Fic: Lithops Effect
Because fluorescentness craved h/c, and because I love me some h/c and needed something to jog me from my creative rut, I came up with this random slice of feverish/hurt!Dean fic. Enjoy.
Title: Lithops Effect
Pairing: Gen, with implied Dean/Cas if you use binoculars.
Rating: PG-13, for language.
Words: 3,122
Spoilers: We're just going to be safe and say, well, the entire fucking show up until the beginning of Season 4, mkay? Nothing at all specific about late S4; in my mind, this takes place some time very soon after Dean comes back from Hell.
Summary: A shameless excuse to write feverish/hurt/delirious!Dean and have Sam and Castiel both do their part to take care of him, as per the prompt by fluorescentness.
A/N: Title taken from the likewise-titled Mountain Goats song.
~ ~ ~
After one long season of waiting, after one long season of wanting / I am breaking open
My insides are pink and raw, and it hurts me when I move my jaw / But I am taking tiny steps forward.
And I feel sure that my wounds will heal, and I will bloom here in my room
With a little water, and a little bit of sunlight / And a little bit of tender mercy, tender mercy
The big trucks come up the highway and the big wheels rattle my windows / And night, night comes to Texas
After one blind season alone in here, after one long sweltering summer / I, I am going to find the exit
And I will go to the house of a friend i know / And I will let myself forget
With a little water, and a little bit of sunlight / And a little bit of tender mercy, tender mercy
~ ~ ~
By the time Sam ever finds Dean, the vampires have all but drained every drop of blood from his body.
He's a pale shadow of his former self, wrung out and squeezed dry like a pathetic sponge. He doesn't tense or respond at all when Sam picks the lock that keeps him handcuffed to the rusted pipe in the farmhouse cellar. And when he throws him over his shoulder fireman-style and carries him to the Impala and flops the dead weight of his brother's body in the back seat, Sam's stomach does a flip. He doesn't check for a pulse because he can't bring himself to, but he knows Dean is alive. Knows it just as sure as he knows night is dark and day is light, and as he knows Dean is his brother and that he would do anything, literally anything, to make him better.
He kicks through the motel door and is only halfway surprised to see Castiel already waiting there, sitting on the flat stretch of Dean's bed. Sam doesn't pause at the realization, though, because with Dean stilted against his body, wedged up underneath his shoulder with his head lolling every which way like it's barely attached, he can't afford to. Just kicks the door closed and tries to ignore the idle search of Castiel's eyes. He drops Dean onto the opposite bed, his own bed, and instantly takes to loosening the buttons of his brother's shirt.
"Can you help, or you just here to watch?"
Sam has his back to Castiel, so he doesn't see it when the angel's gaze darts quickly from Dean to his hands. "I can give him rest," Castiel offers. Sam snarks.
"He doesn’t need rest, he needs blood." He shakes the shirt from Dean's body, tries not to notice the bluish tint of his brother's skin or how cold he is, even in the parts of his body that should be warmest. "They practically sucked him dry, for Christ's sake."
He usually keeps his tongue carefully in check around Castiel, but in the heat of the moment Sam lets the blasphemy slip without restraint; Castiel doesn't react. The bloodied shirt falls forgotten onto the floor as Sam reaches up to tap his brother's face with gentle fingers. There's a sickly lump building upon itself in the floor of his belly, twisting up to thickly choke his throat, and it takes a minute but eventually he recognizes it as futility. It's a rough, scraping, visceral feeling. It's exactly how he felt when he saw Dean get electrocuted so many years ago, or when he stared down at him in the hospital bed after the Impala got t-boned, all pale and fragile and utterly breakable. Tubes hanging out and going in and intersecting with each other below his skin where Sam couldn't see. Just like when he'd first lost Dean to the Hellhounds. How he stood there helpless and naïve, gaping stupidly while Dean's stomach opened up and the floor sprawled with the opaque red of his blood.
How he felt when he lowered the impassive pine box with his brother inside into the ground, and precisely how he felt when he tapped the flat back of the shovel over the very last scoop of dirt that covered Dean's grave.
He is losing him.
Basic first aid training kicking in, Sam flips a blanket over Dean's body - he would need all the warmth he could get right now - and lobs his heavy, clunking combat boots onto the floor. Mental checklists reel through his head - fever, dehydration, hypothermia. Dean could be suffering from all of the above right now, for all he knew. With a sigh, Sam fins a hand through his hair and huffs out a breath. He doesn't take his eyes from Dean when he says, "Can you heal him?"
Castiel is the model of composure on the outside, but when Sam looks, really looks, into the wide pools of blue that are the angel's eyes, it's easy to see he is shaken. His jaw tightens as he swallows, and he doesn't have to say anything for Sam to know the answer to his question.
The vampires had been tricky sons of bitches. They had hit Dean below the belt, played dirty, luring him into their nest with the old my car's broken down, can you please help? routine. It still shocks Sam when he thinks about why the hell Dean let his guard down like that, why he fell for such an amateur hustle, but he quickly pushes the thoughts from his mind. None of that matters now. Every last one of the bastards is dead now, beheaded and haphazardly scattered on the grounds and through the halls of the dilapidated country plantation. Sam had been ruthless to a degree that surprised even him, but that's what happens when something tries to take his brother away from him these days. He refuses to lose him again. To demons or vampires or ghosts or angels or whatever. Just - no. Sam would tear the whole goddamn world apart if it meant keeping Dean at his side, because he's already lost him too many fucking times and it's just not going to happen again. He's not going to lose him again. He's not.
He passes a hand over his lips roughly. Stilts the other on his hip. Watches the weak, irregular rise and fall of Dean's chest beneath the thin polyester blankets. Swims through all the theories and mythologies and ideas he has, and feels the crush of disappointment freeze through his chest when he comes up empty.
Just then, Castiel rises from the bed and leans over Dean's impassive frame. Sam is expecting something huge and poetic to happen, something biblical, some kind of beautiful warm white light to spear out of Heaven and magically heal his brother, a shining golden hand or illuminated writing on the wall, something, but nothing of the sort happens. Castiel simply raises a hand and skims it along Dean's cheek with all the gentleness of someone who's done it more than once before. The angel's face is all wrecked with confusion and regret and curious fascination, and it's kind of a beautiful thing to watch but it's not really helping, so Sam steps closer and clears his throat.
"What do we do?"
Castiel doesn't respond at all, which kind of infuriates Sam. The angel's lips purse into a grim line and he swipes a sweaty fan of Dean's hair from his forehead.
"Just help him, Cas!"
At the words, Castiel straightens and turns to look at the younger Winchester. "I can’t," he answers flatly, honestly. It tugs something in Sam's chest a dozen different directions - rage, heartbreak, desperation, disbelief, arrhythmia, all of it culminating into one lurid rush of white-hot emotion not unlike panic.
"What, so you can zap demons back to Hell with one finger but you can’t cure a vampire bite?"
But Castiel doesn't have time to respond, because that's when Dean wakes up with a sudden jerk and a hollow gasp that sends all kinds of shivers up and down Sam's spine. He's at his brother's side within a heartbeat. "Dean!"
Dean pulls frantically at the air, as if he can't quite gulp in enough oxygen to fill his lungs. Just being conscious brings a comforting flush of color into his cheeks, though it's a diminished shade of his usual healthy tan and it fades quickly as his back settles against the bed and his head falls heavily to the side. A horrible moan rattles out of his throat, reeking of sickness and pain and everything Sam doesn't want to think about his brother going through right now. His eyelids flutter as Sam repeats his name over and over again, Dean's voice responding only with a strained groan from somewhere deep inside his chest.
Warily, Sam throws a glance back at Castiel, who is watching the scene unfold with just as much unsettled panic and concern littering his face as Sam's. For the briefest second, their eyes meet, and it's at that instant that it really hits home for Sam that shit, Castiel really can't help, and that shit, this really might be how it ends. Dean all sliced up and bled dry and feverish, sweating and writhing on a third-rate motel bed; Sam at his side completely helpless, welling with tears; and a disturbingly stoic guardian angel looming powerlessly over him.
And the whole world's going to burn because of it.
No. Just - no, Sam isn't going to let that happen. Isn't going to let Dean go out like this, sickly and embarrassed and jerking like a lightning-struck toad. It's not the dignified death of a hunter, not the death he deserves, but then again neither was being torn into by Hellhounds. Sam's eyes slam shut at the thought and he curls his fingers tightly into the blankets until they white-knuckle. He springs from the bed in an instant.
When he comes back, it's with warm water and a bowl, a stark white washcloth floating in it. He pauses momentarily when he sees Castiel leaning over his brother again - his familiar trench coat sloughed off and thrown carelessly onto the other bed, along with his other jacket. His sleeves are bunched up around his forearms, and for a moment Sam is surprised at how slender they are. How slender Castiel's entire body is, really. With his trench coat he seems so ominous, so official and filled-out and enigmatic, but now that he's stripped down to just a shirt and slacks and that sloppily skewed indigo tie, he looks decidedly smaller. Less threatening. Even the sight of him brings with it a certain serenity.
Sam swallows and sweeps into the empty gap between beds, stopping to set the bowl on the nightstand and fold the blankets back from Dean's chest. A mess of jaundiced yellow and unsettling purple bruises litter the skin there, making Sam's stomach clench unpleasantly at the sight. A quick succession of movements later and he's dabbing softly at Dean's forehead, clearing away the grime of sweat and blood and god knows what else. "Dean? Dean, wake up. Come on, man," Sam is urging insistently. "You gotta come back, Dean. Come on."
A subtle stirring happens under Dean’s eyelids as his shoulders tense up. Sam hears Castiel move behind him, then feels the peculiar electricity radiating from his body when he leans almost uncomfortably close. The guy really didn't have much of a concept of personal space, despite all his time among humans. Under any other circumstance it would make Sam uncomfortable, force him to duck under a polite excuse and put a comfortable distance between himself and Castiel, but these aren't normal circumstances so he does nothing. Just goes with it and continues brushing the week's grunge away from his brother's restless face. Castiel extends a hand and lays it gently on Dean's chest, his voice low and measured when he whispers, "Exsuscito tu."
Sam mentally translates the Latin as soon as the words leave Castiel's lips - I awaken you. And it must be some kind of angel mojo thing, he thinks, because two seconds later Dean's eyelids are fluttering open and his voice is purring out in a dry husk. "Sam," he says weakly.
"Dean, yeah - I'm here, Dean." The way Dean's face crinkles up when he touches a tender spot on his abdomen tells Sam that there's much more going on under the surface than what he sees. He swallows tensely, wringing the rag out into the newly pink water. "Stay with us, Dean. I got you, it's okay. You’re okay."
Reflections of the words that he could remember Dean saying to him anytime he needed comforting, all those times he just needed to know Dean was there. They were simple, but they always made Sam feel like the world held one spotlight and it shone solely on him, though perhaps that was just because the words were coming out of Dean’s mouth and - in Dean's world - the world did shine exclusively on Sammy.
A shattered, slow-motion moan spins through the air as Dean's head shies away from the light. "No," he mumbles, prompting Sam to cast a confused glance over his shoulder at Castiel. "No, no, no, no, Dad, no... Dad..."
Instantly, Sam's ears perk up. "Dean?" He resituates himself, leaning closer to Dean's face, shaking his shoulders lightly. "Hey. Dean, what about Dad?"
"He's delirious," Castiel says, and Sam almost wants to snap back something bitter like no shit, Sherlock,, but he bites his tongue. Being snarky and having the upper hand isn't what's important right now, he tells himself. Dean is what's important right now. Plain and simple, Dean is all that matters and all that exists in this gray haze of a diseased little world.
With each swipe of the warmed cloth, Dean seems to calm down. His head is still turning from side to side, his eyes frantically moving beneath their lids, but at least his breathing has evened out to a moderate inhale-exhale pace. Not too fast, but not slow enough to be normal just yet either. Can't have everything, Sam tells himself, that and other heartening things like one step at a time, in an effort to brighten his outlook on this whole ridiculous situation.
It doesn't work.
After what seems like a pleasant stretch of calm, Dean's eyes snap open and he's staring at Sam in this cold, dislocated way that holds no recognition. Sam's immediate response is to smile, a small pathetic thing, but the action is buried quickly beneath an avalanche of desperate concern. Dean is staring hard at him, eyes wide and too-bright, thrashing wild and dim and terrifying, drilling straight through into the heart of him where Sam is afraid he won't see anything but blackness and demon blood and fury and revenge. There's not a single spark of identification written anywhere on Dean's face. He regards Sam as if he is a complete stranger - a dangerous one, at that. Someone or something that he is very, very much afraid of.
Sam's blood slows to an icy crawl as he risks saying, "Dean?"
"No - no, no, you sonofabitch!" Dean is yelling now. Which is absolutely not cool, because it's four AM and they're in a motel with thin walls and a police station only ten blocks away. Sam instinctively shushes his brother, dabbing the cloth against his forehead and holding his shoulders down to the bed as best he can, but nothing helps. Dean is thrashing and screaming out no, no, no, fuck you, no, I won’t go back, no, and Sam can't do a damn thing but watch it happen and wait for Dean to either calm down or just go completely off the fucking map crazy. And there's no telling what would happen then - more screaming, probably, and it wouldn't be just Dean's doing this time because if Dean goes, Sam goes too. To an ambiguous x-marked spot on a crinkled, soda-stained map sliding around the Impala's floorboards, or to the bottom of the ocean or the darkest corners of madness, or even to Hell if he could have. He'll always follow Dean, no matter where, close and semi-substantial as a shadow chasing his heels.
Castiel comes out of left field, it seems, flattening a hand across Dean's mouth. He stares hard at him and says, "Dean," so demanding and powerful that even Sam fixes his eyes on him. So does Dean. "Be calm," the angel commands.
For a long time nothing happens, but then Castiel draws his hand back and rests it on the bed at Dean's side. Dean's eyes do this crazy rolling-back thing, eyelashes swooping down and up and down again, staying that way as his face smoothes out and he drifts into unconsciousness without another sound.
Castiel's shoulders rise subtly as he pulls in a deep breath. "Your brother will be fine," he says unexpectedly. Sam blinks, eyebrows muddling in confusion.
"He’s - he needs help, Cas. He’s very much not fine, actually." Sam swallows anxiously against the words. When his gaze falls to his brother again - the sweat slick of his hair, the unhealthy pallor of his skin, how sunken his cheeks are and how he probably hasn't had a shower or a decent meal in a full week, how his pupils are full and blown and gaping black pits into the thrashing realms of his soul that Sam can't and will never see, memories of Hell sewn onto his core with every breath and blink, sautered there by some hellfire torch - something pulls in his chest and he can't quite breathe right anymore.
Castiel stands straight and shrugs his coats on again. "He will be fine."
"How do you know?" Sam challenges.
"I don’t," Castiel answers simply. Sam immediately glances to him, but his stare is just as vacant and haunted and indecipherable as always. His head does a small dip, a nod of acknowledgment, as he finishes, "But I have faith. And you should, too."
Sam glances down to his hands. Smeared with crimson, bloody at the knuckles, mud-striped and bruised. It should probably disturb him that he doesn't know who all's blood is on his hands - whether it's Dean's or the vampires' or his own or some innocent victim's - but it doesn't. He's not thinking about disease, not thinking about the final hisses of silver-eyed vampires or the people they've sucked dry over the weeks. He's not think of anything beyond this room, four hundred and fifty square feet of space that holds his entire existence easily within its too-thick polyester curtains and grimy looped carpet and the persistent rattle of an air-conditioning unit that cuts on spontaneously of its own accord. With the not-quite-warmth of an angel at his back and the clutching feverish husk of Dean's body stretched before him, this is what Sam's world has been reduced to. And until Dean is better, he's okay with that.
Castiel's words echo in Sam's mind long after he has left, taking with him the slightly vacuous rush of wind and feathers and celestial energy. The last thing he said dances in Sam's ears, you should too, reluctant to sink into his skin. He watches Dean consistently through till dawn, watches as his fever spikes and he shivers like a madman beneath the covers, sweat soaking straight through like he's shaped from water. Watches as Dean's breathing settles into a comfortingly regular rhythm - inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate. And at exactly eleven-seventeen AM the next morning, Dean's eyes open, unobstructed and clear and wild like forests.
They are everything Sam has ever wanted to see, and then some.
Title: Lithops Effect
Pairing: Gen, with implied Dean/Cas if you use binoculars.
Rating: PG-13, for language.
Words: 3,122
Spoilers: We're just going to be safe and say, well, the entire fucking show up until the beginning of Season 4, mkay? Nothing at all specific about late S4; in my mind, this takes place some time very soon after Dean comes back from Hell.
Summary: A shameless excuse to write feverish/hurt/delirious!Dean and have Sam and Castiel both do their part to take care of him, as per the prompt by fluorescentness.
A/N: Title taken from the likewise-titled Mountain Goats song.
~ ~ ~
After one long season of waiting, after one long season of wanting / I am breaking open
My insides are pink and raw, and it hurts me when I move my jaw / But I am taking tiny steps forward.
And I feel sure that my wounds will heal, and I will bloom here in my room
With a little water, and a little bit of sunlight / And a little bit of tender mercy, tender mercy
The big trucks come up the highway and the big wheels rattle my windows / And night, night comes to Texas
After one blind season alone in here, after one long sweltering summer / I, I am going to find the exit
And I will go to the house of a friend i know / And I will let myself forget
With a little water, and a little bit of sunlight / And a little bit of tender mercy, tender mercy
~ ~ ~
By the time Sam ever finds Dean, the vampires have all but drained every drop of blood from his body.
He's a pale shadow of his former self, wrung out and squeezed dry like a pathetic sponge. He doesn't tense or respond at all when Sam picks the lock that keeps him handcuffed to the rusted pipe in the farmhouse cellar. And when he throws him over his shoulder fireman-style and carries him to the Impala and flops the dead weight of his brother's body in the back seat, Sam's stomach does a flip. He doesn't check for a pulse because he can't bring himself to, but he knows Dean is alive. Knows it just as sure as he knows night is dark and day is light, and as he knows Dean is his brother and that he would do anything, literally anything, to make him better.
He kicks through the motel door and is only halfway surprised to see Castiel already waiting there, sitting on the flat stretch of Dean's bed. Sam doesn't pause at the realization, though, because with Dean stilted against his body, wedged up underneath his shoulder with his head lolling every which way like it's barely attached, he can't afford to. Just kicks the door closed and tries to ignore the idle search of Castiel's eyes. He drops Dean onto the opposite bed, his own bed, and instantly takes to loosening the buttons of his brother's shirt.
"Can you help, or you just here to watch?"
Sam has his back to Castiel, so he doesn't see it when the angel's gaze darts quickly from Dean to his hands. "I can give him rest," Castiel offers. Sam snarks.
"He doesn’t need rest, he needs blood." He shakes the shirt from Dean's body, tries not to notice the bluish tint of his brother's skin or how cold he is, even in the parts of his body that should be warmest. "They practically sucked him dry, for Christ's sake."
He usually keeps his tongue carefully in check around Castiel, but in the heat of the moment Sam lets the blasphemy slip without restraint; Castiel doesn't react. The bloodied shirt falls forgotten onto the floor as Sam reaches up to tap his brother's face with gentle fingers. There's a sickly lump building upon itself in the floor of his belly, twisting up to thickly choke his throat, and it takes a minute but eventually he recognizes it as futility. It's a rough, scraping, visceral feeling. It's exactly how he felt when he saw Dean get electrocuted so many years ago, or when he stared down at him in the hospital bed after the Impala got t-boned, all pale and fragile and utterly breakable. Tubes hanging out and going in and intersecting with each other below his skin where Sam couldn't see. Just like when he'd first lost Dean to the Hellhounds. How he stood there helpless and naïve, gaping stupidly while Dean's stomach opened up and the floor sprawled with the opaque red of his blood.
How he felt when he lowered the impassive pine box with his brother inside into the ground, and precisely how he felt when he tapped the flat back of the shovel over the very last scoop of dirt that covered Dean's grave.
He is losing him.
Basic first aid training kicking in, Sam flips a blanket over Dean's body - he would need all the warmth he could get right now - and lobs his heavy, clunking combat boots onto the floor. Mental checklists reel through his head - fever, dehydration, hypothermia. Dean could be suffering from all of the above right now, for all he knew. With a sigh, Sam fins a hand through his hair and huffs out a breath. He doesn't take his eyes from Dean when he says, "Can you heal him?"
Castiel is the model of composure on the outside, but when Sam looks, really looks, into the wide pools of blue that are the angel's eyes, it's easy to see he is shaken. His jaw tightens as he swallows, and he doesn't have to say anything for Sam to know the answer to his question.
The vampires had been tricky sons of bitches. They had hit Dean below the belt, played dirty, luring him into their nest with the old my car's broken down, can you please help? routine. It still shocks Sam when he thinks about why the hell Dean let his guard down like that, why he fell for such an amateur hustle, but he quickly pushes the thoughts from his mind. None of that matters now. Every last one of the bastards is dead now, beheaded and haphazardly scattered on the grounds and through the halls of the dilapidated country plantation. Sam had been ruthless to a degree that surprised even him, but that's what happens when something tries to take his brother away from him these days. He refuses to lose him again. To demons or vampires or ghosts or angels or whatever. Just - no. Sam would tear the whole goddamn world apart if it meant keeping Dean at his side, because he's already lost him too many fucking times and it's just not going to happen again. He's not going to lose him again. He's not.
He passes a hand over his lips roughly. Stilts the other on his hip. Watches the weak, irregular rise and fall of Dean's chest beneath the thin polyester blankets. Swims through all the theories and mythologies and ideas he has, and feels the crush of disappointment freeze through his chest when he comes up empty.
Just then, Castiel rises from the bed and leans over Dean's impassive frame. Sam is expecting something huge and poetic to happen, something biblical, some kind of beautiful warm white light to spear out of Heaven and magically heal his brother, a shining golden hand or illuminated writing on the wall, something, but nothing of the sort happens. Castiel simply raises a hand and skims it along Dean's cheek with all the gentleness of someone who's done it more than once before. The angel's face is all wrecked with confusion and regret and curious fascination, and it's kind of a beautiful thing to watch but it's not really helping, so Sam steps closer and clears his throat.
"What do we do?"
Castiel doesn't respond at all, which kind of infuriates Sam. The angel's lips purse into a grim line and he swipes a sweaty fan of Dean's hair from his forehead.
"Just help him, Cas!"
At the words, Castiel straightens and turns to look at the younger Winchester. "I can’t," he answers flatly, honestly. It tugs something in Sam's chest a dozen different directions - rage, heartbreak, desperation, disbelief, arrhythmia, all of it culminating into one lurid rush of white-hot emotion not unlike panic.
"What, so you can zap demons back to Hell with one finger but you can’t cure a vampire bite?"
But Castiel doesn't have time to respond, because that's when Dean wakes up with a sudden jerk and a hollow gasp that sends all kinds of shivers up and down Sam's spine. He's at his brother's side within a heartbeat. "Dean!"
Dean pulls frantically at the air, as if he can't quite gulp in enough oxygen to fill his lungs. Just being conscious brings a comforting flush of color into his cheeks, though it's a diminished shade of his usual healthy tan and it fades quickly as his back settles against the bed and his head falls heavily to the side. A horrible moan rattles out of his throat, reeking of sickness and pain and everything Sam doesn't want to think about his brother going through right now. His eyelids flutter as Sam repeats his name over and over again, Dean's voice responding only with a strained groan from somewhere deep inside his chest.
Warily, Sam throws a glance back at Castiel, who is watching the scene unfold with just as much unsettled panic and concern littering his face as Sam's. For the briefest second, their eyes meet, and it's at that instant that it really hits home for Sam that shit, Castiel really can't help, and that shit, this really might be how it ends. Dean all sliced up and bled dry and feverish, sweating and writhing on a third-rate motel bed; Sam at his side completely helpless, welling with tears; and a disturbingly stoic guardian angel looming powerlessly over him.
And the whole world's going to burn because of it.
No. Just - no, Sam isn't going to let that happen. Isn't going to let Dean go out like this, sickly and embarrassed and jerking like a lightning-struck toad. It's not the dignified death of a hunter, not the death he deserves, but then again neither was being torn into by Hellhounds. Sam's eyes slam shut at the thought and he curls his fingers tightly into the blankets until they white-knuckle. He springs from the bed in an instant.
When he comes back, it's with warm water and a bowl, a stark white washcloth floating in it. He pauses momentarily when he sees Castiel leaning over his brother again - his familiar trench coat sloughed off and thrown carelessly onto the other bed, along with his other jacket. His sleeves are bunched up around his forearms, and for a moment Sam is surprised at how slender they are. How slender Castiel's entire body is, really. With his trench coat he seems so ominous, so official and filled-out and enigmatic, but now that he's stripped down to just a shirt and slacks and that sloppily skewed indigo tie, he looks decidedly smaller. Less threatening. Even the sight of him brings with it a certain serenity.
Sam swallows and sweeps into the empty gap between beds, stopping to set the bowl on the nightstand and fold the blankets back from Dean's chest. A mess of jaundiced yellow and unsettling purple bruises litter the skin there, making Sam's stomach clench unpleasantly at the sight. A quick succession of movements later and he's dabbing softly at Dean's forehead, clearing away the grime of sweat and blood and god knows what else. "Dean? Dean, wake up. Come on, man," Sam is urging insistently. "You gotta come back, Dean. Come on."
A subtle stirring happens under Dean’s eyelids as his shoulders tense up. Sam hears Castiel move behind him, then feels the peculiar electricity radiating from his body when he leans almost uncomfortably close. The guy really didn't have much of a concept of personal space, despite all his time among humans. Under any other circumstance it would make Sam uncomfortable, force him to duck under a polite excuse and put a comfortable distance between himself and Castiel, but these aren't normal circumstances so he does nothing. Just goes with it and continues brushing the week's grunge away from his brother's restless face. Castiel extends a hand and lays it gently on Dean's chest, his voice low and measured when he whispers, "Exsuscito tu."
Sam mentally translates the Latin as soon as the words leave Castiel's lips - I awaken you. And it must be some kind of angel mojo thing, he thinks, because two seconds later Dean's eyelids are fluttering open and his voice is purring out in a dry husk. "Sam," he says weakly.
"Dean, yeah - I'm here, Dean." The way Dean's face crinkles up when he touches a tender spot on his abdomen tells Sam that there's much more going on under the surface than what he sees. He swallows tensely, wringing the rag out into the newly pink water. "Stay with us, Dean. I got you, it's okay. You’re okay."
Reflections of the words that he could remember Dean saying to him anytime he needed comforting, all those times he just needed to know Dean was there. They were simple, but they always made Sam feel like the world held one spotlight and it shone solely on him, though perhaps that was just because the words were coming out of Dean’s mouth and - in Dean's world - the world did shine exclusively on Sammy.
A shattered, slow-motion moan spins through the air as Dean's head shies away from the light. "No," he mumbles, prompting Sam to cast a confused glance over his shoulder at Castiel. "No, no, no, no, Dad, no... Dad..."
Instantly, Sam's ears perk up. "Dean?" He resituates himself, leaning closer to Dean's face, shaking his shoulders lightly. "Hey. Dean, what about Dad?"
"He's delirious," Castiel says, and Sam almost wants to snap back something bitter like no shit, Sherlock,, but he bites his tongue. Being snarky and having the upper hand isn't what's important right now, he tells himself. Dean is what's important right now. Plain and simple, Dean is all that matters and all that exists in this gray haze of a diseased little world.
With each swipe of the warmed cloth, Dean seems to calm down. His head is still turning from side to side, his eyes frantically moving beneath their lids, but at least his breathing has evened out to a moderate inhale-exhale pace. Not too fast, but not slow enough to be normal just yet either. Can't have everything, Sam tells himself, that and other heartening things like one step at a time, in an effort to brighten his outlook on this whole ridiculous situation.
It doesn't work.
After what seems like a pleasant stretch of calm, Dean's eyes snap open and he's staring at Sam in this cold, dislocated way that holds no recognition. Sam's immediate response is to smile, a small pathetic thing, but the action is buried quickly beneath an avalanche of desperate concern. Dean is staring hard at him, eyes wide and too-bright, thrashing wild and dim and terrifying, drilling straight through into the heart of him where Sam is afraid he won't see anything but blackness and demon blood and fury and revenge. There's not a single spark of identification written anywhere on Dean's face. He regards Sam as if he is a complete stranger - a dangerous one, at that. Someone or something that he is very, very much afraid of.
Sam's blood slows to an icy crawl as he risks saying, "Dean?"
"No - no, no, you sonofabitch!" Dean is yelling now. Which is absolutely not cool, because it's four AM and they're in a motel with thin walls and a police station only ten blocks away. Sam instinctively shushes his brother, dabbing the cloth against his forehead and holding his shoulders down to the bed as best he can, but nothing helps. Dean is thrashing and screaming out no, no, no, fuck you, no, I won’t go back, no, and Sam can't do a damn thing but watch it happen and wait for Dean to either calm down or just go completely off the fucking map crazy. And there's no telling what would happen then - more screaming, probably, and it wouldn't be just Dean's doing this time because if Dean goes, Sam goes too. To an ambiguous x-marked spot on a crinkled, soda-stained map sliding around the Impala's floorboards, or to the bottom of the ocean or the darkest corners of madness, or even to Hell if he could have. He'll always follow Dean, no matter where, close and semi-substantial as a shadow chasing his heels.
Castiel comes out of left field, it seems, flattening a hand across Dean's mouth. He stares hard at him and says, "Dean," so demanding and powerful that even Sam fixes his eyes on him. So does Dean. "Be calm," the angel commands.
For a long time nothing happens, but then Castiel draws his hand back and rests it on the bed at Dean's side. Dean's eyes do this crazy rolling-back thing, eyelashes swooping down and up and down again, staying that way as his face smoothes out and he drifts into unconsciousness without another sound.
Castiel's shoulders rise subtly as he pulls in a deep breath. "Your brother will be fine," he says unexpectedly. Sam blinks, eyebrows muddling in confusion.
"He’s - he needs help, Cas. He’s very much not fine, actually." Sam swallows anxiously against the words. When his gaze falls to his brother again - the sweat slick of his hair, the unhealthy pallor of his skin, how sunken his cheeks are and how he probably hasn't had a shower or a decent meal in a full week, how his pupils are full and blown and gaping black pits into the thrashing realms of his soul that Sam can't and will never see, memories of Hell sewn onto his core with every breath and blink, sautered there by some hellfire torch - something pulls in his chest and he can't quite breathe right anymore.
Castiel stands straight and shrugs his coats on again. "He will be fine."
"How do you know?" Sam challenges.
"I don’t," Castiel answers simply. Sam immediately glances to him, but his stare is just as vacant and haunted and indecipherable as always. His head does a small dip, a nod of acknowledgment, as he finishes, "But I have faith. And you should, too."
Sam glances down to his hands. Smeared with crimson, bloody at the knuckles, mud-striped and bruised. It should probably disturb him that he doesn't know who all's blood is on his hands - whether it's Dean's or the vampires' or his own or some innocent victim's - but it doesn't. He's not thinking about disease, not thinking about the final hisses of silver-eyed vampires or the people they've sucked dry over the weeks. He's not think of anything beyond this room, four hundred and fifty square feet of space that holds his entire existence easily within its too-thick polyester curtains and grimy looped carpet and the persistent rattle of an air-conditioning unit that cuts on spontaneously of its own accord. With the not-quite-warmth of an angel at his back and the clutching feverish husk of Dean's body stretched before him, this is what Sam's world has been reduced to. And until Dean is better, he's okay with that.
Castiel's words echo in Sam's mind long after he has left, taking with him the slightly vacuous rush of wind and feathers and celestial energy. The last thing he said dances in Sam's ears, you should too, reluctant to sink into his skin. He watches Dean consistently through till dawn, watches as his fever spikes and he shivers like a madman beneath the covers, sweat soaking straight through like he's shaped from water. Watches as Dean's breathing settles into a comfortingly regular rhythm - inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate. And at exactly eleven-seventeen AM the next morning, Dean's eyes open, unobstructed and clear and wild like forests.
They are everything Sam has ever wanted to see, and then some.