Memefic: Temple (PG13)
Temple
Warnings: Self harm, anxiety related issues, language.
Spoilers: 4.06
Summary: Written for the current hoodie-time fever-themed comment-fic meme, for the prompt: Dean gets ghost sickness. Again. Which is embarrassing enough as it is, but on top of it, he's already down with a bad case of the flu. There are germs everywhere and they're only gonna make him worse. Tylenol? What're you talking about? What if he chokes on the pills, huh? And that cough syrup Sam keeps trying to make him drink? That color's just unnatural. A cold bath? You do know how many people die in bathroom accidents each year, right?
Note: I made one little comment on the prompt about steel wool, and then, well, this happened.
Also, I'm breaking my own rule about posting comment-fic in the comments, because this is over 4,000 words.
Temple
He pads across the room, eyes flickering over the smooth, bright floorboards. They’re clean, as everything in the house is clean. No scratches or scuff marks, no suggestion that any animal or child ever walked across its surface.
Dean knows better than to trust it, any of it-the beautiful floors, the creamy unstained walls, the simple furniture. He pauses at the entrance to the kitchen and stares at the stainless steel fixtures and ivory counters. The silence is real, alive. It sits in the empty spaces, huge and serene.
He rubs at his throat as he climbs the stairs. He’s felt a dry ache coming on for a couple of days now, but it hasn’t affected his mobility much. The stairs are dark hardwood, and he puts his feet down on each one with a little more force than necessary. He imagines the house shuddering a little with every step, but it’s probably just the vibrations in his bones.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for but he’ll it know when he finds it.
He’s standing in another white room when Sam finds him, a little while later. Dean hears him stomping up the stairs, but doesn’t turn. He doesn’t really move at all. Sam comes to stand beside him, and after a moment he shifts from foot to foot, making the floor creak.
“…oh,” he says finally, faintly, and Dean does turn then, flashing briefly on his brother’s face before turning away. Back to the closet, the wide open door. The space inside like the gap of a knocked-out tooth.
The bloody handprints all over the walls, at just the right height for a ten year old girl.
_____________
An hour later at the morgue, Sam accidentally brushes against Dean’s arm, and Dean knows the exact moment that Sam registers his elevated body temperature.
“Shit!” Sam blurts, springing away and holding up a warding hand, staring with wide eyes “You’re getting sick! You’re sick! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dean glowers and doesn’t dignify Sam’s freakout with a response. Asshole that he is, the kid refuses to come any closer, and holds his ground a good twenty feet away. He levels a shaking finger.
“You should have told me.”
Dean opens his mouth to deliver a witty retort, but his throat sticks and he clears it, then turns away and coughs and swallows and claps a hand to his neck, squeezing his glands. Fuck Sam anyway. It’s not like either of them gets sick all that often.
That’s probably the reason Sam’s freaking out, actually.
“Stop being a little bitch,” he bites out, rounding on his brother, and if his voice is a little raspier than usual, well, he hopes that’ll only make Sam fall in line that much quicker.
Unfortunately, Sam seems to have no desire to get within twenty feet of Dean and his current ‘condition,’ and remains firmly planted on the far side of the tiled floor.
“We can’t both be down with it at the same time,” Sam says, in a passable attempt at sounding reasonable. Dean narrows his eyes.
“Scared I’m gonna infect your sorry ass?” He waves sharply at the door, and piles on the scorn. “Christ, you giant girl, if you’re that scared of germs then you can just fuck off, and I’ll finish up with Mommy Dearest here myself.”
Sam bites his lip, looking vaguely guilty, but not enough to approach and let Dean hack all over him. Dammit.
“Go on, get outta here.” Dean jerks his head at the double doors. Sam wavers, but it’s pretty clear he has no desire to be near Dean, Dean’s mounting fever, his clamminess and sore throat, or any of the rest of his recently acquired germy symptoms.
Moments later, Dean’s alone in the morgue with nothing but the dead body of the late Jamie Corcoron’s mother, and the sound of the door swinging softly back and forth.
It’s kinda soothing, actually.
_____________
“So,” Sam picks at his Chinese food and peers at his notes, “It’s definitely the girl doing it? Killed her mom and dad and had a try at the nice realtor lady for dessert?”
Dean’s draped across his bed with an arm flung across his face, mouth open and panting lightly. His throat is on fire and his skin is that lovely combination of hot and clammy that makes him wonder if maybe he’ll go down in history as the world’s soggiest case of spontaneous human combustion. He’s barely paying attention to Sam, and to judge by the quality of his brother’s conversational gambits, it’s probably just as well. He lets a grunt stand in for his usual snappy retort.
“God.” Sam pushes his food across the table and shoves to his feet. “You’re going to be insufferable the whole time you’re sick, aren’t you?”
Dean peels his arm away from his eyes and glares. He’s a little mollified to see Sam blanch when he gets a good eyeful. Dean must look even worse than he feels.
“C’mere,” he slurs, gesturing weakly. “Got a present for you.”
Sam’s lip curls, but to his credit he doesn’t actually flee.
“It came on pretty fast,” he observes, leaning against the motel room door, arms folded. “You think it’s just a cold?”
“Plague,” Dean returns, rolling over and burying his face in the comforter. “Fucking-Bubonic black death avian swine flu. Flying pigs. Ringarounnarosie.” God, he aches.
Somewhere twenty miles away, Sam’s muttering about a thermometer. Dean curls a little tighter. He was wrong before. Forget spontaneous human combustion, he’s gonna freeze into a block of fucking ice, and then Sam will have to cut chips off and carry them around in his pockets and Jesus, where the fuck did that thought come from? Dean doesn’t do delirious.
He hates being sick. Next time it can be Sam’s turn. He's better at delerium anyway.
_____________
Sam’s got his hands in Dean’s face, all long fingers and broad, flat nails. The light shines sickly pale on their surface and Dean remembers that nails and hair are made of dead cells. That the outer layers of skin are all dead. A walking body is covered in a sheath of death. He slaps at Sam’s hands, tries to shove himself backward.
“Stop it,” he grits thinly, “Stop it.”
“You’re a goddamn grown-ass man,” Sam growls, waving the thermometer around, “Stop acting like a child.”
Dean grabs the thermometer, plastic and shiny metal tip (dipped in alcohol? Did they remember to clean it last time they used it?), and shoves Sam back. “Don’t touch me. Get off. Christ.”
Sam backs up, scowling, but they have in fact established that Dean is a goddamn grown-ass man. He eyes the thermometer warily. Should he wash it first? Is it clean? Who the hell cares what his temperature is, anyway? He’s not gonna die from a fucking fever. He tosses the offending instrument on the night table and flashes a glance at Sam, but his brother’s already across the room, glowering at his notes. Dean can’t tell if he’s even registered the little plasticky tinkly noise. Which is just as well.
He just wants to fucking sleep.
_____________
Sam smells like fire. Stinks like charred bones and roasting flesh. Accelerant and phosphorus. White phosphorus. Red phosphorus. Dean watches through slit lids as his brother collapses in the chair next to the door. It creaks, alarmingly.
“It’s done,” he says, “Jamie’s not going to hurt anyone else.”
Dean lets his eyes slide closed. The bed tries to crawl away underneath him and he digs his fingers in. Registers the outside world in fits and starts. Noise and air. Rustle of material. Hum of the lights. Sam moving across the room. Resting fingertips on the back of Dean’s neck.
“We’ll stay here for a while,” he murmurs, and Dean turns away from the distorted noise, the vibrations buzzing around the edges of the words. Sam keeps his fingers on Dean’s neck longer than he really needs to.
_____________
Sam’s cleaning. The light’s on in the bathroom, and the fan hums low and continuous. The smell of smoke still hangs in the air, vapor-thin, but the odor of detergent is gradually pushing it away. Dean hears Sam slap his shirt against the side of the bathtub, and the world fades out and when it comes back Sam’s wringing out shirts and cursing, quietly, and the noise of water and soap suds spattering on plastic fills the world.
_____________
He knocks the thermometer onto the carpet with a dull thump. Carpet. God. He can smell it, now, toxic and moldering, pregnant with corruption and crawling with things. Dean knows all about the things that live in motel rooms, the thousand uninvited guests. He’s woken up more than once marked with red spots or little welts, or just generally itchier than when he’d gone to bed. Like the bed he’s in now. Full of tiny legs, little wings, scales and faceted eyes
He sits up and hangs onto the edge of the bed with dry hands, fingers stinging and skin shivering. He can’t be here. He can’t let things go on like this. Something has to be done. He has to do something.
He finds his feet and pushes both hands down his face. Dry. Hot and dry. And he hurts from the inside out, hollow in places where he used to be full. His guts are being pulped, maybe. No other explanation. His insides are going to drip thick and clotted black from his nose, eyes, mouth and ears. Out of his every orifice, gobbets of flesh, pulped bone. Ruin.
He wants to swallow but can’t. His lips rest parted, cracking and dry. The air tastes of sickness, hot and sour as rot. Every breath draws it in, caking his lungs. His throat spasms, aborted desperation. He takes a step toward the door, then another. He wants to run but his skin is too thin. Too much movement and it’ll crack apart and fall around his feet and all his guts will come spilling out.
He lifts one arm, fingers grasping at air. Takes another step.
Hands clamp on his shoulders, hard heavy slaps that jolt through his body and he flinches sharply.
“God,” Sam says, voice too large, jagged in the wrong places, “You’re a furnace.”
He tries to pull away but Sam’s voice follows, and his hands dig in, fingers deep into the flesh, into muscle and skin as soft as wax. Adrenaline stabs upward from Dean’s belly and his arms jerk on their own and this time he lunges forward, but Sam’s fingers are cracking through bone and suddenly the world tilts and the walls are the ceiling and the floor is gone and Dean’s on his back blinking up, sucking in short dry breathes, blinking and blinking.
“Here,” and Sam shoves water at his face and it’s cold and wonderful but fuck where did it come from, what if it’s not clean? What’s inside it? Metal and blood, vomit and filth. He sputters out sickness and gasps and chokes and Sam swears. Cold wet spatters on Dean’s face and neck and chest and a hand slams onto his sternum and forces him down into the suffocating, bug-crawling softness of the bed. His bed. The sick bed.
“Nnn,” he managed, breathless and desert-cracked. “No get off get off don’t touch me-”
“Dean-”
“Don’t touch me! I’ll fucking-”
“Shit.” Sam bites the word. “Shit, your fever’s tearing you up. Shit. Okay I’m not touching you, okay? See me not touching you? Could you stop, Dean? Just, stop.”
Dean stares wide-eyed at Sam’s empty hands, slick and shiny with maybe water, or maybe sweat, or slime. Something viscous and toxic. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head away.
“Your fever needs to come down,” Sam murmurs.
_____________
The pills are bitter and horrible and he spits them onto the carpet and scrubs the back of his arm across his mouth and hacks, and again, and then it doesn’t stop and he’s doubled over, a cold hand on his back as he coughs and gasps and struggles for air, and coughs again and the air won’t come. Sam moves, at some point, and then he’s in front of him, holding on to wads of Dean’s shirt at the shoulders. Holding on while Dean gasps and drags air in, slow and thin.
“Your fever needs to come down,” Sam says again, “We’ve got to-just, come on.”
Dean’s barely managed to uncurl himself when a long arm shoves under his shoulders and he’s very nearly airborne, hauled to stand on trembling legs. He slumps against his brother, forehead banging against Sam’s chest. It’s awkward and ungainly and they stumble together into the bathroom and the light roars on and Dean flinches but Sam won’t let him go.
Sam spins the tap and the water screams into the bathtub, high and clear and glaring. Dean jerks away-no, the water’s cold, it’s not clean, people die like this, he’ll die he’ll die, all over again-and Sam clamps him tightly under his long arm and says, “Dammit, settle the fuck down.”
Dean coughs again, weakly, shakes his head.
“Sam.” His voice creaks. “Sam no, I’m not gonna-it’s two in the damn morning, I’m not-”
Sam slams the tap off and it echoes through the walls.
“Dean if you don’t-if we don’t do something your fever won’t come down,” he growls, low and tight. Dean shifts away, a little, but Sam latches one arm on his bicep and the world fades to a point just where he’s gripping. His fingers, the pad of his thumb. The bones inside.
Sam bites out some more words but a huge white buzzing opens up and swallows them. Dean looks up from his arm, looks for his brother, but can’t find his face, his eyes. He feels his body step away from him, and a thin high whine kicks on from somewhere and then the walls are gone.
_____________
Something cold is on his face. He can’t scream but he thrashes an arm up, claws roughly until the washcloth flops wetly to the side. He sits up hard, gasping, and his eyelids peel back and his eyes do their best to pop right out of his head.
The room is big and empty. No Sam. No anyone. Just Dean, alone with the reek of his own sickness, the stink of his body breaking down.
He fumbles around, finds the washcloth and wipes at his face. It’s cool but it’s wrong, he realizes, anything could be on it, anything from the bed or the water or Sam’s hands, and now it’s all over Dean’s face, burning and corrosive-God, he can feel it, stinging as it eats away at his skin. He drops the cloth and gets up, with difficulty, angles himself toward the gaping bathroom doorway.
The water from the sink’s not much better, splashing all over fake porcelain, smearing in the light, halo-bright. He scrubs at his face, again and then again, at his arms and hands and neck, but it’s no good. He can still feel it, the contamination from everything, feel it on his skin, tight and tense as something burning, eating way at him, inside and out.
Water doesn’t cut it. Soap isn’t much better. Sam’s left the cleaning kit on the counter, stuffed with random detergents, cleansers, sponges and rags. All-purpose, easier than running to the Laundromat at three in the morning to get out bloodstains. Easier all around. Not everything in it is for clothes, either. Dean rummages, comes up with a nearly empty bottle of linseed oil, half a canister of turpentine. Not great for skin, maybe, but better than the alternative. And it burns now, and his hands are on fire and goddammit, there must be something else.
He grabs the last clean steel wool pad. Sam won’t mind. Just let it work. Please, please let it work.
_____________
In the other room, the door opens.
“Dean? Dean are you-?”
_____________
It’s okay if there’s blood.
Red spatters in the sink, but the water washes it away.
_____________
He hears Sam before he sees him, but he’s not prepared to have the pad yanked from his hand, or for the noise his brother makes when blood flies from Dean’s ruined skin and spatters across Sam’s face.
“Sam,” Dean says, or thinks he does, holding his hands out, warding him away. His skin’s torn from scrubbing and his fingers tremble with the phantom rasp of metal on skin, scouring at tendons and knuckles and fingerprints, nails and veins and lifelines. Blood wells between two fingers and drips down, trails from Dean’s wrist in a long thin line.
Sam’s face collapses.
“Dean,” he breathes, “Jesus, you…why would you…?” he reaches out, reaches for Dean’s hands, his arms maybe, and Dean yanks them away and stumbles back.
“Don’t you-you don’t fuckin’ touch me, don’t. You can’t-”
“What?” And Sam’s face is a mix of confusion and cautious gentleness, like Dean’s losing his damn mind or something. Like he’s an animal who’s gonna freak out. But he’s not. He’s not.
“Get away from me!” he snarls, winching his arms in, hands close to his body. As close as possible without touching. The pain is distant. The blood dripping from his fingers and wrists is cold. Sam stands rooted to the ground, but Dean can see his nostrils flaring, can see he’s trying to control himself.
“You’re bleeding,” Sam says quietly, steadily. “You need to let me help you.”
Dean looks away, toward the wall. There’s a thin smear of black in the corner, above the shower. Mold. Poison. It gets in the air. It gets in the lungs. It grows and grows and fills everything, every empty space, chokes out air and blood and light. It kills. It’s horrible and it’s everywhere and it’s on him.
His feet stumble over themselves and something hard hits his back, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. It’s everything else that’s important, everything on his skin, his hands and face. And now it’s in his blood, black and rotting, worming inside, underneath, burrowing and tunneling. He yanks his hands away from his body and stares, trembling, something huge welling up in his throat. His mouth is open and there isn’t any air. The blood from his hands is too dark. Much too dark. Not red but black, sticky and noxious. Toxic. Bubbling. The stink of decay hits him like a brick to the face. It’s him. He’s rotting. He’s infected. His skin’s full of holes, his skin’s coming off, turning to liquid, foaming and fizzing.
Distantly he feels something hit his knees. The light reels. He grabs one hand with the other, nails digging in and he can see bone, punching through noxious chemical flesh, he can taste it on his tongue. Thick and viscous. He hears a noise, some scraping whine, and his throat aches with it.
When something grabs him he’s not ready. Some huge horror latches onto his streaked, soaking wrists, and he’s yanked forward violently, arms and body jerking. He can’t get away. He can’t get away. Whatever it is, it’s too strong, holding on and tearing into his skin, and he pulls and pulls. The light strobes. He hears words, whispers. Calm down, please calm down, you’re making it worse. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.
He spits and snarls, wrenches backward, thrashing, heels digging into the tile. Warm wetness bubbles from his mouth-froth, or blood, or worse. He pants through his teeth, rasping noises that don’t sound like him. He’s coming apart. Everything’s coming apart. His wrists are slippery. He yanks, hard as he can, and there’s a sharp cry. The world pitches away and his head cracks into something hard and ringing, a solid bell, a single tone, a cry across an empty sky. Light peals across his vision and his body disintegrates, there in that moment, and silence blossoms in its place.
_____________
The TV’s on when Dean opens his eyes.
He blinks, blearily, at the pale pillowcase a hairsbreadth from his eye. Light flickers blue and grey and stuttering. Cartoons.
He blinks. Daffy Duck’s voice swells and fades.
After all, it was me or him, and obviously, it couldn't be me…
“Ughh,” his mouth makes noises of its own accord. He smacks his lips around the sticky, horrible taste.
It's a simple matter of logic.
“Sssmm,” he groans. Shuts his eyes, rallies a bit. His throat doesn’t hurt. “Sam…”
There’s a clatter, the noise of a huge body moving suddenly.
I'm not like other people. I can't stand pain. It hurts me.
“Hey.” A heavy hand falls on his shoulder, and Dean doesn’t flinch. There’s a moment, suspended in the little room, when it’s nothing but him and his brother in a small quiet space. The low light of the television and blue shadows on the walls.
And then the pain, and the memory, comes back.
“Oh,” he says, eyes squeezing shut as he curls around his hands, “Oh Jesus, oh fuck.”
“Yeah,” Sam says sympathetically, “It, uh-it’s kinda gory.”
“Jeezus. Why the hell did I…?” he gasps. His hands twitch and even that slight movement sends agony through his skin, spiderwebbing through tendons and muscles, stabbing up his arms. A dull, sympathetic ache murmurs from the back of his skull and he can’t find the wherewithal to pry his eyes open again.
“Why-Sam, what the hell happened?” His voice comes out plaintive, and small.
Sam sighs. Dean bites the inside of his cheek and breathes through his nose. He remembers, in a distant way, the moment in the bathroom when stripping his skin off with a steel wool pad seemed like the best idea in the world, but he has no idea where that particular insanity originated.
“It, uh-” Sam pauses. Dean hears him lick his lips. “It wasn’t just a fever. Or…flu. I mean I knew you were sick. I thought it was just…I thought you were just freaking out from the fever. I’m…but it wasn’t. I mean maybe that was part of it, but…I think you picked up something. From Jamie’s mom. In the morgue. You know? Like before.”
“What…” saliva is pooling in his mouth, nausea in his gut. He swallows, and again, manages a slurred mumble that sounds as much like “Ghost sickness?” as he can manage.
Sam says something in response, but Dean loses his voice in a sudden stab from his hands. He makes another noise, something like a whine, though he’ll never admit it, and Sam’s grip tightens on his shoulder.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he hears, faintly, and then something about painkillers and lying low and time to heal, be fine. It all runs together in a blur and then he’s choking and Sam’s swearing and there’s spit and the smell of vomit and he just wants to be unconscious again.
_____________
He opens his eyes to a quiet sunrise peeking around the curtains. The smell of vomit is gone. His hands are a trembling mass of dark red pain on the ends of his arms. Sam’s asleep, propped up against the bed, hair crazy and unwashed. He smells faintly of smoke.
There oughta be a law, Dean thinks vaguely. He grits his teeth and manages to shift an arm without brushing his bandaged hand against the comforter. A fucking law about…about fucking relapses. Shit. He gets his hand as close to Sam’s head as he can manage without actually touching him. He can feel his fingers trembling in their cocoon of white, but the bandages give an illusion of stillness.
Dean wants painkillers. He wants water. He wants to hack his goddamn hands off and shower until the end of time, and he wants out of this room that smells of stale sickness and two grown, overripe men, and smoke, and turpentine and laundry detergent, and blood. He really wants a glass of water. Oh God, does he want a glass of water.
But Sam’s asleep. It’s eight in the morning, Sam’s out cold on the floor, head on Dean’s bed. Dean creeps his fingers a little closer. The pain from the movement washes over and through him. He clenches his jaw and shuts his eyes and swallows the noise he wants to make, and when he opens his eyes again, Sam’s still dead to the world.
Dean lets him sleep.
-End-
________________________________________
Notes: Oh my god, this fic would not freaking end. If it seems choppy and weird in places, it's because I just wanted it to be over. I'm not kidding. 4,000 words. It's a monster.
Don't ask me how the Looney Tunes reference got in there, or why. Blame Sunday morning weirdness.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the backstory is here, other than that Jamie was a ghost who killed her parents after being locked in a closet and probably violently abused or something. So the mom was the one who got ghost sickness and went on to infect Dean. In case there was any confusion.
Warnings: Self harm, anxiety related issues, language.
Spoilers: 4.06
Summary: Written for the current hoodie-time fever-themed comment-fic meme, for the prompt: Dean gets ghost sickness. Again. Which is embarrassing enough as it is, but on top of it, he's already down with a bad case of the flu. There are germs everywhere and they're only gonna make him worse. Tylenol? What're you talking about? What if he chokes on the pills, huh? And that cough syrup Sam keeps trying to make him drink? That color's just unnatural. A cold bath? You do know how many people die in bathroom accidents each year, right?
Note: I made one little comment on the prompt about steel wool, and then, well, this happened.
Also, I'm breaking my own rule about posting comment-fic in the comments, because this is over 4,000 words.
Temple
He pads across the room, eyes flickering over the smooth, bright floorboards. They’re clean, as everything in the house is clean. No scratches or scuff marks, no suggestion that any animal or child ever walked across its surface.
Dean knows better than to trust it, any of it-the beautiful floors, the creamy unstained walls, the simple furniture. He pauses at the entrance to the kitchen and stares at the stainless steel fixtures and ivory counters. The silence is real, alive. It sits in the empty spaces, huge and serene.
He rubs at his throat as he climbs the stairs. He’s felt a dry ache coming on for a couple of days now, but it hasn’t affected his mobility much. The stairs are dark hardwood, and he puts his feet down on each one with a little more force than necessary. He imagines the house shuddering a little with every step, but it’s probably just the vibrations in his bones.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for but he’ll it know when he finds it.
He’s standing in another white room when Sam finds him, a little while later. Dean hears him stomping up the stairs, but doesn’t turn. He doesn’t really move at all. Sam comes to stand beside him, and after a moment he shifts from foot to foot, making the floor creak.
“…oh,” he says finally, faintly, and Dean does turn then, flashing briefly on his brother’s face before turning away. Back to the closet, the wide open door. The space inside like the gap of a knocked-out tooth.
The bloody handprints all over the walls, at just the right height for a ten year old girl.
_____________
An hour later at the morgue, Sam accidentally brushes against Dean’s arm, and Dean knows the exact moment that Sam registers his elevated body temperature.
“Shit!” Sam blurts, springing away and holding up a warding hand, staring with wide eyes “You’re getting sick! You’re sick! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dean glowers and doesn’t dignify Sam’s freakout with a response. Asshole that he is, the kid refuses to come any closer, and holds his ground a good twenty feet away. He levels a shaking finger.
“You should have told me.”
Dean opens his mouth to deliver a witty retort, but his throat sticks and he clears it, then turns away and coughs and swallows and claps a hand to his neck, squeezing his glands. Fuck Sam anyway. It’s not like either of them gets sick all that often.
That’s probably the reason Sam’s freaking out, actually.
“Stop being a little bitch,” he bites out, rounding on his brother, and if his voice is a little raspier than usual, well, he hopes that’ll only make Sam fall in line that much quicker.
Unfortunately, Sam seems to have no desire to get within twenty feet of Dean and his current ‘condition,’ and remains firmly planted on the far side of the tiled floor.
“We can’t both be down with it at the same time,” Sam says, in a passable attempt at sounding reasonable. Dean narrows his eyes.
“Scared I’m gonna infect your sorry ass?” He waves sharply at the door, and piles on the scorn. “Christ, you giant girl, if you’re that scared of germs then you can just fuck off, and I’ll finish up with Mommy Dearest here myself.”
Sam bites his lip, looking vaguely guilty, but not enough to approach and let Dean hack all over him. Dammit.
“Go on, get outta here.” Dean jerks his head at the double doors. Sam wavers, but it’s pretty clear he has no desire to be near Dean, Dean’s mounting fever, his clamminess and sore throat, or any of the rest of his recently acquired germy symptoms.
Moments later, Dean’s alone in the morgue with nothing but the dead body of the late Jamie Corcoron’s mother, and the sound of the door swinging softly back and forth.
It’s kinda soothing, actually.
_____________
“So,” Sam picks at his Chinese food and peers at his notes, “It’s definitely the girl doing it? Killed her mom and dad and had a try at the nice realtor lady for dessert?”
Dean’s draped across his bed with an arm flung across his face, mouth open and panting lightly. His throat is on fire and his skin is that lovely combination of hot and clammy that makes him wonder if maybe he’ll go down in history as the world’s soggiest case of spontaneous human combustion. He’s barely paying attention to Sam, and to judge by the quality of his brother’s conversational gambits, it’s probably just as well. He lets a grunt stand in for his usual snappy retort.
“God.” Sam pushes his food across the table and shoves to his feet. “You’re going to be insufferable the whole time you’re sick, aren’t you?”
Dean peels his arm away from his eyes and glares. He’s a little mollified to see Sam blanch when he gets a good eyeful. Dean must look even worse than he feels.
“C’mere,” he slurs, gesturing weakly. “Got a present for you.”
Sam’s lip curls, but to his credit he doesn’t actually flee.
“It came on pretty fast,” he observes, leaning against the motel room door, arms folded. “You think it’s just a cold?”
“Plague,” Dean returns, rolling over and burying his face in the comforter. “Fucking-Bubonic black death avian swine flu. Flying pigs. Ringarounnarosie.” God, he aches.
Somewhere twenty miles away, Sam’s muttering about a thermometer. Dean curls a little tighter. He was wrong before. Forget spontaneous human combustion, he’s gonna freeze into a block of fucking ice, and then Sam will have to cut chips off and carry them around in his pockets and Jesus, where the fuck did that thought come from? Dean doesn’t do delirious.
He hates being sick. Next time it can be Sam’s turn. He's better at delerium anyway.
_____________
Sam’s got his hands in Dean’s face, all long fingers and broad, flat nails. The light shines sickly pale on their surface and Dean remembers that nails and hair are made of dead cells. That the outer layers of skin are all dead. A walking body is covered in a sheath of death. He slaps at Sam’s hands, tries to shove himself backward.
“Stop it,” he grits thinly, “Stop it.”
“You’re a goddamn grown-ass man,” Sam growls, waving the thermometer around, “Stop acting like a child.”
Dean grabs the thermometer, plastic and shiny metal tip (dipped in alcohol? Did they remember to clean it last time they used it?), and shoves Sam back. “Don’t touch me. Get off. Christ.”
Sam backs up, scowling, but they have in fact established that Dean is a goddamn grown-ass man. He eyes the thermometer warily. Should he wash it first? Is it clean? Who the hell cares what his temperature is, anyway? He’s not gonna die from a fucking fever. He tosses the offending instrument on the night table and flashes a glance at Sam, but his brother’s already across the room, glowering at his notes. Dean can’t tell if he’s even registered the little plasticky tinkly noise. Which is just as well.
He just wants to fucking sleep.
_____________
Sam smells like fire. Stinks like charred bones and roasting flesh. Accelerant and phosphorus. White phosphorus. Red phosphorus. Dean watches through slit lids as his brother collapses in the chair next to the door. It creaks, alarmingly.
“It’s done,” he says, “Jamie’s not going to hurt anyone else.”
Dean lets his eyes slide closed. The bed tries to crawl away underneath him and he digs his fingers in. Registers the outside world in fits and starts. Noise and air. Rustle of material. Hum of the lights. Sam moving across the room. Resting fingertips on the back of Dean’s neck.
“We’ll stay here for a while,” he murmurs, and Dean turns away from the distorted noise, the vibrations buzzing around the edges of the words. Sam keeps his fingers on Dean’s neck longer than he really needs to.
_____________
Sam’s cleaning. The light’s on in the bathroom, and the fan hums low and continuous. The smell of smoke still hangs in the air, vapor-thin, but the odor of detergent is gradually pushing it away. Dean hears Sam slap his shirt against the side of the bathtub, and the world fades out and when it comes back Sam’s wringing out shirts and cursing, quietly, and the noise of water and soap suds spattering on plastic fills the world.
_____________
He knocks the thermometer onto the carpet with a dull thump. Carpet. God. He can smell it, now, toxic and moldering, pregnant with corruption and crawling with things. Dean knows all about the things that live in motel rooms, the thousand uninvited guests. He’s woken up more than once marked with red spots or little welts, or just generally itchier than when he’d gone to bed. Like the bed he’s in now. Full of tiny legs, little wings, scales and faceted eyes
He sits up and hangs onto the edge of the bed with dry hands, fingers stinging and skin shivering. He can’t be here. He can’t let things go on like this. Something has to be done. He has to do something.
He finds his feet and pushes both hands down his face. Dry. Hot and dry. And he hurts from the inside out, hollow in places where he used to be full. His guts are being pulped, maybe. No other explanation. His insides are going to drip thick and clotted black from his nose, eyes, mouth and ears. Out of his every orifice, gobbets of flesh, pulped bone. Ruin.
He wants to swallow but can’t. His lips rest parted, cracking and dry. The air tastes of sickness, hot and sour as rot. Every breath draws it in, caking his lungs. His throat spasms, aborted desperation. He takes a step toward the door, then another. He wants to run but his skin is too thin. Too much movement and it’ll crack apart and fall around his feet and all his guts will come spilling out.
He lifts one arm, fingers grasping at air. Takes another step.
Hands clamp on his shoulders, hard heavy slaps that jolt through his body and he flinches sharply.
“God,” Sam says, voice too large, jagged in the wrong places, “You’re a furnace.”
He tries to pull away but Sam’s voice follows, and his hands dig in, fingers deep into the flesh, into muscle and skin as soft as wax. Adrenaline stabs upward from Dean’s belly and his arms jerk on their own and this time he lunges forward, but Sam’s fingers are cracking through bone and suddenly the world tilts and the walls are the ceiling and the floor is gone and Dean’s on his back blinking up, sucking in short dry breathes, blinking and blinking.
“Here,” and Sam shoves water at his face and it’s cold and wonderful but fuck where did it come from, what if it’s not clean? What’s inside it? Metal and blood, vomit and filth. He sputters out sickness and gasps and chokes and Sam swears. Cold wet spatters on Dean’s face and neck and chest and a hand slams onto his sternum and forces him down into the suffocating, bug-crawling softness of the bed. His bed. The sick bed.
“Nnn,” he managed, breathless and desert-cracked. “No get off get off don’t touch me-”
“Dean-”
“Don’t touch me! I’ll fucking-”
“Shit.” Sam bites the word. “Shit, your fever’s tearing you up. Shit. Okay I’m not touching you, okay? See me not touching you? Could you stop, Dean? Just, stop.”
Dean stares wide-eyed at Sam’s empty hands, slick and shiny with maybe water, or maybe sweat, or slime. Something viscous and toxic. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head away.
“Your fever needs to come down,” Sam murmurs.
_____________
The pills are bitter and horrible and he spits them onto the carpet and scrubs the back of his arm across his mouth and hacks, and again, and then it doesn’t stop and he’s doubled over, a cold hand on his back as he coughs and gasps and struggles for air, and coughs again and the air won’t come. Sam moves, at some point, and then he’s in front of him, holding on to wads of Dean’s shirt at the shoulders. Holding on while Dean gasps and drags air in, slow and thin.
“Your fever needs to come down,” Sam says again, “We’ve got to-just, come on.”
Dean’s barely managed to uncurl himself when a long arm shoves under his shoulders and he’s very nearly airborne, hauled to stand on trembling legs. He slumps against his brother, forehead banging against Sam’s chest. It’s awkward and ungainly and they stumble together into the bathroom and the light roars on and Dean flinches but Sam won’t let him go.
Sam spins the tap and the water screams into the bathtub, high and clear and glaring. Dean jerks away-no, the water’s cold, it’s not clean, people die like this, he’ll die he’ll die, all over again-and Sam clamps him tightly under his long arm and says, “Dammit, settle the fuck down.”
Dean coughs again, weakly, shakes his head.
“Sam.” His voice creaks. “Sam no, I’m not gonna-it’s two in the damn morning, I’m not-”
Sam slams the tap off and it echoes through the walls.
“Dean if you don’t-if we don’t do something your fever won’t come down,” he growls, low and tight. Dean shifts away, a little, but Sam latches one arm on his bicep and the world fades to a point just where he’s gripping. His fingers, the pad of his thumb. The bones inside.
Sam bites out some more words but a huge white buzzing opens up and swallows them. Dean looks up from his arm, looks for his brother, but can’t find his face, his eyes. He feels his body step away from him, and a thin high whine kicks on from somewhere and then the walls are gone.
_____________
Something cold is on his face. He can’t scream but he thrashes an arm up, claws roughly until the washcloth flops wetly to the side. He sits up hard, gasping, and his eyelids peel back and his eyes do their best to pop right out of his head.
The room is big and empty. No Sam. No anyone. Just Dean, alone with the reek of his own sickness, the stink of his body breaking down.
He fumbles around, finds the washcloth and wipes at his face. It’s cool but it’s wrong, he realizes, anything could be on it, anything from the bed or the water or Sam’s hands, and now it’s all over Dean’s face, burning and corrosive-God, he can feel it, stinging as it eats away at his skin. He drops the cloth and gets up, with difficulty, angles himself toward the gaping bathroom doorway.
The water from the sink’s not much better, splashing all over fake porcelain, smearing in the light, halo-bright. He scrubs at his face, again and then again, at his arms and hands and neck, but it’s no good. He can still feel it, the contamination from everything, feel it on his skin, tight and tense as something burning, eating way at him, inside and out.
Water doesn’t cut it. Soap isn’t much better. Sam’s left the cleaning kit on the counter, stuffed with random detergents, cleansers, sponges and rags. All-purpose, easier than running to the Laundromat at three in the morning to get out bloodstains. Easier all around. Not everything in it is for clothes, either. Dean rummages, comes up with a nearly empty bottle of linseed oil, half a canister of turpentine. Not great for skin, maybe, but better than the alternative. And it burns now, and his hands are on fire and goddammit, there must be something else.
He grabs the last clean steel wool pad. Sam won’t mind. Just let it work. Please, please let it work.
_____________
In the other room, the door opens.
“Dean? Dean are you-?”
_____________
It’s okay if there’s blood.
Red spatters in the sink, but the water washes it away.
_____________
He hears Sam before he sees him, but he’s not prepared to have the pad yanked from his hand, or for the noise his brother makes when blood flies from Dean’s ruined skin and spatters across Sam’s face.
“Sam,” Dean says, or thinks he does, holding his hands out, warding him away. His skin’s torn from scrubbing and his fingers tremble with the phantom rasp of metal on skin, scouring at tendons and knuckles and fingerprints, nails and veins and lifelines. Blood wells between two fingers and drips down, trails from Dean’s wrist in a long thin line.
Sam’s face collapses.
“Dean,” he breathes, “Jesus, you…why would you…?” he reaches out, reaches for Dean’s hands, his arms maybe, and Dean yanks them away and stumbles back.
“Don’t you-you don’t fuckin’ touch me, don’t. You can’t-”
“What?” And Sam’s face is a mix of confusion and cautious gentleness, like Dean’s losing his damn mind or something. Like he’s an animal who’s gonna freak out. But he’s not. He’s not.
“Get away from me!” he snarls, winching his arms in, hands close to his body. As close as possible without touching. The pain is distant. The blood dripping from his fingers and wrists is cold. Sam stands rooted to the ground, but Dean can see his nostrils flaring, can see he’s trying to control himself.
“You’re bleeding,” Sam says quietly, steadily. “You need to let me help you.”
Dean looks away, toward the wall. There’s a thin smear of black in the corner, above the shower. Mold. Poison. It gets in the air. It gets in the lungs. It grows and grows and fills everything, every empty space, chokes out air and blood and light. It kills. It’s horrible and it’s everywhere and it’s on him.
His feet stumble over themselves and something hard hits his back, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. It’s everything else that’s important, everything on his skin, his hands and face. And now it’s in his blood, black and rotting, worming inside, underneath, burrowing and tunneling. He yanks his hands away from his body and stares, trembling, something huge welling up in his throat. His mouth is open and there isn’t any air. The blood from his hands is too dark. Much too dark. Not red but black, sticky and noxious. Toxic. Bubbling. The stink of decay hits him like a brick to the face. It’s him. He’s rotting. He’s infected. His skin’s full of holes, his skin’s coming off, turning to liquid, foaming and fizzing.
Distantly he feels something hit his knees. The light reels. He grabs one hand with the other, nails digging in and he can see bone, punching through noxious chemical flesh, he can taste it on his tongue. Thick and viscous. He hears a noise, some scraping whine, and his throat aches with it.
When something grabs him he’s not ready. Some huge horror latches onto his streaked, soaking wrists, and he’s yanked forward violently, arms and body jerking. He can’t get away. He can’t get away. Whatever it is, it’s too strong, holding on and tearing into his skin, and he pulls and pulls. The light strobes. He hears words, whispers. Calm down, please calm down, you’re making it worse. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.
He spits and snarls, wrenches backward, thrashing, heels digging into the tile. Warm wetness bubbles from his mouth-froth, or blood, or worse. He pants through his teeth, rasping noises that don’t sound like him. He’s coming apart. Everything’s coming apart. His wrists are slippery. He yanks, hard as he can, and there’s a sharp cry. The world pitches away and his head cracks into something hard and ringing, a solid bell, a single tone, a cry across an empty sky. Light peals across his vision and his body disintegrates, there in that moment, and silence blossoms in its place.
_____________
The TV’s on when Dean opens his eyes.
He blinks, blearily, at the pale pillowcase a hairsbreadth from his eye. Light flickers blue and grey and stuttering. Cartoons.
He blinks. Daffy Duck’s voice swells and fades.
After all, it was me or him, and obviously, it couldn't be me…
“Ughh,” his mouth makes noises of its own accord. He smacks his lips around the sticky, horrible taste.
It's a simple matter of logic.
“Sssmm,” he groans. Shuts his eyes, rallies a bit. His throat doesn’t hurt. “Sam…”
There’s a clatter, the noise of a huge body moving suddenly.
I'm not like other people. I can't stand pain. It hurts me.
“Hey.” A heavy hand falls on his shoulder, and Dean doesn’t flinch. There’s a moment, suspended in the little room, when it’s nothing but him and his brother in a small quiet space. The low light of the television and blue shadows on the walls.
And then the pain, and the memory, comes back.
“Oh,” he says, eyes squeezing shut as he curls around his hands, “Oh Jesus, oh fuck.”
“Yeah,” Sam says sympathetically, “It, uh-it’s kinda gory.”
“Jeezus. Why the hell did I…?” he gasps. His hands twitch and even that slight movement sends agony through his skin, spiderwebbing through tendons and muscles, stabbing up his arms. A dull, sympathetic ache murmurs from the back of his skull and he can’t find the wherewithal to pry his eyes open again.
“Why-Sam, what the hell happened?” His voice comes out plaintive, and small.
Sam sighs. Dean bites the inside of his cheek and breathes through his nose. He remembers, in a distant way, the moment in the bathroom when stripping his skin off with a steel wool pad seemed like the best idea in the world, but he has no idea where that particular insanity originated.
“It, uh-” Sam pauses. Dean hears him lick his lips. “It wasn’t just a fever. Or…flu. I mean I knew you were sick. I thought it was just…I thought you were just freaking out from the fever. I’m…but it wasn’t. I mean maybe that was part of it, but…I think you picked up something. From Jamie’s mom. In the morgue. You know? Like before.”
“What…” saliva is pooling in his mouth, nausea in his gut. He swallows, and again, manages a slurred mumble that sounds as much like “Ghost sickness?” as he can manage.
Sam says something in response, but Dean loses his voice in a sudden stab from his hands. He makes another noise, something like a whine, though he’ll never admit it, and Sam’s grip tightens on his shoulder.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he hears, faintly, and then something about painkillers and lying low and time to heal, be fine. It all runs together in a blur and then he’s choking and Sam’s swearing and there’s spit and the smell of vomit and he just wants to be unconscious again.
_____________
He opens his eyes to a quiet sunrise peeking around the curtains. The smell of vomit is gone. His hands are a trembling mass of dark red pain on the ends of his arms. Sam’s asleep, propped up against the bed, hair crazy and unwashed. He smells faintly of smoke.
There oughta be a law, Dean thinks vaguely. He grits his teeth and manages to shift an arm without brushing his bandaged hand against the comforter. A fucking law about…about fucking relapses. Shit. He gets his hand as close to Sam’s head as he can manage without actually touching him. He can feel his fingers trembling in their cocoon of white, but the bandages give an illusion of stillness.
Dean wants painkillers. He wants water. He wants to hack his goddamn hands off and shower until the end of time, and he wants out of this room that smells of stale sickness and two grown, overripe men, and smoke, and turpentine and laundry detergent, and blood. He really wants a glass of water. Oh God, does he want a glass of water.
But Sam’s asleep. It’s eight in the morning, Sam’s out cold on the floor, head on Dean’s bed. Dean creeps his fingers a little closer. The pain from the movement washes over and through him. He clenches his jaw and shuts his eyes and swallows the noise he wants to make, and when he opens his eyes again, Sam’s still dead to the world.
Dean lets him sleep.
-End-
________________________________________
Notes: Oh my god, this fic would not freaking end. If it seems choppy and weird in places, it's because I just wanted it to be over. I'm not kidding. 4,000 words. It's a monster.
Don't ask me how the Looney Tunes reference got in there, or why. Blame Sunday morning weirdness.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the backstory is here, other than that Jamie was a ghost who killed her parents after being locked in a closet and probably violently abused or something. So the mom was the one who got ghost sickness and went on to infect Dean. In case there was any confusion.