ratherastory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratherastory) wrote2010-05-07 06:29 pm
ratherastory) wrote2010-05-07 06:29 pm
A Wild Night and a New Road
Title: A Wild Night and a New Road
Summary: It's after the end of the world, and Dean is sick. That's pretty much it. Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ariadnes_string as a belated birthday present. She originally asked for Dean with malaria at a comment-fic meme at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hoodie_time. So, happy birthday, sweetie! Sorry it's so late.
Spoiler: General Season 5 stuff, but nothing specific after 5.03, I wouldn't think, and they're pretty vague. Vague spoilers for all previous seasons too, obviously.
Wordcount: 4,887
Warnings: None, really. Compared to the usual gore-fest that is my work, there's nothing here. Oh, well, there's the usual swearing. Otherwise? Uh, Dean is feverish. That's about it.
Disclaimer: So I thought maybe I might be allowed to keep them, but then scary people in black suits and blue gloves showed up, and I thought discretion would be the better part of valour in this case and I let them take it all away.
Neurotic Author's Note: So, yeah. Again, no beta, very little revision, all typos, malapropisms and syntax errors are mine and mine alone.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I fought with this fic a LOT. I actually wrote about 2,500 words of it from Sam's POV originally, but it totally didn't work and I had to scrap that and start again, and then Dean kind of refused to get as out of it as I planned, and... yeah. This is just a bit of plotless h/c, really. There's no point, no moral to the story, and I'm posting it now because if I wait for it to be perfect it will never get posted at all. So. There you go.
*
They stop in Toledo a couple of hours before sunset, and Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, fingerless gloves useless against the cold. Sam purses his lips, doesn't say anything, but rummages through one of the duffel bags and tosses him a woolen sweater. Dean shrugs out of his leather jacket, pulls on the sweater, zips the jacket back up over it, keeps shivering. Wonders if his lips are blue yet. Fucking cold.
“Cemetery?” Sam asks, and Dean nods.
There's a mass grave, but on closer examination they find someone's been there already. The air smells faintly of gasoline and burnt flesh, the ground is scorched. Not everyone knows to burn the bodies, but the knowledge is spreading quickly among the survivors: the infected don't always stay dead.
A voice startles him, coming from behind. “They're taken care of.”
He whirls, has his gun trained before he even has time to register the owner of the voice. A girl steps out from behind one of the graves, dark hair pulled back in a serviceable but untidy braid. She's wearing fatigues that are too big on her frame, supplemented by layers of cotton and wool that only serve to emphasize how thin she is. Her skin has the sallow complexion of someone who doesn't go out much in the sunlight. She squints in the fading evening light, and Dean's reminded of an alley cat, all claws and teeth and protruding ribs and fading memories of sitting on someone's lap and eating tuna out of a can.
“I know you.”
He keeps the gun trained on her, glances at Sam, who turned when he saw Dean react. It's rare that people recognize them, but when they do, it's rarely good. Sam is tense, but studying the girl's face, trying to read her. For a guy who's gone mostly deaf (fucking angels and their fucking super-sonic whateverthefuck, and if Dean had to go back he'd definitely come up with a better plan than the one they went with), he's surprisingly not that jumpy. Especially considering how twitchy he'd become just prior to the world nearly ending. To Dean's surprise, he relaxes after a moment, and smiles.
“You're Lily Shoemaker,” he says, a little too loudly, and she starts, narrows her eyes more before she places them.
“You're those guys who were here when my Dad died. You broke the mirrors and got rid of Bloody Mary. Charlie said you saved her life.”
Dean nods, carefully tucks the gun back into the back of his pants when he's sure that she's not a threat and that there aren't any others waiting to jump them. “Charlie around?”
“Dead. She was one of the first, when the virus hit. Her and my sister and pretty much everyone in their class. Almost all the kids at school.”
Dean's head starts to ache, and he rubs at his face with the tips of his fingers. Sam shoots him a questioning look, which means he didn't catch what the girl —Lily— said. He's getting better at reading lips, but he's not there yet. He shrugs, sort of a catch-all signal for 'not important, tell you later,' and Sam just nods, accepting the verdict. Sam edges closer to Dean, nudges him with an elbow, asking silently if he's okay, and he's not, not really, but there's not much they can do about it right now.
“There a safe place to stay in town?”
Lily shrugs, shakes her head. “I wouldn't recommend staying. There's boarded up houses on the outskirts that are safe enough for a night or two. Just keep something against the doors, in case. I gotta go. Let people know you're not infected. You should get going. It'll be dark soon.”
She turns on her heel, disappears into the twilight, and he's not sorry to let her go. He hunches in on himself, shivering harder than before, even though it's really not that cold out. Not really. He's been in worse. Sam nudges him again, peers intently at his face.
“You okay?”
He makes an equivocal gesture with his head, because he's suddenly not sure, but he doesn't exactly want to worry Sam. Not yet. “Probably nothing,” he says, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “Girl says there are houses we can use for the night. We should go.”
Sam nods, catches him by an elbow and presses his free hand to Dean's forehead before he can duck away. “You're warm.”
“Fuckin' freezing,” he grumbles, but Sam is rarely wrong about that sort of thing, and his head is aching worse than before.
Sam throws an arm over his shoulder, keeps pace with him back to the car. Time was, Dean would have shrugged off the arm, probably accompanied by a sarcastic remark or three, and Sam would have retreated into wounded silence. It all seems far away and unimportant, now. They don't talk much, never have, but they've stopped lying to each other —to themselves— about what they want. Dean watches the world teeter on the brink of collapse every day, and every morning he wakes up and is dizzy with the knowledge that it's still there, that for another twenty-four hours, at least, it hasn't plunged over the edge. He fishes the car keys out of his pocket, scrubs at his forehead with the back of his wrist, light-headed, and hands the keys to Sam, who just nods and slides into the driver's seat.
It's hard to stay awake in the car, in spite of the cold. He wraps his arms around himself, leans against the passenger-side window. Shadows flicker by, stretching and vanishing. He barely notices when Sam stops the car, starts a bit when Sam pats his shoulder, trying to get his attention.
“What's wrong?”
He resists the impulse to curl up on himself. “Don't feel good,” he admits, although it costs him to do it.
“Dean, you gotta look at me when you talk, I can't understand you. You sick?”
He just nods, doesn't have the energy to make sure he's talking clearly enough for Sam to get what he's saying. He's underwater, everything swimmy. Maybe that's what Sam feels like these days, everything blurry and indistinct. He's about to ask when he realizes Sam is talking.
“I'm going to make sure the house is secure. You okay to stay here for a few minutes?”
Sam's all but deaf, going into a strange place with no backup, and Dean desperately wants to go with him, the instinct to keep his little brother safe overwhelming. The only way it could be more dangerous is if Sam was going in blind, and that just doesn't bear thinking about. He mutters a protest, and Sam places a large hand on his forehead, at once reassuring and checking if his fever's gone up.
“I know,” he says soothingly. “If you could back me up, you would, but you can't. Not right now. It looks boarded up, should be fine. You gotta let me take point, just for today, okay?”
He nods resignedly, doesn't protest when Sam pulls the blanket from the back seat and pulls it over him. “Feel shitty,” he mutters, but of course Sam doesn't hear him. “End of the damn world, and I'm taken out by the damn flu.”
His heart stops about three times while he waits, imagination running away with him as lights and shadows flicker and dance around the car. He drums his fingers on the dashboard, knee jouncing up and down restlessly until Sam is back, all smiles and reassurance, prying him out of the car because suddenly Dean's legs aren't working quite the way he remembers they should. Dean lets his brother haul him up the steps of the front porch of the small house, and all but carry him to a bedroom on the ground floor. The place smells stale and musty, what furniture is left is covered in months' worth of dust —it's going to wreak havoc with Sam's allergies, he thinks dazedly— but there's no tell-tale smell of sulphur. Not even the faint scent of decomposition that they've found in some houses where the people weren't so lucky. Sam tugs off his boots, nudges him into the bed, strips his clothes off before folding them and putting them on a nearby chair. He pulls the covers up, and Dean will be damned if it isn't the most comfortable bed he's ever had the pleasure to lie on.
“Poor kid,” he says, as Lily's face floats in his vision.
“What?”
“Lily. No one remembers Charlie or Bloody Mary or anything else. She already lost people, and now she has to deal with even more shit like that. Fucking terrible.”
“I caught maybe half of that,” Sam leans over him.
“Lily,” he repeats. “Just fucking terrible.” Sam sighs.
“Yeah, I know. I wish... I'm going to see about finding some water,” Sam pats his arm, doesn't say what he wishes. It's not like it's a big secret, anyway. “Hang tight, okay?”
This time he does let himself curl into a ball, shivering so hard it hurts. He wants to call Sam back, but Sam probably won't hear him anyway, and it would be ridiculously clingy and needy of him to want his brother back just from the next room. God damn it, he survived the apocalypse, he can damned well survive three minutes with the flu while Sam fetches him a glass of water.
After that things get more than a little confused. He thinks Sam comes back, tastes faintly stale tap water and the sort-of sweet coating of extra-strength Tylenol on his tongue, hears Sam's voice, but can't make out what he's saying. He keeps shivering under the blankets until his muscles start spasming, joints aching as though he's spent days out in the cold and damp. He doesn't remember asking, but when he opens his eyes he finds Sam stretched out next to him, warm and comforting, and he wedges himself against his brother's chest, not caring at all that he's the little spoon —though he makes a vague mental note to deny it with his last dying breath, if pressed. Heat seeps from his little brother, easing some of the aches in his body, and Sam wraps both arms around him and murmurs something that sounds soothing, and Dean drifts back into an uneasy sleep filled with shadows and flame.
The next time he awakens the room is tilting drunkenly, and he clutches reflexively at the bed to keep from falling. There's something wet pressed to his face, and he catches sight of a shadow looming over him in the darkness.
“Sammy?”
It is Sam, he's pretty sure. His brother just hushes him, keeps wiping his face. “It's okay. You're sick, but it'll get better.”
“Feel like shit, Sammy,” he complains, shifting under the cloth. There's water dripping down his neck, and the feeling of being chilled to the bone hasn't abated in the slightest. He doesn't get to complain often, but this time he figures he can get a free pass, because it's Sam and because he really does feel like shit. “End of the goddamned world, and I'm dying from some sort of fucking 'flu. Fucking figures.”
“You're not dying,” Sam snaps, and Dean can hear the fear in his voice. “Shut up.”
“Feels like it. Hurts.”
Sam bites his lip. “What hurts?”
“Everything. Joints hurt. Goddamned fucking cold, feel like I've been encased in ice,” Dean shifts again, trying unsuccessfully to find a more comfortable position on the bed. “The hell's happening to me?”
“I don't know. Virus, I guess. Come on, time for more Tylenol.”
“Shouldn't waste it. That shit doesn't grow on trees.”
Sam rolls his eyes, props him up and shoves the pills between his lips. “I'm not wasting it. You're sick, that's what it's for.”
“Right,” he swallows, comes close to choking, and Sam holds him while he coughs, pain spiking in his head. Sam draws back, and Dean feels oddly bereft at the lack of contact, snags his fingers in the hem of Sam's t-shirt. “Don't go.”
Shit. As though he hasn't been acting like a co-dependent barnacle enough for one day. He's never going to live this down. Sam doesn't seem to mind, though.
“Not going anywhere. Just changing positions.”
“D'you even hear what I said?”
Sam doesn't answer, and Dean doesn't know whether he should be grateful or worried that Sam can apparently read his mind, since he obviously can't hear what he's saying.
“Sam?” Still nothing, but Sam squeezes his arm reassuringly, and tucks Dean's head against him, holding him close until the even sound of his breathing lulls Dean back into that uncertain place between sleep and delirium.
The next time Dean awakens he's pretty sure he's being dipped in boiling water. He remembers what that feels like, and it's a lot like this. He jerks away from where Sam is pressing wet cloths against his skin, can't even articulate why he's resisting. He can hear his heartbeat fast and erratic in his ears, the rushing sound of blood pumping a little too fast. Nothing in the room is staying still, and he struggles weakly to sit up, stomach churning, shoving at Sam's arm when his brother tries to force him back on the bed.
“Gonna be sick,” he manages, and maybe Sam hears him or maybe he's doing that freakish mind-meld thing again, but the next thing Dean knows he's being held over the side of the bed, a trash can under his head and Sam's hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing circles while he pukes up water and what's left of the pills and maybe his stomach lining, because they ran out of supplies earlier and haven't been able to restock.
“Okay, drink,” Sam says when he's done, still gasping for breath, and holds the water glass for him. “Small sips. You still with me?”
“Mm.”
He doesn't bother with the water, just curls back up on the bed and tries to ignore the pounding in his head. Sam doesn't press him, just runs his fingers through Dean's hair, soothing. Another side effect of the apocalypse, or maybe just of losing most of his hearing: Sam is even more touchy-feely now even than when he was a kid. Not that Dean finds he minds it all that much —it's a nice change from the two years leading up to the final showdown with Lucifer, when the distance between them felt like a physical barrier. The only up side to being sick is that Sam will pretty much give him a pass on everything, so he wriggles closer and buries his face in Sam's shirt until the discomfort of the heat forces him away again, and Sam doesn't insist.
After what feels like forever but is probably realistically only a few hours of tossing and turning and fruitless searching for a cool spot on the bed, he feels the fever break, sweat pouring from him and soaking his clothes, the bed, and Sam too. He reaches out blindly, tries to mumble an apology, but Sam doesn't reply, just keeps a steadying hand on his chest until they both fall asleep again.
Sam insists that they spend the day in the house, strips the bed when he finds a linen closet full of sheets that are clean apart from a thin layer of dust. Dean makes a show of complaining about staying anywhere too long, but he's secretly kind of relieved. He feels like a wrung-out dishcloth, spends the whole morning and most of the afternoon dozing on and off, too tired even to worry overmuch when Sam leaves for a few hours to do some scrounging for food back in town.
By the time Sam is back, so is the fever. Sam finds him huddled under several extra blankets, teeth chattering, and Dean can count on the fingers of one hand the times he's been this happy to see his brother. Sam frowns at him, rests the backs of his fingers against his cheek.
“You need a doctor. This isn't normal.”
“Fuck normal.”
Sam just rolls his eyes. “Lily hooked me up with some supplies, and I think they've got a doctor of sorts. You're not better by tomorrow, I'm going to ask her to come.”
Dean just grunts, throws an arm over his face to block out the sickly light coming in through the window. Sam takes him by the elbow, shakes his arm lightly.
“Hey, no sleeping yet. I brought soup and juice. You're going to drink the whole glass and then eat as much as you can manage.” He props Dean up again, shakes him a little when Dean grumbles and tries to twist away. “Come on, don't be a baby. Just drink it and get it over with.”
The juice and soup come back up about an hour later, when the convulsive shivering has morphed into what feels like a furnace lit somewhere inside his chest, but Dean is too tired and too sore and way too sick to properly enjoy his I-told-you-so moment as his brother holds him steady over the trash can again, coughing and retching miserably. He even lets Sam wipe him down with a wet cloth without protesting too much, restless and feeling as though he wants to crawl out of his skin. Sam ignores the stream of muttered complaints, or maybe he just can't hear them, but he keeps a reassuring pressure on Dean's arm the whole time, wipes his face, smiles when Dean manages to open his eyes and look at him.
“Just get some sleep, okay?”
He nods tiredly, tugs at Sam's arm until his brother grudgingly lies down next to him. He shouldn't take advantage of the fact that Sam will pretty much let him get away with anything when he's sick, but he can't bring himself to care, wedges himself against Sam's comforting bulk, and tries to ignore his misery long enough to go to sleep, Sam's large hand rubbing his shoulder.
The next day it's lather, rinse, repeat. The fever breaks in the early morning, and Dean spends the next few hours half-asleep, right until he starts feeling as though all the heat is being leeched from his body. His joints still ache fiercely, and the mere thought of swallowing anything other than water makes him want to hurl. Sam tucks as many blankets as he can around him, disappears out the front door. For a while Dean worries, until things start to go blurry again. He kicks off the blankets that are suddenly smothering him, his throat parched. There has to be a bathroom in this house, he thinks, and there'll be water in there. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, manages to make it to the bedroom door before the floor tilts alarmingly, then rushes up to hit him in the face.
He still hasn't quite figured out how to get himself back up when Sam gets back, although he has managed at least to prop himself up partially in the doorway. He opens his eyes to find Sam's anxious and blurry face a couple of inches away.
“You ass, what were you thinking?”
Dean flinches. “Bein' loud, Sammy,” he mutters. “Thirsty. Getting' water.”
“I left water next to the bed.”
“Y'did?”
“Yes, moron. Come on, I brought a doctor to take a look at you. Let's get you up.”
Everything tilts crazily, and he shuts his eyes against the dizziness. He hears another voice, feels another set of arms helping Sam, and he tries to jerk away —doesn't want anyone else touching him— but the hands are firm, insistent, and he's just too damned tired to resist much. He keeps his eyes closed against the light, head aching so much now that he just wants to curl up into a ball and die, except the other voice won't leave him alone. It's a girl, he realizes with some surprise. He doesn't know why he was expecting a guy.
The girl's hands are gentle, and he can feel the difference when it's her examining him or Sam moving him around so she can get at him. He flinches when the cold metal of her stethoscope presses to his ribcage, and Sam rubs a hand between his shoulder blades, takes charge of answering all her questions that don't directly involve how he's feeling —and some of them that do. He doesn't feel like talking much, anyway.
“Dean, I need you to open your eyes for me,” the doctor prods him gently, and she sounds nice, and maybe opening his eyes won't be so bad. He flinches again, but he thinks she's pretty, maybe, though kind of blurry. Pretty eyes, dark skin that reminds him of Cassie's —whom he hasn't given a second thought to in five years. She gives him a sympathetic smile. “The light hurts, huh? I'm sorry, I'm going to have to make it hurt a bit more, but it'll just take a second.” She flashes a penlight in his eyes, and he can't quite bite back a whimper, scrunching his eyes shut again. She pats his hand. “I know, I'm sorry, but you're done now. I'm going to give you a shot to make you more comfortable and help you sleep, okay?”
He barely feels the needle, but she's right. A few moments later the bone-deep ache recedes, and he drifts, listening to the rise and fall of voices around his bed, Sam's hand heavy against the top of his head. He doesn't quite sleep, but it's not so bad. The shadows stay where they're supposed to, and he realizes that, weird as it is, the nightmares have stayed away while he's been sick. No hell, no Lucifer, nothing. Just the shadows doing weird things —and the drugs are doing wonders for that— and Sam, which is kind of awesome. He tries to lift his head to find Sam, but it just lolls to the side.
“Sammy?”
“Still here, Dean.”
“'kay. Just checking.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“'kay.”
When he wakes up the sheets are clammy, and whoever the doctor was, she's long gone. For a minute he thinks he might have just dreamed the whole thing, but there are bottles of pills on the table by the bed, and Sam is asleep next to him, head pillowed on his palm. He looks peaceful like that, no indication of the constant weight on his shoulders, the guilt of being responsible for all this. Dean jabs an elbow into his ribs to wake him —there's no sense talking, because Sam won't hear. Sam snorts, brings up a hand to scrub at his eyes.
“Wha'? Dean? Y'okay?”
He nods. “Still feel shitty. What'd the doctor say?”
Sam sits up, scrubs at his eyes some more, then looks more closely at him. “I didn't understand you.”
He turns to face him. “What's wrong with me?”
Sam makes a face that he can't quite read. “You remember last week when we were in that bayou and you were bitching about the mosquitoes?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Fuckers were huge. Post-apocalyptic mutant mosquitoes. Fucking plague.”
Sam chuckles before his expression goes grim again. “Yeah. Turns out you're not far off.”
His head hurts, and Sam isn't helping. “The fuck, Sam?”
“You have malaria.”
The information doesn't compute. “Thought it didn't exist anymore. Like smallpox, or whatever.”
He's not sure Sam caught everything, but apparently it's enough. “It was extinct in North America, but that was before the world ended, back when there were prophylactic drugs and shit. Apparently it used to exist here, and now it's back and you got bitten by a mosquito carrying the parasite.”
He snorts. “Prophylactic. Eight years out of college and you're still breaking out the two-bit words. What about you?”
Sam's up and pouring water into a glass. “You know how it is. The mosquitoes have always liked you better. It's all the sugar you ingest, I bet.”
“'m fuckin' irresistible, even to bugs. Great,” he grumbles, and is stupidly pleased with himself when he manages the water all on his own. “So what now?” he asks, as Sam perches by his hip on the bed, watching him as though he might disappear at any moment.
“Leo gave us some pills that'll help, she thinks. There's still a bunch of stuff left over in the local drugstores: they keep it there under guard because it's easier just to store things where they came from.”
“Leo?”
“The doctor. Her name's Leonda, but people call her Leo.”
“Huh. And she just happened to have malaria pills with her?”
Sam smirks. “No, smartass. We went and got them while you were sleeping. Give me that,” he liberates the now-empty glass. “You feeling up to food? You should be good for another few hours, at least, before the fever starts up again.”
He can feel his face falling. “What do you mean, again?”
Sam scrunches up his face in what Dean recognizes as an attempt not to show that he's worried. “The pills ought to help, but Leo said you're going to spike fevers for at least a couple more days. You feel cold or anything?”
He shakes his head. “Not right now. Still feel shitty, but it's not so bad. You, uh... you making out okay?”
It's a bit late to ask, but up until two days ago he's the one who's been taking point on most things, dealing with talking to people because Sam can't always understand them, picking the places to go where people aren't likely to recognize them, making sure Sam's always within eyeshot. Sam pats his knee.
“I'm just fine. Not nearly as helpless as you think I am, big brother.”
“Never said that,” he settles back on his pillow. “Don't think you're helpless,” he mumbles, lets his eyes close. He's tired again, after less than five minutes of being awake. This sucks.
“Yeah, I know it sucks,” Sam runs his fingers through Dean's hair, and Dean is annoyed that he didn't realize he was still talking out loud. “They're pretty nice here, for the most part. Small group, pretty well-organized. Didn't try to kill me for being the Antichrist. Overall, I'd say it's a win. We'll be okay to stay for a while. I cleared it with Leo and some of the others who're in charge, they're willing as long as I help out.”
He blinks. “What? An' quit pettin' me. Not a dog.”
Sam keeps up the motion anyway, and Dean can't bring himself to protest anymore. “Dean, it takes weeks to get over malaria even under the best medical supervision, and Leo is great but she was still in her residency when the shit hit the fan. Like it or not, we're not going far for a while.”
There are a thousand questions Dean wants to ask. How they're going to get food, who the people in charge are, why Sam thinks he can trust them, but he can't manage more than an incoherent mumble. Luckily, Sam has known him all their lives, and even if he doesn't understand the words, he understands the intent, and he moves back onto the bed, stretches out beside him, and wraps an arm around his midriff, the weight familiar and comforting.
“You just got a crush on the chick,” he mutters, poking weakly at his brother, and grins when Sam thwacks his shoulder lightly.
“Shut up. There's nowhere important we need to be, Dean. I've checked this place out, and it's safe enough. We've got this house to ourselves, and there's still water, still food to be had. No one here is crazy that I can tell. And, uh... Leo says you might get sick again. That there's no cure. If we stay... we can make it work here. I know we can.”
He's already falling asleep again in spite of himself. Briefly a vision flashes through his mind of Sam standing in the small kitchen he caught sight of earlier, washing someone else's dishes as though they belong to him, smiling self-consciously up at him through his lashes. Maybe it's not nearly as bad as he thinks it is. Lily's here, and maybe they can help, this time. For whatever that's worth.
“Just for a little while, though.” He opens his eyes in time to see Sam smile, wide and bright, and some of the tightness in his chest eases up, ever so slightly.
“Okay, sure,” Sam agrees easily. “Just for a little while.”
Summary: It's after the end of the world, and Dean is sick. That's pretty much it. Written for
ariadnes_string as a belated birthday present. She originally asked for Dean with malaria at a comment-fic meme at hoodie_time. So, happy birthday, sweetie! Sorry it's so late.Spoiler: General Season 5 stuff, but nothing specific after 5.03, I wouldn't think, and they're pretty vague. Vague spoilers for all previous seasons too, obviously.
Wordcount: 4,887
Warnings: None, really. Compared to the usual gore-fest that is my work, there's nothing here. Oh, well, there's the usual swearing. Otherwise? Uh, Dean is feverish. That's about it.
Disclaimer: So I thought maybe I might be allowed to keep them, but then scary people in black suits and blue gloves showed up, and I thought discretion would be the better part of valour in this case and I let them take it all away.
Neurotic Author's Note: So, yeah. Again, no beta, very little revision, all typos, malapropisms and syntax errors are mine and mine alone.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I fought with this fic a LOT. I actually wrote about 2,500 words of it from Sam's POV originally, but it totally didn't work and I had to scrap that and start again, and then Dean kind of refused to get as out of it as I planned, and... yeah. This is just a bit of plotless h/c, really. There's no point, no moral to the story, and I'm posting it now because if I wait for it to be perfect it will never get posted at all. So. There you go.
*
They stop in Toledo a couple of hours before sunset, and Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, fingerless gloves useless against the cold. Sam purses his lips, doesn't say anything, but rummages through one of the duffel bags and tosses him a woolen sweater. Dean shrugs out of his leather jacket, pulls on the sweater, zips the jacket back up over it, keeps shivering. Wonders if his lips are blue yet. Fucking cold.
“Cemetery?” Sam asks, and Dean nods.
There's a mass grave, but on closer examination they find someone's been there already. The air smells faintly of gasoline and burnt flesh, the ground is scorched. Not everyone knows to burn the bodies, but the knowledge is spreading quickly among the survivors: the infected don't always stay dead.
A voice startles him, coming from behind. “They're taken care of.”
He whirls, has his gun trained before he even has time to register the owner of the voice. A girl steps out from behind one of the graves, dark hair pulled back in a serviceable but untidy braid. She's wearing fatigues that are too big on her frame, supplemented by layers of cotton and wool that only serve to emphasize how thin she is. Her skin has the sallow complexion of someone who doesn't go out much in the sunlight. She squints in the fading evening light, and Dean's reminded of an alley cat, all claws and teeth and protruding ribs and fading memories of sitting on someone's lap and eating tuna out of a can.
“I know you.”
He keeps the gun trained on her, glances at Sam, who turned when he saw Dean react. It's rare that people recognize them, but when they do, it's rarely good. Sam is tense, but studying the girl's face, trying to read her. For a guy who's gone mostly deaf (fucking angels and their fucking super-sonic whateverthefuck, and if Dean had to go back he'd definitely come up with a better plan than the one they went with), he's surprisingly not that jumpy. Especially considering how twitchy he'd become just prior to the world nearly ending. To Dean's surprise, he relaxes after a moment, and smiles.
“You're Lily Shoemaker,” he says, a little too loudly, and she starts, narrows her eyes more before she places them.
“You're those guys who were here when my Dad died. You broke the mirrors and got rid of Bloody Mary. Charlie said you saved her life.”
Dean nods, carefully tucks the gun back into the back of his pants when he's sure that she's not a threat and that there aren't any others waiting to jump them. “Charlie around?”
“Dead. She was one of the first, when the virus hit. Her and my sister and pretty much everyone in their class. Almost all the kids at school.”
Dean's head starts to ache, and he rubs at his face with the tips of his fingers. Sam shoots him a questioning look, which means he didn't catch what the girl —Lily— said. He's getting better at reading lips, but he's not there yet. He shrugs, sort of a catch-all signal for 'not important, tell you later,' and Sam just nods, accepting the verdict. Sam edges closer to Dean, nudges him with an elbow, asking silently if he's okay, and he's not, not really, but there's not much they can do about it right now.
“There a safe place to stay in town?”
Lily shrugs, shakes her head. “I wouldn't recommend staying. There's boarded up houses on the outskirts that are safe enough for a night or two. Just keep something against the doors, in case. I gotta go. Let people know you're not infected. You should get going. It'll be dark soon.”
She turns on her heel, disappears into the twilight, and he's not sorry to let her go. He hunches in on himself, shivering harder than before, even though it's really not that cold out. Not really. He's been in worse. Sam nudges him again, peers intently at his face.
“You okay?”
He makes an equivocal gesture with his head, because he's suddenly not sure, but he doesn't exactly want to worry Sam. Not yet. “Probably nothing,” he says, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “Girl says there are houses we can use for the night. We should go.”
Sam nods, catches him by an elbow and presses his free hand to Dean's forehead before he can duck away. “You're warm.”
“Fuckin' freezing,” he grumbles, but Sam is rarely wrong about that sort of thing, and his head is aching worse than before.
Sam throws an arm over his shoulder, keeps pace with him back to the car. Time was, Dean would have shrugged off the arm, probably accompanied by a sarcastic remark or three, and Sam would have retreated into wounded silence. It all seems far away and unimportant, now. They don't talk much, never have, but they've stopped lying to each other —to themselves— about what they want. Dean watches the world teeter on the brink of collapse every day, and every morning he wakes up and is dizzy with the knowledge that it's still there, that for another twenty-four hours, at least, it hasn't plunged over the edge. He fishes the car keys out of his pocket, scrubs at his forehead with the back of his wrist, light-headed, and hands the keys to Sam, who just nods and slides into the driver's seat.
It's hard to stay awake in the car, in spite of the cold. He wraps his arms around himself, leans against the passenger-side window. Shadows flicker by, stretching and vanishing. He barely notices when Sam stops the car, starts a bit when Sam pats his shoulder, trying to get his attention.
“What's wrong?”
He resists the impulse to curl up on himself. “Don't feel good,” he admits, although it costs him to do it.
“Dean, you gotta look at me when you talk, I can't understand you. You sick?”
He just nods, doesn't have the energy to make sure he's talking clearly enough for Sam to get what he's saying. He's underwater, everything swimmy. Maybe that's what Sam feels like these days, everything blurry and indistinct. He's about to ask when he realizes Sam is talking.
“I'm going to make sure the house is secure. You okay to stay here for a few minutes?”
Sam's all but deaf, going into a strange place with no backup, and Dean desperately wants to go with him, the instinct to keep his little brother safe overwhelming. The only way it could be more dangerous is if Sam was going in blind, and that just doesn't bear thinking about. He mutters a protest, and Sam places a large hand on his forehead, at once reassuring and checking if his fever's gone up.
“I know,” he says soothingly. “If you could back me up, you would, but you can't. Not right now. It looks boarded up, should be fine. You gotta let me take point, just for today, okay?”
He nods resignedly, doesn't protest when Sam pulls the blanket from the back seat and pulls it over him. “Feel shitty,” he mutters, but of course Sam doesn't hear him. “End of the damn world, and I'm taken out by the damn flu.”
His heart stops about three times while he waits, imagination running away with him as lights and shadows flicker and dance around the car. He drums his fingers on the dashboard, knee jouncing up and down restlessly until Sam is back, all smiles and reassurance, prying him out of the car because suddenly Dean's legs aren't working quite the way he remembers they should. Dean lets his brother haul him up the steps of the front porch of the small house, and all but carry him to a bedroom on the ground floor. The place smells stale and musty, what furniture is left is covered in months' worth of dust —it's going to wreak havoc with Sam's allergies, he thinks dazedly— but there's no tell-tale smell of sulphur. Not even the faint scent of decomposition that they've found in some houses where the people weren't so lucky. Sam tugs off his boots, nudges him into the bed, strips his clothes off before folding them and putting them on a nearby chair. He pulls the covers up, and Dean will be damned if it isn't the most comfortable bed he's ever had the pleasure to lie on.
“Poor kid,” he says, as Lily's face floats in his vision.
“What?”
“Lily. No one remembers Charlie or Bloody Mary or anything else. She already lost people, and now she has to deal with even more shit like that. Fucking terrible.”
“I caught maybe half of that,” Sam leans over him.
“Lily,” he repeats. “Just fucking terrible.” Sam sighs.
“Yeah, I know. I wish... I'm going to see about finding some water,” Sam pats his arm, doesn't say what he wishes. It's not like it's a big secret, anyway. “Hang tight, okay?”
This time he does let himself curl into a ball, shivering so hard it hurts. He wants to call Sam back, but Sam probably won't hear him anyway, and it would be ridiculously clingy and needy of him to want his brother back just from the next room. God damn it, he survived the apocalypse, he can damned well survive three minutes with the flu while Sam fetches him a glass of water.
After that things get more than a little confused. He thinks Sam comes back, tastes faintly stale tap water and the sort-of sweet coating of extra-strength Tylenol on his tongue, hears Sam's voice, but can't make out what he's saying. He keeps shivering under the blankets until his muscles start spasming, joints aching as though he's spent days out in the cold and damp. He doesn't remember asking, but when he opens his eyes he finds Sam stretched out next to him, warm and comforting, and he wedges himself against his brother's chest, not caring at all that he's the little spoon —though he makes a vague mental note to deny it with his last dying breath, if pressed. Heat seeps from his little brother, easing some of the aches in his body, and Sam wraps both arms around him and murmurs something that sounds soothing, and Dean drifts back into an uneasy sleep filled with shadows and flame.
The next time he awakens the room is tilting drunkenly, and he clutches reflexively at the bed to keep from falling. There's something wet pressed to his face, and he catches sight of a shadow looming over him in the darkness.
“Sammy?”
It is Sam, he's pretty sure. His brother just hushes him, keeps wiping his face. “It's okay. You're sick, but it'll get better.”
“Feel like shit, Sammy,” he complains, shifting under the cloth. There's water dripping down his neck, and the feeling of being chilled to the bone hasn't abated in the slightest. He doesn't get to complain often, but this time he figures he can get a free pass, because it's Sam and because he really does feel like shit. “End of the goddamned world, and I'm dying from some sort of fucking 'flu. Fucking figures.”
“You're not dying,” Sam snaps, and Dean can hear the fear in his voice. “Shut up.”
“Feels like it. Hurts.”
Sam bites his lip. “What hurts?”
“Everything. Joints hurt. Goddamned fucking cold, feel like I've been encased in ice,” Dean shifts again, trying unsuccessfully to find a more comfortable position on the bed. “The hell's happening to me?”
“I don't know. Virus, I guess. Come on, time for more Tylenol.”
“Shouldn't waste it. That shit doesn't grow on trees.”
Sam rolls his eyes, props him up and shoves the pills between his lips. “I'm not wasting it. You're sick, that's what it's for.”
“Right,” he swallows, comes close to choking, and Sam holds him while he coughs, pain spiking in his head. Sam draws back, and Dean feels oddly bereft at the lack of contact, snags his fingers in the hem of Sam's t-shirt. “Don't go.”
Shit. As though he hasn't been acting like a co-dependent barnacle enough for one day. He's never going to live this down. Sam doesn't seem to mind, though.
“Not going anywhere. Just changing positions.”
“D'you even hear what I said?”
Sam doesn't answer, and Dean doesn't know whether he should be grateful or worried that Sam can apparently read his mind, since he obviously can't hear what he's saying.
“Sam?” Still nothing, but Sam squeezes his arm reassuringly, and tucks Dean's head against him, holding him close until the even sound of his breathing lulls Dean back into that uncertain place between sleep and delirium.
The next time Dean awakens he's pretty sure he's being dipped in boiling water. He remembers what that feels like, and it's a lot like this. He jerks away from where Sam is pressing wet cloths against his skin, can't even articulate why he's resisting. He can hear his heartbeat fast and erratic in his ears, the rushing sound of blood pumping a little too fast. Nothing in the room is staying still, and he struggles weakly to sit up, stomach churning, shoving at Sam's arm when his brother tries to force him back on the bed.
“Gonna be sick,” he manages, and maybe Sam hears him or maybe he's doing that freakish mind-meld thing again, but the next thing Dean knows he's being held over the side of the bed, a trash can under his head and Sam's hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing circles while he pukes up water and what's left of the pills and maybe his stomach lining, because they ran out of supplies earlier and haven't been able to restock.
“Okay, drink,” Sam says when he's done, still gasping for breath, and holds the water glass for him. “Small sips. You still with me?”
“Mm.”
He doesn't bother with the water, just curls back up on the bed and tries to ignore the pounding in his head. Sam doesn't press him, just runs his fingers through Dean's hair, soothing. Another side effect of the apocalypse, or maybe just of losing most of his hearing: Sam is even more touchy-feely now even than when he was a kid. Not that Dean finds he minds it all that much —it's a nice change from the two years leading up to the final showdown with Lucifer, when the distance between them felt like a physical barrier. The only up side to being sick is that Sam will pretty much give him a pass on everything, so he wriggles closer and buries his face in Sam's shirt until the discomfort of the heat forces him away again, and Sam doesn't insist.
After what feels like forever but is probably realistically only a few hours of tossing and turning and fruitless searching for a cool spot on the bed, he feels the fever break, sweat pouring from him and soaking his clothes, the bed, and Sam too. He reaches out blindly, tries to mumble an apology, but Sam doesn't reply, just keeps a steadying hand on his chest until they both fall asleep again.
Sam insists that they spend the day in the house, strips the bed when he finds a linen closet full of sheets that are clean apart from a thin layer of dust. Dean makes a show of complaining about staying anywhere too long, but he's secretly kind of relieved. He feels like a wrung-out dishcloth, spends the whole morning and most of the afternoon dozing on and off, too tired even to worry overmuch when Sam leaves for a few hours to do some scrounging for food back in town.
By the time Sam is back, so is the fever. Sam finds him huddled under several extra blankets, teeth chattering, and Dean can count on the fingers of one hand the times he's been this happy to see his brother. Sam frowns at him, rests the backs of his fingers against his cheek.
“You need a doctor. This isn't normal.”
“Fuck normal.”
Sam just rolls his eyes. “Lily hooked me up with some supplies, and I think they've got a doctor of sorts. You're not better by tomorrow, I'm going to ask her to come.”
Dean just grunts, throws an arm over his face to block out the sickly light coming in through the window. Sam takes him by the elbow, shakes his arm lightly.
“Hey, no sleeping yet. I brought soup and juice. You're going to drink the whole glass and then eat as much as you can manage.” He props Dean up again, shakes him a little when Dean grumbles and tries to twist away. “Come on, don't be a baby. Just drink it and get it over with.”
The juice and soup come back up about an hour later, when the convulsive shivering has morphed into what feels like a furnace lit somewhere inside his chest, but Dean is too tired and too sore and way too sick to properly enjoy his I-told-you-so moment as his brother holds him steady over the trash can again, coughing and retching miserably. He even lets Sam wipe him down with a wet cloth without protesting too much, restless and feeling as though he wants to crawl out of his skin. Sam ignores the stream of muttered complaints, or maybe he just can't hear them, but he keeps a reassuring pressure on Dean's arm the whole time, wipes his face, smiles when Dean manages to open his eyes and look at him.
“Just get some sleep, okay?”
He nods tiredly, tugs at Sam's arm until his brother grudgingly lies down next to him. He shouldn't take advantage of the fact that Sam will pretty much let him get away with anything when he's sick, but he can't bring himself to care, wedges himself against Sam's comforting bulk, and tries to ignore his misery long enough to go to sleep, Sam's large hand rubbing his shoulder.
The next day it's lather, rinse, repeat. The fever breaks in the early morning, and Dean spends the next few hours half-asleep, right until he starts feeling as though all the heat is being leeched from his body. His joints still ache fiercely, and the mere thought of swallowing anything other than water makes him want to hurl. Sam tucks as many blankets as he can around him, disappears out the front door. For a while Dean worries, until things start to go blurry again. He kicks off the blankets that are suddenly smothering him, his throat parched. There has to be a bathroom in this house, he thinks, and there'll be water in there. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, manages to make it to the bedroom door before the floor tilts alarmingly, then rushes up to hit him in the face.
He still hasn't quite figured out how to get himself back up when Sam gets back, although he has managed at least to prop himself up partially in the doorway. He opens his eyes to find Sam's anxious and blurry face a couple of inches away.
“You ass, what were you thinking?”
Dean flinches. “Bein' loud, Sammy,” he mutters. “Thirsty. Getting' water.”
“I left water next to the bed.”
“Y'did?”
“Yes, moron. Come on, I brought a doctor to take a look at you. Let's get you up.”
Everything tilts crazily, and he shuts his eyes against the dizziness. He hears another voice, feels another set of arms helping Sam, and he tries to jerk away —doesn't want anyone else touching him— but the hands are firm, insistent, and he's just too damned tired to resist much. He keeps his eyes closed against the light, head aching so much now that he just wants to curl up into a ball and die, except the other voice won't leave him alone. It's a girl, he realizes with some surprise. He doesn't know why he was expecting a guy.
The girl's hands are gentle, and he can feel the difference when it's her examining him or Sam moving him around so she can get at him. He flinches when the cold metal of her stethoscope presses to his ribcage, and Sam rubs a hand between his shoulder blades, takes charge of answering all her questions that don't directly involve how he's feeling —and some of them that do. He doesn't feel like talking much, anyway.
“Dean, I need you to open your eyes for me,” the doctor prods him gently, and she sounds nice, and maybe opening his eyes won't be so bad. He flinches again, but he thinks she's pretty, maybe, though kind of blurry. Pretty eyes, dark skin that reminds him of Cassie's —whom he hasn't given a second thought to in five years. She gives him a sympathetic smile. “The light hurts, huh? I'm sorry, I'm going to have to make it hurt a bit more, but it'll just take a second.” She flashes a penlight in his eyes, and he can't quite bite back a whimper, scrunching his eyes shut again. She pats his hand. “I know, I'm sorry, but you're done now. I'm going to give you a shot to make you more comfortable and help you sleep, okay?”
He barely feels the needle, but she's right. A few moments later the bone-deep ache recedes, and he drifts, listening to the rise and fall of voices around his bed, Sam's hand heavy against the top of his head. He doesn't quite sleep, but it's not so bad. The shadows stay where they're supposed to, and he realizes that, weird as it is, the nightmares have stayed away while he's been sick. No hell, no Lucifer, nothing. Just the shadows doing weird things —and the drugs are doing wonders for that— and Sam, which is kind of awesome. He tries to lift his head to find Sam, but it just lolls to the side.
“Sammy?”
“Still here, Dean.”
“'kay. Just checking.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“'kay.”
When he wakes up the sheets are clammy, and whoever the doctor was, she's long gone. For a minute he thinks he might have just dreamed the whole thing, but there are bottles of pills on the table by the bed, and Sam is asleep next to him, head pillowed on his palm. He looks peaceful like that, no indication of the constant weight on his shoulders, the guilt of being responsible for all this. Dean jabs an elbow into his ribs to wake him —there's no sense talking, because Sam won't hear. Sam snorts, brings up a hand to scrub at his eyes.
“Wha'? Dean? Y'okay?”
He nods. “Still feel shitty. What'd the doctor say?”
Sam sits up, scrubs at his eyes some more, then looks more closely at him. “I didn't understand you.”
He turns to face him. “What's wrong with me?”
Sam makes a face that he can't quite read. “You remember last week when we were in that bayou and you were bitching about the mosquitoes?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Fuckers were huge. Post-apocalyptic mutant mosquitoes. Fucking plague.”
Sam chuckles before his expression goes grim again. “Yeah. Turns out you're not far off.”
His head hurts, and Sam isn't helping. “The fuck, Sam?”
“You have malaria.”
The information doesn't compute. “Thought it didn't exist anymore. Like smallpox, or whatever.”
He's not sure Sam caught everything, but apparently it's enough. “It was extinct in North America, but that was before the world ended, back when there were prophylactic drugs and shit. Apparently it used to exist here, and now it's back and you got bitten by a mosquito carrying the parasite.”
He snorts. “Prophylactic. Eight years out of college and you're still breaking out the two-bit words. What about you?”
Sam's up and pouring water into a glass. “You know how it is. The mosquitoes have always liked you better. It's all the sugar you ingest, I bet.”
“'m fuckin' irresistible, even to bugs. Great,” he grumbles, and is stupidly pleased with himself when he manages the water all on his own. “So what now?” he asks, as Sam perches by his hip on the bed, watching him as though he might disappear at any moment.
“Leo gave us some pills that'll help, she thinks. There's still a bunch of stuff left over in the local drugstores: they keep it there under guard because it's easier just to store things where they came from.”
“Leo?”
“The doctor. Her name's Leonda, but people call her Leo.”
“Huh. And she just happened to have malaria pills with her?”
Sam smirks. “No, smartass. We went and got them while you were sleeping. Give me that,” he liberates the now-empty glass. “You feeling up to food? You should be good for another few hours, at least, before the fever starts up again.”
He can feel his face falling. “What do you mean, again?”
Sam scrunches up his face in what Dean recognizes as an attempt not to show that he's worried. “The pills ought to help, but Leo said you're going to spike fevers for at least a couple more days. You feel cold or anything?”
He shakes his head. “Not right now. Still feel shitty, but it's not so bad. You, uh... you making out okay?”
It's a bit late to ask, but up until two days ago he's the one who's been taking point on most things, dealing with talking to people because Sam can't always understand them, picking the places to go where people aren't likely to recognize them, making sure Sam's always within eyeshot. Sam pats his knee.
“I'm just fine. Not nearly as helpless as you think I am, big brother.”
“Never said that,” he settles back on his pillow. “Don't think you're helpless,” he mumbles, lets his eyes close. He's tired again, after less than five minutes of being awake. This sucks.
“Yeah, I know it sucks,” Sam runs his fingers through Dean's hair, and Dean is annoyed that he didn't realize he was still talking out loud. “They're pretty nice here, for the most part. Small group, pretty well-organized. Didn't try to kill me for being the Antichrist. Overall, I'd say it's a win. We'll be okay to stay for a while. I cleared it with Leo and some of the others who're in charge, they're willing as long as I help out.”
He blinks. “What? An' quit pettin' me. Not a dog.”
Sam keeps up the motion anyway, and Dean can't bring himself to protest anymore. “Dean, it takes weeks to get over malaria even under the best medical supervision, and Leo is great but she was still in her residency when the shit hit the fan. Like it or not, we're not going far for a while.”
There are a thousand questions Dean wants to ask. How they're going to get food, who the people in charge are, why Sam thinks he can trust them, but he can't manage more than an incoherent mumble. Luckily, Sam has known him all their lives, and even if he doesn't understand the words, he understands the intent, and he moves back onto the bed, stretches out beside him, and wraps an arm around his midriff, the weight familiar and comforting.
“You just got a crush on the chick,” he mutters, poking weakly at his brother, and grins when Sam thwacks his shoulder lightly.
“Shut up. There's nowhere important we need to be, Dean. I've checked this place out, and it's safe enough. We've got this house to ourselves, and there's still water, still food to be had. No one here is crazy that I can tell. And, uh... Leo says you might get sick again. That there's no cure. If we stay... we can make it work here. I know we can.”
He's already falling asleep again in spite of himself. Briefly a vision flashes through his mind of Sam standing in the small kitchen he caught sight of earlier, washing someone else's dishes as though they belong to him, smiling self-consciously up at him through his lashes. Maybe it's not nearly as bad as he thinks it is. Lily's here, and maybe they can help, this time. For whatever that's worth.
“Just for a little while, though.” He opens his eyes in time to see Sam smile, wide and bright, and some of the tightness in his chest eases up, ever so slightly.
“Okay, sure,” Sam agrees easily. “Just for a little while.”