in and face Dean again.
Dean was perilously close to tears when Sam walked in. “M’hand won’t work, Sammy,” he sniffled, making Sam feel like even more of a heel. “Why won’t m’hand work?”
Sam sat down on the edge of the bed, to Dean’s left. He hated seeing his big brother like this. “It got infected when you were in Germany, remember? They had to cut it off.”
Dean’s forehead crinkled in a confused frown. “Sammy?”
“Does it hurt?”
Dean nodded. “Aches, kind of. I... I think I’m sick, Sam.”
“Yeah. It’ll be okay, though.” Without really thinking, Sam laid a hand on Dean’s arm, just above the stump, and began massaging the muscle with his thumb.
Dean made a funny high-pitched groaning noise in the back of his throat, and his eyes slid shut.
“Dean? Am I hurting you?”
Dean shook his head. “No, ’s good, keep... nnnngh.”
So Sam kept kneading, trying to ignore his dismay at the heat pouring from Dean’s skin and the flush of his cheeks. And although he kept his voice low, Dean let loose with a string of profanity that left no doubt as to his having been in the Marines for two years before his injury, including some particularly colorful expressions in Arabic that he’d probably picked up from the interpreters. Sam knew those mainly from having made a few Arab-American friends at Stanford. There were one or two that he didn’t recognize, though, and he assumed those must have been Kurdish.
He was absurdly glad that Jess wasn’t in the room. She’d probably heard worse, but some old-fashioned part of his mind still wanted to keep her sheltered from things like rough language and the obscene wisecrack Dean was likely to make when Sam finished because he didn’t think he could say what he really felt. Perils of being a Winchester, Sam thought with a fleeting grimace.
But the off-color joke never came. Instead, when Sam finished, Dean slumped against him and mumbled, “Y’r awesome, Sammy. Thanks.”
“Want some ice cream?”
“’Kay. ’S hot in here. ’M I sick? I think I’m sick.”
“Yeah, Dean. You’re sick. But we’re here, me and Jess. We’ll get you through this.”
“’N Dad?”
Sam sighed. “I don’t know where Dad is. He’s back to not answering his phone.”
Dean started sniffling again. “’S gonna get himself killed, Sammy... ’s gonna get killed and we’re not gonna know....”
Sam started rubbing Dean’s shoulder. “Hey. Cas is still out there, right? Maybe Cas is looking after Dad.” They hadn’t heard from the angel in a couple of months, either, but the argument from silence worked both ways. Dean wasn’t with it enough to realize it was a fallacy in either form.
And sure enough, Dean nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. Hope so. Don’ want Dad to die.”
“Ice cream?”
Dean nodded again.
Sam eased him back against the pillows that had been propping him up. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
“Love you, Sammy,” Dean murmured as his eyes slid shut again.
“Love you, too, Dean,” Sam whispered back, running a hand through the hair that was finally starting to look more like his brother’s usual style. Then he left the room quietly and hurried to the kitchen to fill a bowl with chocolate ice cream.
Somehow it didn’t surprise him that by the time he got back, Dean was chatting quietly with someone who wasn’t there, even tried to introduce Sam to the guy-a member of Dean’s unit who’d been killed in Fallujah. The apartment was too well warded for it to be an actual ghost, so it had to be a hallucination. Sam alerted Jess once Dean finished his ice cream and fell asleep, and both of them took the next day off from work because they suspected-rightly-that the hallucinations would only get scarier as the fever dredged up memories of hunts gone awry and terrible moments from Iraq. It took both of them to still Dean’s flailing limbs long enough to get him through ice baths, coax him into taking Tylenol, and keep him calm enough that he didn’t wake up the whole building with his screams.
Finally, though, the fever broke, and Sam was beyond relieved to see his brother’s eyes focus on him, sparkling with their normal intelligence and good humor.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean whispered with a tired smile.
“Hey,” Sam whispered back. “Feeling better?”
Dean nodded. “Beat to hell, but at least I’m not burning up anymore.”
Sam sighed. “That’s a relief.”
Dean started to reach for Sam with his left hand, then caught himself and patted Sam’s arm with his right hand. “Thanks, dude. Guess I was pretty out of it for a while there.”
“Is... does your hand....”
Dean looked down and moved his stump like he was turning the hand over. “Still kind of aches.” Then he frowned. “You did something the other day... felt really good, whatever it was.”
“Would you like me to....”
“If... yeah.”
Sam gingerly wrapped his hand around the stump and began massaging gently, and Dean let out a groan of pure pleasure and began making the kinds of wisecracks that both disgusted and relieved Sam. That, more than anything, convinced him that Dean really was on the mend.
Maybe not every phantom could be dispatched with a salt and burn, but Sam felt better knowing that he could help Dean keep at least a few even of those at bay.
And finally, a slightly timeline-warped crossover with SGA Vegas-verse, for honeylocusttree's prompt for Dean-with-a-normal-life having feverish hallucinations of demons, etc. Companion piece to Nevada Fox.
The Fox and the Hound
Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm,
I know,
Been that way for all my time...
It's been this way all their lives, since Dean was four years old. Every time he has a fever--every time--the hallucinations start.
No, Daddy, I don' wanna move... Sammy's just made friends... we got a baseball game Saturday, Daddy, please let us stay a few more days...
I'm sorry, Dad, I s-sh-sh-shouldn'ta gone to the arcade... is Sammy okay? The, the shtriga didn't hurt him, right?
Mommy, Mommy, I miss you so much, why'd you have to die....
Mom wasn't dead. Dad never forced them to move. Nobody'd ever heard of a shtriga or half of the other things that showed up in Dean's fever dreams. And nobody knew why Dean got these spells. At first they only embarrassed Sam, but the older Dean got, the worse the dreams got, and the more worried Sam got--so worried, in fact, that he turned down Stanford in favor of going to the police academy with Dean there in Lawrence because a dangerously feverish Dean pleaded with him not to leave. Sam thought then that maybe ensuring that their world was nothing like the hallucinations would make them stop.
It hasn't. Not even moving to Las Vegas has. They've only gotten worse in the last three years, and they've had zilch to do with the nightmarish stuff the brothers have seen as homicide investigators. And Sam thinks it's only the grace of God that's kept Dean from turning into an anti-social functional mute like Sheppard.
Just yesterday, in fact, Sam found himself spilling his guts about Dean's latest bout of flu--dude has the worst immune system, seriously--to Keller, the new assistant ME. Why, he had no clue. He doesn't even like her all that much, and even if he did think she was attractive, she's got something going with that new FBI agent, McKay. But she is a doctor, and Dean had been raving about demons and hellhounds and killing Lilith, pleading with Sam not to use his powers (!!) to get him out of some kind of deal, and Sam... just didn't know what to do anymore. Keller listened sympathetically and told him to call if Dean got any worse; she knew of a place out in the desert where he might be able to get some help.
Dean's worse, all right. He's convinced he has hours to live, and the shivering he's doing isn't all from the chills. Every time the dog down the street barked, Dean flinched. So Sam called, and now he's following Keller's directions through the starlit desert, CCR on the Impala's stereo and Dean curled up beside him on the front seat, a quivering ball of feverish fear.
When it's over, so they say,
It'll rain a sunny day,
I know,
Shining down like water...
Suddenly the headlights fall on what looks like an old man with long white hair and black clothes crouched by the side of the road. He doesn't seem to be in much better shape than Dean is, and Sam gets the sense that he really needs help. So, against his better judgment, he pulls over, checks his sidearm, and opens the door.
Dean's teeth are chattering. "S-S-Sammy... c-careful... d-d-d-don't listen to Ruby... can't trust demons...."
"I'll be careful, Dean, I promise," Sam whispers, running a hand through Dean's hair before he slides out of the car.
It's quiet out tonight, and dark; there's not even a moon for the coyotes to howl at, which makes Sam glad. He doesn't think Dean could handle hearing coyotes right now. As it is, the loudest sound he can hear is the gravel crunching under his feet as he makes his way down the shoulder to the spot where the old man is hunched against the desert wind, seemingly freezing despite his elaborate leather coat, his skin grey in the headlights.
"Sir?" Sam says, gently putting a hand on the man's shoulder. "Would you come with me, please? I can get you some help--" He breaks off with a gasp when the man slowly lifts his head and Sam gets a good look at his face.
Yellow, reptilian eyes. Shiny grey skin with prominent veins. Holes that look like nostrils on his cheeks. No eyebrows, but a starburst tattoo around his left eye. A patch of white beard beneath a mouth full of sharp teeth. But whatever it is--it, not he, it's not human, it can't be--it's clearly not well; its eyes look glazed, and it shivers beneath Sam's hand.
"I hunger," it rasps in a harsh, distorted whisper.
Sam swallows and resists the urge to put a bullet in the thing's brain. "Come with me, then. We'll get you some food."
Its right hand flexes as it stands slowly, looking at Sam and sniffing a little like a cat. Then it chuckles weakly. "No. I will take nothing from you--it would be... ungracious."
Sam blinks. "I can't just leave you here."
"No. I will come... Sam Winchester."
Sam's eyes fly wide open, and he recoils a step. "How do you know my name?"
It chuckles a little again. "They say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
And suddenly Sam hears Dean staggering up behind him. "S-Sammy... Wraith...." He says the word like he's trying to warn Sam not to step on a rattlesnake.
The not-man--the Wraith?--makes a little noise like a harsh hiss. "He knows. He sees."
Sam frowns at it as Dean stumbles into him, catching his brother without looking. Dean's burning up; it's a wonder he has the strength to stand at all. "Are you saying... my brother's psychic?"
"After a fashion," it replies, stepping closer, its hand still flexing. "Other worlds. But he is dying. I can help... but I hunger...."
"Sammy, no," Dean breathes.
Sam swallows. "Do what you have to."
It pulls open his shirt--good thing the shirt has snaps!--and slams its right hand onto Sam's chest, and for a moment all Sam knows is searing pain and Dean screaming in his ear. Then the pain stops and the Wraith backs away, looking better but making a visible effort to stop himself from taking more of whatever he took from Sam. It pants harshly a couple of times, then advances on Dean, who struggles in Sam's grasp but can't get away before the same hand makes contact with Dean's chest. Dean cries out... but the fever breaks, and the Wraith backs off, looking slightly the worse for wear.
"What the hell did you do?" Dean demands, sounding breathless but lucid.
"Brothers... you would give your lives for each other," the Wraith replies, sounding oddly gentle. "I simply... performed a transfusion."
Then it collapses.
Dean helps Sam get it into the back seat of the Impala, and they go on to the place Keller told Sam to go to get help for Dean, which turns out to be Area 51. Keller's actually waiting for them when they get there, and a bunch of Marines hustle the Wraith away while Keller runs tests to figure out what's going on with Dean. Her best theory is that, like the Wraith suggested, Dean is mildly psychic in a way that allows him to see into other realities when he's feverish, and the Wraith apparently took five years off Sam's life and gave three of them to Dean. The thing's an alien, one of a race of space vampires (at least that's Dean's summary of Keller's explanation). It may or may not have fixed Dean's immune system; it's too early to tell.
Three days later, the FBI insists that they transfer to Colorado Springs. A few months after that, they hear through the grapevine that Sheppard was killed in the line of duty, chasing down a serial killer. They go back for the funeral, but nobody else seems to actually mourn the poor guy, and Dean resents that on Shep's behalf. Sure, Shep had his problems, but Dean knows there's another reality where they were the ones living in their classic car and hunting down monsters no one else knew about. And he wasn't that bad of a guy if you got past the silence.
A month or two after that, Dean catches a cold. Sam finds him in the bathroom, paused in the middle of rubbing Mentholatum on his chest to stare at the scar the Wraith had left behind, five finger points and a long slash from the slit in its palm. Sam's the only one who ever gets to see that scar; he's got one just like it.
"Dean?" Sam asks quietly. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Dean returns. "I still... I still see it sometimes, Sam. It's still there. But I think... I like Todd better than Cas. Todd got it, y'know? Cas doesn't, not yet." And he rubs at his left deltoid and shivers a little.
"Doesn't get what?"
Dean meets his eyes. "You and me. That we'd give our lives for each other, no matter what. We might go at it completely the wrong way--"
"Dean--"
"--but we're family, right? We save each other. That's what we do."
Sam pulls his shivering, sniffling brother into a hug. Apparently that's one constant in both realities. "Yeah. We do."
I wanna know,
Have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day?
First, a piece that had been unfinished for a couple of years until maypoles requested feverish!Dean getting overly emotional while watching TV--in this case, the culprit is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (Do I need to warn for spoilers for LWW? Italicized text is adapted from the book to the BBC version; there's also one out-of-context quote from Voyage of the Dawn Treader.)
Entertaining Angels
December 23, 2009
It was Castiel’s turn to rent something to watch, as Dean was fighting an upper respiratory virus, Sam was in a funk, and both had agreed that there was nothing on worth watching. The three-stoplight Texas town where they’d stopped didn’t have a Blockbuster, but the local video store didn’t look too sketchy, so sticking his hand in his coat pocket and fingering the handful of bills Dean had given him, Castiel straightened his shoulders and went in. He’d chosen movies a time or two before with minimal instruction from Dean; he could do this.
“No,” whined a female voice as he walked through the door. “They’re kids’ movies, and I don’t like allegories.”
“It’s not an allegory!” replied another exasperated female voice. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s suppositional representational fantasy.”
Castiel blinked-he’d heard that phrase before. He glanced around and saw two young women, roughly Dean and Sam’s age, among the older DVDs. Curious, he made his way toward them.
“Easy for you to say,” groused the first voice, which belonged to a thin red-haired woman dressed according to the latest fashion. “You’re an English prof.”
“That has nothing to do with it!” cried the other woman, a blonde who looked oddly like Ingrid Bergmann in Casablanca. “All you have to do is read the books to see the difference!”
“And anyway, the visual effects are stupid.”
“They were made for TV in the ’80s. They’re still closer to the books than the Disney version.” She caught sight of Castiel and nodded in greeting.
“No,” came the stubborn reply. “I’d rather watch something else.”
“Like what?”
“... I dunno....”
The English professor rolled her eyes. Art majors, she mouthed to Castiel. Aloud she said, “Look, why don’t we make a day of it tomorrow and have our own Trilogy Tuesday?”
“No!” the red-head frowned. “Twelve hours of hobbits? Bo-ring.”
The blonde was simmering now. “Fine. You’ve got five minutes to pick something before I make you watch The Longest Day and Patton back to back. And no romantic comedies unless it’s got Cary Grant in or it’s something like Stardust.”
The red-head stomped off to the newer releases.
“Sister?” Castiel asked as he approached the blonde.
“Cousin,” she sighed. “I get spoiled having other Inklings fans around at school who actually understand these things.” She looked wistfully at the DVD set labeled The Chronicles of Narnia. “I have these on VHS, but I didn’t think to bring ’em down with me. Guess I should have.”
Castiel tilted his head and regarded her closely. “You enjoy them?”
She nodded. “Sure, the visuals are cheesy sometimes, and some of the actors are pretty over-the-top, and they did abridge Caspian a little too much... but there’s so much deep-seated theology in the books that the new versions just don’t seem to catch, and this version does. Spiritual comfort food, but no empty calories.” She in turn regarded Castiel closely. “You ever seen them before?”
“No,” Castiel admitted, looking at the box, “and I don’t think the friends I’m with have, either. How long are they?”
“Nine hours total. Three three-parters.” She paused. “Look, don’t ask me how I know this... but I think your friends need to see these. Call it a hunch, call it a word from the Lord....”
Castiel looked at her sharply. “You believe in such things?”
She seemed ready to apologize, but something flickered in her eyes that sent a sudden pang of homesickness through Castiel, and she stood a bit straighter. “Yes. I do. And I’ll tell you what else I believe.” She placed a gentle hand on Castiel’s shoulder and whispered, “‘Above all shadows rides the Sun / and Stars forever dwell; / I will not say the Day is done / nor bid the Stars farewell.’”
Castiel took a deep breath and nodded. “Thank you.”
She smiled and released him, then dug something out of the pocket of her own trench coat. “Here’s something else they might like,” she said, placing a small fabric bundle in his hand. It crinkled, and he opened it to find that it held several packets of tea. “Not many things better than literature and tea on a cold wet evening. Unless, of course, you add a dog and a roaring fire,” she added with a twinkle.
“Dean is ill,” Castiel confessed. “He doesn’t normally drink tea, but I think it would help him tonight. Again, I thank you.”
“Hey, you know anything about this Stargate: Continuum?” the red-head called.
The blonde’s eyes glittered deviously. “Excuse me,” she murmured to Castiel, then left.
Castiel looked again at the DVD set. He had met “Jack” Lewis once but heard him spoken of repeatedly, had heard countless redeemed souls mention this series as one that had set them on the path to salvation. Maybe this was what they needed, if only for the refreshment of their spirits.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he snatched the card and headed to the rental counter.
Both brothers were asleep when Castiel returned to the hotel, having finished the brisket he had brought them from across town before going to the video store. It took a call to Bobby for him to figure out how to heat plain water in the little coffee pot that was in the room, but by the time the sound and smell of popping corn roused Sam, he had succeeded in fixing a mug of tea for each of them and one for himself.
“Cas?” Sam said groggily as he sat up. “What’d you bring us?”
“I believe it is called suppositional representational fantasy,” Castiel replied, handing Sam the mug with Earl Grey. “Also tea.”
Sam raised a skeptical eyebrow but took the mug without protest. Castiel crossed to the other bed and shook Dean’s shoulder, which elicited an unintelligible groan cut off by a horrible coughing fit. Sam was halfway around Dean’s bed before Castiel could call him for help, and together they got Dean propped up at an angle that eased his breathing. As soon as Dean had caught his breath, Castiel pressed the mug of tea into his hand, and Dean gulped half of it down right away.
“Yech... I can’t taste a thing,” Dean wheezed. “What is this?”
“Lemon tea,” Castiel answered. When Dean stared at him, he continued, “You need Vitamin C, and I understand strong black tea contains a bronchiodilator as well as anti-inflammatories.”
Dean blinked and looked at Sam.
“Drink it,” Sam ordered. “It’s good for you.”
Dean grumbled and took another drink.
Satisfied, Castiel turned his attention to hooking Sam’s computer up to the TV. Dean had talked Sam into installing the right kind of connector just a few weeks before.
“You okay?” Sam asked quietly behind him.
“I’ll live,” Dean croaked.
“Cas brought popcorn. You gonna want any?”
“Nah. Thanks. Couldn’t taste it anyway, and with my luck, I’d start coughing and choke.” As if to prove his point, his attempt at a chuckle came out as a wheeze.
Sam’s “Okay” was barely audible.
Dean’s voice dropped an octave below its normal low register. “Hey. This ain’t your fault. Okay?”
Castiel turned just in time to see Sam nod glumly and get up to go back to his own bed.
“Cas?” Dean shot the angel a meaningful look.
Castiel retrieved the bag of popcorn from the microwave and presented it to Sam. When Sam looked away, Castiel said kindly but firmly, “I do not care for popcorn. I bought it for you.”
Sam looked back at Castiel, sighed, and took the popcorn bag from him. “Okay. Thanks.”
Castiel smiled and handed him the TV remote as well, then put the first DVD, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, into the computer’s DVD drive. By the time Sam got the TV turned to the right channel, Castiel had maneuvered past the opening menus and started the movie.
Castiel was still adjusting to having emotions, but no human language had a fitting word for the feeling that swept over him when the majestic French horn theme began. He very nearly burst into tears, but the theme was too short-and oddly enough, he sensed the same about Dean. When he glanced over at Dean, however, Dean had, with slight difficulty, stifled his desire to cry.
“Are you familiar with this movie, Dean?” Castiel asked.
Dean shrugged. “I think I saw it when I was nine.”
“Really?” Sam asked around a mouthful of popcorn. “Where was I?”
“Asleep, probably.”
Castiel took a drink of tea, savoring the variety of flavors in it before turning his attention fully to the screen. He was slightly confused as to why the story was beginning with four siblings on a train leaving London, given that the cover of the set bore a picture of the two girls riding a flying lion, but he kept his questions to himself and soon picked up where the story was headed once the eldest boy, Peter, suggested exploring the large house where they were staying. After that, at least for the next fifteen minutes or so, it seemed a straightforward fantasy adventure, so it surprised him when the youngest girl, Lucy, began crying over her siblings’ refusal to believe her story and he started hearing sympathetic sniffles from Dean.
“Dude,” said Sam, “are you crying?!”
“Shuddup,” Dean croaked. “That was you once upon a time.”
“Like you wouldn’t have gone off to have tea with a faun at that age.”
“Dude, shut. up.” And Dean sniffled again.
They left their banter there for the moment and kept watching... until the white-faced woman in the sleigh started offering the younger brother, Edmund, a hot drink and Turkish delight, and Sam started to squirm, more inwardly than outwardly. And then, toward the end of the first hour, there was an exchange between the brothers that sounded terribly familiar:
“Shouldn’t we be going that way,” began Edmund presently, “if we’re heading for the lamp-post?” He had forgotten for the moment that he must pretend never to have been in the wood before. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized that he had given himself away. Everyone stopped; everyone stared at him.
“So you were here,” Peter said, “and all the time you made out that Lucy was telling lies.”
There was a dead silence. “Of all the poisonous little beasts-” said Peter, and turned away and said no more. There seemed, indeed, no more to say, and presently the four resumed their journey; but Edmund was saying to himself, “I’ll pay you all out for this, you pack of stuck-up, self-satisfied prigs.”
And then they discovered that Edmund’s conversation with the White Witch had led to the faun’s arrest for treason.
Dean’s pain and anger at Sam’s betrayal was very close to the surface now, although he had genuinely tried to forgive and move on. Castiel glanced over at him and saw more tears spilling down his fever-flushed cheeks, tears that he would never have shed if he weren’t ill. And Sam looked like his guilt was trying to eat him alive. Castiel wondered whether this movie had been such a wise choice after all.
Most of the second hour was much the same, aside from piquing Castiel’s curiosity about the mysterious lion Aslan. Peter’s attitude and Edmund’s behavior and internal dialogue continued to mirror Dean and Sam uncomfortably well, down to Peter’s “All the same, he is our brother, even if he is rather a little beast. We have to go and look for him.” Castiel sensed rather than saw the awkward look that passed between Sam and Dean at that moment.
“I loved these books as a kid,” Sam confessed quietly during a part where the characters were traveling and not talking. “I never....” He sighed, unable to finish the thought.
Dean didn’t respond. But toward the end of the second hour, he was gripped by a terrible coughing fit, and when Sam crawled onto his bed to support him and rub his back, he stiffened only for a moment before allowing the touch. When the fit passed, Dean was too weak to do anything but slump against Sam. They were still sitting like that at the beginning of the third hour, when the children finally met Aslan.
“But where is the fourth child?” asked Aslan.
“O Aslan, he has tried to betray them. He has joined the White Witch,” said Mr. Beaver. And then something made Peter say,
“That was partly my fault, Aslan. I was angry with him and I’m sure that helped him to go wrong.”
And Aslan said nothing either to excuse Peter or to blame him but merely stood looking at him with his great unchanging eyes. And it seemed to all of them that there was nothing to be said.
“Please-Aslan,” said Lucy, “can anything be done to save Edmund?”
“All shall be done,” said Aslan. “But it may be more difficult than any of you can imagine.”
And Dean burst into tears.
“Aw, Dean,” whispered Sam brokenly, pulling Dean closer and letting him simply sob into his shoulder.
Dean’s tears had pretty well subsided by the time Peter had to fight the werewolf, but he kept sniffling through Edmund’s rescue, and he didn’t move away from Sam. And then:
When the other children woke up next morning (they had been sleeping on piles of cushions in the pavilion) the first thing they heard-from Mrs. Beaver-was that their brother had been rescued and brought into camp late last night; and was at that moment with Aslan. As soon as they had breakfasted they all went out, and there they saw Aslan and Edmund walking together in the dewy grass, apart from the rest of the court. There is no need to tell you (and no one ever heard) what Aslan was saying, but it was a conversation that Edmund never forgot. As the others drew nearer Aslan turned to meet them, bringing Edmund with him.
“Here is your brother,” he said, nudging Edmund forward, “and-there is no need to talk about what is past.”
Edmund shook hands with each of the others and said to each of them in turn, “I’m sorry”-and Castiel could just hear Sam whispering the same thing miserably to Dean.
“Sammy,” Dean whispered back, in much the same tone as Lucy was saying “Edmund!” as she hugged him-a tone that held far more love and forgiveness than the word itself could easily convey. And Castiel didn’t have to look to know that both brothers were crying now.
As soon as the White Witch showed up to talk to Aslan, Castiel finally understood what the English professor had meant by ‘suppositional representational fantasy’-supposing there were a world wherein creatures of legend not only existed (as they did in this reality) but were the majority (as they were in Narnia), Messiah might well take the form of a great lion in that world. But he found himself distracted from the revelation by the fact that Sam and Dean kept clinging to each other and sniffling... even sobbing outright during the night scene at the Stone Table. He could feel Dean’s fever climbing, and Dean’s defenses seemed to fall proportionately further; Sam, too, seemed more physically and emotionally exhausted than Castiel had realized after Carthage. Neither could keep the grief and remorse bottled up any longer. And not even the happy ending and the transformation of Edmund from bratty little brother to King Edmund the Just seemed to help much, since both brothers evidently wondered whether Sam would have to echo Edmund’s daring to break the Witch’s wand and his resulting brush with death to end the Apocalypse and redeem himself.
As the final credits rolled, Dean shivered and mumbled, “My fault, Aslan... ’m sorry, Sammy....”
“You were only an ass,” Sam replied sadly, and Castiel got the sense that he was quoting another book from the same series. “But I was a traitor.”
“Still m’brother, Sasquatch.”
“Jerk.”
“B-tzchoo!” The name was cut off by a violent sneeze, and Sam wasn’t able to dodge.
“GAH! Dean!!”
Dean deliberately wiped his nose on Sam’s shirt. Sam pretended more disgust than he actually felt. Dean grinned shakily... and suddenly the atmosphere felt much, much lighter.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, the writer of Hebrews had admonished his audience, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. But sometimes, Castiel reflected, something even greater than showing hospitality to an angel happened. Sometimes the right word from the right person made possible a miracle that no one else could recognize. And this measure of healing that Castiel could never give his friends through his own power? That was a miracle in his book.
Next, a sequel to Semper Fi, inspired by The King's Surgeon by surgicalsteel, for roque_clasique's prompt for feverish!permantently-injured!Dean forgetting his injury.
Phantoms
It was inevitable, Sam supposed. Now that Cas was no longer hanging around to keep the germs at bay, Dean was bound to catch something. They were just lucky it appeared to be a plain old garden-variety virus that would run its course in a matter of days and leave him not too much the worse for wear, too vanilla even to diagnose more precisely, and not something exotic like MRSA that would be hard to treat and could seriously hinder his ongoing recovery from the IED attack.
Unfortunately for Dean, the fever had gone on beyond zebra and was now pushing 104°. He wasn’t hallucinating that Sam knew of, but he wasn’t too with it, either, and sometimes his rambles got pretty funny, like the long one on Star Trek vs. Star Wars. The fact that he appealed to Jess for backup, even though Jess had no preference for either one, only made Sam laugh more. So it wasn’t too surprising when, in the course of watching TV in his bedroom, Dean tried to reach for the remote with his non-existent left hand and missed. Sam chuckled at Dean’s confused frown. Then Dean tried again, more deliberately, and missed again. Looking deeply disturbed, he tried and failed a third time.
Sam started to laugh. Dean started to scream.
Jess was at Dean’s side in a flash. “Dean? Dean, what is it? Talk to me.”
Dean’s eyes were fever-glazed and wild with terror. “I c-c-can’t... it w-went through my hand... J-Jess? What... why can’t I touch anything?” His voice rose hysterically. “What the hell kind of curse is this?!”
Sam guffawed.
Jess spun and glared at him, furious. “Out.”
“What? It’s-”
“OUT!”
“Okay, fine...” Sam conceded and left the room, closing the door behind him as Jess murmured soothing words to Dean that Sam couldn’t quite make out. And he stayed in the hall until she apparently got Dean calmed down and slipped quietly out of the room.
Her jaw clenched as soon as she saw him standing there. “It’s not funny, Sam,” she said quietly. “Phantom limb is a real phenomenon; the brain doesn’t always remember that a limb is missing and sometimes reacts as if it’s still there. He can probably still feel that hand even on a good day-maybe it’ll itch or hurt, maybe he thinks he’s drumming his fingers on the table. It’s disorienting enough without the fever, when he’s lucid enough to recognize that he can’t touch things with that hand because it’s gone and maybe even to laugh at himself for forgetting. Knowing the things you’ve hunted?” She shook her head. “He couldn’t figure out if he was out of phase or a ghost or what. Your laughing at him won’t help matters.”
Sam blinked. “He seriously felt like the remote went through his hand?!”
“Seriously.”
Sam tried to imagine what that would feel like and suddenly felt sick with guilt. “You’re right. That isn’t funny. Is... is he okay now?”
“Calmer. You can probably help him more than I can, though. You’ve known him longer. Sometimes massaging the stump helps, too, and I don’t think he’d accept that from me.”
Sam nodded. “Thanks for setting me straight.”
She kissed his cheek and went on to the living room, leaving Sam to steel himself to go in and face Dean again.
Dean was perilously close to tears when Sam walked in. “M’hand won’t work, Sammy,” he sniffled, making Sam feel like even more of a heel. “Why won’t m’hand work?”
Sam sat down on the edge of the bed, to Dean’s left. He hated seeing his big brother like this. “It got infected when you were in Germany, remember? They had to cut it off.”
Dean’s forehead crinkled in a confused frown. “Sammy?”
“Does it hurt?”
Dean nodded. “Aches, kind of. I... I think I’m sick, Sam.”
“Yeah. It’ll be okay, though.” Without really thinking, Sam laid a hand on Dean’s arm, just above the stump, and began massaging the muscle with his thumb.
Dean made a funny high-pitched groaning noise in the back of his throat, and his eyes slid shut.
“Dean? Am I hurting you?”
Dean shook his head. “No, ’s good, keep... nnnngh.”
So Sam kept kneading, trying to ignore his dismay at the heat pouring from Dean’s skin and the flush of his cheeks. And although he kept his voice low, Dean let loose with a string of profanity that left no doubt as to his having been in the Marines for two years before his injury, including some particularly colorful expressions in Arabic that he’d probably picked up from the interpreters. Sam knew those mainly from having made a few Arab-American friends at Stanford. There were one or two that he didn’t recognize, though, and he assumed those must have been Kurdish.
He was absurdly glad that Jess wasn’t in the room. She’d probably heard worse, but some old-fashioned part of his mind still wanted to keep her sheltered from things like rough language and the obscene wisecrack Dean was likely to make when Sam finished because he didn’t think he could say what he really felt. Perils of being a Winchester, Sam thought with a fleeting grimace.
But the off-color joke never came. Instead, when Sam finished, Dean slumped against him and mumbled, “Y’r awesome, Sammy. Thanks.”
“Want some ice cream?”
“’Kay. ’S hot in here. ’M I sick? I think I’m sick.”
“Yeah, Dean. You’re sick. But we’re here, me and Jess. We’ll get you through this.”
“’N Dad?”
Sam sighed. “I don’t know where Dad is. He’s back to not answering his phone.”
Dean started sniffling again. “’S gonna get himself killed, Sammy... ’s gonna get killed and we’re not gonna know....”
Sam started rubbing Dean’s shoulder. “Hey. Cas is still out there, right? Maybe Cas is looking after Dad.” They hadn’t heard from the angel in a couple of months, either, but the argument from silence worked both ways. Dean wasn’t with it enough to realize it was a fallacy in either form.
And sure enough, Dean nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. Hope so. Don’ want Dad to die.”
“Ice cream?”
Dean nodded again.
Sam eased him back against the pillows that had been propping him up. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
“Love you, Sammy,” Dean murmured as his eyes slid shut again.
“Love you, too, Dean,” Sam whispered back, running a hand through the hair that was finally starting to look more like his brother’s usual style. Then he left the room quietly and hurried to the kitchen to fill a bowl with chocolate ice cream.
Somehow it didn’t surprise him that by the time he got back, Dean was chatting quietly with someone who wasn’t there, even tried to introduce Sam to the guy-a member of Dean’s unit who’d been killed in Fallujah. The apartment was too well warded for it to be an actual ghost, so it had to be a hallucination. Sam alerted Jess once Dean finished his ice cream and fell asleep, and both of them took the next day off from work because they suspected-rightly-that the hallucinations would only get scarier as the fever dredged up memories of hunts gone awry and terrible moments from Iraq. It took both of them to still Dean’s flailing limbs long enough to get him through ice baths, coax him into taking Tylenol, and keep him calm enough that he didn’t wake up the whole building with his screams.
Finally, though, the fever broke, and Sam was beyond relieved to see his brother’s eyes focus on him, sparkling with their normal intelligence and good humor.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean whispered with a tired smile.
“Hey,” Sam whispered back. “Feeling better?”
Dean nodded. “Beat to hell, but at least I’m not burning up anymore.”
Sam sighed. “That’s a relief.”
Dean started to reach for Sam with his left hand, then caught himself and patted Sam’s arm with his right hand. “Thanks, dude. Guess I was pretty out of it for a while there.”
“Is... does your hand....”
Dean looked down and moved his stump like he was turning the hand over. “Still kind of aches.” Then he frowned. “You did something the other day... felt really good, whatever it was.”
“Would you like me to....”
“If... yeah.”
Sam gingerly wrapped his hand around the stump and began massaging gently, and Dean let out a groan of pure pleasure and began making the kinds of wisecracks that both disgusted and relieved Sam. That, more than anything, convinced him that Dean really was on the mend.
Maybe not every phantom could be dispatched with a salt and burn, but Sam felt better knowing that he could help Dean keep at least a few even of those at bay.
And finally, a slightly timeline-warped crossover with SGA Vegas-verse, for honeylocusttree's prompt for Dean-with-a-normal-life having feverish hallucinations of demons, etc. Companion piece to Nevada Fox.
The Fox and the Hound
Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm,
I know,
Been that way for all my time...
It's been this way all their lives, since Dean was four years old. Every time he has a fever--every time--the hallucinations start.
No, Daddy, I don' wanna move... Sammy's just made friends... we got a baseball game Saturday, Daddy, please let us stay a few more days...
I'm sorry, Dad, I s-sh-sh-shouldn'ta gone to the arcade... is Sammy okay? The, the shtriga didn't hurt him, right?
Mommy, Mommy, I miss you so much, why'd you have to die....
Mom wasn't dead. Dad never forced them to move. Nobody'd ever heard of a shtriga or half of the other things that showed up in Dean's fever dreams. And nobody knew why Dean got these spells. At first they only embarrassed Sam, but the older Dean got, the worse the dreams got, and the more worried Sam got--so worried, in fact, that he turned down Stanford in favor of going to the police academy with Dean there in Lawrence because a dangerously feverish Dean pleaded with him not to leave. Sam thought then that maybe ensuring that their world was nothing like the hallucinations would make them stop.
It hasn't. Not even moving to Las Vegas has. They've only gotten worse in the last three years, and they've had zilch to do with the nightmarish stuff the brothers have seen as homicide investigators. And Sam thinks it's only the grace of God that's kept Dean from turning into an anti-social functional mute like Sheppard.
Just yesterday, in fact, Sam found himself spilling his guts about Dean's latest bout of flu--dude has the worst immune system, seriously--to Keller, the new assistant ME. Why, he had no clue. He doesn't even like her all that much, and even if he did think she was attractive, she's got something going with that new FBI agent, McKay. But she is a doctor, and Dean had been raving about demons and hellhounds and killing Lilith, pleading with Sam not to use his powers (!!) to get him out of some kind of deal, and Sam... just didn't know what to do anymore. Keller listened sympathetically and told him to call if Dean got any worse; she knew of a place out in the desert where he might be able to get some help.
Dean's worse, all right. He's convinced he has hours to live, and the shivering he's doing isn't all from the chills. Every time the dog down the street barked, Dean flinched. So Sam called, and now he's following Keller's directions through the starlit desert, CCR on the Impala's stereo and Dean curled up beside him on the front seat, a quivering ball of feverish fear.
When it's over, so they say,
It'll rain a sunny day,
I know,
Shining down like water...
Suddenly the headlights fall on what looks like an old man with long white hair and black clothes crouched by the side of the road. He doesn't seem to be in much better shape than Dean is, and Sam gets the sense that he really needs help. So, against his better judgment, he pulls over, checks his sidearm, and opens the door.
Dean's teeth are chattering. "S-S-Sammy... c-careful... d-d-d-don't listen to Ruby... can't trust demons...."
"I'll be careful, Dean, I promise," Sam whispers, running a hand through Dean's hair before he slides out of the car.
It's quiet out tonight, and dark; there's not even a moon for the coyotes to howl at, which makes Sam glad. He doesn't think Dean could handle hearing coyotes right now. As it is, the loudest sound he can hear is the gravel crunching under his feet as he makes his way down the shoulder to the spot where the old man is hunched against the desert wind, seemingly freezing despite his elaborate leather coat, his skin grey in the headlights.
"Sir?" Sam says, gently putting a hand on the man's shoulder. "Would you come with me, please? I can get you some help--" He breaks off with a gasp when the man slowly lifts his head and Sam gets a good look at his face.
Yellow, reptilian eyes. Shiny grey skin with prominent veins. Holes that look like nostrils on his cheeks. No eyebrows, but a starburst tattoo around his left eye. A patch of white beard beneath a mouth full of sharp teeth. But whatever it is--it, not he, it's not human, it can't be--it's clearly not well; its eyes look glazed, and it shivers beneath Sam's hand.
"I hunger," it rasps in a harsh, distorted whisper.
Sam swallows and resists the urge to put a bullet in the thing's brain. "Come with me, then. We'll get you some food."
Its right hand flexes as it stands slowly, looking at Sam and sniffing a little like a cat. Then it chuckles weakly. "No. I will take nothing from you--it would be... ungracious."
Sam blinks. "I can't just leave you here."
"No. I will come... Sam Winchester."
Sam's eyes fly wide open, and he recoils a step. "How do you know my name?"
It chuckles a little again. "They say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
And suddenly Sam hears Dean staggering up behind him. "S-Sammy... Wraith...." He says the word like he's trying to warn Sam not to step on a rattlesnake.
The not-man--the Wraith?--makes a little noise like a harsh hiss. "He knows. He sees."
Sam frowns at it as Dean stumbles into him, catching his brother without looking. Dean's burning up; it's a wonder he has the strength to stand at all. "Are you saying... my brother's psychic?"
"After a fashion," it replies, stepping closer, its hand still flexing. "Other worlds. But he is dying. I can help... but I hunger...."
"Sammy, no," Dean breathes.
Sam swallows. "Do what you have to."
It pulls open his shirt--good thing the shirt has snaps!--and slams its right hand onto Sam's chest, and for a moment all Sam knows is searing pain and Dean screaming in his ear. Then the pain stops and the Wraith backs away, looking better but making a visible effort to stop himself from taking more of whatever he took from Sam. It pants harshly a couple of times, then advances on Dean, who struggles in Sam's grasp but can't get away before the same hand makes contact with Dean's chest. Dean cries out... but the fever breaks, and the Wraith backs off, looking slightly the worse for wear.
"What the hell did you do?" Dean demands, sounding breathless but lucid.
"Brothers... you would give your lives for each other," the Wraith replies, sounding oddly gentle. "I simply... performed a transfusion."
Then it collapses.
Dean helps Sam get it into the back seat of the Impala, and they go on to the place Keller told Sam to go to get help for Dean, which turns out to be Area 51. Keller's actually waiting for them when they get there, and a bunch of Marines hustle the Wraith away while Keller runs tests to figure out what's going on with Dean. Her best theory is that, like the Wraith suggested, Dean is mildly psychic in a way that allows him to see into other realities when he's feverish, and the Wraith apparently took five years off Sam's life and gave three of them to Dean. The thing's an alien, one of a race of space vampires (at least that's Dean's summary of Keller's explanation). It may or may not have fixed Dean's immune system; it's too early to tell.
Three days later, the FBI insists that they transfer to Colorado Springs. A few months after that, they hear through the grapevine that Sheppard was killed in the line of duty, chasing down a serial killer. They go back for the funeral, but nobody else seems to actually mourn the poor guy, and Dean resents that on Shep's behalf. Sure, Shep had his problems, but Dean knows there's another reality where they were the ones living in their classic car and hunting down monsters no one else knew about. And he wasn't that bad of a guy if you got past the silence.
A month or two after that, Dean catches a cold. Sam finds him in the bathroom, paused in the middle of rubbing Mentholatum on his chest to stare at the scar the Wraith had left behind, five finger points and a long slash from the slit in its palm. Sam's the only one who ever gets to see that scar; he's got one just like it.
"Dean?" Sam asks quietly. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Dean returns. "I still... I still see it sometimes, Sam. It's still there. But I think... I like Todd better than Cas. Todd got it, y'know? Cas doesn't, not yet." And he rubs at his left deltoid and shivers a little.
"Doesn't get what?"
Dean meets his eyes. "You and me. That we'd give our lives for each other, no matter what. We might go at it completely the wrong way--"
"Dean--"
"--but we're family, right? We save each other. That's what we do."
Sam pulls his shivering, sniffling brother into a hug. Apparently that's one constant in both realities. "Yeah. We do."
I wanna know,
Have you ever seen the rain
Comin' down on a sunny day?