SPN: "Sick"
Category: Supernatural, This Christmas Day 'verse
Title: Sick (AO3)
Word Count: 4750
Rating: PG
Summary: Sooner or later, even Winchesters get sick. Takes place roughly two years after Dean and Marcy get married.
So, it turns out that having your job go bonkers and spending a week and a half (and counting) wondering whether or not you're going to get paid, added to sick kitty worries, is not exactly conducive to meeting self-imposed fic deadlines. In other words, this is not the Fourth of July story you were looking for.
But I poked at this and it turned out to be a lot closer to finished than I thought it was, so presto! You get something, at least.
Dean was coughing-again-when Marcy came out of the bathroom. "You okay over there?" she asked, tucking something into her suitcase.
"Fine," he choked out, and she disappeared into the bathroom again, coming out with a plastic cup of water.
"You don't sound fine," she said, pressing her hand against his forehead. "You're burning up."
"Just a cold." He gulped down the water. "'Be fine. You're gonna-"
"I'm waiting on Firth. He always remembers a dozen things he needs at the last minute. Last time I rushed him, we ended up having to scour Richmond at 2 a.m. for a wheelchair-accessible store where he could buy underwear, and that's not an adventure I care to repeat."
Dean's snort at that image choked itself into another cough, and Marcy went back into the bathroom, coming out this time with a wet washcloth. "Here."
"Marce-" His lungs decided they'd had enough of this talking business and spasmed some more.
The bed was too high for her to casually sit down, so she sort of propped one hip against it and leaned over. "I really don't like the sound of that cough."
"'Sokay," he finally managed, using the washcloth to wipe his eyes. "Gonna miss your flight. Know how Sean gets when you have to pay for extra tickets."
Marcy rolled her eyes. "I don't care about Sean's penny-pinching ass right now." She sighed. "Although I am definitely bringing up the jet again. As much as we fly, it's bound to be cheaper in the long run. Not to mention we could fly on our schedule instead of Delta's. If we could just find a pilot-"
"What about-there's a pilot cousin, right?" He'd heard the name, but it was something weird. "Tir?"
"Ter, short for Terence," she corrected, absently, "and you're right. He's been doing commercial for years, completely shitty schedule. I bet he'd kill for something more regular. And he always believed Hannah."
Dean knew that look. Ter hadn't occurred to Marcy before, but now that she'd thought of him-a family solution to the issue of trustworthy pilots-Sean might as well give up on resisting the purchase of that jet. Firth was already on Marcy's side on the jet issue-bad as commercial flying was, it was even worse for a man in a wheelchair-and when both of them dug their heels (and wheels) in....
"Sic 'im," he said, and coughed again.
"I'm not sure I should leave you like this."
"Be fine," he insisted. "Just-" Another spasm. "Nex' time I offer t' keep the brats ennertained-"
"I will definitely smack you next time you get near the little snot factories. Especially without a flu shot."
"I don'-"
"Dean."
"Fine," he relented. Maybe she was right. Everybody else in the family got the shots because with all the kids, it wasn't a question of if you'd be exposed, only when. "'ll call David, okay?"
"If you prom-" Marcy's phone started playing Firth's ringtone, and she dragged herself away from the bed. "There he is," she said, reaching into her pocket and turning it off. "Are you sure-"
"I'm fine, Sam!"
Her eyes narrowed, a bit, but thankfully, she took that as him being sarcastic, not feverish and out of his head. "Is it okay if I have somebody check on you anyway?"
"If it makes you feel better."
"All right, then. The flight info's on the fridge, and if you need something, call somebody."
"Yes, nurse."
She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Sorry, I'll give you a better one when I come home and you're not contagious."
"Holdin' you to that," he said-and started coughing again.
"Dean-"
"Go," he croaked, making a shooing gesture with his free hand.
***
The first couple of days were okay, especially after Anne brought him a pie. Apples were fruit and therefore healthy, so he was totally not lying when he assured Sam that he was eating right.
The fourth morning after Marcy left, though, Dean woke up freezing and feeling like he'd just been hit by a semi. Again. Maybe worse. Whatever had happened between the cabin and him waking up all healed in the hospital, he still didn't remember any of it, no matter how many stories Sam told about Ouija boards and flying glasses.
He managed to get to the bathroom, but when he tried to go to the kitchen for something breakfasty, he only made it as far as the bedroom door before the dizzies got too bad, and he wasn't even trying to walk. He was too fucking dizzy to steer his chair. "Fuck it," he finally said, and crawled back into bed. He wasn't working today anyway. He could just curl up and enjoy having a throat that felt like he'd swallowed a broken vase, a nose that didn't work, lungs that were trying to fly south for the winter, a brain that was trying to escape his skull through his ears, and joints that properly belonged to some super-arthritic 90-year-old someplace.
Look, if he was going to be miserable, he might as well be miserable. No point in half-assing it.
Sleep was supposed to be good for you if you were sick, but nobody who said that ever mentioned that it was harder to sleep when you were this sick. Medicine let him breathe for a couple of hours at a time, but it wore off, and it didn't do a whole hell of a lot for the throat or the cough; he'd used up the last of the cough syrup yesterday and the sore throat stuff the day before that, and hadn't gone to get more because he'd thought he was getting better. Then Buttercup made her afternoon appearance, since Mrs. Reilly's place didn't get the sunbeams that their bedroom did. She was delighted at finding a nap buddy and kept trying to curl up on top of him. Because he needed seventeen pounds of Maine Coon mix on his chest.
Besides, you could only sleep so long before your back began to hurt, and it wasn't like everything didn't already hurt.
There was nothing on live TV, and fast-forwarding commercials on the recorded stuff took too much focus. So did reading. Getting up to change DVDs was awkward and exhausting, and when he tried streaming a season of Star Trek on Netflix, he dozed off and had nightmares about a three-way between Sulu, Chekhov, and a rawhead.
He'd pretty much been reduced to staring at the dust in the sunlight at this point.
The last time he'd been this sick- When had it been? That time in Vermont, him and Sam and a dead used-car salesman, way back before Dad died? They'd been stuck in that motel for nearly a week after they'd torched the smarmy bastard, and Sam kept threatening to take him to the hospital because he was convinced Dean had gotten pneumonia.
"Thin's like this're why I try not to get sick," he told the dust. "Sammy fuckin' hovers. Took my poker money an' went to a pharmacy an' bought shit. Bought! Coulda stole perfectly fine cough syrup, but no, he paid for it, like he never learned a damn thing from me."
How long he went on rambling, he didn't know, just that at some point it finally dawned on him that he was talking to the dust. He couldn't even pretend he was talking to Buttercup; she was curled up in his chair, snoring. And it was fucking freezing in here, even though this time of afternoon, on a day as sunny as this one, it tended to be too warm, thanks to the southern exposure. Fever, maybe.
Time for more drugs. Way past.
Except that he'd left the bottle in the bathroom. Fuck it.
Pushing the covers back took entirely too much strength, and then he sat there for-well, for entirely too long, wondering why his feet didn't touch the floor, before he remembered that this stupid heirloom of a bed was way too high.
"C'mon, Dean," he muttered, "this ain't gettin' the bottle."
He slid out of bed more than he got out of bed, but that was okay, nobody was here to laugh at him. He let go of the mattress to take a shaky step-
The room was spinning. And not because he was dizzy. No, for some reason, his foot was asleep. Both feet.
He tried to take a step forward, but his feet folded up beneath him, and he landed on the floor, hard. His lungs spasmed, but he couldn't get air in or out, not for an eternity, and when he finally managed a gasping breath, it set him coughing again, so long and so hard that when it finally stopped, all he could do was collapse exhausted onto the floor and just lie there.
He might be in trouble.
The medicine was in the bathroom. His phone was on the nightstand. Getting to either required way more strength than he had at the moment.
He'd rest a few minutes. The fall had just taken too much out of him, that's all. He'd catch his breath and rest, and then he'd be fine and he could get up and take his medicine.
A heavy weight settled on his chest, warm and-and vibrating?
Dean forced one eye open and saw a calico blur. "Hi, Buttercup," he muttered, and she licked his nose before tucking her head up against his throat.
The purring lulled him back to sleep.
***
Noise that he couldn't identify woke him, but he couldn't seem to move anything. Maybe if he ignored it, it'd go away.
"What the-" That was a woman's voice, and now someone was kneeling beside him. He forced his eyes open. Jeans. With legs in them. That...didn't help. "Dean?" There was a hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle shake. "Why are you on the floor?"
"Floor?" He wasn't on the floor. The bed was just really hard. And kinda dusty. And.... "Holy shit, 'm on the floor."
"Did you try to walk?" the voice asked incredulously. "Like this?" The hand moved up to his forehead. "Shit."
"Not on the floor, 'kay?"
The voice muttered something. "Dean." The world rattled a bit. Earthquake? "It's Courtney." Courtney? Did he know anybody named Courtney? "How long have you been here?"
"Se'enty-nine."
More muttering, and a sense of movement. Something warm was spread over him-a blanket? The bedspread? Then there were beeps. Why were there beeps?
Why didn't the world ever make sense when you needed it to?
Fuck this. He was going back to sleep.
***
There was someone snuggled up against him. Even through a fever-haze, Dean was sure it wasn't Marcy. His body knew what hers felt like. Also, she was bigger.
He cracked one eye open, and wished he hadn't.
A baby stared back at him.
Okay, maybe "baby" was pushing it. Toddler.
"Buttercup?" he croaked, and the kid giggled.
Buttercup had turned into a kid. Of course she had. He never had trusted that cat.
"Don't bite me," he ordered. "Hate catnip."
That got him another giggle before he fell back asleep.
***
A familiar electronic song jerked him out of his doze.
"Dean Winchester's phone," he heard somebody say-a woman's voice, familiar, but he couldn't immediately place it. "This is Courtney Harrigan." A pause. "I'm Marcy's sister, jackass."
Ah, Reynolds women. So delicate. So refined. So fond of the ruder sections of the dictionary.
He wondered who she was talking to. Most of the people he knew....
He woke back up at a stern "If he could answer his phone, would I have? He's asleep. Yes, in the middle of the day. He's sick. Marcy asked me to look in on him." There was a pause. "Wait a second, you think I should have left a man so sick that he fucking forgot that his legs don't work alone just so you don't have to talk to one of his in-laws? Yes, dammit, he did! He was on the fucking floor when I got- No, I did not take him to the hospital. Because David made a house call! David. Jenn's husband. That would be Doctor Cooper to you. My and Marcy's sister- Exactly how drunk did you get at their wedding?"
David had been here? He didn't remember seeing David. He remembered being on the floor with Buttercup. He didn't remember getting back into bed. Had Courtney put him here?
Wait, could Courtney put him here? David might be able to, but he didn't remember David....
He couldn't think. Maybe he really was sick.
"Dean." There was a big blur next to his bed. It had Courtney's voice. He squinted at it, but couldn't make it turn into Courtney. "Will you explain to your idiot brother that I haven't stuffed you in a freezer so I can eat your liver with a nice Chianti?"
"Huh?"
"Sam. Is. On. The. Phone."
"Why's he on a phone? Break it that way."
Whatever the Courtney-blur said, it wasn't English, and Dean was almost sure that it wasn't just his clogged ears making it sound that way.
"Here. Talk at your brother."
The blur held up a dark square thing, and a tinny little voice came out of it. "Dean, are you all right?"
Hey, he knew that voice. "Sammy! That's Sammy!"
"Yes, Dean, it's Sam. Are you all right?"
"Fine. There's a kid in my bed." Wait, Sam needed to know the important part. "Was a cat."
"It- What?"
"The neighbor's cat was curled up next to him when I got here," Courtney said. "I'm guessing Dean dozed off between that and finding Jemmy in the bed. Nothing else explains the operetta extolling the virtues of his nephew the werecat."
"The what?"
"Are you asking about the operetta or the werecat? Because in your former line of work, I'd think you'd know what the latter is."
"Jesus Christ, is there anybody in your family that's not a smartass?"
"Aunt Myrtle, but that's just because of the senility. Jemmy, hon, stay off Uncle Dean, we want him to keep liking you."
"Why do you have kids there anyway?"
"Why do I have- I have twelve children, Sam, three of whom are under five! Where do you think they should be? On the curb next to the fucking recyclables?"
He loved the Reynolds women. So snarky. Marcy was the best, of course, but the rest of them didn't suck.
He must have missed something, otherwise Courtney's next remark didn't make any sense. "Thank you for the concern, but we're pretty sure it's just this year's flu. Marcy said he didn't listen when she told him to get the shot." A pause. "Marcy had to go to-um-"
"Phoenix," Dean croaked.
"Phoenix. She and Firth are tag-teaming the audit this year so it gets done faster." Another pause. Maybe she'd switched off the speaker. "You're right, of course. Marcy should have completely ignored her job responsibilities to stay home with a full-grown man who swore all he had was a cold. It's not like she has any relatives who live locally who are perfectly happy to check in on him, or anything. Was it a really bad monster that damaged your brain?"
That one made him laugh. Except that laughing became coughing and next thing he knew, Jemmy had hauled himself to his feet and was beating helpfully-and hard-on Uncle Dean's back. His lungs must be really well attached.
"Jemmy!" Courtney picked the little boy up and set him on the floor. "That's not helping. You okay, Dean?"
Sam was having a meltdown, as Dean could hear him shouting "What's wrong?" from here.
Courtney put the phone back to her ear. "Nothing's wrong, he's just coughing. It's what sick people do. Listen, I'm here to make sure he's okay, I'm going to go do that." Another pause. "Yeah, I'll get right on that." She hit the button, and just stood there looking at him. "I thought your brother only hated Marcy."
Dean managed a shrug. He couldn't explain Sam's thought processes when his brain was working, let alone now. "Guilt by ashociation?" he hazarded.
"He's a jackass."
"Worried."
"I'll give him that, but really, who taught that boy his manners?"
Dean managed a grin. "Me."
"Well, that explains a lot. Jemmy!" She moved quickly, and suddenly Dean was nose-to-nose with his nephew again. "Stay there, you hazardous little ferret. Dean, time for your medicine. David brought a little of everything, so what flavor do you want? Grape, orange, bubble gum, or grown-up?"
Dean dragged up a smirk. "Made outta real grown-ups?"
"Ass," Courtney said, but with a grin, and she vanished for a few minutes. He almost dozed off, but Jemmy started trying to get under his pillow, and even through the brain fuzz, Dean remembered that he kept a knife there. That kind of adrenaline surge would normally keep him up for hours. This time, he managed to tug Jemmy back and plant his elbow solidly on the pillow before his energy gave out and he fell back, exhausted.
And then Courtney was back with a teensy little measuring cup of sticky green liquid. "Try this. Maybe it'll knock you out."
"Don' wanna sleep."
"Yeah, well, David said you needed to sleep more." She shoved the cup at him, and he swallowed the stuff in it. It tasted terrible. Definitely made out of real grown-ups. Dirty ones. She shoved a cup of water at him and vanished. How did she keep doing that?
"Okay," she said, and he woke up again. "There's a cup and a pitcher of water here on Marcy's nightstand, and I set your phone alarm for your next dose and put the drugs here." She hefted Jemmy to her hip. "Now, I have to take the monsters back home for their own meds and to feed the rest of them-"
"I c'n hannel-"
"Tori's already here. She's entertaining the less wriggly ones in the living room so that they're not jumping all over you."
Tori. Which one was Tori? He didn't remember a-
"My oldest. Your niece, remember?"
Yeah, like he hadn't acquired fifty of them when he got married. And the fact that he could remember that he was married now meant he was perfectly fine.
"David doesn't want you left alone until you're more coherent. Not with you so out of it that you're trying to walk. So you be a good boy and take your medication and sleep and if you need to get out of bed, ask for help."
"But-"
"Tori is under orders to call Mama if you misbehave. No warnings. And definitely no pie."
Oh, God, not Anne.
"Exactly. You just sleep and ask for help like a good boy. Blake may come over, is that okay?"
Blake? He was pretty sure that wasn't any of the nephews-
"Tori's other half, remember?"
Right. The fiancé. "Long's they don' fuck like bunnies in my bed."
"So the couch is fine? I'll let them know."
"Wait, that's not what I-"
Dammit. Courtney had vanished again.
***
"No, Sam, I'm fine. I'm just not exposed to the little snot factories every day the way the rest of them are, so I didn't have any immunity built up."
"You should have seen a doctor!"
"I did. David made a house call-"
"And who the hell is David?"
Dean rubbed his temple. There were days he missed Sam like his missed the feeling in his feet-and then there were days like this. "David is Jenn's husband. Jenn's the oldest, the social worker," he cut off the question before Sam could ask, "and yes, David is a real doctor, he has a practice and everything. And I don't remember what he said, but if he thought I was okay to be left at home, then believe me, I was. He knows Marcy wouldn't bother with a malpractice suit, she'd just rip off his balls and stuff them down his throat."
"Marcy should never have-"
"Sam, if you start this bullshit again, I'm hanging up on you. It's her job. She couldn't stay with me any more than Sean could stay home when his kid got chicken pox. Not when there were plenty of people to help out. It's not like I was at death's door or something."
"You were delirious!"
"Not when she left, I wasn't!"
"But-"
"If I'd been that out of it when she was leaving, she would have stayed, okay? She would have told Sean where to shove it and dragged my ass to the hospital. Neither one of us expected it to get that bad. It's as much my fault as-"
"Dean, don't you get it? You could have died! And she left-"
He still had a lingering headache from the flu, or he would have pounded his head against the wall. "Put Sarah on the phone, Sam."
"Huh? Why do you want to talk to Sarah?"
"Because I can't hit you from here!"
There was a pause. "That's not fair, Dean."
"Dammit, Sam- I know you were worried, all right? Just- It's not her fault. Quit blaming her."
"I'm not blaming, I'm saying-"
He heard the front door opening. Oh, thank God. "Sam, Marcy's home. I'll talk to you later."
He hung up without waiting for Sam to say it was okay. He loved his brother, but honestly, if Sam didn't get past this stupid thing he had about Marcy.... Marcy couldn't do anything without Sam making a federal case out of it. He would've found something to bitch about if she hadn't left-probably her answering Dean's phone, the way Courtney had, or her not dragging him to intensive care at the first sniffle, or picking the wrong chicken soup. Something.
Dean was about out of patience and understanding, even considering how much leeway he was willing to grant Sam. It had been two years. He and Marcy had their spats, nothing was perfect, and if anybody wanted her home more, it was him-but he loved her, and they were happy. Why the hell couldn't Sam just accept that he had a sister-in-law and move on? It wasn't like Dean was asking them to be best friends or anything, he just wanted his brother to be polite and not blame everything that went wrong on her. Oh, and quit acting like Dean's wife was-how did Marcy put it? A one-night-stand fucking him for karma points, that was it. Like she was going to get bored and leave and poor little Sammy was going to get stuck with a heartbroken cripple of a brother.
Dean dropped the phone in its chair pocket and turned around just as Marcy came in. "Hey, stranger," he said.
"I hate the desert," she announced, giving the suitcase a shove towards the washing machine and kicking off her shoes as she crossed the living room. "And I hope to God you're not contagious anymore." She jerked off her jacket-and then her shirt, which even for a Marcy homecoming was a little startling. He didn't usually see the bra before she got into the bedroom.
Then he saw what the long sleeves had been concealing. "Nice sunburn," he said, following her to the bedroom, and got a glare. "You're gonna be cranky now, aren't you?"
"I'll be better once I've had something for-this." She gestured to her bright pink face-it hadn't been as obvious in the dimmer light of the living room-then eased off her watch and her wedding band. The skin underneath was still pale-the watch not so much, but the unburned ring of skin on her finger had painfully sharp edges. "It was in the eighties and sunny and they decided to have as many of the group conferences out on a patio as they could, which, okay, yay, but the idiot could at least have offered us pasty white easterners some fucking sunscreen! It's not like I carry it with me in the middle of February! The damn final meeting took three hours!"
"Not to mention, you don't really tan." Marcy was one of those people who went from pale to burnt, no in-between at all.
"Not helping, Dean." She went straight into the bathroom and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet, probably looking for something for the sunburn. "I heard you had some excitement," she said.
"Some coughing, some sneezing, I thought Jemmy was a werecat, Courtney swore at Sam a lot. Oh, and Tori and Blake babysat me and I think the futon needs to be cleaned. Or possibly replaced."
"Hate I missed it." Marcy paused. "Well, except that last part."
"Yeah. Did you beat up on Sean?"
"Beat up on-oh, the plane? Firth had Ter hired before we got to cruising altitude. He's going to find a couple of friends so we have spare pilots and 24-hour on-call if we need it. All we have to do is find a plane now, something that can be made wheelchair-accessible. Ter's going to get with Firth next week to consult on that and finding a private hangar and finalizing the other details." She pulled a bottle out of the back of the cabinet and came back out into the room. "The question is, do we need to get something that can hold two wheelchairs?"
"I wasn't that sick, woman."
She flashed him a grin and sat down on the battered armchair to pop open the bottle. "Sean also picked a very bad trip to try to argue his point," she said.
"Give me that," he said, "and hold out your arms and tell me about it."
She obeyed and let him apply the lotion. "God, that feels good."
"Of course it does." He dabbed a bit on the tip of her nose, earning a much more relaxed-sounding laugh.
"I knew it had to be really bad for Sam to call and yell at me, but there weren't any flights that would have gotten me back here in less than 24 hours, they were routing me through fucking Seattle no matter how much money I offered to throw at them-"
Dean blinked and rewound that conversation. "Wait, Sam called you?"
"You went silent on him. He'd texted but didn't get an answer, and when he tried to call, you didn't pick up."
Dean finished Marcy's arms and dabbed some more lotion on her cheeks. "I didn't?"
"You didn't answer when anybody called, except me. Probably a reflex reaction to hearing 'Cherry Pie.'" He frowned. "Remember, you got pissed and changed Sam's ringtone to 'Bitch' last month?"
"Oh, right." The old one, he would have probably answered, but as sick as he'd been, he must not have remembered that he changed it.
"Anyway, Sam was worried, Dean, and when I called, you didn't make a whole lot of sense. I wasn't even sure you were following the conversation."
What? "You called?"
"Every day. You don't remember?"
He snapped the bottle closed and shook his head. "The first couple of days, yeah, but then- I figured you got busy or something."
"I was afraid of that. It's why I started calling people to check on you. I'm sorry Courtney couldn't get here earlier." She hesitated. "If we had our own plane, I could have dumped the whole thing on Firth and come back here."
"Hey, we managed." She gave him a look. "Okay, you managed, and I should've gotten the damn flu shot. I promise, I'll get it next year."
"Oh, no, honey. You're getting one tomorrow."
"But-"
"The flu has multiple strains, and you're not doing this to me again." She grinned. "Besides, this might be the only thing I can do, short of divorcing you, that Sam will actually approve of."
That made him laugh. "You wouldn't divorce a sick man, would you?"
"Trust me, Dean, if I ever divorce you? It will not be to make your brother happy." She leaned forward. "You're not contagious anymore, right?"
"I don't think so."
"Oh, good. You owe me a kiss."
"More than that."
"Mm. True. It's our anniversary next week, you know."
"Yeah, but what I meant was, you probably saved my life. I mean, David had to make a house call and I thought Jemmy was Buttercup and everything."
"Good point." She kissed him. "We'll celebrate early. Be gentle with me, I'm singed."
He chuckled. "I think we can manage."
Title: Sick (AO3)
Word Count: 4750
Rating: PG
Summary: Sooner or later, even Winchesters get sick. Takes place roughly two years after Dean and Marcy get married.
So, it turns out that having your job go bonkers and spending a week and a half (and counting) wondering whether or not you're going to get paid, added to sick kitty worries, is not exactly conducive to meeting self-imposed fic deadlines. In other words, this is not the Fourth of July story you were looking for.
But I poked at this and it turned out to be a lot closer to finished than I thought it was, so presto! You get something, at least.
Dean was coughing-again-when Marcy came out of the bathroom. "You okay over there?" she asked, tucking something into her suitcase.
"Fine," he choked out, and she disappeared into the bathroom again, coming out with a plastic cup of water.
"You don't sound fine," she said, pressing her hand against his forehead. "You're burning up."
"Just a cold." He gulped down the water. "'Be fine. You're gonna-"
"I'm waiting on Firth. He always remembers a dozen things he needs at the last minute. Last time I rushed him, we ended up having to scour Richmond at 2 a.m. for a wheelchair-accessible store where he could buy underwear, and that's not an adventure I care to repeat."
Dean's snort at that image choked itself into another cough, and Marcy went back into the bathroom, coming out this time with a wet washcloth. "Here."
"Marce-" His lungs decided they'd had enough of this talking business and spasmed some more.
The bed was too high for her to casually sit down, so she sort of propped one hip against it and leaned over. "I really don't like the sound of that cough."
"'Sokay," he finally managed, using the washcloth to wipe his eyes. "Gonna miss your flight. Know how Sean gets when you have to pay for extra tickets."
Marcy rolled her eyes. "I don't care about Sean's penny-pinching ass right now." She sighed. "Although I am definitely bringing up the jet again. As much as we fly, it's bound to be cheaper in the long run. Not to mention we could fly on our schedule instead of Delta's. If we could just find a pilot-"
"What about-there's a pilot cousin, right?" He'd heard the name, but it was something weird. "Tir?"
"Ter, short for Terence," she corrected, absently, "and you're right. He's been doing commercial for years, completely shitty schedule. I bet he'd kill for something more regular. And he always believed Hannah."
Dean knew that look. Ter hadn't occurred to Marcy before, but now that she'd thought of him-a family solution to the issue of trustworthy pilots-Sean might as well give up on resisting the purchase of that jet. Firth was already on Marcy's side on the jet issue-bad as commercial flying was, it was even worse for a man in a wheelchair-and when both of them dug their heels (and wheels) in....
"Sic 'im," he said, and coughed again.
"I'm not sure I should leave you like this."
"Be fine," he insisted. "Just-" Another spasm. "Nex' time I offer t' keep the brats ennertained-"
"I will definitely smack you next time you get near the little snot factories. Especially without a flu shot."
"I don'-"
"Dean."
"Fine," he relented. Maybe she was right. Everybody else in the family got the shots because with all the kids, it wasn't a question of if you'd be exposed, only when. "'ll call David, okay?"
"If you prom-" Marcy's phone started playing Firth's ringtone, and she dragged herself away from the bed. "There he is," she said, reaching into her pocket and turning it off. "Are you sure-"
"I'm fine, Sam!"
Her eyes narrowed, a bit, but thankfully, she took that as him being sarcastic, not feverish and out of his head. "Is it okay if I have somebody check on you anyway?"
"If it makes you feel better."
"All right, then. The flight info's on the fridge, and if you need something, call somebody."
"Yes, nurse."
She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Sorry, I'll give you a better one when I come home and you're not contagious."
"Holdin' you to that," he said-and started coughing again.
"Dean-"
"Go," he croaked, making a shooing gesture with his free hand.
***
The first couple of days were okay, especially after Anne brought him a pie. Apples were fruit and therefore healthy, so he was totally not lying when he assured Sam that he was eating right.
The fourth morning after Marcy left, though, Dean woke up freezing and feeling like he'd just been hit by a semi. Again. Maybe worse. Whatever had happened between the cabin and him waking up all healed in the hospital, he still didn't remember any of it, no matter how many stories Sam told about Ouija boards and flying glasses.
He managed to get to the bathroom, but when he tried to go to the kitchen for something breakfasty, he only made it as far as the bedroom door before the dizzies got too bad, and he wasn't even trying to walk. He was too fucking dizzy to steer his chair. "Fuck it," he finally said, and crawled back into bed. He wasn't working today anyway. He could just curl up and enjoy having a throat that felt like he'd swallowed a broken vase, a nose that didn't work, lungs that were trying to fly south for the winter, a brain that was trying to escape his skull through his ears, and joints that properly belonged to some super-arthritic 90-year-old someplace.
Look, if he was going to be miserable, he might as well be miserable. No point in half-assing it.
Sleep was supposed to be good for you if you were sick, but nobody who said that ever mentioned that it was harder to sleep when you were this sick. Medicine let him breathe for a couple of hours at a time, but it wore off, and it didn't do a whole hell of a lot for the throat or the cough; he'd used up the last of the cough syrup yesterday and the sore throat stuff the day before that, and hadn't gone to get more because he'd thought he was getting better. Then Buttercup made her afternoon appearance, since Mrs. Reilly's place didn't get the sunbeams that their bedroom did. She was delighted at finding a nap buddy and kept trying to curl up on top of him. Because he needed seventeen pounds of Maine Coon mix on his chest.
Besides, you could only sleep so long before your back began to hurt, and it wasn't like everything didn't already hurt.
There was nothing on live TV, and fast-forwarding commercials on the recorded stuff took too much focus. So did reading. Getting up to change DVDs was awkward and exhausting, and when he tried streaming a season of Star Trek on Netflix, he dozed off and had nightmares about a three-way between Sulu, Chekhov, and a rawhead.
He'd pretty much been reduced to staring at the dust in the sunlight at this point.
The last time he'd been this sick- When had it been? That time in Vermont, him and Sam and a dead used-car salesman, way back before Dad died? They'd been stuck in that motel for nearly a week after they'd torched the smarmy bastard, and Sam kept threatening to take him to the hospital because he was convinced Dean had gotten pneumonia.
"Thin's like this're why I try not to get sick," he told the dust. "Sammy fuckin' hovers. Took my poker money an' went to a pharmacy an' bought shit. Bought! Coulda stole perfectly fine cough syrup, but no, he paid for it, like he never learned a damn thing from me."
How long he went on rambling, he didn't know, just that at some point it finally dawned on him that he was talking to the dust. He couldn't even pretend he was talking to Buttercup; she was curled up in his chair, snoring. And it was fucking freezing in here, even though this time of afternoon, on a day as sunny as this one, it tended to be too warm, thanks to the southern exposure. Fever, maybe.
Time for more drugs. Way past.
Except that he'd left the bottle in the bathroom. Fuck it.
Pushing the covers back took entirely too much strength, and then he sat there for-well, for entirely too long, wondering why his feet didn't touch the floor, before he remembered that this stupid heirloom of a bed was way too high.
"C'mon, Dean," he muttered, "this ain't gettin' the bottle."
He slid out of bed more than he got out of bed, but that was okay, nobody was here to laugh at him. He let go of the mattress to take a shaky step-
The room was spinning. And not because he was dizzy. No, for some reason, his foot was asleep. Both feet.
He tried to take a step forward, but his feet folded up beneath him, and he landed on the floor, hard. His lungs spasmed, but he couldn't get air in or out, not for an eternity, and when he finally managed a gasping breath, it set him coughing again, so long and so hard that when it finally stopped, all he could do was collapse exhausted onto the floor and just lie there.
He might be in trouble.
The medicine was in the bathroom. His phone was on the nightstand. Getting to either required way more strength than he had at the moment.
He'd rest a few minutes. The fall had just taken too much out of him, that's all. He'd catch his breath and rest, and then he'd be fine and he could get up and take his medicine.
A heavy weight settled on his chest, warm and-and vibrating?
Dean forced one eye open and saw a calico blur. "Hi, Buttercup," he muttered, and she licked his nose before tucking her head up against his throat.
The purring lulled him back to sleep.
***
Noise that he couldn't identify woke him, but he couldn't seem to move anything. Maybe if he ignored it, it'd go away.
"What the-" That was a woman's voice, and now someone was kneeling beside him. He forced his eyes open. Jeans. With legs in them. That...didn't help. "Dean?" There was a hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle shake. "Why are you on the floor?"
"Floor?" He wasn't on the floor. The bed was just really hard. And kinda dusty. And.... "Holy shit, 'm on the floor."
"Did you try to walk?" the voice asked incredulously. "Like this?" The hand moved up to his forehead. "Shit."
"Not on the floor, 'kay?"
The voice muttered something. "Dean." The world rattled a bit. Earthquake? "It's Courtney." Courtney? Did he know anybody named Courtney? "How long have you been here?"
"Se'enty-nine."
More muttering, and a sense of movement. Something warm was spread over him-a blanket? The bedspread? Then there were beeps. Why were there beeps?
Why didn't the world ever make sense when you needed it to?
Fuck this. He was going back to sleep.
***
There was someone snuggled up against him. Even through a fever-haze, Dean was sure it wasn't Marcy. His body knew what hers felt like. Also, she was bigger.
He cracked one eye open, and wished he hadn't.
A baby stared back at him.
Okay, maybe "baby" was pushing it. Toddler.
"Buttercup?" he croaked, and the kid giggled.
Buttercup had turned into a kid. Of course she had. He never had trusted that cat.
"Don't bite me," he ordered. "Hate catnip."
That got him another giggle before he fell back asleep.
***
A familiar electronic song jerked him out of his doze.
"Dean Winchester's phone," he heard somebody say-a woman's voice, familiar, but he couldn't immediately place it. "This is Courtney Harrigan." A pause. "I'm Marcy's sister, jackass."
Ah, Reynolds women. So delicate. So refined. So fond of the ruder sections of the dictionary.
He wondered who she was talking to. Most of the people he knew....
He woke back up at a stern "If he could answer his phone, would I have? He's asleep. Yes, in the middle of the day. He's sick. Marcy asked me to look in on him." There was a pause. "Wait a second, you think I should have left a man so sick that he fucking forgot that his legs don't work alone just so you don't have to talk to one of his in-laws? Yes, dammit, he did! He was on the fucking floor when I got- No, I did not take him to the hospital. Because David made a house call! David. Jenn's husband. That would be Doctor Cooper to you. My and Marcy's sister- Exactly how drunk did you get at their wedding?"
David had been here? He didn't remember seeing David. He remembered being on the floor with Buttercup. He didn't remember getting back into bed. Had Courtney put him here?
Wait, could Courtney put him here? David might be able to, but he didn't remember David....
He couldn't think. Maybe he really was sick.
"Dean." There was a big blur next to his bed. It had Courtney's voice. He squinted at it, but couldn't make it turn into Courtney. "Will you explain to your idiot brother that I haven't stuffed you in a freezer so I can eat your liver with a nice Chianti?"
"Huh?"
"Sam. Is. On. The. Phone."
"Why's he on a phone? Break it that way."
Whatever the Courtney-blur said, it wasn't English, and Dean was almost sure that it wasn't just his clogged ears making it sound that way.
"Here. Talk at your brother."
The blur held up a dark square thing, and a tinny little voice came out of it. "Dean, are you all right?"
Hey, he knew that voice. "Sammy! That's Sammy!"
"Yes, Dean, it's Sam. Are you all right?"
"Fine. There's a kid in my bed." Wait, Sam needed to know the important part. "Was a cat."
"It- What?"
"The neighbor's cat was curled up next to him when I got here," Courtney said. "I'm guessing Dean dozed off between that and finding Jemmy in the bed. Nothing else explains the operetta extolling the virtues of his nephew the werecat."
"The what?"
"Are you asking about the operetta or the werecat? Because in your former line of work, I'd think you'd know what the latter is."
"Jesus Christ, is there anybody in your family that's not a smartass?"
"Aunt Myrtle, but that's just because of the senility. Jemmy, hon, stay off Uncle Dean, we want him to keep liking you."
"Why do you have kids there anyway?"
"Why do I have- I have twelve children, Sam, three of whom are under five! Where do you think they should be? On the curb next to the fucking recyclables?"
He loved the Reynolds women. So snarky. Marcy was the best, of course, but the rest of them didn't suck.
He must have missed something, otherwise Courtney's next remark didn't make any sense. "Thank you for the concern, but we're pretty sure it's just this year's flu. Marcy said he didn't listen when she told him to get the shot." A pause. "Marcy had to go to-um-"
"Phoenix," Dean croaked.
"Phoenix. She and Firth are tag-teaming the audit this year so it gets done faster." Another pause. Maybe she'd switched off the speaker. "You're right, of course. Marcy should have completely ignored her job responsibilities to stay home with a full-grown man who swore all he had was a cold. It's not like she has any relatives who live locally who are perfectly happy to check in on him, or anything. Was it a really bad monster that damaged your brain?"
That one made him laugh. Except that laughing became coughing and next thing he knew, Jemmy had hauled himself to his feet and was beating helpfully-and hard-on Uncle Dean's back. His lungs must be really well attached.
"Jemmy!" Courtney picked the little boy up and set him on the floor. "That's not helping. You okay, Dean?"
Sam was having a meltdown, as Dean could hear him shouting "What's wrong?" from here.
Courtney put the phone back to her ear. "Nothing's wrong, he's just coughing. It's what sick people do. Listen, I'm here to make sure he's okay, I'm going to go do that." Another pause. "Yeah, I'll get right on that." She hit the button, and just stood there looking at him. "I thought your brother only hated Marcy."
Dean managed a shrug. He couldn't explain Sam's thought processes when his brain was working, let alone now. "Guilt by ashociation?" he hazarded.
"He's a jackass."
"Worried."
"I'll give him that, but really, who taught that boy his manners?"
Dean managed a grin. "Me."
"Well, that explains a lot. Jemmy!" She moved quickly, and suddenly Dean was nose-to-nose with his nephew again. "Stay there, you hazardous little ferret. Dean, time for your medicine. David brought a little of everything, so what flavor do you want? Grape, orange, bubble gum, or grown-up?"
Dean dragged up a smirk. "Made outta real grown-ups?"
"Ass," Courtney said, but with a grin, and she vanished for a few minutes. He almost dozed off, but Jemmy started trying to get under his pillow, and even through the brain fuzz, Dean remembered that he kept a knife there. That kind of adrenaline surge would normally keep him up for hours. This time, he managed to tug Jemmy back and plant his elbow solidly on the pillow before his energy gave out and he fell back, exhausted.
And then Courtney was back with a teensy little measuring cup of sticky green liquid. "Try this. Maybe it'll knock you out."
"Don' wanna sleep."
"Yeah, well, David said you needed to sleep more." She shoved the cup at him, and he swallowed the stuff in it. It tasted terrible. Definitely made out of real grown-ups. Dirty ones. She shoved a cup of water at him and vanished. How did she keep doing that?
"Okay," she said, and he woke up again. "There's a cup and a pitcher of water here on Marcy's nightstand, and I set your phone alarm for your next dose and put the drugs here." She hefted Jemmy to her hip. "Now, I have to take the monsters back home for their own meds and to feed the rest of them-"
"I c'n hannel-"
"Tori's already here. She's entertaining the less wriggly ones in the living room so that they're not jumping all over you."
Tori. Which one was Tori? He didn't remember a-
"My oldest. Your niece, remember?"
Yeah, like he hadn't acquired fifty of them when he got married. And the fact that he could remember that he was married now meant he was perfectly fine.
"David doesn't want you left alone until you're more coherent. Not with you so out of it that you're trying to walk. So you be a good boy and take your medication and sleep and if you need to get out of bed, ask for help."
"But-"
"Tori is under orders to call Mama if you misbehave. No warnings. And definitely no pie."
Oh, God, not Anne.
"Exactly. You just sleep and ask for help like a good boy. Blake may come over, is that okay?"
Blake? He was pretty sure that wasn't any of the nephews-
"Tori's other half, remember?"
Right. The fiancé. "Long's they don' fuck like bunnies in my bed."
"So the couch is fine? I'll let them know."
"Wait, that's not what I-"
Dammit. Courtney had vanished again.
***
"No, Sam, I'm fine. I'm just not exposed to the little snot factories every day the way the rest of them are, so I didn't have any immunity built up."
"You should have seen a doctor!"
"I did. David made a house call-"
"And who the hell is David?"
Dean rubbed his temple. There were days he missed Sam like his missed the feeling in his feet-and then there were days like this. "David is Jenn's husband. Jenn's the oldest, the social worker," he cut off the question before Sam could ask, "and yes, David is a real doctor, he has a practice and everything. And I don't remember what he said, but if he thought I was okay to be left at home, then believe me, I was. He knows Marcy wouldn't bother with a malpractice suit, she'd just rip off his balls and stuff them down his throat."
"Marcy should never have-"
"Sam, if you start this bullshit again, I'm hanging up on you. It's her job. She couldn't stay with me any more than Sean could stay home when his kid got chicken pox. Not when there were plenty of people to help out. It's not like I was at death's door or something."
"You were delirious!"
"Not when she left, I wasn't!"
"But-"
"If I'd been that out of it when she was leaving, she would have stayed, okay? She would have told Sean where to shove it and dragged my ass to the hospital. Neither one of us expected it to get that bad. It's as much my fault as-"
"Dean, don't you get it? You could have died! And she left-"
He still had a lingering headache from the flu, or he would have pounded his head against the wall. "Put Sarah on the phone, Sam."
"Huh? Why do you want to talk to Sarah?"
"Because I can't hit you from here!"
There was a pause. "That's not fair, Dean."
"Dammit, Sam- I know you were worried, all right? Just- It's not her fault. Quit blaming her."
"I'm not blaming, I'm saying-"
He heard the front door opening. Oh, thank God. "Sam, Marcy's home. I'll talk to you later."
He hung up without waiting for Sam to say it was okay. He loved his brother, but honestly, if Sam didn't get past this stupid thing he had about Marcy.... Marcy couldn't do anything without Sam making a federal case out of it. He would've found something to bitch about if she hadn't left-probably her answering Dean's phone, the way Courtney had, or her not dragging him to intensive care at the first sniffle, or picking the wrong chicken soup. Something.
Dean was about out of patience and understanding, even considering how much leeway he was willing to grant Sam. It had been two years. He and Marcy had their spats, nothing was perfect, and if anybody wanted her home more, it was him-but he loved her, and they were happy. Why the hell couldn't Sam just accept that he had a sister-in-law and move on? It wasn't like Dean was asking them to be best friends or anything, he just wanted his brother to be polite and not blame everything that went wrong on her. Oh, and quit acting like Dean's wife was-how did Marcy put it? A one-night-stand fucking him for karma points, that was it. Like she was going to get bored and leave and poor little Sammy was going to get stuck with a heartbroken cripple of a brother.
Dean dropped the phone in its chair pocket and turned around just as Marcy came in. "Hey, stranger," he said.
"I hate the desert," she announced, giving the suitcase a shove towards the washing machine and kicking off her shoes as she crossed the living room. "And I hope to God you're not contagious anymore." She jerked off her jacket-and then her shirt, which even for a Marcy homecoming was a little startling. He didn't usually see the bra before she got into the bedroom.
Then he saw what the long sleeves had been concealing. "Nice sunburn," he said, following her to the bedroom, and got a glare. "You're gonna be cranky now, aren't you?"
"I'll be better once I've had something for-this." She gestured to her bright pink face-it hadn't been as obvious in the dimmer light of the living room-then eased off her watch and her wedding band. The skin underneath was still pale-the watch not so much, but the unburned ring of skin on her finger had painfully sharp edges. "It was in the eighties and sunny and they decided to have as many of the group conferences out on a patio as they could, which, okay, yay, but the idiot could at least have offered us pasty white easterners some fucking sunscreen! It's not like I carry it with me in the middle of February! The damn final meeting took three hours!"
"Not to mention, you don't really tan." Marcy was one of those people who went from pale to burnt, no in-between at all.
"Not helping, Dean." She went straight into the bathroom and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet, probably looking for something for the sunburn. "I heard you had some excitement," she said.
"Some coughing, some sneezing, I thought Jemmy was a werecat, Courtney swore at Sam a lot. Oh, and Tori and Blake babysat me and I think the futon needs to be cleaned. Or possibly replaced."
"Hate I missed it." Marcy paused. "Well, except that last part."
"Yeah. Did you beat up on Sean?"
"Beat up on-oh, the plane? Firth had Ter hired before we got to cruising altitude. He's going to find a couple of friends so we have spare pilots and 24-hour on-call if we need it. All we have to do is find a plane now, something that can be made wheelchair-accessible. Ter's going to get with Firth next week to consult on that and finding a private hangar and finalizing the other details." She pulled a bottle out of the back of the cabinet and came back out into the room. "The question is, do we need to get something that can hold two wheelchairs?"
"I wasn't that sick, woman."
She flashed him a grin and sat down on the battered armchair to pop open the bottle. "Sean also picked a very bad trip to try to argue his point," she said.
"Give me that," he said, "and hold out your arms and tell me about it."
She obeyed and let him apply the lotion. "God, that feels good."
"Of course it does." He dabbed a bit on the tip of her nose, earning a much more relaxed-sounding laugh.
"I knew it had to be really bad for Sam to call and yell at me, but there weren't any flights that would have gotten me back here in less than 24 hours, they were routing me through fucking Seattle no matter how much money I offered to throw at them-"
Dean blinked and rewound that conversation. "Wait, Sam called you?"
"You went silent on him. He'd texted but didn't get an answer, and when he tried to call, you didn't pick up."
Dean finished Marcy's arms and dabbed some more lotion on her cheeks. "I didn't?"
"You didn't answer when anybody called, except me. Probably a reflex reaction to hearing 'Cherry Pie.'" He frowned. "Remember, you got pissed and changed Sam's ringtone to 'Bitch' last month?"
"Oh, right." The old one, he would have probably answered, but as sick as he'd been, he must not have remembered that he changed it.
"Anyway, Sam was worried, Dean, and when I called, you didn't make a whole lot of sense. I wasn't even sure you were following the conversation."
What? "You called?"
"Every day. You don't remember?"
He snapped the bottle closed and shook his head. "The first couple of days, yeah, but then- I figured you got busy or something."
"I was afraid of that. It's why I started calling people to check on you. I'm sorry Courtney couldn't get here earlier." She hesitated. "If we had our own plane, I could have dumped the whole thing on Firth and come back here."
"Hey, we managed." She gave him a look. "Okay, you managed, and I should've gotten the damn flu shot. I promise, I'll get it next year."
"Oh, no, honey. You're getting one tomorrow."
"But-"
"The flu has multiple strains, and you're not doing this to me again." She grinned. "Besides, this might be the only thing I can do, short of divorcing you, that Sam will actually approve of."
That made him laugh. "You wouldn't divorce a sick man, would you?"
"Trust me, Dean, if I ever divorce you? It will not be to make your brother happy." She leaned forward. "You're not contagious anymore, right?"
"I don't think so."
"Oh, good. You owe me a kiss."
"More than that."
"Mm. True. It's our anniversary next week, you know."
"Yeah, but what I meant was, you probably saved my life. I mean, David had to make a house call and I thought Jemmy was Buttercup and everything."
"Good point." She kissed him. "We'll celebrate early. Be gentle with me, I'm singed."
He chuckled. "I think we can manage."