Cura te ipsum
Title: Cura te ipsum
Author: July
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Characters: Dean and Sam
Spoilers: Just the pilot.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I don't even get shared custody.
Summary: “I need a break, Dad,” he said aloud, to the Impala’s empty passenger seat. “I feel like crap, we haven’t slept in three days, and I need a break.”Too bad that telepathy, like subtlety, was not one of his gifts.
Notes: Now with a mini Latin glossary at the bottom.
Cura te ipsum
He and Sam always were always sick at the same time. It was only natural, considering that they spent most of their childhood sharing the same backseat or the same bed in a motel room. And since the only thing that would make Sammy feel better was Dean, quarantine was hardly an option. Dad tried it, once, when Sam had some bug or another. He booked two single rooms with an adjoining door. It lasted a whopping 10 minutes with Sam-who was maybe 5 at the time-trying not to cry on his bed in one room while John stood under the lintel between the rooms, unable to meet his other son’s eyes.
Dean remembered very clearly sitting there, arms crossed, looking at Dad with an expression that could only be described as incredulous. And maybe a little hurt. John had held out for almost a quarter hour before conceding that the situation was untenable. He felt like an ass, Dean was pissed, and Sammy was miserable. And nobody was going to get any sleep.
So John bowed out gracefully: he cussed, told Dean to watch out for his brother, and went to get beer. As soon as he was out the door, Dean crossed through the connecting door to see Sammy. He rolled Sammy over a little, making space for himself on the bed, and turned on the TV.
“Check it out, Sammy. It's Moonlighting! Not exactly how I wanted to spend spring break, but all told, not too bad. I’m gonna go scare us up some OJ and Sprite.”
He had a gift, he knew he did, for not making Sam feel like a wimp when he was under the weather. And Sam always returned the favor, usually by flashing Dad the puppy-dog eyes and/or bitching and moaning long enough to guarantee that they would get a decent night of sleep, and maybe a hot meal, without Dean having to ask. Sam got to save face, and Dean got to salvage a little pride, too.
Dean sneezed again, shuddered, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. There was a fine layer of yellow-green crud starting to build up on the cuff of his henley. He might have taken the time to consider how gross that was, but he was having enough trouble following the truck in the rain already.
“I need a break, Dad,” he said aloud, to the Impala’s empty passenger seat. “I feel like crap, we haven’t slept in three days, and I need a break.”
Too bad that telepathy, like subtlety, was not one of his gifts.
>>>>>
Taking upper level Latin in his first term as a freshman might have been a mistake. Sam considered this possibility for the umpteenth time. His roommate had said has much on the first day of class, reminding Sam that this was the time to take huge lecture courses that he could skip (presumably in favor of nursing a hangover) and only show up for section reviews.
Then again, his roommate’s name was Juniper. Damn hippies, Sam thought, and cringed at how easily his dad’s words of wisdom came to him lately. Quod nocet, saepe docet. Wait, where was he? Right. The subjunctive. Personally, Sam preferred the imperative. He certainly had more practice with it. You couldn’t suggest that a demon exit the body of a possessed person; you couldn’t imply that a home ought to bless its own self; and you sure as shit couldn’t hypothesize an evil spirit into not returning. No, the imperative was much better. It was straight forward, powerful, and effective.
Sam sneezed, shuddered, and for a moment considered wiping his nose on the cuff of his sleeve. No, that was gross, not ectoplasm gross, but still. Christ, he felt like crap. But in two days he had a Latin 301 final, and the consequences of failure were unthinkable. He shivered again, even in the sunlight streaming through the window of the library and tried not to think about how good one of Dean’s OJ/Sprite cocktails sounded. But that ship had sailed. That bridge was burnt. Dean had made his choice. Dad had made his. And Sam had a roommate named after a tree, a Latin final, and probably the flu. Roma traditoribus non premia.
>>>>>
He didn’t know what was more disheartening: the fact that their ‘Black Dog’ had turned out to be just that: an overweight Newfoundland, or that said fat Newfoundland had outrun him. Dean looked through the sleet as he watched the dog disappear into the trees.
“Did you get him?” John asked, jogging into the clearing. The man wasn’t even out of breath.
“Dog,” Dean panted and ran a hand down his wet face. “Just a dog.” He tried to clear his throat, coughing up an impressive loogey in the process.
“Damn it, Dean,” John said, exasperated. And with that, he turned and headed back towards the car. At a jog. Of course.
His breath caught and Dean put out a hand to lean against a tree until the coughing passed. Wearily, he rubbed at his breastbone, trying to dull the sharp pain there. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples and roaring in his ears. He was the only son here, and there was no getting around that unfortunate fact. He needed to step up his game if had any hope of covering two positions. He needed to cut his turnovers in half, double his assists, hustle more, run faster, play harder. There was no bench left to ride. He spat into the grass, turned, and jogged after his father.
>>>>>
“Seriously, man, why did you take this course?” Juniper had returned to their room a few moments ago from what he described as an ‘epic hot-boxing.’ On a scale of one to Keith Richards, Sam gave him a solid 8. He was red-eyed, reeking of pot, and feeling philosophical. “Dude. Think about it. Dude. You knew it would be hard, and you knew the exams would suck, and you chose to do it anyway. What does that say about you, Sam, as a man among men?”
This was a question Sam didn’t want to answer, at least not definitively, and definitely not to Juniper. He had his reasons. Certainly because it was intellectually challenging and useful for pre-law. But also because it reminded him of lessons in Pastor Jim’s basement, because it made him feel useful and helpful, because he was better at it than Dean, because his Dad was always proud of his ability to churn out incantations at the drop of a hat. Because it made him feel close to a family he had knowingly turned his back on.
“It’s complicated,” he said, peevishly. Non habes iure provocare mihi. He was going to say something else, but he had to pause to hack up a lung. It left his chest aching, and it took him a moment to draw a decent breath.
“That sounds bad, man. Hey, I think I got some echinacea in my last care package.”
Damn hippies, Sam thought again. Echinacea wasn’t going to do crap. His head hurt, his throat hurt, and he was almost out of cough drops. The store was closed for the night but…oh, nevermind. It would be open in another hour. He’d lost track of time again. A soft pink dawn was already creeping up into the sky. No point in sleeping now, he was halfway through the irregular verbs. Age quod agis.
>>>>>
For the coolest dad in the world, sometimes John Winchester could be a real bastard. Dean had made his peace with this unfortunate truth years ago. So that night, when Dean returned to their motel from a beer run and found the truck gone, he was not wholly surprised. Pissed, but not surprised. Sam would have shat a brick, he thought. But Sam wasn’t here.
He had to open the door to their room using two hands, jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. It was brass monkey balls cold in Colorado in December, and he wasn’t dressed for the weather: just decent boots, a couple layers, and a toque. The thought of a scalding hot shower and a full night of sleep-maybe a cup of black, hot coffee in the morning, was enough to make his head spin. He got the door open and shut it behind him, taking a moment to relish the relative heat of the room. With an excitement bordering on glee, he turned up the thermostat all the way and started stripping off layers of wet clothes, casting aside his cell phone and miscellaneous small arms along the way.
He was down to his t-shirt when he saw the note: Werewolf sighting in Carpenter. Bullets on order with Caleb. Meet back 0700.
Yuma to Lincoln…5 hours if he pushed his luck. 10 round trip. That gave him an hour to dry out and warm up here and maybe an hour at Caleb’s. If Sam was a walking encyclopedia of weird, Dean was an ambulatory atlas. Mr. Rand McNally sneezed four times in a row. Jesus, it made his chest hurt. He could actually hear it moving around in his there, too, which couldn’t be good. He made a fist and pressed the knuckles into his sternum, waiting until it passed.
For a long moment, he stared at his phone. He could call Dad. It was always a possibility. He could call him and say…what, exactly? I’d love to go get those silver bullets, but I’ve got a cold or I might be coming down with something or I need some beauty sleep. He might as well take up knitting and yoga and turn in his testes before they were repossessed.
Sick call was not an option, then. He got in the shower and did as much deep breathing as he could before the hot water ran out. Then he put on some dry clothes, got in the Impala, and started driving towards I-80.
>>>>>
Sam had no appetite. In lieu of real food, he partook of what he had always thought of as The John Winchester Breakfast Special: one large black coffee, three aspirin, three Motrin, and a refill. The thought of adopting any of his father’s habits was galling and Sam didn’t even like coffee. But he did feel a little better. Dura necessitas. He tried to inhale again-big mistake. Coughing hoarsely into the crook of his elbow, he palmed another lozenge from the economy sized bag in his jacket pocket. He suspected that he smelled rather strongly of menthol, but there was no way to know since he had lost the ability to breathe through his nose.
The elevator opened onto the lobby and Sam headed outside. He couldn’t wait for this to be over. He was going to sleep for a week. Squinting against the sunshine, he sneezed four times, producing something that could only be described as the color unripened bananas Now it was approaching ectoplasm gross, he thought, and reached for the Kleenex in his other pocket.
Sam hustled across the quad towards his final. In the fall, he thought that maybe the nice weather was a fluke. But the sun had never really stopped shining and the air, even now, was more brisk and refreshing than anything else. It was a pleasant change, certainly, from last December. Where had they been? Ithaca? The hunt was a disaster. The coven ended up dead. But when it was all said and done, he’d spent almost two hours patching his family up. Dad couldn’t see out of one eye, and Dean was shaking so hard he couldn’t hold his flare gun much less a needle.
It wasn’t his family’s finest hour. Dean had been hypothermic, sluggish, disoriented, and belligerent. Just getting him into dry clothes had been a herculean task. Dad had been brained by an iced-over tree branch at some point, and while he wasn’t concussed, he was bleeding like a stuck pig from half a dozen lacerations in his scalp. Never in his life had Dad looked as grateful as when Sam emerged from the gorge unscathed and offered to drive back to the cabin.
Sam was sick, he was tired, and he couldn’t keep from asking himself: Where were they today? Who was driving them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
He got to Pigott with a good half hour before the test. Pausing outside the side door, he took a moment to cough up his other lung. As discreetly as possible, he expectorated what was left. Oh my God, it had texture now. It was officially ectoplasm gross. Maybe he would go to Vaden after the test. Right now, though, there was work to do. He pulled his note cards out of his backpack and went back to work.
>>>>>
“You look like death on a cracker,” Caleb pronounced, letting him into the house.
“Thanks.” Dean croaked. The drive had been a bitch and he was all out of witty repartee. The sleet had turned into an unholy combination of frozen and half frozen precipitation that meteorologists insisted on calling ‘wintry mix’ instead of 'proof that God hates you'. And the nice, straight lanes of I-80 had made it difficult to focus, to concentrate, to stay awake, even.
“Sit your ass down,” Caleb said in a way that was really only half invitation. Dean dropped onto the nearest horizontal surface, a dilapidated couch whose infrastructure had been on life support since the first Bush administration. It smelled like those nasty hand-rolled cigarettes Caleb loved, which had also burnt random holes in the polyester upholstery. It was the best damn sofa he had ever laid eyes on.
“Do I need to get the kit?” Caleb asked, rather bluntly in Dean’s opinion.
“Nah, just a cold.” Caleb just shrugged. Not his business, not his problem. He was a man of relatively few, fairly profane words. Unless, of course, he was talking about guns. Never ask Caleb about guns, Dean had learned, unless you wanted a filibuster.
“I’ll get your stuff boxed up. You can grab a few, if you want. I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
“Thanks, man.” Muttering something under his breath about pride going before a boot up the ass, Caleb headed for the basement. Neither John nor Dean had ever been downstairs, but for his part, Dean suspected that Caleb had amassed enough weaponry down there to make the Royal Armoury in Leeds look like a dime store.
Dean kicked off his boots, turned on his side, and tucked his knees up towards his chest. A few seconds later, he was hit in the head by an old pillow and an army surplus blanket. Caleb was a good guy. Dean made do with his little bed. He wrapped himself up and turned to rest his head on the pillow. He tried to take a deep breath and settle in, but it just set off a coughing jag that was long and hard enough to turn the pillow into a potential biohazard. He was shivering and sweating at the same time, but preferred to avoid the implications of that by dropping immediately into an uneasy sleep.
A few minutes later, Caleb was shaking him awake. “What?” he groaned out, then turned his face back into the pillow as his body attempted to expel what was left of his pulmonary system. The blanket felt too warm, but he was clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Rise and shine, princess. You’ve been sleeping for a solid four hours.” Horrified, Dean pushed himself to a sitting position. Dad was going to go ballistic. “Good news and bad news,” Caleb said. “The bad news is that your Dad’s probably going to blow his top. The good news is while you were sleeping the sleet turned to snow, so there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.”
“He’s gonna kill me,” Dean said, pushing a hand through his damp hair.
“No shit,” Caleb said, sounding disgusted. “Get your boots on. I’ll go start the truck.” Dean was confused. Caleb was going to drive him back to Yuma? That was above and beyond the call. And it was more than his pride could swallow, even today. He swung his legs back to the floor and prepared to rise and protest. He put his hand down on the pillow to push himself to his feet, but when he did, his hand came away a little tacky from where the fabric was flecked with blood.
“Oh, fuck me.”
>>>>>
Sam kicked Latin ass. Hell, when he was fourteen years old he extemporaneously cobbled together an exorcism in Latin, a benediction in Aramaic, and an injunction in Ancient Greek while under fire from a trio of poltergeists. And now, riding the high from an exam he knew he had aced, he could finally acknowledge that he was, indeed, The Man.
It was worth it after all, he thought, kicking off his boots and climbing cautiously into his lofted bed. He coughed again, curled sideways, and tried to ignore the nasty rattling noise his chest was making. Still worth it, he thought. Sam wrapped himself up in his second hand blanket and tried to warm up. It was weird that he was cold, though, since Juniper kept the room like a sauna. He could hear the infamous Stanford band getting started, though it couldn’t be much past three in the afternoon. It was the last day of finals and the parties were going to be ludicrous. If he hadn’t been so relieved to get into bed, he might have been annoyed that the one time he could allow himself to get hammered, he was too sick to do it.
A few minutes later-funny, the sun had set-Sam fought his way back into consciousness. At first he thought it was the raucous debauchery from inside the dorm that had woken him. But, fighting down a rising panic, he realized it was because he was struggling to breathe. A familiar dread overtook him. He knew this feeling. He had pushed his luck too far. Like the time in Childress that Dad’s cracked rib slipped and punctured his lung. Or the time that they waited too long to pop Dean’s shoulder back in, and the muscles were too stiff to do it, and he had to listen to his brother scream all the way to the hospital in Provo. That’s what this was: ER time.
The ER was either the first stop or the last resort. And even by Winchester standards, he was out of options. ABC: everything followed airway. Sam rolled out of the bunk, slipping a little on the way down, but regaining his footing. He tried bracing himself against the bed post, but it didn’t ease the way his chest was clenching itself. Juniper was nowhere to be found. Probably getting baked somewhere. Damn hippies.
As soon as he opened the door to the hallway, though, he realized how screwed he really was. There was not a sober person left on his floor. Alcohol fumes drifted like mustard gas, and he half-choked on his way into the common lounge. Dollars to donuts even the sub-free kids were wasted tonight. He looked across to the other wing of the dorm. Girls: the last resort of last resorts. Quidquid id est timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Sam spent his entire semester avoiding them like the Black Death. Not only because they were distracting (Sunbathing in the quad? In the middle of the day? ), but also because he was more than a little afraid of them. He knew that they, unlike their denser male counterparts, could probably tell he was different. They would know his clothes were cheap or thrift shop or both. They could tell he’d never had a haircut that cost more than five dollars. They would ask insightful questions about his family.
The fever had him a little unsteady on his feet, his eyes glazed over dully, so nobody gave him a second look as he elbowed his way through the crowd of smashed students. He stepped into the girls’ hallway and knocked on the first door he saw.
“Wait one freaking minute, Kit,” said a girl’s voice, and the door swung open. In the background, Black Betty was playing at a potentially lethal volume, but even that didn’t distract him from the fact that this girl was the most beautiful he had ever seen. She was in an early stage of ‘getting ready to go out’. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had a PROPERTY OF STANFORD VOLLEYBALL t-shirt on. But she was wearing a short denim skirt that made her legs look about a million miles long. Oh my God, he thought, her legs.
“Sorry, you’re not Kit,” she said. Sam remembered to breathe again. “I think you have the wrong room.” She smiled at him a little indulgently. Her eyes were blue, he noticed.
“No, I mean yes, but…no.” Sam Winchester, master of any language but English. “I’m sorry, but I have a favor to ask.” She raised an eyebrow. “You seem, um, relatively sober.” Way to bowl her over, he thought. “I really, really need a lift to the ER.” As if to make his point, his knees buckled a little and he put a hand out to steady himself on the door. She was looking at him like he was a lost puppy.
“I’ll get my keys.”
>>>>>
Dean didn’t remember much of the drive. There was snow involved, and ice, and Caleb cursing quite a bit-mostly at Dean, Dean’s judgment, Dean’s lack of self-awareness, Dean’s parentage, and so on and so forth. Dean might have taken exception to any or all of it, but he was too busy trying to breathe.
When the triage nurse directed him to take a seat and fill out some forms, Caleb pointedly and loudly informed her that the kid’s lips were blue, goddammit, and he was coughing up blood. Dean thought that was a little overdramatic, but then again he couldn’t see his own lips. He swatted away some hands reaching for him.
“The shirt stays on,” he heard Caleb say. “Goddammit, I said the shirt stays on.” The last thing they needed was somebody asking questions about the demonic road rash on his shoulder or the ritual burns on his abdomen. Somebody passed him an oxygen mask and pretty soon the world around him started to come back into focus.
“Dumbass,” Caleb said, from the chair next to the bed. He looked peeved. Dean grinned. The troublesome nurse was gone, stepped out to get a doctor, probably.
“Call Dad yet?” he asked, muffled a little by the mask. If he died on Caleb’s watch, Dad would kill Caleb until he was dead and then kill him some more. That was actually a little comforting.
“They’re going to x-ray your chest,” Caleb dodged the question. “Probably an IV, maybe observe you overnight, definitely drugs. You got a workable insurance card?” Dean nodded.
“Good. Now I’m going to call John Winchester and tell him his elder son is in the hospital. I’d like a plain pine box. And I’m taking my Johnny Cash collection with me.”
“’Why me, Lord’?” Caleb swatted him on the back of the head. Then, he dialed John’s phone number.
“Hey. Nope, the order was ready. Snow kicked up. Not safe to drive.” Caleb stood up and turned his back to Dean. “Wasn’t fit for man nor beast to be driving, John. Yeah, well, there’s another problem. We’re at St. Elizabeth’s. Yes, John, the hospital. Dean’s fine. Dean’s-I can’t put him on right now, they’ve got a mask on him. We’re waiting-John, listen-we’re waiting on-“ Caleb stopped talking for a moment and even from the bed, Dean could hear the spirit, if not the letter, of verbal abuse he was being subjected to. When Caleb turned back around, Dean had his hand out to accept the phone.
Dean inhaled as much as he felt he could, and then pulled the mask away from his face for a moment. “I’m fine, Sir.”
“What the fuck are you doing at the hospital, then?” his father’s voice was low, clipped. He was pissed, but Dean couldn’t tell at whom.
“You know Caleb. Bring a gun to a knife fight.” Without any warning, he started coughing again, and this time he didn’t stop. Caleb put a hand on his shoulder, pried the phone out of his hand, and pulled the oxygen mask back over his face.
“That stays on,” he said grimly. “I’m here, John. He’s OK. Yeah. But he’s OK.” There was another pause. “Got it. No sedatives, no surgery, no overnight.” Another pause. “Just don’t kill yourself getting here. Jesus, John. I swear.” Caleb clicked his phone off.
“He say?” Dean abbreviated, rasping breathlessly. Caleb turned and gave him a look that was usually reserved for recalcitrant werewolves. “That bad, huh?”
>>>>>
“I’m not Dean,” said the driver of the SUV. She leaned over and shook his shoulder. “Quit calling me Dean.”
“Sorry,” Sam said. He tried to focus on breathing again. It was the fever, he thought, it was raising his heart rate, making it hard to breathe, making it hard to keep up. “I just got a little confused there. Dean’s usually driving. Who are you, again?”
“I’m Jess,” she said, smiling a little from the corner of her mouth. Sam liked her already. Whoever she was, she was displaying remarkable equilibrium for someone transporting a delirious stranger to the ER. And she hadn’t changed out of that wonderful, wonderful skirt.
“Hi, Jess. I’m Sam.”
“Hi, Sam.” She laughed. “This is the third time we’ve been introduced in as many minutes.”
“No kidding? I can’t believe I’d forget you. Ignoti nulla cupido. No, wait, that one doesn’t work.”
“Must be some trip you’re on.”
“I’m not…I’m sober,” he said. “Call Dean, he’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
“That is a glorious skirt.”
“Seriously, Sam, what did you take? They’re going to ask you when we get there.”
“Didn’t take anything,” he mumbled and coughed shallowly. “Swear to God, Dean. I didn’t take anything.”
“And here we go again. I’m Jess.”
“Hi, Jess. I’m Sam.”
“Hi, Sam. What are you on?”
“Nothing. Jurare in verba magistri. Hey, I really like your skirt.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
>>>>>
“He’s resting comfortably,” Caleb said into the phone. “See you soon.”
‘Resting comfortably’ might be the most oxymoronic phrase ever to be used in a hospital, Dean thought. Right up there with ‘living will’ or ‘life support.’ The fever was down, and the mask was off, but now he had a tube in his arm and a doctor who mispronounced ‘Ehart’.
“I want to leave,” he said, having regained the ability to both breathe and speak. He hated hospitals, he hated doctors, and he hated having tubes stuck in him. They’d been here for four hours already, and if he stayed a minute longer, he was going to lose his mind. Caleb sat, hands clasped behind his head, like he had the patience of Job.
“When your Dad gets here.”
“The hell with Dad!” Dean snapped. “He isn’t here. He’s just…he’s not here. Go tell the nurse to get the scrips and the AMA paperwork ready. Because I? I am leaving in the next ten minutes even if I have to impersonate a corpse to do it.” Caleb looked at him, really looked, then shrugged and headed towards the nurses’ station. Almost the minute he was out the door, Dean’s phone rang. He swung his legs over the bed, working around the wobble in his knees, and retrieved the phone from his jacket. He glanced at the call ID: Stanford Emergency Medicine. Dean sat back down in a hurry.
>>>>>
“Thanks for the ride,” Sam said, teetering out of the car.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the girl with the legs said, putting the car in park in one of the emergency spots. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam assured her. “Dean’ll be here soon.”
“Yeah, I’m coming with you.” She took him firmly by the hand-and her hand felt pleasantly cool-and led him through the sliding glass doors, past the chairs of waiting people, and up to the admitting desk. “Hi. This is Sam. He lives on my floor and no, I don’t know what he took, but I think he’s having trouble breathing and he’s definitely in an altered state, if you know what I mean.”
She was talking kind of fast. She was worried? That was OK. Dean would be there soon. Not Dad, though, and he couldn’t remember why. Then Sam caught sight of her legs again and blissfully stopped thinking again.
A half hour later he sat on the edge of a hospital bed, blushing furiously as she retold the story. “I’m pretty sure you spoke Latin for a while. Oh, and you would not shut up about my skirt.”
“No way,” he said. “I don’t believe it.” Whatever was in his IV had brought him back around.
“Seriously, you said it was glorious.” He laughed and of course it turned into a hacking cough. Sam would’ve apologized if he could’ve spoken. He’d known this girl for a little more than an hour-and only remembered the last twenty minutes-but he was pretty sure that she was the most perfect person he had ever met. She was a freshman, too. She wanted to be a surgeon. The only problem was that she was dating someone named Sterling. And, really: 'Sterling'?
“Sam?” she interrupted his reverie. “Who’s Dean?”
Sam could feel himself sit up straighter, pulling his shoulders back defensively and he cast his eyes towards the floor. “Why do you ask?”
“You asked for him. A lot.” Sam swallowed.
“He’s my brother. We…we used to be really close.” And thank God a nurse came in before things could get more awkward. Jess excused herself to go get a cup of coffee.
“I have some questions about your paperwork,” he said.
“What paperwork?” Sam asked.
“Exactly.” He offered Sam a clipboard.
And that’s when it hit him: he had no insurance. He had the student kind, but that was only good on campus. And now…now he was looking at a treatment room, IV, x-rays, definitely some drugs...Sam ran the numbers in his head. He had a work study job, but that went towards living expenses, and the wad of cash Dean had shoved in his wallet at the bus station was spent long ago on books. He couldn’t pay this bill. He could get an off campus job and cancel his dining plan and eat ramen for the next three and a half years and he would never pay this bill.
Smiling like a champ, Sam accepted the paperwork. The nurse left. Sam considered climbing out the window. Then he remembered what was in his wallet. On top of the cash, Dean had given him three cards. Sam had cut up the fraudulent credit card, but held onto the other two. He pulled them out: Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance and a license for one Murphy Samuel McManus. Sam had bitched about it. Waiting at the bus stop, the last conversation he had with Dean, he had almost refused his gifts. “You don't fuckin' know what you're gonna need it for, Sam, you just always need it.” So Sam took it.
Swallowing the sour taste in his mouth, probably a combination of pride, crow, and humble pie, Sam began to dutifully copy down the information. Facilis descensus Averno.
>>>>>
“Mr. Connor McManus?”
“Yes,” Dean said. His voice was gravelly and his mouth was dry. There was only one insurance card with that name on it, and John Winchester didn’t even know that it existed. Sam kept the cards, he thought, Sam kept the cards.
“Your insurance lists you as the responsible party for your brother Murphy,” said a world weary female voice from the other end of the line. Dean had seen and conned a million of these same women: tired, overworked admitting nurses just trying to survive their shifts.
“That’s correct.”
“I just need to verify if-“
“Is he okay?” Dean ran over her words, unable to stop himself. “Is my brother okay? Was there…was there an accident?”
“He hasn’t called you?”
“No.” Please, God, don’t let it be bad. The Impala didn’t have snow chains, but he could hotwire Caleb’s truck if he needed to. Effortlessly, he did the math. It was almost a 24 hour drive. He’d have to stop to gas up a few times. Call it an even 24, then. That was too long. God help him, he would book a flight. He could get on plane if he had to, Dean tried to convince himself.
“He’s going to be fine, Mr. McManus.”
“Oh?”
“I’m looking at his chart now. He has pneumonia, but it’s nothing that rest and fluids and antibiotics can’t clear up.”
“Oh.” Dean laid back down on the bed. He could feel himself getting shaky again. He closed his eyes and focused on controlling his voice. Sam kept the cards.
“I know how it is with college kids,” the battleaxe said with surprising empathy. “They can be…trying. I can transfer you up to his room, if you’d like?”
“No,” Dean said quickly, but it was a little garbled. “No,” he repeated. “I’ll call him back myself. But you’re, I mean, you know he’s okay?”
“I’m positive, Mr. McManus. He probably won’t even have to stay the night.” Dean verified the P.O. Box in Sacramento, thanked her, and hung up the phone. He stayed there for a while, eyes closed, the weight of his talisman rising and falling with his rattling breath.
>>>>>
It wasn’t the first time Sam had talked his way out of a night in the hospital. It was, however, the first time a beautiful girl with pin-up legs was waiting to give him a lift home. He hadn’t thought she would, it had been two hours, but there she was outside the ER’s sliding doors.
“Sam!” she called out. He felt like death warmed over, he was still running a temperature, he needed a clean shirt, and he had approximately a gallon of mucus inside of him but the sight of her waving at him like that made him feel like the luckiest man alive.
“Hey,” he said, tucking the small paper bag of prescriptions under his arm. “I can’t believe you waited.”
“The night is still young,” Jess said and unlocked the car. “We can stop for cocoa on the way home, if you want. Always makes me feel better.” She flashed him a puckish smile and the hell with Sterling, Sam thought. Who names their kid Sterling, anyway? Fortes fortuna iuvat.
“That would be great.”
>>>>>
Caleb was shaking his shoulders. He was pretty sure it wasn’t time for more meds, because he’d just drifted off again after the last round. “Lemme alone, man” he muttered.
“Dean, son, you need to wake up.” He threw a hand over his eyes, and turned towards the wall. He was groggy and disoriented, and the movement made him start coughing again, producing something with the consistency of Elmer’s glue. Dean groaned, rubbed at his chest, and curled up a little tighter.
“That wasn’t a request, Dean.” The hands moved from his shoulders to his back, hauling him upright. Somebody put a glass of water in his hand, and he managed to drink a little. “Look at me, son. Let me know you’re at home.” Dean caught his breath and opened his eyes.
“Hey, Dad.” He made a concerted effort to rouse himself now. He could smell coffee and see Caleb standing silently in the kitchen doorway holding two mugs.
“Hey, Dean.” Dad was looking relieved and mad at the same time. Neat trick.
“What are you doing here? There’s a werewolf in Carpenter.”
“Jim’s on it. Go back to sleep, kid.”
“The hell? You woke me up for that? I was sleeping.”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you again in a couple hours.” His dad took him by the shoulders again, laying him horizontal and rolling him onto his side, facing the door. Dad stared at him for a minute or two, and then he stood up to face Caleb.
“Why didn’t you make him stay the night?” Dad demanded. They thought he was down for the count, so they weren’t trying real hard to keep it down. Dean forced himself to stay awake, to pay attention.
“Gee, John, let me think about that one,” Caleb said, with a certain disarming, wry humor. “I remember some asshole promising me all kinds of bodily harm if I did any such thing.”
“He looks terrible.”
“You should have seen him yesterday when he was coughing up blood on my sofa,” Caleb took a sip of coffee, his expression mild. “Pretty long drive from Yuma for a kid with pneumonia.”
“You got something to say to me?”
“You still take it black?” Caleb passed him a mug of coffee. And Dad took it from him with nothing more than a muttered oath. The point was made and peace, via caffeine, was offered. And accepted. Caleb could always pull that shit off. He was a wily bastard.
Dean smiled, thinking about his brother on the other side of the country. Sam had kept the cards. Probably not the amex, though, the little girl scout. And they both had pneumonia. It was funny. It was hilarious, actually. And even if it was just coincidence, it was still good enough for Dean. And Sam had kept the cards.
It was like the rope: you don't fuckin' know what you're gonna need it for, you just always need it.
Thanks, saberivojo! You're right. I did need a glossary.
Cura te ipsum: Heal thyself; ie, take care of yourself first before you can care for others.
Roma traditoribus non premia: Rome does not reward traitors. Told by Scipio to Viriato's bodyguards after they assasinated Viratio and came to collect their reward.
Non habes iure provocare mihi: You do not have the right to provoke me. (apparently common on tombstones)
Age quod agis: "Anything worth doing is worth doing right."
Dura necesitas: Necessity is harsh.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: Who watches the watchmen? -Juvenal
Ignoti nulla cupido: You don't desire what you don't know.
Jurare in verba magistri: swear by the word of the teacher/master. A fragment from another quote about how Horatius will NOT swear by the word of any master.
Facilis decensus Averno: The descent to hell is easy.
Fortes fortuna iuvat: Fortune favors the bold!
Author: July
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Characters: Dean and Sam
Spoilers: Just the pilot.
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I don't even get shared custody.
Summary: “I need a break, Dad,” he said aloud, to the Impala’s empty passenger seat. “I feel like crap, we haven’t slept in three days, and I need a break.”Too bad that telepathy, like subtlety, was not one of his gifts.
Notes: Now with a mini Latin glossary at the bottom.
Cura te ipsum
He and Sam always were always sick at the same time. It was only natural, considering that they spent most of their childhood sharing the same backseat or the same bed in a motel room. And since the only thing that would make Sammy feel better was Dean, quarantine was hardly an option. Dad tried it, once, when Sam had some bug or another. He booked two single rooms with an adjoining door. It lasted a whopping 10 minutes with Sam-who was maybe 5 at the time-trying not to cry on his bed in one room while John stood under the lintel between the rooms, unable to meet his other son’s eyes.
Dean remembered very clearly sitting there, arms crossed, looking at Dad with an expression that could only be described as incredulous. And maybe a little hurt. John had held out for almost a quarter hour before conceding that the situation was untenable. He felt like an ass, Dean was pissed, and Sammy was miserable. And nobody was going to get any sleep.
So John bowed out gracefully: he cussed, told Dean to watch out for his brother, and went to get beer. As soon as he was out the door, Dean crossed through the connecting door to see Sammy. He rolled Sammy over a little, making space for himself on the bed, and turned on the TV.
“Check it out, Sammy. It's Moonlighting! Not exactly how I wanted to spend spring break, but all told, not too bad. I’m gonna go scare us up some OJ and Sprite.”
He had a gift, he knew he did, for not making Sam feel like a wimp when he was under the weather. And Sam always returned the favor, usually by flashing Dad the puppy-dog eyes and/or bitching and moaning long enough to guarantee that they would get a decent night of sleep, and maybe a hot meal, without Dean having to ask. Sam got to save face, and Dean got to salvage a little pride, too.
Dean sneezed again, shuddered, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. There was a fine layer of yellow-green crud starting to build up on the cuff of his henley. He might have taken the time to consider how gross that was, but he was having enough trouble following the truck in the rain already.
“I need a break, Dad,” he said aloud, to the Impala’s empty passenger seat. “I feel like crap, we haven’t slept in three days, and I need a break.”
Too bad that telepathy, like subtlety, was not one of his gifts.
>>>>>
Taking upper level Latin in his first term as a freshman might have been a mistake. Sam considered this possibility for the umpteenth time. His roommate had said has much on the first day of class, reminding Sam that this was the time to take huge lecture courses that he could skip (presumably in favor of nursing a hangover) and only show up for section reviews.
Then again, his roommate’s name was Juniper. Damn hippies, Sam thought, and cringed at how easily his dad’s words of wisdom came to him lately. Quod nocet, saepe docet. Wait, where was he? Right. The subjunctive. Personally, Sam preferred the imperative. He certainly had more practice with it. You couldn’t suggest that a demon exit the body of a possessed person; you couldn’t imply that a home ought to bless its own self; and you sure as shit couldn’t hypothesize an evil spirit into not returning. No, the imperative was much better. It was straight forward, powerful, and effective.
Sam sneezed, shuddered, and for a moment considered wiping his nose on the cuff of his sleeve. No, that was gross, not ectoplasm gross, but still. Christ, he felt like crap. But in two days he had a Latin 301 final, and the consequences of failure were unthinkable. He shivered again, even in the sunlight streaming through the window of the library and tried not to think about how good one of Dean’s OJ/Sprite cocktails sounded. But that ship had sailed. That bridge was burnt. Dean had made his choice. Dad had made his. And Sam had a roommate named after a tree, a Latin final, and probably the flu. Roma traditoribus non premia.
>>>>>
He didn’t know what was more disheartening: the fact that their ‘Black Dog’ had turned out to be just that: an overweight Newfoundland, or that said fat Newfoundland had outrun him. Dean looked through the sleet as he watched the dog disappear into the trees.
“Did you get him?” John asked, jogging into the clearing. The man wasn’t even out of breath.
“Dog,” Dean panted and ran a hand down his wet face. “Just a dog.” He tried to clear his throat, coughing up an impressive loogey in the process.
“Damn it, Dean,” John said, exasperated. And with that, he turned and headed back towards the car. At a jog. Of course.
His breath caught and Dean put out a hand to lean against a tree until the coughing passed. Wearily, he rubbed at his breastbone, trying to dull the sharp pain there. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples and roaring in his ears. He was the only son here, and there was no getting around that unfortunate fact. He needed to step up his game if had any hope of covering two positions. He needed to cut his turnovers in half, double his assists, hustle more, run faster, play harder. There was no bench left to ride. He spat into the grass, turned, and jogged after his father.
>>>>>
“Seriously, man, why did you take this course?” Juniper had returned to their room a few moments ago from what he described as an ‘epic hot-boxing.’ On a scale of one to Keith Richards, Sam gave him a solid 8. He was red-eyed, reeking of pot, and feeling philosophical. “Dude. Think about it. Dude. You knew it would be hard, and you knew the exams would suck, and you chose to do it anyway. What does that say about you, Sam, as a man among men?”
This was a question Sam didn’t want to answer, at least not definitively, and definitely not to Juniper. He had his reasons. Certainly because it was intellectually challenging and useful for pre-law. But also because it reminded him of lessons in Pastor Jim’s basement, because it made him feel useful and helpful, because he was better at it than Dean, because his Dad was always proud of his ability to churn out incantations at the drop of a hat. Because it made him feel close to a family he had knowingly turned his back on.
“It’s complicated,” he said, peevishly. Non habes iure provocare mihi. He was going to say something else, but he had to pause to hack up a lung. It left his chest aching, and it took him a moment to draw a decent breath.
“That sounds bad, man. Hey, I think I got some echinacea in my last care package.”
Damn hippies, Sam thought again. Echinacea wasn’t going to do crap. His head hurt, his throat hurt, and he was almost out of cough drops. The store was closed for the night but…oh, nevermind. It would be open in another hour. He’d lost track of time again. A soft pink dawn was already creeping up into the sky. No point in sleeping now, he was halfway through the irregular verbs. Age quod agis.
>>>>>
For the coolest dad in the world, sometimes John Winchester could be a real bastard. Dean had made his peace with this unfortunate truth years ago. So that night, when Dean returned to their motel from a beer run and found the truck gone, he was not wholly surprised. Pissed, but not surprised. Sam would have shat a brick, he thought. But Sam wasn’t here.
He had to open the door to their room using two hands, jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. It was brass monkey balls cold in Colorado in December, and he wasn’t dressed for the weather: just decent boots, a couple layers, and a toque. The thought of a scalding hot shower and a full night of sleep-maybe a cup of black, hot coffee in the morning, was enough to make his head spin. He got the door open and shut it behind him, taking a moment to relish the relative heat of the room. With an excitement bordering on glee, he turned up the thermostat all the way and started stripping off layers of wet clothes, casting aside his cell phone and miscellaneous small arms along the way.
He was down to his t-shirt when he saw the note: Werewolf sighting in Carpenter. Bullets on order with Caleb. Meet back 0700.
Yuma to Lincoln…5 hours if he pushed his luck. 10 round trip. That gave him an hour to dry out and warm up here and maybe an hour at Caleb’s. If Sam was a walking encyclopedia of weird, Dean was an ambulatory atlas. Mr. Rand McNally sneezed four times in a row. Jesus, it made his chest hurt. He could actually hear it moving around in his there, too, which couldn’t be good. He made a fist and pressed the knuckles into his sternum, waiting until it passed.
For a long moment, he stared at his phone. He could call Dad. It was always a possibility. He could call him and say…what, exactly? I’d love to go get those silver bullets, but I’ve got a cold or I might be coming down with something or I need some beauty sleep. He might as well take up knitting and yoga and turn in his testes before they were repossessed.
Sick call was not an option, then. He got in the shower and did as much deep breathing as he could before the hot water ran out. Then he put on some dry clothes, got in the Impala, and started driving towards I-80.
>>>>>
Sam had no appetite. In lieu of real food, he partook of what he had always thought of as The John Winchester Breakfast Special: one large black coffee, three aspirin, three Motrin, and a refill. The thought of adopting any of his father’s habits was galling and Sam didn’t even like coffee. But he did feel a little better. Dura necessitas. He tried to inhale again-big mistake. Coughing hoarsely into the crook of his elbow, he palmed another lozenge from the economy sized bag in his jacket pocket. He suspected that he smelled rather strongly of menthol, but there was no way to know since he had lost the ability to breathe through his nose.
The elevator opened onto the lobby and Sam headed outside. He couldn’t wait for this to be over. He was going to sleep for a week. Squinting against the sunshine, he sneezed four times, producing something that could only be described as the color unripened bananas Now it was approaching ectoplasm gross, he thought, and reached for the Kleenex in his other pocket.
Sam hustled across the quad towards his final. In the fall, he thought that maybe the nice weather was a fluke. But the sun had never really stopped shining and the air, even now, was more brisk and refreshing than anything else. It was a pleasant change, certainly, from last December. Where had they been? Ithaca? The hunt was a disaster. The coven ended up dead. But when it was all said and done, he’d spent almost two hours patching his family up. Dad couldn’t see out of one eye, and Dean was shaking so hard he couldn’t hold his flare gun much less a needle.
It wasn’t his family’s finest hour. Dean had been hypothermic, sluggish, disoriented, and belligerent. Just getting him into dry clothes had been a herculean task. Dad had been brained by an iced-over tree branch at some point, and while he wasn’t concussed, he was bleeding like a stuck pig from half a dozen lacerations in his scalp. Never in his life had Dad looked as grateful as when Sam emerged from the gorge unscathed and offered to drive back to the cabin.
Sam was sick, he was tired, and he couldn’t keep from asking himself: Where were they today? Who was driving them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
He got to Pigott with a good half hour before the test. Pausing outside the side door, he took a moment to cough up his other lung. As discreetly as possible, he expectorated what was left. Oh my God, it had texture now. It was officially ectoplasm gross. Maybe he would go to Vaden after the test. Right now, though, there was work to do. He pulled his note cards out of his backpack and went back to work.
>>>>>
“You look like death on a cracker,” Caleb pronounced, letting him into the house.
“Thanks.” Dean croaked. The drive had been a bitch and he was all out of witty repartee. The sleet had turned into an unholy combination of frozen and half frozen precipitation that meteorologists insisted on calling ‘wintry mix’ instead of 'proof that God hates you'. And the nice, straight lanes of I-80 had made it difficult to focus, to concentrate, to stay awake, even.
“Sit your ass down,” Caleb said in a way that was really only half invitation. Dean dropped onto the nearest horizontal surface, a dilapidated couch whose infrastructure had been on life support since the first Bush administration. It smelled like those nasty hand-rolled cigarettes Caleb loved, which had also burnt random holes in the polyester upholstery. It was the best damn sofa he had ever laid eyes on.
“Do I need to get the kit?” Caleb asked, rather bluntly in Dean’s opinion.
“Nah, just a cold.” Caleb just shrugged. Not his business, not his problem. He was a man of relatively few, fairly profane words. Unless, of course, he was talking about guns. Never ask Caleb about guns, Dean had learned, unless you wanted a filibuster.
“I’ll get your stuff boxed up. You can grab a few, if you want. I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
“Thanks, man.” Muttering something under his breath about pride going before a boot up the ass, Caleb headed for the basement. Neither John nor Dean had ever been downstairs, but for his part, Dean suspected that Caleb had amassed enough weaponry down there to make the Royal Armoury in Leeds look like a dime store.
Dean kicked off his boots, turned on his side, and tucked his knees up towards his chest. A few seconds later, he was hit in the head by an old pillow and an army surplus blanket. Caleb was a good guy. Dean made do with his little bed. He wrapped himself up and turned to rest his head on the pillow. He tried to take a deep breath and settle in, but it just set off a coughing jag that was long and hard enough to turn the pillow into a potential biohazard. He was shivering and sweating at the same time, but preferred to avoid the implications of that by dropping immediately into an uneasy sleep.
A few minutes later, Caleb was shaking him awake. “What?” he groaned out, then turned his face back into the pillow as his body attempted to expel what was left of his pulmonary system. The blanket felt too warm, but he was clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Rise and shine, princess. You’ve been sleeping for a solid four hours.” Horrified, Dean pushed himself to a sitting position. Dad was going to go ballistic. “Good news and bad news,” Caleb said. “The bad news is that your Dad’s probably going to blow his top. The good news is while you were sleeping the sleet turned to snow, so there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.”
“He’s gonna kill me,” Dean said, pushing a hand through his damp hair.
“No shit,” Caleb said, sounding disgusted. “Get your boots on. I’ll go start the truck.” Dean was confused. Caleb was going to drive him back to Yuma? That was above and beyond the call. And it was more than his pride could swallow, even today. He swung his legs back to the floor and prepared to rise and protest. He put his hand down on the pillow to push himself to his feet, but when he did, his hand came away a little tacky from where the fabric was flecked with blood.
“Oh, fuck me.”
>>>>>
Sam kicked Latin ass. Hell, when he was fourteen years old he extemporaneously cobbled together an exorcism in Latin, a benediction in Aramaic, and an injunction in Ancient Greek while under fire from a trio of poltergeists. And now, riding the high from an exam he knew he had aced, he could finally acknowledge that he was, indeed, The Man.
It was worth it after all, he thought, kicking off his boots and climbing cautiously into his lofted bed. He coughed again, curled sideways, and tried to ignore the nasty rattling noise his chest was making. Still worth it, he thought. Sam wrapped himself up in his second hand blanket and tried to warm up. It was weird that he was cold, though, since Juniper kept the room like a sauna. He could hear the infamous Stanford band getting started, though it couldn’t be much past three in the afternoon. It was the last day of finals and the parties were going to be ludicrous. If he hadn’t been so relieved to get into bed, he might have been annoyed that the one time he could allow himself to get hammered, he was too sick to do it.
A few minutes later-funny, the sun had set-Sam fought his way back into consciousness. At first he thought it was the raucous debauchery from inside the dorm that had woken him. But, fighting down a rising panic, he realized it was because he was struggling to breathe. A familiar dread overtook him. He knew this feeling. He had pushed his luck too far. Like the time in Childress that Dad’s cracked rib slipped and punctured his lung. Or the time that they waited too long to pop Dean’s shoulder back in, and the muscles were too stiff to do it, and he had to listen to his brother scream all the way to the hospital in Provo. That’s what this was: ER time.
The ER was either the first stop or the last resort. And even by Winchester standards, he was out of options. ABC: everything followed airway. Sam rolled out of the bunk, slipping a little on the way down, but regaining his footing. He tried bracing himself against the bed post, but it didn’t ease the way his chest was clenching itself. Juniper was nowhere to be found. Probably getting baked somewhere. Damn hippies.
As soon as he opened the door to the hallway, though, he realized how screwed he really was. There was not a sober person left on his floor. Alcohol fumes drifted like mustard gas, and he half-choked on his way into the common lounge. Dollars to donuts even the sub-free kids were wasted tonight. He looked across to the other wing of the dorm. Girls: the last resort of last resorts. Quidquid id est timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Sam spent his entire semester avoiding them like the Black Death. Not only because they were distracting (Sunbathing in the quad? In the middle of the day? ), but also because he was more than a little afraid of them. He knew that they, unlike their denser male counterparts, could probably tell he was different. They would know his clothes were cheap or thrift shop or both. They could tell he’d never had a haircut that cost more than five dollars. They would ask insightful questions about his family.
The fever had him a little unsteady on his feet, his eyes glazed over dully, so nobody gave him a second look as he elbowed his way through the crowd of smashed students. He stepped into the girls’ hallway and knocked on the first door he saw.
“Wait one freaking minute, Kit,” said a girl’s voice, and the door swung open. In the background, Black Betty was playing at a potentially lethal volume, but even that didn’t distract him from the fact that this girl was the most beautiful he had ever seen. She was in an early stage of ‘getting ready to go out’. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had a PROPERTY OF STANFORD VOLLEYBALL t-shirt on. But she was wearing a short denim skirt that made her legs look about a million miles long. Oh my God, he thought, her legs.
“Sorry, you’re not Kit,” she said. Sam remembered to breathe again. “I think you have the wrong room.” She smiled at him a little indulgently. Her eyes were blue, he noticed.
“No, I mean yes, but…no.” Sam Winchester, master of any language but English. “I’m sorry, but I have a favor to ask.” She raised an eyebrow. “You seem, um, relatively sober.” Way to bowl her over, he thought. “I really, really need a lift to the ER.” As if to make his point, his knees buckled a little and he put a hand out to steady himself on the door. She was looking at him like he was a lost puppy.
“I’ll get my keys.”
>>>>>
Dean didn’t remember much of the drive. There was snow involved, and ice, and Caleb cursing quite a bit-mostly at Dean, Dean’s judgment, Dean’s lack of self-awareness, Dean’s parentage, and so on and so forth. Dean might have taken exception to any or all of it, but he was too busy trying to breathe.
When the triage nurse directed him to take a seat and fill out some forms, Caleb pointedly and loudly informed her that the kid’s lips were blue, goddammit, and he was coughing up blood. Dean thought that was a little overdramatic, but then again he couldn’t see his own lips. He swatted away some hands reaching for him.
“The shirt stays on,” he heard Caleb say. “Goddammit, I said the shirt stays on.” The last thing they needed was somebody asking questions about the demonic road rash on his shoulder or the ritual burns on his abdomen. Somebody passed him an oxygen mask and pretty soon the world around him started to come back into focus.
“Dumbass,” Caleb said, from the chair next to the bed. He looked peeved. Dean grinned. The troublesome nurse was gone, stepped out to get a doctor, probably.
“Call Dad yet?” he asked, muffled a little by the mask. If he died on Caleb’s watch, Dad would kill Caleb until he was dead and then kill him some more. That was actually a little comforting.
“They’re going to x-ray your chest,” Caleb dodged the question. “Probably an IV, maybe observe you overnight, definitely drugs. You got a workable insurance card?” Dean nodded.
“Good. Now I’m going to call John Winchester and tell him his elder son is in the hospital. I’d like a plain pine box. And I’m taking my Johnny Cash collection with me.”
“’Why me, Lord’?” Caleb swatted him on the back of the head. Then, he dialed John’s phone number.
“Hey. Nope, the order was ready. Snow kicked up. Not safe to drive.” Caleb stood up and turned his back to Dean. “Wasn’t fit for man nor beast to be driving, John. Yeah, well, there’s another problem. We’re at St. Elizabeth’s. Yes, John, the hospital. Dean’s fine. Dean’s-I can’t put him on right now, they’ve got a mask on him. We’re waiting-John, listen-we’re waiting on-“ Caleb stopped talking for a moment and even from the bed, Dean could hear the spirit, if not the letter, of verbal abuse he was being subjected to. When Caleb turned back around, Dean had his hand out to accept the phone.
Dean inhaled as much as he felt he could, and then pulled the mask away from his face for a moment. “I’m fine, Sir.”
“What the fuck are you doing at the hospital, then?” his father’s voice was low, clipped. He was pissed, but Dean couldn’t tell at whom.
“You know Caleb. Bring a gun to a knife fight.” Without any warning, he started coughing again, and this time he didn’t stop. Caleb put a hand on his shoulder, pried the phone out of his hand, and pulled the oxygen mask back over his face.
“That stays on,” he said grimly. “I’m here, John. He’s OK. Yeah. But he’s OK.” There was another pause. “Got it. No sedatives, no surgery, no overnight.” Another pause. “Just don’t kill yourself getting here. Jesus, John. I swear.” Caleb clicked his phone off.
“He say?” Dean abbreviated, rasping breathlessly. Caleb turned and gave him a look that was usually reserved for recalcitrant werewolves. “That bad, huh?”
>>>>>
“I’m not Dean,” said the driver of the SUV. She leaned over and shook his shoulder. “Quit calling me Dean.”
“Sorry,” Sam said. He tried to focus on breathing again. It was the fever, he thought, it was raising his heart rate, making it hard to breathe, making it hard to keep up. “I just got a little confused there. Dean’s usually driving. Who are you, again?”
“I’m Jess,” she said, smiling a little from the corner of her mouth. Sam liked her already. Whoever she was, she was displaying remarkable equilibrium for someone transporting a delirious stranger to the ER. And she hadn’t changed out of that wonderful, wonderful skirt.
“Hi, Jess. I’m Sam.”
“Hi, Sam.” She laughed. “This is the third time we’ve been introduced in as many minutes.”
“No kidding? I can’t believe I’d forget you. Ignoti nulla cupido. No, wait, that one doesn’t work.”
“Must be some trip you’re on.”
“I’m not…I’m sober,” he said. “Call Dean, he’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
“That is a glorious skirt.”
“Seriously, Sam, what did you take? They’re going to ask you when we get there.”
“Didn’t take anything,” he mumbled and coughed shallowly. “Swear to God, Dean. I didn’t take anything.”
“And here we go again. I’m Jess.”
“Hi, Jess. I’m Sam.”
“Hi, Sam. What are you on?”
“Nothing. Jurare in verba magistri. Hey, I really like your skirt.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
>>>>>
“He’s resting comfortably,” Caleb said into the phone. “See you soon.”
‘Resting comfortably’ might be the most oxymoronic phrase ever to be used in a hospital, Dean thought. Right up there with ‘living will’ or ‘life support.’ The fever was down, and the mask was off, but now he had a tube in his arm and a doctor who mispronounced ‘Ehart’.
“I want to leave,” he said, having regained the ability to both breathe and speak. He hated hospitals, he hated doctors, and he hated having tubes stuck in him. They’d been here for four hours already, and if he stayed a minute longer, he was going to lose his mind. Caleb sat, hands clasped behind his head, like he had the patience of Job.
“When your Dad gets here.”
“The hell with Dad!” Dean snapped. “He isn’t here. He’s just…he’s not here. Go tell the nurse to get the scrips and the AMA paperwork ready. Because I? I am leaving in the next ten minutes even if I have to impersonate a corpse to do it.” Caleb looked at him, really looked, then shrugged and headed towards the nurses’ station. Almost the minute he was out the door, Dean’s phone rang. He swung his legs over the bed, working around the wobble in his knees, and retrieved the phone from his jacket. He glanced at the call ID: Stanford Emergency Medicine. Dean sat back down in a hurry.
>>>>>
“Thanks for the ride,” Sam said, teetering out of the car.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the girl with the legs said, putting the car in park in one of the emergency spots. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam assured her. “Dean’ll be here soon.”
“Yeah, I’m coming with you.” She took him firmly by the hand-and her hand felt pleasantly cool-and led him through the sliding glass doors, past the chairs of waiting people, and up to the admitting desk. “Hi. This is Sam. He lives on my floor and no, I don’t know what he took, but I think he’s having trouble breathing and he’s definitely in an altered state, if you know what I mean.”
She was talking kind of fast. She was worried? That was OK. Dean would be there soon. Not Dad, though, and he couldn’t remember why. Then Sam caught sight of her legs again and blissfully stopped thinking again.
A half hour later he sat on the edge of a hospital bed, blushing furiously as she retold the story. “I’m pretty sure you spoke Latin for a while. Oh, and you would not shut up about my skirt.”
“No way,” he said. “I don’t believe it.” Whatever was in his IV had brought him back around.
“Seriously, you said it was glorious.” He laughed and of course it turned into a hacking cough. Sam would’ve apologized if he could’ve spoken. He’d known this girl for a little more than an hour-and only remembered the last twenty minutes-but he was pretty sure that she was the most perfect person he had ever met. She was a freshman, too. She wanted to be a surgeon. The only problem was that she was dating someone named Sterling. And, really: 'Sterling'?
“Sam?” she interrupted his reverie. “Who’s Dean?”
Sam could feel himself sit up straighter, pulling his shoulders back defensively and he cast his eyes towards the floor. “Why do you ask?”
“You asked for him. A lot.” Sam swallowed.
“He’s my brother. We…we used to be really close.” And thank God a nurse came in before things could get more awkward. Jess excused herself to go get a cup of coffee.
“I have some questions about your paperwork,” he said.
“What paperwork?” Sam asked.
“Exactly.” He offered Sam a clipboard.
And that’s when it hit him: he had no insurance. He had the student kind, but that was only good on campus. And now…now he was looking at a treatment room, IV, x-rays, definitely some drugs...Sam ran the numbers in his head. He had a work study job, but that went towards living expenses, and the wad of cash Dean had shoved in his wallet at the bus station was spent long ago on books. He couldn’t pay this bill. He could get an off campus job and cancel his dining plan and eat ramen for the next three and a half years and he would never pay this bill.
Smiling like a champ, Sam accepted the paperwork. The nurse left. Sam considered climbing out the window. Then he remembered what was in his wallet. On top of the cash, Dean had given him three cards. Sam had cut up the fraudulent credit card, but held onto the other two. He pulled them out: Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance and a license for one Murphy Samuel McManus. Sam had bitched about it. Waiting at the bus stop, the last conversation he had with Dean, he had almost refused his gifts. “You don't fuckin' know what you're gonna need it for, Sam, you just always need it.” So Sam took it.
Swallowing the sour taste in his mouth, probably a combination of pride, crow, and humble pie, Sam began to dutifully copy down the information. Facilis descensus Averno.
>>>>>
“Mr. Connor McManus?”
“Yes,” Dean said. His voice was gravelly and his mouth was dry. There was only one insurance card with that name on it, and John Winchester didn’t even know that it existed. Sam kept the cards, he thought, Sam kept the cards.
“Your insurance lists you as the responsible party for your brother Murphy,” said a world weary female voice from the other end of the line. Dean had seen and conned a million of these same women: tired, overworked admitting nurses just trying to survive their shifts.
“That’s correct.”
“I just need to verify if-“
“Is he okay?” Dean ran over her words, unable to stop himself. “Is my brother okay? Was there…was there an accident?”
“He hasn’t called you?”
“No.” Please, God, don’t let it be bad. The Impala didn’t have snow chains, but he could hotwire Caleb’s truck if he needed to. Effortlessly, he did the math. It was almost a 24 hour drive. He’d have to stop to gas up a few times. Call it an even 24, then. That was too long. God help him, he would book a flight. He could get on plane if he had to, Dean tried to convince himself.
“He’s going to be fine, Mr. McManus.”
“Oh?”
“I’m looking at his chart now. He has pneumonia, but it’s nothing that rest and fluids and antibiotics can’t clear up.”
“Oh.” Dean laid back down on the bed. He could feel himself getting shaky again. He closed his eyes and focused on controlling his voice. Sam kept the cards.
“I know how it is with college kids,” the battleaxe said with surprising empathy. “They can be…trying. I can transfer you up to his room, if you’d like?”
“No,” Dean said quickly, but it was a little garbled. “No,” he repeated. “I’ll call him back myself. But you’re, I mean, you know he’s okay?”
“I’m positive, Mr. McManus. He probably won’t even have to stay the night.” Dean verified the P.O. Box in Sacramento, thanked her, and hung up the phone. He stayed there for a while, eyes closed, the weight of his talisman rising and falling with his rattling breath.
>>>>>
It wasn’t the first time Sam had talked his way out of a night in the hospital. It was, however, the first time a beautiful girl with pin-up legs was waiting to give him a lift home. He hadn’t thought she would, it had been two hours, but there she was outside the ER’s sliding doors.
“Sam!” she called out. He felt like death warmed over, he was still running a temperature, he needed a clean shirt, and he had approximately a gallon of mucus inside of him but the sight of her waving at him like that made him feel like the luckiest man alive.
“Hey,” he said, tucking the small paper bag of prescriptions under his arm. “I can’t believe you waited.”
“The night is still young,” Jess said and unlocked the car. “We can stop for cocoa on the way home, if you want. Always makes me feel better.” She flashed him a puckish smile and the hell with Sterling, Sam thought. Who names their kid Sterling, anyway? Fortes fortuna iuvat.
“That would be great.”
>>>>>
Caleb was shaking his shoulders. He was pretty sure it wasn’t time for more meds, because he’d just drifted off again after the last round. “Lemme alone, man” he muttered.
“Dean, son, you need to wake up.” He threw a hand over his eyes, and turned towards the wall. He was groggy and disoriented, and the movement made him start coughing again, producing something with the consistency of Elmer’s glue. Dean groaned, rubbed at his chest, and curled up a little tighter.
“That wasn’t a request, Dean.” The hands moved from his shoulders to his back, hauling him upright. Somebody put a glass of water in his hand, and he managed to drink a little. “Look at me, son. Let me know you’re at home.” Dean caught his breath and opened his eyes.
“Hey, Dad.” He made a concerted effort to rouse himself now. He could smell coffee and see Caleb standing silently in the kitchen doorway holding two mugs.
“Hey, Dean.” Dad was looking relieved and mad at the same time. Neat trick.
“What are you doing here? There’s a werewolf in Carpenter.”
“Jim’s on it. Go back to sleep, kid.”
“The hell? You woke me up for that? I was sleeping.”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you again in a couple hours.” His dad took him by the shoulders again, laying him horizontal and rolling him onto his side, facing the door. Dad stared at him for a minute or two, and then he stood up to face Caleb.
“Why didn’t you make him stay the night?” Dad demanded. They thought he was down for the count, so they weren’t trying real hard to keep it down. Dean forced himself to stay awake, to pay attention.
“Gee, John, let me think about that one,” Caleb said, with a certain disarming, wry humor. “I remember some asshole promising me all kinds of bodily harm if I did any such thing.”
“He looks terrible.”
“You should have seen him yesterday when he was coughing up blood on my sofa,” Caleb took a sip of coffee, his expression mild. “Pretty long drive from Yuma for a kid with pneumonia.”
“You got something to say to me?”
“You still take it black?” Caleb passed him a mug of coffee. And Dad took it from him with nothing more than a muttered oath. The point was made and peace, via caffeine, was offered. And accepted. Caleb could always pull that shit off. He was a wily bastard.
Dean smiled, thinking about his brother on the other side of the country. Sam had kept the cards. Probably not the amex, though, the little girl scout. And they both had pneumonia. It was funny. It was hilarious, actually. And even if it was just coincidence, it was still good enough for Dean. And Sam had kept the cards.
It was like the rope: you don't fuckin' know what you're gonna need it for, you just always need it.
Thanks, saberivojo! You're right. I did need a glossary.
Cura te ipsum: Heal thyself; ie, take care of yourself first before you can care for others.
Roma traditoribus non premia: Rome does not reward traitors. Told by Scipio to Viriato's bodyguards after they assasinated Viratio and came to collect their reward.
Non habes iure provocare mihi: You do not have the right to provoke me. (apparently common on tombstones)
Age quod agis: "Anything worth doing is worth doing right."
Dura necesitas: Necessity is harsh.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: Who watches the watchmen? -Juvenal
Ignoti nulla cupido: You don't desire what you don't know.
Jurare in verba magistri: swear by the word of the teacher/master. A fragment from another quote about how Horatius will NOT swear by the word of any master.
Facilis decensus Averno: The descent to hell is easy.
Fortes fortuna iuvat: Fortune favors the bold!