Sick Days - Chapter 5
Title: Sick Days
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 2,344 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 4
Sam rolled his eyes as he reached for the motel room's doorknob. 'Highway to Hell' was blaring from inside the room. At this rate they were going to get kicked out of this actually nice motel before he could convince Dean that there was no case here. At least not one that they could do anything about.
There hadn’t been any strange marks that he could find on the bodies that were still in the morgue or the funeral home. What he thought was going to be an easy perusal through the county’s death records had turned into a nightmare. Sure there’d been deaths here over the years. Plenty of them.
It turned out half the town was a retirement community. Even if he ignored the deaths of anyone over sixty-five it still wasn’t as if there was any particular type of death he could look for. Dean could be right and twelve of the annual deaths could be attributed to something that shouldn’t be here, but there was no way of telling which ones. And then there were the families.
The college student had been an only child to a single mother - no kids to check with there. The computer guy had been single as far as he could tell and the farmer left behind a wife and twenty year old daughter that was off at school. The two really young kids had been only children, which only left one boy who’d had a younger brother with parents that wouldn’t let Sam anywhere near their traumatized son. If anyone had seen anything out of the ordinary, no one was talking.
While he hadn’t come up with anything useful, he’d driven back and forth around town enough today to see that Dean was right about one thing. Every other spot in this town was high scale meaning that even if they wanted to blow the credit, they’d stick out like sore thumbs.
While he knew Dean was having a rough time with this, if Dean couldn't manage to keep it together they were going to end up sleeping in the car and they’d already done enough of that this week. He didn't want to hear anymore whining about a stiff neck and cramped legs. More importantly, he didn't want those cramped legs to be his own.
"Turn it down, Dean," Sam said automatically as he walked into the room.
Dean was ignoring him. Big surprise. It wouldn’t kill his brother to pretend to be an adult at least some of the time. He didn’t exactly enjoying being Dean’s mother. Sure Dean had always been the one looking after him and he’d do anything for Dean but there was a big difference between looking out for his brother when he really needed it and babysitting. They were both theoretically grown ups and he wasn’t sure how he’d been elected the responsible one.
“What have you been doing in here?” he asked Dean as he dropped his bag on the table. His nose wrinkled as he took in another deep breath. “This place reeks, man."
Turning to look at his brother he suddenly noticed that it wasn’t that Dean was ignoring him. Dean just flat out hadn’t heard him. It was then that he realized the bass of the retro MTV music videos were covering up a seriously nasty hacking cough. The television's remote lay forgotten on the floor and Dean was doubled over at the edge of the bed like he was struggling to catch his breath.
Sam quickly closed the distance between them, put a hand on Dean's shoulder and nearly got decked for it as Dean jumped up swinging. "Sam? What the hell?" Dean rasped. "Where'd you come from?"
"The door..." he told Dean with worried eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Oh I'm just freakin' super," Dean grumbled as he pulled the edges of his jacket tightly around himself.
"You’re cold?" he asked doubtfully.
"It's freezing in here," Dean replied as he sat back down on the bed. Without saying anything further he propped his elbows up on his knees and held his head in his hands.
Dean was obviously not in the mood to hear any differing opinions, but Sam had only been in the room for thirty seconds and he was already starting to sweat. He took off his own jacket as he walked over to the thermostat. It was cranked up as high as it would go and it wasn't broken - the baseboard was cranking out the heat. He shot a look to Dean, but his brother was still staring at the floor.
Leaving the thermostat where it was for now, Sam hit the power button on the television as he walked by. He stood at the end of the bed staring at Dean and waiting for some sort of explanation as to what he was missing here. When Dean still said nothing, he walked past his brother, which finally triggered a response, but not the one he was expecting.
"Watch your step there. I uh...I kinda tossed my cookies all over the floor."
Between the reluctance in Dean's scratchy voice and the fact that his brother wouldn't meet his eyes, Sam could tell that Dean was embarrassed as hell about it, but wasn't about to admit it.
"Projectile style," Dean added in a smart-ass tone as if he realized that he wasn't coming off with the proper degree of tough guy.
"Way too much information," Sam replied, partially playing along with his brother's stupid macho crap, but not enough to tell Dean he had to cleanup the mess. "I'll take care of it."
"No, I got it. Actually, I think we should just call that should be play boy bunny at the front desk and tell her that some drunk broke in. Maybe we can get a free night and a sympathy kiss out of this."
He wasn’t sure whether or not to point out to Dean the obvious fact that no one in their right mind was going to kiss him right now.
"Have you been drinking?" he asked as he at least picked up the remote. The tone wasn't so much accusatory, just concerned.
Dean had a tough time last night. Sam had gone and talked to Colleen himself this afternoon. She was a wreck still, but dealing. Mostly she had just gone on and on about how much Dean had been there for her and her kids last night. How he’d helped her and helped with her daughter’s nightmare. Her nightmare about a ghost boy.
He could only assume that the girl had overheard Dean with her brother the other day. Or maybe it was something. Really it was the only reason he wasn’t dragging Dean kicking and screaming from this town. That and there was obviously something here Dean needed to deal with. For Dean’s mental sake Sam was praying that this was something that could be stopped.
All in all he wouldn’t blame his brother for having gone a little heavy on the whiskey, but Dean shook his head. "I wish I was, but no. I just feel like crap," his brother replied as he finally lifted his head.
Sam nodded as he looked over his brother's pale face. "You look like crap," he agreed.
The deep concern in his voice would be obvious to anyone that was listening, but as usual, Dean wasn't listening.
"Gee, thanks, Sammy. Always the supportive brother." He looked to the remote in Sam’s hand. “That thing’s broke.”
Sam turned it over in his hands. “It looks okay.”
“If it was a stripper that would mean something. I mean it doesn’t work.”
Dean’s voice was still off, but was sounding stronger. The only problem for Dean was that Sam knew when his brother was putting on an act. He could pull his ‘I’m fine’ routine with anyone else, but not with Sam.
He tested the remote to appease his brother. Nothing happened when he pushed the power button. He shrugged and tossed it onto the bed behind him. “It’s probably just the battery. Now stop changing the subject. You really look awful, man, and I don’t care what you say - you are sick. We can't do this tonight."
"Are you kidding me?" Dean asked as he forced his posture to straighten. "Whatever this thing is I can take it with my eyes closed."
"That's just the thing, Dean, we don't know what it is that we're dealing with. If we're even dealing with anything. We’re calling this one off."
"Like hell we are. I didn't drive all the way out here just to..."
Another bought off coughing cut Dean's protest short. By the grimace that Dean wasn't able to hide, Sam could tell that the cough felt as bad as it sounded.
"You can't hunt like this."
"Watch me," Dean challenged as he straightened back up. "It's not like I can just take a sick day."
“Actually, you can. One of the perks of the gig, right?”
“Sure.” Even through the roughness of Dean’s voice Sam could clearly make out the thick sarcasm that laced that single word.
“Dean...”
“No, you’re totally right, Sam. Instead of killing this thing we can lay around and watch Pay-Per-View while another family gets torn apart. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh right, because I’m not a selfish moron.”
“Dean, you’re not killing these people by taking care of yourself. We don’t even know that anything is killing them,” Sam said once more in the hopes that his brother would actual look at reason this time.
“That’s crap and you know it. Something sure as hell is killing these people and it’s not just some disease. There’s something here, Sam. A spirit at the sanitarium, it’s choosing these people and I’m not going to let another family get torn apart because I ate a bad burrito.”
“It’s not your job to save everyone.”
“Maybe not. But it’s my job to try isn’t it? Besides I’m not going to sit around here and let some stupid cold kick my ass.”
“This isn’t a cold. I’ve seen you with a cold, it doesn’t even make you blink.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Quinn. Maybe I’m just turning into a wuss. Or maybe I really did eat a bad burrito.” He winced as his hand moved to his stomach.
“You didn’t get that cough from a burrito.” Sam glanced down at the mess on the floor between them. “Actually it doesn’t look like you ate much at all. Did you throw up earlier?”
“What? No...” Obviously realizing where Sam was going with this, Dean shot him a look. “You’re analyzing my vomit.” Rolling his eyes Dean collapsed back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Awesome.”
“There’s just not much substance...”
“Is this what they teach you in school? Dude, you’re seriously weirding me out! I didn’t eat lunch. You happy now?”
“You didn’t eat lunch?”
He couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice. Dean loved to eat. Like if he didn’t do demon hunting for a living he’d weigh a thousand pounds love to eat.
“You said you were going to grab something when I called you from the school.”
“I lied. So what? I’ve just been feeling sick.”
“Since when?”
“Since we hit Oregon.”
“That was almost two days ago, Dean. This morning you looked me in the eyes and told me you were fine. Why the sudden problem with the truth?”
Dean didn’t reply but Sam was too busy kicking himself to care. He’d been so annoyed that Dean had rushed them out here on a whim and so worried that Dean was acting so strange he hadn’t actually been paying attention to Dean himself. He should have noticed that his brother hadn’t been eating and now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure that his brother had eaten since that nasty gas station.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“So you could go all mother hen on my ass over nothing? Thanks, but no thanks," Dean grumbled as he sat back up on the bed. "I'm fine, Sam. Drop it already.”
Sam just shook his head as he disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later he returned with a wet towel. He kneeled on the floor in front of Dean and started cleaning up. He didn't care what Dean thought about it and he didn’t care what Dean thought they should do tonight. His brother wasn't in any condition to run out into the shadows if there was really something out there.
“Fine. If you think it's going to be so easy I can take care of this myself.”
“Like hell you can.”
“What?” Sam asked indignantly as he looked up to Dean. “Like I suddenly can’t take care of some vengeful spirits?”
“You could if you believed that’s what we’re dealing with.”
Dean was right. He didn’t believe it and now he was worried. As he finished on the floor he stood up and looked down at this brother. “Dean, more people are sick.”
“All the more reason to end this now.”
“And now you’re sick,” Sam added, ignoring Dean’s tenacious hold on his spirit theory.
“You’re worried about me now? Dude, can we just focus on this case? Those people dropped in under a day. This is just a damn cold.”
“Whatever. You say you’re going to stop this - how? You said yourself that you don’t even know what this is.”
“That’s why we have to get to the sanitarium, search out some clues, find this big bad bitch and fry her up good.”
“’Her’?” Dean’s tone sounded strangely committed to the female pronoun considering that they didn’t have proof of any spirits aside from possibly a ghost boy.
“Or him? It? Who cares? I don’t think gender confusion is our biggest problem here.”
Dean pushed himself off the bed and waved for Sam to follow him. “Let’s hit the road already. You can tell me everything you didn’t find out today on the way.”
Continue to Chapter 6
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 2,344 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 4
Sam rolled his eyes as he reached for the motel room's doorknob. 'Highway to Hell' was blaring from inside the room. At this rate they were going to get kicked out of this actually nice motel before he could convince Dean that there was no case here. At least not one that they could do anything about.
There hadn’t been any strange marks that he could find on the bodies that were still in the morgue or the funeral home. What he thought was going to be an easy perusal through the county’s death records had turned into a nightmare. Sure there’d been deaths here over the years. Plenty of them.
It turned out half the town was a retirement community. Even if he ignored the deaths of anyone over sixty-five it still wasn’t as if there was any particular type of death he could look for. Dean could be right and twelve of the annual deaths could be attributed to something that shouldn’t be here, but there was no way of telling which ones. And then there were the families.
The college student had been an only child to a single mother - no kids to check with there. The computer guy had been single as far as he could tell and the farmer left behind a wife and twenty year old daughter that was off at school. The two really young kids had been only children, which only left one boy who’d had a younger brother with parents that wouldn’t let Sam anywhere near their traumatized son. If anyone had seen anything out of the ordinary, no one was talking.
While he hadn’t come up with anything useful, he’d driven back and forth around town enough today to see that Dean was right about one thing. Every other spot in this town was high scale meaning that even if they wanted to blow the credit, they’d stick out like sore thumbs.
While he knew Dean was having a rough time with this, if Dean couldn't manage to keep it together they were going to end up sleeping in the car and they’d already done enough of that this week. He didn't want to hear anymore whining about a stiff neck and cramped legs. More importantly, he didn't want those cramped legs to be his own.
"Turn it down, Dean," Sam said automatically as he walked into the room.
Dean was ignoring him. Big surprise. It wouldn’t kill his brother to pretend to be an adult at least some of the time. He didn’t exactly enjoying being Dean’s mother. Sure Dean had always been the one looking after him and he’d do anything for Dean but there was a big difference between looking out for his brother when he really needed it and babysitting. They were both theoretically grown ups and he wasn’t sure how he’d been elected the responsible one.
“What have you been doing in here?” he asked Dean as he dropped his bag on the table. His nose wrinkled as he took in another deep breath. “This place reeks, man."
Turning to look at his brother he suddenly noticed that it wasn’t that Dean was ignoring him. Dean just flat out hadn’t heard him. It was then that he realized the bass of the retro MTV music videos were covering up a seriously nasty hacking cough. The television's remote lay forgotten on the floor and Dean was doubled over at the edge of the bed like he was struggling to catch his breath.
Sam quickly closed the distance between them, put a hand on Dean's shoulder and nearly got decked for it as Dean jumped up swinging. "Sam? What the hell?" Dean rasped. "Where'd you come from?"
"The door..." he told Dean with worried eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Oh I'm just freakin' super," Dean grumbled as he pulled the edges of his jacket tightly around himself.
"You’re cold?" he asked doubtfully.
"It's freezing in here," Dean replied as he sat back down on the bed. Without saying anything further he propped his elbows up on his knees and held his head in his hands.
Dean was obviously not in the mood to hear any differing opinions, but Sam had only been in the room for thirty seconds and he was already starting to sweat. He took off his own jacket as he walked over to the thermostat. It was cranked up as high as it would go and it wasn't broken - the baseboard was cranking out the heat. He shot a look to Dean, but his brother was still staring at the floor.
Leaving the thermostat where it was for now, Sam hit the power button on the television as he walked by. He stood at the end of the bed staring at Dean and waiting for some sort of explanation as to what he was missing here. When Dean still said nothing, he walked past his brother, which finally triggered a response, but not the one he was expecting.
"Watch your step there. I uh...I kinda tossed my cookies all over the floor."
Between the reluctance in Dean's scratchy voice and the fact that his brother wouldn't meet his eyes, Sam could tell that Dean was embarrassed as hell about it, but wasn't about to admit it.
"Projectile style," Dean added in a smart-ass tone as if he realized that he wasn't coming off with the proper degree of tough guy.
"Way too much information," Sam replied, partially playing along with his brother's stupid macho crap, but not enough to tell Dean he had to cleanup the mess. "I'll take care of it."
"No, I got it. Actually, I think we should just call that should be play boy bunny at the front desk and tell her that some drunk broke in. Maybe we can get a free night and a sympathy kiss out of this."
He wasn’t sure whether or not to point out to Dean the obvious fact that no one in their right mind was going to kiss him right now.
"Have you been drinking?" he asked as he at least picked up the remote. The tone wasn't so much accusatory, just concerned.
Dean had a tough time last night. Sam had gone and talked to Colleen himself this afternoon. She was a wreck still, but dealing. Mostly she had just gone on and on about how much Dean had been there for her and her kids last night. How he’d helped her and helped with her daughter’s nightmare. Her nightmare about a ghost boy.
He could only assume that the girl had overheard Dean with her brother the other day. Or maybe it was something. Really it was the only reason he wasn’t dragging Dean kicking and screaming from this town. That and there was obviously something here Dean needed to deal with. For Dean’s mental sake Sam was praying that this was something that could be stopped.
All in all he wouldn’t blame his brother for having gone a little heavy on the whiskey, but Dean shook his head. "I wish I was, but no. I just feel like crap," his brother replied as he finally lifted his head.
Sam nodded as he looked over his brother's pale face. "You look like crap," he agreed.
The deep concern in his voice would be obvious to anyone that was listening, but as usual, Dean wasn't listening.
"Gee, thanks, Sammy. Always the supportive brother." He looked to the remote in Sam’s hand. “That thing’s broke.”
Sam turned it over in his hands. “It looks okay.”
“If it was a stripper that would mean something. I mean it doesn’t work.”
Dean’s voice was still off, but was sounding stronger. The only problem for Dean was that Sam knew when his brother was putting on an act. He could pull his ‘I’m fine’ routine with anyone else, but not with Sam.
He tested the remote to appease his brother. Nothing happened when he pushed the power button. He shrugged and tossed it onto the bed behind him. “It’s probably just the battery. Now stop changing the subject. You really look awful, man, and I don’t care what you say - you are sick. We can't do this tonight."
"Are you kidding me?" Dean asked as he forced his posture to straighten. "Whatever this thing is I can take it with my eyes closed."
"That's just the thing, Dean, we don't know what it is that we're dealing with. If we're even dealing with anything. We’re calling this one off."
"Like hell we are. I didn't drive all the way out here just to..."
Another bought off coughing cut Dean's protest short. By the grimace that Dean wasn't able to hide, Sam could tell that the cough felt as bad as it sounded.
"You can't hunt like this."
"Watch me," Dean challenged as he straightened back up. "It's not like I can just take a sick day."
“Actually, you can. One of the perks of the gig, right?”
“Sure.” Even through the roughness of Dean’s voice Sam could clearly make out the thick sarcasm that laced that single word.
“Dean...”
“No, you’re totally right, Sam. Instead of killing this thing we can lay around and watch Pay-Per-View while another family gets torn apart. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh right, because I’m not a selfish moron.”
“Dean, you’re not killing these people by taking care of yourself. We don’t even know that anything is killing them,” Sam said once more in the hopes that his brother would actual look at reason this time.
“That’s crap and you know it. Something sure as hell is killing these people and it’s not just some disease. There’s something here, Sam. A spirit at the sanitarium, it’s choosing these people and I’m not going to let another family get torn apart because I ate a bad burrito.”
“It’s not your job to save everyone.”
“Maybe not. But it’s my job to try isn’t it? Besides I’m not going to sit around here and let some stupid cold kick my ass.”
“This isn’t a cold. I’ve seen you with a cold, it doesn’t even make you blink.”
“Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Quinn. Maybe I’m just turning into a wuss. Or maybe I really did eat a bad burrito.” He winced as his hand moved to his stomach.
“You didn’t get that cough from a burrito.” Sam glanced down at the mess on the floor between them. “Actually it doesn’t look like you ate much at all. Did you throw up earlier?”
“What? No...” Obviously realizing where Sam was going with this, Dean shot him a look. “You’re analyzing my vomit.” Rolling his eyes Dean collapsed back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Awesome.”
“There’s just not much substance...”
“Is this what they teach you in school? Dude, you’re seriously weirding me out! I didn’t eat lunch. You happy now?”
“You didn’t eat lunch?”
He couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice. Dean loved to eat. Like if he didn’t do demon hunting for a living he’d weigh a thousand pounds love to eat.
“You said you were going to grab something when I called you from the school.”
“I lied. So what? I’ve just been feeling sick.”
“Since when?”
“Since we hit Oregon.”
“That was almost two days ago, Dean. This morning you looked me in the eyes and told me you were fine. Why the sudden problem with the truth?”
Dean didn’t reply but Sam was too busy kicking himself to care. He’d been so annoyed that Dean had rushed them out here on a whim and so worried that Dean was acting so strange he hadn’t actually been paying attention to Dean himself. He should have noticed that his brother hadn’t been eating and now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure that his brother had eaten since that nasty gas station.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“So you could go all mother hen on my ass over nothing? Thanks, but no thanks," Dean grumbled as he sat back up on the bed. "I'm fine, Sam. Drop it already.”
Sam just shook his head as he disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later he returned with a wet towel. He kneeled on the floor in front of Dean and started cleaning up. He didn't care what Dean thought about it and he didn’t care what Dean thought they should do tonight. His brother wasn't in any condition to run out into the shadows if there was really something out there.
“Fine. If you think it's going to be so easy I can take care of this myself.”
“Like hell you can.”
“What?” Sam asked indignantly as he looked up to Dean. “Like I suddenly can’t take care of some vengeful spirits?”
“You could if you believed that’s what we’re dealing with.”
Dean was right. He didn’t believe it and now he was worried. As he finished on the floor he stood up and looked down at this brother. “Dean, more people are sick.”
“All the more reason to end this now.”
“And now you’re sick,” Sam added, ignoring Dean’s tenacious hold on his spirit theory.
“You’re worried about me now? Dude, can we just focus on this case? Those people dropped in under a day. This is just a damn cold.”
“Whatever. You say you’re going to stop this - how? You said yourself that you don’t even know what this is.”
“That’s why we have to get to the sanitarium, search out some clues, find this big bad bitch and fry her up good.”
“’Her’?” Dean’s tone sounded strangely committed to the female pronoun considering that they didn’t have proof of any spirits aside from possibly a ghost boy.
“Or him? It? Who cares? I don’t think gender confusion is our biggest problem here.”
Dean pushed himself off the bed and waved for Sam to follow him. “Let’s hit the road already. You can tell me everything you didn’t find out today on the way.”
Continue to Chapter 6