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ht_murrayTitle: Living Out Loud (1/5) COMPLETE
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
tru_faith_lost
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None, Gen fic with Dean, Sam, and several OC's.
Words: 45,800 in five linked parts
Warnings: Language, Reposted
Disclaimers: No profit or defamation made or implied.
Summary: AU set post-Season 1, but written during Season 1 so anything that happened after Shadow is not only speculation but highly inaccurate. The Winchester boys have defeated the demon and lost their father but come out the other side with a successful family business that allows them to get paid for hunting and a bright future. Dean's past might change all that when he falls seriously ill, and Sam finds out, it's not the first time. Then it's a race against time for a cure only a dead man knows.
A/N: Firstly, yes, this is a repost. I originally took it down, because, despite the fact that people really liked it, I feel like I've changed as a writer since then, and every time I read it, I see things wrong with it that make my skin crawl. (Bad segues, gaping plot holes, use of italics out the wazoo, use of italics for inner voice, POV switching, completely fabricated medical and mythological details, and UGH.) But people have been requesting it, and I keep filing all your little messages away so that I can reply to all of you at once, and then do something stupid like clean out my inbox. I'll still gladly give a file of this story to anyone who wants it, or you can purchase it in Zine for from Agents with Style, but I feel really awkward asking people for their email addresses. I'd be much more comfortable having it online so you can read at leisure and not have to disclose your personal information to me. I'm kind of a private person in that regard.I haven't fixed this at all from it's original version, despite the fact that I still can't read it without cringing, so hopefully it is as you originally found it, except now it's on LJ. I have no problem with people saving it to their hard drives, etc, or sharing it with friends, just do not repost it in any form without my permission. K?
Living Out Loud
We all have a point to make, and we can only make it by living. Live with purpose, live with joy, and live with love. Live in extremes. Live on the line. But don’t live alone. Make your point, and make it loudly, Dean. And make sure there’s someone there to hear it. Because giving our lives is not nearly as profitable as sharing them.
Julia, (Wild Child, H.T. Marie)
"Sam!" Dean called. "Heads up! He's right behind me." The older Winchester brother, crashed into the clearing, the forest seemingly alive behind him.
"I got him," Sam said coolly, staring down the barrel of his .45 as the werewolf charged out of the underbrush. Dean ducked and rolled, but not before the creature swiped a paw across his back. Oh well, more pictures for the website, he grunted with grim satisfaction as the shot echoed through the woods, followed by the thud of a heavy body falling.
It took only a split second for Dean to spring back to his feet, and Sam was immediately at his side. They converged on the fallen werewolf with their faces set in determination as they fumbled in their pockets. They had only until the creature's last breath to collect their artifacts, and they didn't like to leave without getting paid.
Dean unsheathed his gleaming knife and cleanly sliced off both of the monster's pointed lupine ears, followed by three or four clumps of fur. Sam pulled a tin snips from his duffel bag and cleanly snipped off the animal's dagger-like claws, catching them in a plastic bag as he worked.
Both brothers stood up, grinning with satisfaction as the werewolf's chest collapsed on its final breath. Within seconds, there was nothing but a pale human corpse remaining, and though the boys disliked the fact that killing a werewolf inevitably meant killing the human inside, they understood that the soul of that human was finally released from the curse that had tortured it.
Only one task remained, and since Dean had lost the game of rock, paper, scissors they'd played before beginning the hunt, the honor was all his. He grimaced as he stooped over the body. Using his same knife, he opened the gunshot wound over the corpse's heart, and after a few minutes of digging around, retrieved the silver bullet. The bullet and its spent casing both went into the baggie with the claws.
Sam patted his brother on the shoulder affectionately as Dean stood and they took inventory of their cache. "Not bad for a few hours work," the younger brother smirked. He took a moment to pull at the tears in Dean's jacket, satisfying himself that the claws hadn't found flesh. "You need to work on your escape and evade maneuvers, though, big brother. A little closer, and we'd have had doctor bills to cover. That really cuts into our profit margin, you know. I think it may be time we looked into getting some insurance."
Dean laughed sarcastically. "Yeah, like they wouldn't take one look at us and throw us out on our scarred up, uninsurable asses."
Sam shrugged and nodded in agreement with a smirk. "Yeah, but at least now we could afford it if we qualified." He looked approvingly at their collection of artifacts. "At fifty dollars a claw, three hundred per ear, I'd say we cleared over a thousand dollars. Twice that if we remember to get those newspapers with the stories about the murdered hikers before we leave this 'burg."
"That's my boy," Dean grinned, clapping Sam on the back. "Always looking out for our bottom line." They gathered up their supplies and headed back to the car. There was a lightness to their steps that had become normal for them. And anyone who didn't know that the brother's had just dispatched a deadly creature of the night would have thought they'd just clocked out on a Friday night and were on their way to cash their paychecks and get drunk.
It had been six months since they'd buried their father, and despite Sam's earlier statements to the contrary, the younger Winchester brother had decided not to return to Stanford after all. The demon was dead, yes, but so was their father, and Dean himself had nearly been lost as well. Suddenly law school hadn't seemed as important as family, and Dean was all the family Sam had left. For once, that was enough.
Sam no longer felt that he needed to remove himself entirely from the hunting. After all, as Dean had pointed out, there would always be things to hunt, people to save, causes worth taking up. Even if he had wanted to, which he swore he didn't, Sam knew the mental powers he'd developed would never let him ignore the crusade his brother had taken up on principle alone. If he had gone back to Stanford, he'd have probably been driven crazy by the vision/nightmares. He'd never been able to ignore them, and now he didn't have to.
They fought now for different reasons, but they fought together, these Winchester brothers, and they were glad to do it. It was a service to humanity, not a burden, and a greater service could not be performed by virtue of some prestigious degree. Prestige was not a priority either. They hunted now, because they could, because they cared. They hunted to make a difference, because neither wanted a normal life until normal was more. They needed normal to be better than it was. Only when children could sleep in their beds without fearing what went bump in the night and families weren't torn apart by loss and grief that originated in the lair of darkness could the Winchester brothers accept normal. When normal wasn't cold, wasn't empty, wasn't such a lie, then they'd quit.
It was an unspoken pact between the boys. When they stopped caring, they'd stop hunting, and until then, they'd go together against whatever beckoned in the night. It wasn't their job, wasn't their duty, wasn't their vendetta anymore. It was their passion. A passion that, at last, they shared. And they never spoke of it more than the one time, right after their father's funeral, when Sam had revealed his desire to stay.
They never spoke of the contingencies or possibilities, the what ifs, like what if one of us meets a girl, what if one of us gets hurt, what if one of us dies, because life was unpredictable, and they'd take whatever it threw at them and deal with it in its time. They also never talked about forever, though it was implied, because to do so would be to insinuate some kind of contract or obligation between them, and neither would ever have the other believe that there was anything other than love and trust holding them together.
Still, Sam had insisted that if they were going to hunt the big baddies, then they were going to do it within the confines of the law, or at least they were going to try. That meant, of course, that credit card scams were no longer going to be viable sources of income, and pool would be played for entertainment purposes only. Two intelligent young men like themselves should be able to figure out a way to earn a decent living.
Ironically, it had been a sleepless night in another seedy motel room that had inspired Sam's inner entrepreneur. Randomly googling his normal search words, he'd come across, of all things, a haunted saddle. There was some strange story behind the thing, how a horse thief had been hanged and his saddle had been passed down through generations. The guy who had it swore the maid would not clean the den where it was displayed. The thing that had drawn Sam's attention the most, however, was that the haunted horse gear was not being offered for investigation or exorcism. It was for sale, on eBay of all places. And it was drawing bids.
Possibly it was the fact that it had been three a.m. and Sam still hadn't managed to fall asleep, but he'd chuckled a little to himself and wondered, on a whim, if any of the junk they'd collected over the years would be worth anything to amateur ghost hounds and paranormal enthusiasts around the world. Of course, he couldn’t risk passing on a curse or actual haunting to some poor unsuspecting person, but some artifact of an actual haunting, with documentation like photographs or something, might prove valuable, he'd thought.
So, he'd dug out a couple of bloody crossbow bolts that had splintered and were useless for future hunting excursions, copied a few pages of text from Dad's journal describing how the bolts had been used to take down a vampire, and listed them on eBay himself. They'd brought in five hundred dollars, and Sam had sworn that setting up the account for the transaction was the last thing he'd ever use the scammed credit cards for.
Things had kind of snowballed from there. Paranormal posh was all the rage these days in the homes of rich eccentrics and basement ghost hunters. Sam and Dean just provided the accessories. A few peculiar trinkets with documentation that made them as real as one cared to believe they were, made Brothers in Blood Artifacts, as they'd named their company, an overnight success.
As a compromise between Dean and Sam, Dean had agreed to take a few courses in business and marketing, while Sam took a few on business and corporate law. It really hadn't put a damper in the hunting, since the classes were only a couple of days during the week, and most of their hunting could be scheduled around them. Usually.
They were actually doing all right, considering the fact that their lives had been completely turned upside down just six months prior. They'd taken over the lease on the downstairs of an older two story house in Madison, Wisconsin, took classes at MATC, and did their long distance cases on the weekends or referred them to Dad's contacts that were closer to the action.
"So, big test in the morning, huh?" Sam asked as Dean slouched in the passenger seat of the Impala trying to focus on the Econ notes with his pen light. "We coulda waited until tomorrow night to bag this werewolf, you know. We might be doing all right, but we can't really afford for you to have to re-take a course because you spent too much time in the field."
"Oh ye of little faith, baby brother," Dean scoffed. "You're not the only one in this family with brains, you know." He tapped his head suggestively as he raised his eyebrows, "I got this stuff down. It's all right up here." He clicked the pen light off for emphasis. "Now do me a favor and shut up. I'm gonna try to catch some shut eye on the way home."
"Dean, it's like 10:00. You never go to sleep this early."
"Lay off. Big test tomorrow," Dean said, trying to ignore the growing ache in his head.
Sam seemed to accept that answer, and they drove in silence the rest of the way.
XXX
Sam was gonna be pissed. Dean was pretty pissed himself at the moment. The whole thing was supposed to be no big deal. Of all the possible outcomes to the situation, complete and utter failure had not been one he'd considered in the least. Yet, there he was staring blankly at the test paper as though he'd never attended a single lecture or done any of the homework. And that was the worst part. He had attended class, and he had done the homework.
School had never been a place of shining achievement for Dean Winchester, but that had been primarily attributable to the fact that he quite frankly had never given a rat's ass about anything that didn't specifically aid in the hunter lifestyle. He'd always been fairly certain, as had John and Sam, that he could have done quite well with academia in general, if he had just put a little effort into it. Now however, he'd actually made the effort.
Dean didn't care much for the school part of his deal with Sam, but he agreed that the compromise was worthwhile if it kept Sam in his life, and it wasn't like the courses were difficult. At least he hadn't thought so. Until now, he'd been sailing through the curriculum, so he couldn’t understand why he just couldn't hold a train of thought at the moment. He'd tried several times to read the questions on the page and found himself just re-reading them as though they were written in a language he'd never learned.
He found himself glancing at the clock and knew that he was screwed. The class was almost over, and he hadn't answered a single question. Dean felt eyes on him and looked to his right where little Daniella was seated next to her mother. The seven-year-old had been in class twice that week. She was just getting over the chicken pox, and her mother, Marcy, had been unable to find a babysitter. Marcy had thought it harmless to bring the little girl along, since Daniella was no longer feverish, and all the adults in the class had already had the chicken pox.
Dean noticed that the little girl, her hair braided neatly because her normal loose curls irritated the scabbed over lesions left by the virus on her skin, had looked up from her coloring book and was staring at his blank paper. She shook her head knowingly and looked at Dean like a disappointed parent. He imagined that to be exactly the way Sam was going to look at him when he got back to the house and told his brother that he'd failed the test. He almost handed the whole paper over to the seven-year-old. She could probably at least fill in the blank that had been provided for his name. For some reason, even that hadn't been filled in yet.
Dean turned back to his test and felt the whole room shift along with his turning head. Damn, maybe I'm coming down with something. Suddenly, he felt much better. That had to be it. He'd picked up a virus or something, and that was, no doubt, the reason he couldn't concentrate on the test. After all, he'd had all of the information dead to rights the night before. And he did feel a little hot. Until now, he'd passed off the flushed feeling in his face as test anxiety. As much as he hated the idea of being ill, he preferred it to the feeling of complete inadequacy and failure he'd been forcing down since the exam began.
And Sam would forgive him for being sick, if Dean decided to let Sam in on the information. Dean was beginning to think, however, that he wouldn't be allowed the luxury of suffering in silence on this one. His head was beginning to pound, and he felt a cold sweat creeping over his brow.
Finally, the test period was over. Dean braced himself against the desk to stand and tried his best to mingle in with the few other students unfortunate enough to be still in the room. He grinned casually at Dr. George, the professor, who was looking at him questioningly. Dean was usually the first student to finish an exam, so it was suspicious to see him straggling out at the end this way. Not wanting to have to make excuses for himself, Dean just mixed his test paper in with a stack that was already on the desk and made his way out of the lecture hall. He'd call the professor later, when he could think clearly again.
Sam was waiting outside, leaning against he Impala with his eyebrows raised expectantly. Dean approached, ducking into the upturned collar of his leather jacket as if to ward off a chill, doing his best to hide the flush on his cheeks and the slight hitch in his giddyup that had developed since that morning. He was beginning to realize that what he'd dismissed earlier as only pre-test anxiety had probably been the first symptoms of whatever virus was now festering inside him, and it was probably already past the point where he could convincingly conceal it from his brother. God, he hated being mother henned.
Dean was about to put on his most convincingly overconfident, pompous grin to tell his brother that all was well in the land of academia when a voice from behind him forced him to turn back around.
"Dean!" Marcy called. The thirty-something woman, crossed the street hurriedly, dragging little Daniella by her tiny hand as she looked back and forth for breaks in the traffic.
"Hey, Marcy," Dean nodded, in acknowledgement. "This is my brother Sam," he offered.
Sam, ever the gentleman, offered his hand, "Nice to meet you," he greeted politely.
Marcy nodded to Sam, and turned back to Dean. "That test was a real bear, wasn't it?" She asked, searching Dean's gaze for confirmation. "I thought it was just me, but when I saw you were there 'til the end, I knew it had to be pretty rough. You're usually the first to leave."
Dean tried to ignore Sam's eyes boring into the back of his head as he shrugged. "Yeah, well, I just wanted to make sure I worded everything right," he dismissed.
"Oh," Marcy said, looking deflated, "Maybe it was just me, then. I've been so distracted with Daniella's chicken pox that I didn't really get caught up on the reading. The trials of single parenting, I guess."
Dean could tell that she probably wanted to talk longer, Marcy was a bit of a flirt, not unlike himself, and he'd probably led her to believe he was interested in having dinner sometime. He really wasn't, but she'd been kind enough to switch seats with him the week he'd hobbled into class with a sprained ankle. Well, the injury had actually been a twelve inch gash on the back of his calf muscle caused by yet another Wendigo claw, but Dean had, of course, passed his limp off as a sprained ankle. He'd been grateful that Marcy had allowed him to sit on the end of the row so that he could hang the stiff leg out into the aisle. To express his gratitude he'd smiled his usual charming Dean smile, and she hadn't missed the opportunity to chat him up since.
He couldn't bear to tell her she just wasn't his type. He wasn't actually sure what his type was, since lately he'd entertained quite a few very nice young ladies and had liked them all pretty much equally. He supposed that meant none of them had really been his type. Or maybe they were. Maybe his type would always be the kind of girl he could walk away from without a second thought.
At any rate, Dean was glad that Sam was standing there, waiting impatiently for Dean to get in the car. Not to be rude, but the older brother was really not feeling up to entertaining a chatty Cathy at the moment.
". . .dinner?" Marcy's voice forced its way into Dean's mind. He hadn't even realized she was speaking.
"Hmmm?" He asked, not even having the presence of mind to disguise his lack of attention. Tact required much too much thinking. But he didn't have to think about Marcy's reaction, because her hurt disappointment was immediately apparent. Dean blinked slowly, waiting between each flutter of his eyelids for lucidity to return, but no such luck. He knew he was probably supposed to say something, only he had no clue what they were even talking about. He wasn't really even aware of how much time had passed until Sam cleared his throat suggestively and pushed his brother from behind.
Marcy's expression changed from one of disappointment to one of concern as she noticed Dean's lack of focus. She furrowed her brow and stepped closer to the older brother. "Are you feeling all right? You look a little flushed?"
Marcy reached up and put the back of her hand against Dean's cheek, and when Dean neither moved away or answered Marcy's question, Sam realized something was up as well. Dean hated for anyone to even suggest that he might be less than invincible, so for him to allow himself to come under such close scrutiny without extricating himself, physically or verbally, was a clear indicator that he was not feeling up to snuff.
Sam stepped around beside Marcy and stooped slightly to take a look himself. To Dean's credit, Sam noticed a small quirky smile pull at his brother's mouth in an effort to dismiss their concern, but it was too little and took far too long to reach through the glazed-over hazel eyes.
"You look like crap, man," Sam grinned with a shake of his head. There really wasn't anything funny about it, but Sam's worry always seemed to originate in the same portion of his brain that produced laughter, and he'd never really been able to separate the two expressions convincingly.
"Yeah, you feel warm, Dean," Marcy observed. "You're probably coming down with something." She looked down at her daughter and back at Dean with a hint of guilt morphing her features. "God, I hope you haven't caught Daniella's chicken pox," she said.
Finally the blaring attention seemed to break through the fog in Dean's mind. He arched back with his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, and snickered loudly. "Chicken pox! There's no way I've got the chicken pox," he scoffed openly, and even as he said it, a sick feeling of twisted irony worked its way into his stomach.
XXX
"Yup, it's the chicken pox, all right," Sam said. As soon as Dean had removed his trusty leather jacket, Sam had noticed several red lesions on his brother's forearms, and without the jacket's collar to duck behind, the older brother's flushed complexion was much more apparent.
"Can't be," Dean argued. "Already had chicken pox, same time you did."
"Yeah, well some people get 'em more than once. Guess you're irresistible to more than just women," Sam snickered.
"No. Not the chicken pox. That's a kid's disease," Dean scowled miserably.
"Anyone can get 'em, big brother. Most of us just get 'em out of the way when we're kids to spare us the humiliation of having them when we're adults." He grabbed his brother's arm and pointed to the red spots, raising an eyebrow knowingly as he did so. "Those are definitely chicken pox."
"Thanks so much for your expert diagnosis, Dr. Winchester," Dean grimaced, pulling his arm back. "But I want a second opinion."
"Fine, then, not chicken pox," Sam smirked. "Those itchy little bumps are just NotPox, then. Either way, you're sick."
"They aren't. . ." Dean looked at Sam with annoyance and raked a fingernail over his arm, "Great. They didn't itch until you brought it up. You working on some kind of mind control mojo, Obi-Wan?"
Sam laughed. At least his brother seemed to be more lucid than he had been earlier. That glazed-over, blank look was gone from Dean's features and had been replaced with bitter disgust. Dean hated being sick, and he hated it worse when it was something he couldn't hide. Chicken pox was definitely something that even Dean couldn't hide.
Dean crossed the creaking hardwood floor and bent over the sofa, reaching behind it for the guitar he kept leaning against the wall in the corner. He straightened back up and placed his guitar strap around his shoulder, fingers finding the frets expertly. He plopped back into the worn leather recliner and leaned back into its embrace, knees splayed slightly as he began to noodle out some improvised tune that he was, no doubt, making up as he went along.
Sam grinned knowingly. The guitar was Dean's escape. Sam had given it to his brother as a sort of housewarming present when they'd moved into the place. Dean had, of course, been embarrassed as hell when his baby brother had presented him with it, because, while he had always wanted to learn to play, the sensitive musical part of him was not something he readily acknowledged. The fact that Sam knew how much Dean wanted it and realized that the older brother would never give in to that want on his own had struck a chord inside of Dean that he wasn't used to hearing.
Dean was teaching himself to play, and even Sam had to admit that he seemed to have a talent for it. There were music books scattered all over the coffee table, something which occasionally raised a note of contention between the brothers, but Sam liked it best when Dean leaned back in the overstuffed chair and just played whatever came out. Somehow, the music that Dean made when his eyes were all faraway and introspective let Sam glimpse what lay behind those walls of self-preservation that Dean had become so adept at constructing. And Sam liked what he saw. Sometimes, like now, he felt almost like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation that his brother was having with himself.
"Dude, don't you have class or something?" Dean asked, continuing to thrum absently. Sam knew that meant, "Stop staring at me already," and he took the hint.
Sam threw up his hands in a dismissive gesture. "Just on my way out. I'll stop and pick up some Calamine lotion and Tylenol. Any requests? You're probably gonna be cooped up in here for the next week, so if there's anything you want. . ."
Dean just lifted his eyes and glared at his brother from beneath scowling eyelids.
"Never mind. I'm gone," Sam said, grabbing his book bag. "Just take it easy, and don't scratch; you'll scar."
A slight shrug of the shoulders as Dean leaned his head back into the chair cushions was all the reply Sam needed.
XXX
Three days later, Sam was beginning to wonder if NotPox was really a more accurate diagnosis for his brother's condition. The lesions on Dean's arms had spread to his chest and legs, but were really quite sparse. From what Sam remembered of having the chicken pox himself, the itchy little buggers had almost seemed to pile on top of each other. He had heard, however, that people who got the virus twice usually only got a mild case the second time.
Sam would have been grateful that the lesions were not terribly bad if the rest of Dean's symptoms hadn't become so worrisome. The fever had spiked to almost 103, and those moments of absent-mindedness seemed to be more frequent. Dean was never one to complain, but Sam could tell his brother was in pain from the way his hazel eyes squinted against even a sliver of light in the room and the way he moved stiffly and calculatedly as if willing himself to push through some ache that he didn't want Sam to see.
When the boys had both had the chicken pox the last time, Dean had been twelve and Sam eight, and though the itching had driven them both insane, the other symptoms had been rather negligible. In fact, they'd nearly driven their father off the deep end after a week of close confinement in which the boys had fought and wrestled as though the spots were only painted on. So, Sam was concerned that what should have been a milder case of the disease was really putting his brother through the ringer.
Sam closed his laptop. His head just wasn't up for studying at the moment, and it was about time to go and check on his brother. Some people were demanding when they were sick. Dean was just the opposite. If Sam didn't make a point of going in every couple of hours to assess his brother's condition, Dean would suffer in silence. That was just his way. He could have been puking blood, and he wouldn't have called for help.
Sam was just glad that, so far, he wasn't showing any signs of a relapse himself. That didn't really surprise him, though. Dean's immune system had always been wired differently than his or Dad's. When they were growing up, it seemed that Sam and John caught every cold or flu bug that came around, and Dean usually ended up taking care of them, because for some reason, he never caught what everyone else had. Then, out of the blue, the older brother would come down with something only he would catch, and unfortunately for Dean, he usually got something much worse than everyone else. And that didn’t' just apply to viruses and the like. Sam could remember at least three times when they'd eaten at some questionable establishment, and even though they'd all eaten the same thing, Dean had been the only one to get a raging case of food poisoning out of the deal.
Speaking of which, the chicken soup was just about ready, and Sam retrieved a bowl from the cupboard. He made his way carefully down the hallway to Dean's room.
It had taken some time to get used to sleeping in separate rooms after all the years of sleeping within an arm's length of each other. Still, the apartment had two bedrooms, and it had only made sense that each brother take one, being that they were both inclined to bring home girls from time to time. But, the rooms were directly across the hall from each other, and more often than not, both doors stayed open at night. And sometimes, if Dean fell asleep in the chair and Sam dozed off on the lumpy couch, neither would bother getting up and going to bed, despite the fact that they would both be stiff in the morning.
Dean's room was dark as Sam approached, as his brother had made him put blankets up over the windows to keep out the sunlight. He couldn't immediately make out Dean's shape in the bed. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering in from the hall, and became aware that something seemed to have changed from the last time he'd checked on his brother. The air in the room was still thick and heavy with sickness, but there was something else, a bitter smell like vomit, and a strange keening noise accompanied by a hollow thumping seemed to punch through the heavy atmosphere.
"Dean?" Sam asked hesitantly. "Dean are you awake?" When not so much as a moan of recognition came in response, Sam abandoned all pretense and flicked on the light switch.
The bowl of chicken soup crashed to the floor, along with Sam's panicked heart as the gravity of the situation became apparent.
Dean's hands were fisted in the tangled sheets, and he was arched up in his bed, contorted grotesquely as his head thudded against the headboard in rhythm with his convulsing body. His chin was stretched toward the ceiling, and Sam could see yellow bile-colored vomit trailing down his brother's throat from the corners of his grimacing mouth.
Sam fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone as he raced to his brother's side, and he placed one hand flat on Dean's sweat-soaked chest as he dialed the phone with the other. "Dean!" Tears threatened to shake loose from Sam's eyes as the force of Dean's seizure traveled up his arm. "Yes, I need an ambulance!" He choked.
XXX
Sam struggled to keep a handle on the situation as the phone banged clumsily against his ear in response to Dean's thrashing convulsions. He could barely make out the operator's voice. "Yes," he stammered helplessly, "That's the correct address. It's a two story Victorian. We're downstairs. Just hurry." He clicked the phone shut and dropped it onto the night stand, only vaguely aware that the dispatcher had been trying to keep him on the line. He didn't have enough hands to juggle the phone and his seizing brother, and he knew enough first aid to proceed on his own.
Sam's right hand was still pressed firmly against Dean's heaving, sweat-dampened chest, and he slid it up under his brother's jaw while sliding his left hand and leg under and behind the elder for leverage. Once he was halfway on the bed, Sam tilted his brother forward enough to slip in between Dean and the pillows. Grasping his big bro's jaw firmly in his right hand, the younger Winchester used his left hand to maneuver the struggling body onto its right side.
As soon as Dean was turned, Sam heard a gurgling cough as the vomit that had been pooling in his brother's throat bubbled out onto his hand. His foot slipped, kicking the nightstand and causing the lamp to shatter onto the floor. He wrapped his left arm around Dean's trunk and pulled his brother tightly against him as he tried to turn the elder's head to clear his airway. More vomit, followed by a deep, ragged breath.
"That's it, big brother," Sam encouraged. He was sickened that his voice sounded so weak and uncertain. He hated feeling this helpless and scared, but being strong had always been Dean's job, so Sam was no good at that either.
Dean's head snapped back, catching Sam squarely in the mouth. Fresh blood ran onto his tongue from the cuts in his lips, but all he could think was, God I hope my teeth didn't cut his head. The sudden, sharp pain cleared his mind considerably, and he took a deep breath, willing himself to take control of his emotions.
As the convulsions continued, Sam became aware of the fact that both brothers were in imminent danger of crashing off the bed and onto the floor. He tightened his grip around Dean's chest and pulled the elder against his body, keeping them both tilted to the right so that Dean could breathe. With his face buried in the crook of his brother's neck, Sam held on for dear life, willing the pain to go away.
His eyes shut tightly with the effort of keeping them both safely nested into the pillows, and he let himself breathe in Dean like perfume, latching onto his brother's essence as though it were his soul and willing it to linger there until help could arrive. The scent was that much more pungent for the searing heat that radiated through them.
The agonized, keening noise that had been incessantly grating on Sam's eardrums began to subside just about the time that he heard sirens and footsteps in the hall.
"Back here!" Sam yelled, relieved tears threatening through the quiver in his voice.
Sam wasn't sure how long he'd been there, clutching his brother against him, but even the dim light from the hall had become a glaring, otherworldly beacon to his exhausted body. The first paramedic stopped in the doorway, blocking out enough light to stand in stark silhouette as he looked inside, and Sam thought he knew then what angels must look like.
One medic entered the room and was kneeling at the side of the bed in front of Dean when the second came in. Sam wasn't aware of how tightly he'd been holding onto his brother until the EMT proceeded to try and loosen his grip.
"Son," the medic said gently, "I'm trying to help. You're gonna have to let go now."
Sam might have resisted, might have tightened his embrace against the prying hands, but he was too exhausted. He had no way of knowing how long he'd been at it already, and as soon as he released his hold on Dean's chest, he felt himself fall back heavily, almost plummeting off the other side of the bed as his muscles ceased to support even their own weight. He took a half a dozen whooping breaths, as much to ward off a panic attack as to feed his oxygen-starved body, and willed himself to swing into a sitting position.
It took a moment for the younger brother to feel his feet connect with the cold, hardwood floor and a few more moments for the room to right itself around those feet. When the vertigo of exertion passed, Sam knelt on the floor beside Dean who was now prone. The first paramedic, a thirty-something year old man with an athletic build and long, dark sideburns was holding Dean's head steady while the second, a middle-aged brunette woman with a plump, motherly look about her, inserted a speculum between the older brother's teeth. Once the patient's mouth was held securely open, the woman slid her latex glove clad fingers inside and cleared away whatever vomit might still be obstructing Dean's airway.
That finished, the speculum was removed, and the male EMT pressed Dean's shoulders into the floor.
"How long has he been like this?" the man asked.
Sam struggled to estimate a time frame. He looked at the clock and vaguely remembered the time on the microwave when he'd removed the bowl of soup earlier. That had been fifteen minutes ago. "At least fifteen minutes," Sam ventured shakily, "But I don't know how long he was like that before I found him," he admitted guiltily. I knew his fever was too high. I should've checked on him sooner.
"Has he been ill?" The woman questioned, prepping a hypodermic needle in order to administer some type of injection.
"Yeah," Sam said. "He picked up the chicken pox; first started showing symptoms about three days ago."
"Has he ever had the chicken pox before?"
Sam nodded, "We both had 'em when we were kids."
"He's your brother, then?" The woman deduced.
"Yes, ma'am," Sam mumbled, feeling overwhelmed as he watched Dean's pale face contort with pain and exertion.
"What's his name?" She asked succinctly.
"Dean," Sam replied, and anticipating the next question, "He's twenty-seven. And he's allergic to penicillin."
"And you are?"
"Sam," he said, though he felt like Sammy just then.
The woman's professional demeanor faded momentarily as she put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Well, Sam, I'm Donna and this is my partner Jeffrey. We're gonna do everything we can to help your brother." Turning to the needle in her hand, she lifted it and tapped it a few times before squirting a small amount of liquid out to remove any air bubbles. "I'm giving Dean an anti-convulsant drug to hopefully stop the seizure so that we can better assess his condition."
Sam nodded slowly. "Do you have any idea what could be causing this?" He asked hesitantly.
Jeffrey answered as Donna concentrated on administering the injection and trying to read Dean's vitals. "Probably the fever. I'm reading 104 in the ear canal. Could also be complications from the chicken pox. The virus behaves differently in some individuals. We just have to get him safely to the hospital and let the doctors do the diagnosing."
Within a few minutes the seizure seemed to stop, and the paramedics quickly maneuvered Dean onto a gurney and headed out to the ambulance. Sam quickly fumbled around, grabbing Dean's clothes, their cell phones, and, at the last moment, remembered to take Dean's wallet.
There were already several neighbors gathering on the front lawn when the paramedics and Sam made it out to the porch. Sam didn't acknowledge any of them as he pushed toward the ambulance. He was about to climb inside beside his brother, desperate to stay close, when Donna held out her hand. "Sorry, Sam, our insurance doesn't allow us to take riders. You'll have to follow behind." She leaned forward and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "And it would probably be best if you got one of these nice people to give you a ride, Son. You don't look like you're in any condition to drive."
Sam stumbled back, confused and exhausted. He wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. Surely she wasn't telling him that he couldn't be with his brother? Dean needed him. He was about to protest when a strong hand settled on his shoulder from behind.
"I'll drive you," an unfamiliar voice offered.
Sam nodded without turning around, and watched in disbelief as the ambulance door slammed shut and the sirens began to wail. He felt himself being led to a waiting vehicle as the ambulance spun out of the driveway. He was pushed into a car that he didn't recognize and felt it start into motion, his eyes still locked on the back of the medical transport. As the car pulled out in pursuit, it ran over the curb and Sam's head struck the window, shocking him out of his confused haze.
He looked over at the vehicle's driver, a fiftyish looking man with a graying mustache and a portly build. The man saw his confused expression. "I'm Dr. George, Dean's Econ professor. I was concerned about your brother after he didn't answer a single question on the exam I gave the other day, and then, when he wasn't in class today, I decided to drop by and see if he was all right." Seeing Sam's expression of suspicious disbelief, he added, "It's not something I usually do, but I drive down this street all the time, recognized the car in front of the house, so I knew he lived here. Besides, you're brother's not just any student. But I'm sure you know that."
Sam couldn't help the amused smirk that twisted the corners of his mouth. The cuts in his lips protested and turned the grin into more of a grimace. "Yeah. Dean does have a way of making his presence known and missed." Sam could just imagine Dean's smart mouth in a classroom, especially a lecture hall filled with blushing girls.
"Well, that he does," the professor agreed. "But he's also one of the best students I've ever had. I don't know how he does it. I swear most of the time he's making eyes at the girls in the front row, but he's always right on his game. Usually knows the answers to my questions before I even ask. I'm really surprised he didn't go to a four year college instead of tech school."
Sam's smirk had turned to amused skepticism, laced with pride. "Well, family stuff came up. He never got to go. But to tell you the truth," Sam offered, "Dean never really showed any interest in school. He's only doing it now because I asked him to."
Dr. George frowned, pulling into the ambulance bay of the hospital. "That's a real shame. Your brother has a mind like a steel trap. I hope he's all right."
"Me, too," Sam said, his expression changing back to worried. "I'm Sam," he offered, realizing that he hadn't introduced himself. The car stopped behind the ambulance. "Thanks for the ride."
"No problem, Sam. Would you like me to come in and sit with you? I don't have another class today."
Sam just shook his head. "No. It's been just me and Dean for a long time, now. I'm kinda getting used to this gig. And, well, he'd probably die of embarrassment if he knew you were here. Ruins his whole image, you know."
The professor chuckled knowingly. "I get that about him," he said. Then he fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. "At least let me give you money for a cab ride home," George offered. "I know how tight money is for students these days."
Sam raised his hand to refuse, but took the money anyway. He understood that it was the professor's way of helping the only way he could. "Thanks," he said, genuinely grateful, then he slid out and hurried to catch up with the paramedics.
XXX
Nearly an hour later, Sam still hadn't heard anything from the doctors about his brother's condition, and he was beginning to wish he'd allowed the professor to stay. It was true that he'd gotten pretty good at hanging around hospital waiting rooms, but that didn't mean it got any easier. He just couldn't help but think he was somehow to blame for what had happened.
Finally, a doctor emerged from the Emergency Care Center and seemed to focus his attention on Sam. The younger brother stood up hastily, forgetting that he was sometimes intimidating at his full height, and apologized with his eyes as the doctor stepped back in surprise.
"Are you treating my brother?" Sam asked. "Is he okay? What's going on? No one will tell me anything, and it's been almost an hour." He realized he was rambling and probably looked have crazed with worry, so he stood down, took a deep breath and continued. "I'm sorry. It's just. . .I thought it was just chicken pox, you know?"
The doctor picked up on the guilty inflections in Sam's voice. "Are you Sam, then?" The doctor asked.
Sam nodded. "Dean's my brother. What's wrong with him?"
"Sam, I'm Dr. Grant, and I want very much to help your brother, but I need to get some more information from you," the man stated, trying to soothe Sam's concern by looking calmly into his eyes.
"You mean you don't know what's wrong with him?" Sam asked, his heart pounding in panic.
"Sit down, please, Son," the doctor said, taking a seat himself as he did so. He turned to face Sam as the younger brother took a chair beside him. "Dean does have what appears to be the chicken pox. As for what caused the seizure, we can't be certain yet. It could just be that his fever spiked. . ."
Sam sensed his hesitation, "Or what?" He probed.
"Or it could be any number of rare complications that sometimes occur with this virus," the doctor explained.
"Complications?" Sam asked. "Everybody gets the chicken pox, right? I've never heard of any complications."
"There are some, but like I said, they're rare," Grant said. "Occasionally, the varicella virus can cause pneumonia or encephalitis. However, this usually only occurs in very young children or patients with compromised immunity due to some other underlying factor," he pontificated. "I need you to tell me everything you know about your brother's medical history. We're doing blood tests and a lumbar tap to find out what the immediate problem is, but if there is an underlying factor that we don't know about, we need to know sooner rather than later."
Medical history as in massive heart attacks caused by electrocution? Or dozens of gaping wounds stitched by family members instead of doctors? Or how about half a dozen concussions and at least three serious gunshot wounds? And does rock salt cause permanent damage, cuz he may have caught a chest full of that on at least one occasion?
Sam dropped his gaze, shielding his eyes from the doctor's as he tried to decide, based on his own knowledge of medicine, what he could safely tell the man that would help. Finally he just shook his head, "There's nothing I can think of that would make him more susceptible to the kind of complications you mentioned," he said at last. "In fact, like I told the EMT's, Dean's already had the chicken pox, so I figured he'd only get a mild case this time."
The statement hung in the air momentarily, and something occurred to Sam that he hadn't allowed himself to consider before. "But I was away at college for four years," he muttered softly. "I didn't really keep in touch. If something happened to him then. . .I probably wouldn't know about it." Probably wasn't the word for it. Sam knew that anything that might have happened while he was at Stanford would have never been mentioned. Even if someone had tried to call him at the time, he wouldn't have answered. A sick feeling of dread began to creep over him. God, please let this just be a fever.
The doctor looked defeated for a moment. He'd really been hoping for some answers. "Well, if we do find an infection like pneumonia or encephalitis, we are going to have to give Dean antibiotics. His chart says that he's allergic to penicillin. Is he sensitive to anything else that you know of?"
Sam started to shake his head, then remembered that Dean had a MedicAlert card in his wallet. When they were younger and Dean had nearly died after being given penicillin by a doctor who hadn't known about the allergy, Dad had insisted that Dean get one of those bracelets to wear. Dean had hated the thing with a passion and constantly found ways to lose it. Finally, some techies had figured out a way to encode that kind of information onto a card that could be swiped and read like a credit card. Sam had seen Dean give it to doctors on other occasions, but hadn't remembered it himself until now.
Feeling sheepish fishing through Dean's wallet, Sam finally managed to find the card. "Here, anything he's allergic to should be on here. Dad always made sure he kept that thing updated," Sam said, only momentarily saddened at the thought of his dead father.
"That's perfect," Dr. Grant said. "At least it's something. Why don’t you come with me while I find out what the database has on file."
Sam nodded and jumped up, not willing to let the man out of his sight, being that he was the only one who knew what was going on with Dean. The doctor led him to a desk, and they both waited patiently while the card was processed.
Sam didn't want to admit it, but the whole process made him nervous. He bit at his fingernails and fidgeted on his feet. Somehow, the situation was too much like trying to pass a scammed credit card, and no matter how many times he'd done that, Sam had never been able to keep the butterflies out of his stomach while waiting for the approval to come through.
After several minutes of twitchiness, Sam nearly jumped as the printer started running beside him. The doctor leaned over to read the printout as it came out of the device, and his face scowled in concern. Sam glanced at it himself, and was surprised to see that there appeared to be a lot more than penicillin on the list. He hoped the amount of ink on the page was just the equivalent of doctor speak; mostly extraneous and unintelligible.
Dr. Grant looked at the feedout, his expression changing gradually from one of curiosity to one of dawning realization. Grim realization at that. "I think we have a problem here," he said finally. "It seems Dean's sensitive to quite a large number of drugs."
"Yeah, I guess, but now that you know, then you can make sure you don't give him any of those, right?" Sam asked. Wasn't that the whole purpose of having the card in the first place?
"Yes, that's true," the doctor granted. "But these are all chemotherapy drugs. The only way he'd know that he has a sensitivity to any of these chemicals would be for him to have undergone cancer treatment in the past. And as much as I hate for you to find out like this, a relapse of cancer could certainly be the cause of Dean's current condition."
XXX
No heroic measures! I'll give him friggin' heroic measures!
Sam's jaw clenched so tightly that his head pounded with the strain, and for the first time in months, his headache was really a welcome distraction. His eyes narrowed in determination and rage. The poor black dog had no idea what it was in for as Sam crept silently through the brush toward where the creature lay feasting on the carcass of what had probably been someone's pet.
Sam slunk in a predatory stance that was not his own. It was Dean's. The younger brother knew it all too well from years of following just one step behind his elder, confidently shielded by Dean's invisible brotherly cone of protection. Sam subconsciously mimicked that stealthy, lithe grace down to the carefully coordinated twitch of each and every individual muscle fiber. He was the hunter now, the lone gunman, the point man, not just the flank anymore.
Though he moved silently and agilely through the thicket, he was screaming so loudly that he was certain the leaves themselves trembled in response. He had enough pent up rage and fear inside him from the previous three days' events that every cell in his body quivered erratically.
Sam's initial shock and anger at discovering that Dean had kept the big "C" a secret from him all this time had burned off quickly. He'd been too busy with the details, the complications, the friggin' red tape that had invariably added insult to injury, as they had at every other such instance in their short lives.
Dr. Grant, upon realizing that Sam had not known about his brother's previous battle with cancer had immediately clammed up, fearing he had already breached patient confidentiality by revealing his findings. Of course, being that Sam and Dean were now business partners as well as brothers, Sam had quickly gotten the doc off the hook.
A few phone calls confirmed that Sam had been given Power of Attorney over his brother's affairs, including medical emergencies. Dean also had Power of Attorney over Sam's. They'd both felt a little odd filing the contracts at the time, since they'd spent their entire lives ducking the system and flying under the radar, but they had a fledgling company to protect now, and really, they should have done it a long time ago.
It was a good thing they had done it, too, because Dean had been unconscious, primarily due to sedation for the last three days, and was unable to make any decisions for himself regarding treatment. The chicken pox, as it turned out, was really shingles, same virus, different manifestation. The condition was excruciatingly painful because it focalized in nerve fibers. The pain, combined with the fact that Dean's seizure, most likely caused by his fever, had severely taxed his entire central nervous system, had warranted the sedation. There was little else that could be done to ease his suffering for the time being, and Sam had suffered silently beside his fallen brother day and night.
Lymphoma. The cancer had made Dean's immunity to the chicken pox virus nearly null, which is why it had hit him so hard. God, I should've known. They should've friggin' told me! Not that I made myself available to hear it.
Already in an advanced stage. Why the hell didn't we know something was wrong? Because we're freaks, that's why. All the symptoms, night sweats, weakness, fatigue, every last thing on the list was something they each battled daily in one form or another. When were they ever not just coming back from some sort of injury or demonic influence? We should've had checkups once in awhile. Hell, Dean should've known that he needed to see a doctor regularly to catch any signs of relapse. Stupid, stubborn, son of . . .And that was as far as that train of thought ever went, because one look at Dean's pale, drawn features as the older brother lay deathly still in that carefully sterilized hospital room just made Sam want to. . .
Dammit! I can't believe this! Things were just starting to come together for us, and now this!
It hadn't taken Sam long to discover the details of his brother's previous battle with cancer. Every time one of them needed medical attention, John had always insisted that the records be sent to their "family doctor." Said doctor was actually their Dad's friend Joshua who was actually a doctor of something. Sam never could remember exactly what obscure degree the crazy old coot held. The medical information had always been available. Sam could have found out about this long ago, but who ever looked at his own medical files, or his brother's for that matter?
It had turned out that Dean had been diagnosed not long after Sam had gone to Stanford. Hell, he probably already had it when I left. I was so damned worried about getting the hell out that I didn't even notice he was sick. I bet he would've noticed if I had been sick.
As far as Sam could tell, the doctors had tried several types of treatment that first time Dean was ill. None of them had worked. Dean and his freaky, messed up immune system had nearly died from the chemotherapy. Several different chemicals had been tried, but each time they had proven more toxic to Dean than to the cancer. Radiation had stopped being an option once the lymphoma had spread.
In fact, all of the medical records in the file Sam had scoured meticulously suggested that Dean's cancer had been terminal that first time. Yet, somehow, he'd been in remission for over three years. Sam wasn't especially surprised. He'd said it himself, the Winchesters knew things that doctors didn't know. The reason for Dean's first recovery from the cancer most likely had something supernatural at the root of it. All they could do, for the time being, was wait for Dean to wake up and tell them what had caused that first remission.
They'd have to allow him to recover from the shingles before they could start treatment, anyway. So, for now it was a waiting game, and Sam was going insane with nothing but his own thoughts to accompany him in his vigil.
In his heart, Sam had forgiven Dean for not telling him this one dark secret. Well, forgiven was probably not the right word for it. What he actually felt was complete inability to hold a grudge against his brother while Dean was lying there looking so helpless and vulnerable.
That didn't keep Sam from wanting to put a fist through a wall every time he allowed himself to leave the hospital room, however. For the first two days, he'd managed to stifle that urge and keep his anger at bay. But, having entirely too much time on his hands with nothing to do but worry, had caused Sam to dig a little deeper into his brother's medical file, and the last thing he found there had sent him over the edge.
Storming into the ICU and pummeling his unconscious brother to a bloody pulp not being a viable option at the moment, Sam had stalked angrily out of the hospital in search of something else to unleash his rage upon. Poor black dog had been on their list of "baddies worth taking out, but not an immediate threat to humans" for weeks. Sam had chosen the target based on its known proximity to the hospital, but he'd mentally noted that a black dog was a pretty good money earner since it was one of the few things they hunted that didn't completely disappear when they killed it. A black dog skull and paws would bring in thousands through one of their private buyers, and now there were medical bills to think about.
Do not resuscitate, my ass! Selfish bastard! Damn good thing that the Do Not Resuscitate order filed by Dean Berkowitz after his heart attack cannot be tied to Johnathan Dean, or I'd have to kill him myself. Sam was fuming. Only the fact that his brother's current alias was not bound to the confounded DNR order gave him enough control over his emotions to allow him to maintain his cover until he was in position to make his move.
He crept ever closer to the unwary quarry. The black dog was making so much noise tearing at the flesh of its latest meal that it would never be able to appreciate the painstaking care Sam took in executing his sneak attack. Sam himself could not appreciate the hunt at the moment, because his body moved on instinct alone while his mind warred with another enemy entirely.
No heroic measures! I can't believe he did that! After everything I did to bring him back in the first place. . .
Part Two
Author:
tru_faith_lostRating: PG-13
Pairings: None, Gen fic with Dean, Sam, and several OC's.
Words: 45,800 in five linked parts
Warnings: Language, Reposted
Disclaimers: No profit or defamation made or implied.
Summary: AU set post-Season 1, but written during Season 1 so anything that happened after Shadow is not only speculation but highly inaccurate. The Winchester boys have defeated the demon and lost their father but come out the other side with a successful family business that allows them to get paid for hunting and a bright future. Dean's past might change all that when he falls seriously ill, and Sam finds out, it's not the first time. Then it's a race against time for a cure only a dead man knows.
A/N: Firstly, yes, this is a repost. I originally took it down, because, despite the fact that people really liked it, I feel like I've changed as a writer since then, and every time I read it, I see things wrong with it that make my skin crawl. (Bad segues, gaping plot holes, use of italics out the wazoo, use of italics for inner voice, POV switching, completely fabricated medical and mythological details, and UGH.) But people have been requesting it, and I keep filing all your little messages away so that I can reply to all of you at once, and then do something stupid like clean out my inbox. I'll still gladly give a file of this story to anyone who wants it, or you can purchase it in Zine for from Agents with Style, but I feel really awkward asking people for their email addresses. I'd be much more comfortable having it online so you can read at leisure and not have to disclose your personal information to me. I'm kind of a private person in that regard.I haven't fixed this at all from it's original version, despite the fact that I still can't read it without cringing, so hopefully it is as you originally found it, except now it's on LJ. I have no problem with people saving it to their hard drives, etc, or sharing it with friends, just do not repost it in any form without my permission. K?
Living Out Loud
We all have a point to make, and we can only make it by living. Live with purpose, live with joy, and live with love. Live in extremes. Live on the line. But don’t live alone. Make your point, and make it loudly, Dean. And make sure there’s someone there to hear it. Because giving our lives is not nearly as profitable as sharing them.
Julia, (Wild Child, H.T. Marie)
"Sam!" Dean called. "Heads up! He's right behind me." The older Winchester brother, crashed into the clearing, the forest seemingly alive behind him.
"I got him," Sam said coolly, staring down the barrel of his .45 as the werewolf charged out of the underbrush. Dean ducked and rolled, but not before the creature swiped a paw across his back. Oh well, more pictures for the website, he grunted with grim satisfaction as the shot echoed through the woods, followed by the thud of a heavy body falling.
It took only a split second for Dean to spring back to his feet, and Sam was immediately at his side. They converged on the fallen werewolf with their faces set in determination as they fumbled in their pockets. They had only until the creature's last breath to collect their artifacts, and they didn't like to leave without getting paid.
Dean unsheathed his gleaming knife and cleanly sliced off both of the monster's pointed lupine ears, followed by three or four clumps of fur. Sam pulled a tin snips from his duffel bag and cleanly snipped off the animal's dagger-like claws, catching them in a plastic bag as he worked.
Both brothers stood up, grinning with satisfaction as the werewolf's chest collapsed on its final breath. Within seconds, there was nothing but a pale human corpse remaining, and though the boys disliked the fact that killing a werewolf inevitably meant killing the human inside, they understood that the soul of that human was finally released from the curse that had tortured it.
Only one task remained, and since Dean had lost the game of rock, paper, scissors they'd played before beginning the hunt, the honor was all his. He grimaced as he stooped over the body. Using his same knife, he opened the gunshot wound over the corpse's heart, and after a few minutes of digging around, retrieved the silver bullet. The bullet and its spent casing both went into the baggie with the claws.
Sam patted his brother on the shoulder affectionately as Dean stood and they took inventory of their cache. "Not bad for a few hours work," the younger brother smirked. He took a moment to pull at the tears in Dean's jacket, satisfying himself that the claws hadn't found flesh. "You need to work on your escape and evade maneuvers, though, big brother. A little closer, and we'd have had doctor bills to cover. That really cuts into our profit margin, you know. I think it may be time we looked into getting some insurance."
Dean laughed sarcastically. "Yeah, like they wouldn't take one look at us and throw us out on our scarred up, uninsurable asses."
Sam shrugged and nodded in agreement with a smirk. "Yeah, but at least now we could afford it if we qualified." He looked approvingly at their collection of artifacts. "At fifty dollars a claw, three hundred per ear, I'd say we cleared over a thousand dollars. Twice that if we remember to get those newspapers with the stories about the murdered hikers before we leave this 'burg."
"That's my boy," Dean grinned, clapping Sam on the back. "Always looking out for our bottom line." They gathered up their supplies and headed back to the car. There was a lightness to their steps that had become normal for them. And anyone who didn't know that the brother's had just dispatched a deadly creature of the night would have thought they'd just clocked out on a Friday night and were on their way to cash their paychecks and get drunk.
It had been six months since they'd buried their father, and despite Sam's earlier statements to the contrary, the younger Winchester brother had decided not to return to Stanford after all. The demon was dead, yes, but so was their father, and Dean himself had nearly been lost as well. Suddenly law school hadn't seemed as important as family, and Dean was all the family Sam had left. For once, that was enough.
Sam no longer felt that he needed to remove himself entirely from the hunting. After all, as Dean had pointed out, there would always be things to hunt, people to save, causes worth taking up. Even if he had wanted to, which he swore he didn't, Sam knew the mental powers he'd developed would never let him ignore the crusade his brother had taken up on principle alone. If he had gone back to Stanford, he'd have probably been driven crazy by the vision/nightmares. He'd never been able to ignore them, and now he didn't have to.
They fought now for different reasons, but they fought together, these Winchester brothers, and they were glad to do it. It was a service to humanity, not a burden, and a greater service could not be performed by virtue of some prestigious degree. Prestige was not a priority either. They hunted now, because they could, because they cared. They hunted to make a difference, because neither wanted a normal life until normal was more. They needed normal to be better than it was. Only when children could sleep in their beds without fearing what went bump in the night and families weren't torn apart by loss and grief that originated in the lair of darkness could the Winchester brothers accept normal. When normal wasn't cold, wasn't empty, wasn't such a lie, then they'd quit.
It was an unspoken pact between the boys. When they stopped caring, they'd stop hunting, and until then, they'd go together against whatever beckoned in the night. It wasn't their job, wasn't their duty, wasn't their vendetta anymore. It was their passion. A passion that, at last, they shared. And they never spoke of it more than the one time, right after their father's funeral, when Sam had revealed his desire to stay.
They never spoke of the contingencies or possibilities, the what ifs, like what if one of us meets a girl, what if one of us gets hurt, what if one of us dies, because life was unpredictable, and they'd take whatever it threw at them and deal with it in its time. They also never talked about forever, though it was implied, because to do so would be to insinuate some kind of contract or obligation between them, and neither would ever have the other believe that there was anything other than love and trust holding them together.
Still, Sam had insisted that if they were going to hunt the big baddies, then they were going to do it within the confines of the law, or at least they were going to try. That meant, of course, that credit card scams were no longer going to be viable sources of income, and pool would be played for entertainment purposes only. Two intelligent young men like themselves should be able to figure out a way to earn a decent living.
Ironically, it had been a sleepless night in another seedy motel room that had inspired Sam's inner entrepreneur. Randomly googling his normal search words, he'd come across, of all things, a haunted saddle. There was some strange story behind the thing, how a horse thief had been hanged and his saddle had been passed down through generations. The guy who had it swore the maid would not clean the den where it was displayed. The thing that had drawn Sam's attention the most, however, was that the haunted horse gear was not being offered for investigation or exorcism. It was for sale, on eBay of all places. And it was drawing bids.
Possibly it was the fact that it had been three a.m. and Sam still hadn't managed to fall asleep, but he'd chuckled a little to himself and wondered, on a whim, if any of the junk they'd collected over the years would be worth anything to amateur ghost hounds and paranormal enthusiasts around the world. Of course, he couldn’t risk passing on a curse or actual haunting to some poor unsuspecting person, but some artifact of an actual haunting, with documentation like photographs or something, might prove valuable, he'd thought.
So, he'd dug out a couple of bloody crossbow bolts that had splintered and were useless for future hunting excursions, copied a few pages of text from Dad's journal describing how the bolts had been used to take down a vampire, and listed them on eBay himself. They'd brought in five hundred dollars, and Sam had sworn that setting up the account for the transaction was the last thing he'd ever use the scammed credit cards for.
Things had kind of snowballed from there. Paranormal posh was all the rage these days in the homes of rich eccentrics and basement ghost hunters. Sam and Dean just provided the accessories. A few peculiar trinkets with documentation that made them as real as one cared to believe they were, made Brothers in Blood Artifacts, as they'd named their company, an overnight success.
As a compromise between Dean and Sam, Dean had agreed to take a few courses in business and marketing, while Sam took a few on business and corporate law. It really hadn't put a damper in the hunting, since the classes were only a couple of days during the week, and most of their hunting could be scheduled around them. Usually.
They were actually doing all right, considering the fact that their lives had been completely turned upside down just six months prior. They'd taken over the lease on the downstairs of an older two story house in Madison, Wisconsin, took classes at MATC, and did their long distance cases on the weekends or referred them to Dad's contacts that were closer to the action.
"So, big test in the morning, huh?" Sam asked as Dean slouched in the passenger seat of the Impala trying to focus on the Econ notes with his pen light. "We coulda waited until tomorrow night to bag this werewolf, you know. We might be doing all right, but we can't really afford for you to have to re-take a course because you spent too much time in the field."
"Oh ye of little faith, baby brother," Dean scoffed. "You're not the only one in this family with brains, you know." He tapped his head suggestively as he raised his eyebrows, "I got this stuff down. It's all right up here." He clicked the pen light off for emphasis. "Now do me a favor and shut up. I'm gonna try to catch some shut eye on the way home."
"Dean, it's like 10:00. You never go to sleep this early."
"Lay off. Big test tomorrow," Dean said, trying to ignore the growing ache in his head.
Sam seemed to accept that answer, and they drove in silence the rest of the way.
XXX
Sam was gonna be pissed. Dean was pretty pissed himself at the moment. The whole thing was supposed to be no big deal. Of all the possible outcomes to the situation, complete and utter failure had not been one he'd considered in the least. Yet, there he was staring blankly at the test paper as though he'd never attended a single lecture or done any of the homework. And that was the worst part. He had attended class, and he had done the homework.
School had never been a place of shining achievement for Dean Winchester, but that had been primarily attributable to the fact that he quite frankly had never given a rat's ass about anything that didn't specifically aid in the hunter lifestyle. He'd always been fairly certain, as had John and Sam, that he could have done quite well with academia in general, if he had just put a little effort into it. Now however, he'd actually made the effort.
Dean didn't care much for the school part of his deal with Sam, but he agreed that the compromise was worthwhile if it kept Sam in his life, and it wasn't like the courses were difficult. At least he hadn't thought so. Until now, he'd been sailing through the curriculum, so he couldn’t understand why he just couldn't hold a train of thought at the moment. He'd tried several times to read the questions on the page and found himself just re-reading them as though they were written in a language he'd never learned.
He found himself glancing at the clock and knew that he was screwed. The class was almost over, and he hadn't answered a single question. Dean felt eyes on him and looked to his right where little Daniella was seated next to her mother. The seven-year-old had been in class twice that week. She was just getting over the chicken pox, and her mother, Marcy, had been unable to find a babysitter. Marcy had thought it harmless to bring the little girl along, since Daniella was no longer feverish, and all the adults in the class had already had the chicken pox.
Dean noticed that the little girl, her hair braided neatly because her normal loose curls irritated the scabbed over lesions left by the virus on her skin, had looked up from her coloring book and was staring at his blank paper. She shook her head knowingly and looked at Dean like a disappointed parent. He imagined that to be exactly the way Sam was going to look at him when he got back to the house and told his brother that he'd failed the test. He almost handed the whole paper over to the seven-year-old. She could probably at least fill in the blank that had been provided for his name. For some reason, even that hadn't been filled in yet.
Dean turned back to his test and felt the whole room shift along with his turning head. Damn, maybe I'm coming down with something. Suddenly, he felt much better. That had to be it. He'd picked up a virus or something, and that was, no doubt, the reason he couldn't concentrate on the test. After all, he'd had all of the information dead to rights the night before. And he did feel a little hot. Until now, he'd passed off the flushed feeling in his face as test anxiety. As much as he hated the idea of being ill, he preferred it to the feeling of complete inadequacy and failure he'd been forcing down since the exam began.
And Sam would forgive him for being sick, if Dean decided to let Sam in on the information. Dean was beginning to think, however, that he wouldn't be allowed the luxury of suffering in silence on this one. His head was beginning to pound, and he felt a cold sweat creeping over his brow.
Finally, the test period was over. Dean braced himself against the desk to stand and tried his best to mingle in with the few other students unfortunate enough to be still in the room. He grinned casually at Dr. George, the professor, who was looking at him questioningly. Dean was usually the first student to finish an exam, so it was suspicious to see him straggling out at the end this way. Not wanting to have to make excuses for himself, Dean just mixed his test paper in with a stack that was already on the desk and made his way out of the lecture hall. He'd call the professor later, when he could think clearly again.
Sam was waiting outside, leaning against he Impala with his eyebrows raised expectantly. Dean approached, ducking into the upturned collar of his leather jacket as if to ward off a chill, doing his best to hide the flush on his cheeks and the slight hitch in his giddyup that had developed since that morning. He was beginning to realize that what he'd dismissed earlier as only pre-test anxiety had probably been the first symptoms of whatever virus was now festering inside him, and it was probably already past the point where he could convincingly conceal it from his brother. God, he hated being mother henned.
Dean was about to put on his most convincingly overconfident, pompous grin to tell his brother that all was well in the land of academia when a voice from behind him forced him to turn back around.
"Dean!" Marcy called. The thirty-something woman, crossed the street hurriedly, dragging little Daniella by her tiny hand as she looked back and forth for breaks in the traffic.
"Hey, Marcy," Dean nodded, in acknowledgement. "This is my brother Sam," he offered.
Sam, ever the gentleman, offered his hand, "Nice to meet you," he greeted politely.
Marcy nodded to Sam, and turned back to Dean. "That test was a real bear, wasn't it?" She asked, searching Dean's gaze for confirmation. "I thought it was just me, but when I saw you were there 'til the end, I knew it had to be pretty rough. You're usually the first to leave."
Dean tried to ignore Sam's eyes boring into the back of his head as he shrugged. "Yeah, well, I just wanted to make sure I worded everything right," he dismissed.
"Oh," Marcy said, looking deflated, "Maybe it was just me, then. I've been so distracted with Daniella's chicken pox that I didn't really get caught up on the reading. The trials of single parenting, I guess."
Dean could tell that she probably wanted to talk longer, Marcy was a bit of a flirt, not unlike himself, and he'd probably led her to believe he was interested in having dinner sometime. He really wasn't, but she'd been kind enough to switch seats with him the week he'd hobbled into class with a sprained ankle. Well, the injury had actually been a twelve inch gash on the back of his calf muscle caused by yet another Wendigo claw, but Dean had, of course, passed his limp off as a sprained ankle. He'd been grateful that Marcy had allowed him to sit on the end of the row so that he could hang the stiff leg out into the aisle. To express his gratitude he'd smiled his usual charming Dean smile, and she hadn't missed the opportunity to chat him up since.
He couldn't bear to tell her she just wasn't his type. He wasn't actually sure what his type was, since lately he'd entertained quite a few very nice young ladies and had liked them all pretty much equally. He supposed that meant none of them had really been his type. Or maybe they were. Maybe his type would always be the kind of girl he could walk away from without a second thought.
At any rate, Dean was glad that Sam was standing there, waiting impatiently for Dean to get in the car. Not to be rude, but the older brother was really not feeling up to entertaining a chatty Cathy at the moment.
". . .dinner?" Marcy's voice forced its way into Dean's mind. He hadn't even realized she was speaking.
"Hmmm?" He asked, not even having the presence of mind to disguise his lack of attention. Tact required much too much thinking. But he didn't have to think about Marcy's reaction, because her hurt disappointment was immediately apparent. Dean blinked slowly, waiting between each flutter of his eyelids for lucidity to return, but no such luck. He knew he was probably supposed to say something, only he had no clue what they were even talking about. He wasn't really even aware of how much time had passed until Sam cleared his throat suggestively and pushed his brother from behind.
Marcy's expression changed from one of disappointment to one of concern as she noticed Dean's lack of focus. She furrowed her brow and stepped closer to the older brother. "Are you feeling all right? You look a little flushed?"
Marcy reached up and put the back of her hand against Dean's cheek, and when Dean neither moved away or answered Marcy's question, Sam realized something was up as well. Dean hated for anyone to even suggest that he might be less than invincible, so for him to allow himself to come under such close scrutiny without extricating himself, physically or verbally, was a clear indicator that he was not feeling up to snuff.
Sam stepped around beside Marcy and stooped slightly to take a look himself. To Dean's credit, Sam noticed a small quirky smile pull at his brother's mouth in an effort to dismiss their concern, but it was too little and took far too long to reach through the glazed-over hazel eyes.
"You look like crap, man," Sam grinned with a shake of his head. There really wasn't anything funny about it, but Sam's worry always seemed to originate in the same portion of his brain that produced laughter, and he'd never really been able to separate the two expressions convincingly.
"Yeah, you feel warm, Dean," Marcy observed. "You're probably coming down with something." She looked down at her daughter and back at Dean with a hint of guilt morphing her features. "God, I hope you haven't caught Daniella's chicken pox," she said.
Finally the blaring attention seemed to break through the fog in Dean's mind. He arched back with his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, and snickered loudly. "Chicken pox! There's no way I've got the chicken pox," he scoffed openly, and even as he said it, a sick feeling of twisted irony worked its way into his stomach.
XXX
"Yup, it's the chicken pox, all right," Sam said. As soon as Dean had removed his trusty leather jacket, Sam had noticed several red lesions on his brother's forearms, and without the jacket's collar to duck behind, the older brother's flushed complexion was much more apparent.
"Can't be," Dean argued. "Already had chicken pox, same time you did."
"Yeah, well some people get 'em more than once. Guess you're irresistible to more than just women," Sam snickered.
"No. Not the chicken pox. That's a kid's disease," Dean scowled miserably.
"Anyone can get 'em, big brother. Most of us just get 'em out of the way when we're kids to spare us the humiliation of having them when we're adults." He grabbed his brother's arm and pointed to the red spots, raising an eyebrow knowingly as he did so. "Those are definitely chicken pox."
"Thanks so much for your expert diagnosis, Dr. Winchester," Dean grimaced, pulling his arm back. "But I want a second opinion."
"Fine, then, not chicken pox," Sam smirked. "Those itchy little bumps are just NotPox, then. Either way, you're sick."
"They aren't. . ." Dean looked at Sam with annoyance and raked a fingernail over his arm, "Great. They didn't itch until you brought it up. You working on some kind of mind control mojo, Obi-Wan?"
Sam laughed. At least his brother seemed to be more lucid than he had been earlier. That glazed-over, blank look was gone from Dean's features and had been replaced with bitter disgust. Dean hated being sick, and he hated it worse when it was something he couldn't hide. Chicken pox was definitely something that even Dean couldn't hide.
Dean crossed the creaking hardwood floor and bent over the sofa, reaching behind it for the guitar he kept leaning against the wall in the corner. He straightened back up and placed his guitar strap around his shoulder, fingers finding the frets expertly. He plopped back into the worn leather recliner and leaned back into its embrace, knees splayed slightly as he began to noodle out some improvised tune that he was, no doubt, making up as he went along.
Sam grinned knowingly. The guitar was Dean's escape. Sam had given it to his brother as a sort of housewarming present when they'd moved into the place. Dean had, of course, been embarrassed as hell when his baby brother had presented him with it, because, while he had always wanted to learn to play, the sensitive musical part of him was not something he readily acknowledged. The fact that Sam knew how much Dean wanted it and realized that the older brother would never give in to that want on his own had struck a chord inside of Dean that he wasn't used to hearing.
Dean was teaching himself to play, and even Sam had to admit that he seemed to have a talent for it. There were music books scattered all over the coffee table, something which occasionally raised a note of contention between the brothers, but Sam liked it best when Dean leaned back in the overstuffed chair and just played whatever came out. Somehow, the music that Dean made when his eyes were all faraway and introspective let Sam glimpse what lay behind those walls of self-preservation that Dean had become so adept at constructing. And Sam liked what he saw. Sometimes, like now, he felt almost like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation that his brother was having with himself.
"Dude, don't you have class or something?" Dean asked, continuing to thrum absently. Sam knew that meant, "Stop staring at me already," and he took the hint.
Sam threw up his hands in a dismissive gesture. "Just on my way out. I'll stop and pick up some Calamine lotion and Tylenol. Any requests? You're probably gonna be cooped up in here for the next week, so if there's anything you want. . ."
Dean just lifted his eyes and glared at his brother from beneath scowling eyelids.
"Never mind. I'm gone," Sam said, grabbing his book bag. "Just take it easy, and don't scratch; you'll scar."
A slight shrug of the shoulders as Dean leaned his head back into the chair cushions was all the reply Sam needed.
XXX
Three days later, Sam was beginning to wonder if NotPox was really a more accurate diagnosis for his brother's condition. The lesions on Dean's arms had spread to his chest and legs, but were really quite sparse. From what Sam remembered of having the chicken pox himself, the itchy little buggers had almost seemed to pile on top of each other. He had heard, however, that people who got the virus twice usually only got a mild case the second time.
Sam would have been grateful that the lesions were not terribly bad if the rest of Dean's symptoms hadn't become so worrisome. The fever had spiked to almost 103, and those moments of absent-mindedness seemed to be more frequent. Dean was never one to complain, but Sam could tell his brother was in pain from the way his hazel eyes squinted against even a sliver of light in the room and the way he moved stiffly and calculatedly as if willing himself to push through some ache that he didn't want Sam to see.
When the boys had both had the chicken pox the last time, Dean had been twelve and Sam eight, and though the itching had driven them both insane, the other symptoms had been rather negligible. In fact, they'd nearly driven their father off the deep end after a week of close confinement in which the boys had fought and wrestled as though the spots were only painted on. So, Sam was concerned that what should have been a milder case of the disease was really putting his brother through the ringer.
Sam closed his laptop. His head just wasn't up for studying at the moment, and it was about time to go and check on his brother. Some people were demanding when they were sick. Dean was just the opposite. If Sam didn't make a point of going in every couple of hours to assess his brother's condition, Dean would suffer in silence. That was just his way. He could have been puking blood, and he wouldn't have called for help.
Sam was just glad that, so far, he wasn't showing any signs of a relapse himself. That didn't really surprise him, though. Dean's immune system had always been wired differently than his or Dad's. When they were growing up, it seemed that Sam and John caught every cold or flu bug that came around, and Dean usually ended up taking care of them, because for some reason, he never caught what everyone else had. Then, out of the blue, the older brother would come down with something only he would catch, and unfortunately for Dean, he usually got something much worse than everyone else. And that didn’t' just apply to viruses and the like. Sam could remember at least three times when they'd eaten at some questionable establishment, and even though they'd all eaten the same thing, Dean had been the only one to get a raging case of food poisoning out of the deal.
Speaking of which, the chicken soup was just about ready, and Sam retrieved a bowl from the cupboard. He made his way carefully down the hallway to Dean's room.
It had taken some time to get used to sleeping in separate rooms after all the years of sleeping within an arm's length of each other. Still, the apartment had two bedrooms, and it had only made sense that each brother take one, being that they were both inclined to bring home girls from time to time. But, the rooms were directly across the hall from each other, and more often than not, both doors stayed open at night. And sometimes, if Dean fell asleep in the chair and Sam dozed off on the lumpy couch, neither would bother getting up and going to bed, despite the fact that they would both be stiff in the morning.
Dean's room was dark as Sam approached, as his brother had made him put blankets up over the windows to keep out the sunlight. He couldn't immediately make out Dean's shape in the bed. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering in from the hall, and became aware that something seemed to have changed from the last time he'd checked on his brother. The air in the room was still thick and heavy with sickness, but there was something else, a bitter smell like vomit, and a strange keening noise accompanied by a hollow thumping seemed to punch through the heavy atmosphere.
"Dean?" Sam asked hesitantly. "Dean are you awake?" When not so much as a moan of recognition came in response, Sam abandoned all pretense and flicked on the light switch.
The bowl of chicken soup crashed to the floor, along with Sam's panicked heart as the gravity of the situation became apparent.
Dean's hands were fisted in the tangled sheets, and he was arched up in his bed, contorted grotesquely as his head thudded against the headboard in rhythm with his convulsing body. His chin was stretched toward the ceiling, and Sam could see yellow bile-colored vomit trailing down his brother's throat from the corners of his grimacing mouth.
Sam fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone as he raced to his brother's side, and he placed one hand flat on Dean's sweat-soaked chest as he dialed the phone with the other. "Dean!" Tears threatened to shake loose from Sam's eyes as the force of Dean's seizure traveled up his arm. "Yes, I need an ambulance!" He choked.
XXX
Sam struggled to keep a handle on the situation as the phone banged clumsily against his ear in response to Dean's thrashing convulsions. He could barely make out the operator's voice. "Yes," he stammered helplessly, "That's the correct address. It's a two story Victorian. We're downstairs. Just hurry." He clicked the phone shut and dropped it onto the night stand, only vaguely aware that the dispatcher had been trying to keep him on the line. He didn't have enough hands to juggle the phone and his seizing brother, and he knew enough first aid to proceed on his own.
Sam's right hand was still pressed firmly against Dean's heaving, sweat-dampened chest, and he slid it up under his brother's jaw while sliding his left hand and leg under and behind the elder for leverage. Once he was halfway on the bed, Sam tilted his brother forward enough to slip in between Dean and the pillows. Grasping his big bro's jaw firmly in his right hand, the younger Winchester used his left hand to maneuver the struggling body onto its right side.
As soon as Dean was turned, Sam heard a gurgling cough as the vomit that had been pooling in his brother's throat bubbled out onto his hand. His foot slipped, kicking the nightstand and causing the lamp to shatter onto the floor. He wrapped his left arm around Dean's trunk and pulled his brother tightly against him as he tried to turn the elder's head to clear his airway. More vomit, followed by a deep, ragged breath.
"That's it, big brother," Sam encouraged. He was sickened that his voice sounded so weak and uncertain. He hated feeling this helpless and scared, but being strong had always been Dean's job, so Sam was no good at that either.
Dean's head snapped back, catching Sam squarely in the mouth. Fresh blood ran onto his tongue from the cuts in his lips, but all he could think was, God I hope my teeth didn't cut his head. The sudden, sharp pain cleared his mind considerably, and he took a deep breath, willing himself to take control of his emotions.
As the convulsions continued, Sam became aware of the fact that both brothers were in imminent danger of crashing off the bed and onto the floor. He tightened his grip around Dean's chest and pulled the elder against his body, keeping them both tilted to the right so that Dean could breathe. With his face buried in the crook of his brother's neck, Sam held on for dear life, willing the pain to go away.
His eyes shut tightly with the effort of keeping them both safely nested into the pillows, and he let himself breathe in Dean like perfume, latching onto his brother's essence as though it were his soul and willing it to linger there until help could arrive. The scent was that much more pungent for the searing heat that radiated through them.
The agonized, keening noise that had been incessantly grating on Sam's eardrums began to subside just about the time that he heard sirens and footsteps in the hall.
"Back here!" Sam yelled, relieved tears threatening through the quiver in his voice.
Sam wasn't sure how long he'd been there, clutching his brother against him, but even the dim light from the hall had become a glaring, otherworldly beacon to his exhausted body. The first paramedic stopped in the doorway, blocking out enough light to stand in stark silhouette as he looked inside, and Sam thought he knew then what angels must look like.
One medic entered the room and was kneeling at the side of the bed in front of Dean when the second came in. Sam wasn't aware of how tightly he'd been holding onto his brother until the EMT proceeded to try and loosen his grip.
"Son," the medic said gently, "I'm trying to help. You're gonna have to let go now."
Sam might have resisted, might have tightened his embrace against the prying hands, but he was too exhausted. He had no way of knowing how long he'd been at it already, and as soon as he released his hold on Dean's chest, he felt himself fall back heavily, almost plummeting off the other side of the bed as his muscles ceased to support even their own weight. He took a half a dozen whooping breaths, as much to ward off a panic attack as to feed his oxygen-starved body, and willed himself to swing into a sitting position.
It took a moment for the younger brother to feel his feet connect with the cold, hardwood floor and a few more moments for the room to right itself around those feet. When the vertigo of exertion passed, Sam knelt on the floor beside Dean who was now prone. The first paramedic, a thirty-something year old man with an athletic build and long, dark sideburns was holding Dean's head steady while the second, a middle-aged brunette woman with a plump, motherly look about her, inserted a speculum between the older brother's teeth. Once the patient's mouth was held securely open, the woman slid her latex glove clad fingers inside and cleared away whatever vomit might still be obstructing Dean's airway.
That finished, the speculum was removed, and the male EMT pressed Dean's shoulders into the floor.
"How long has he been like this?" the man asked.
Sam struggled to estimate a time frame. He looked at the clock and vaguely remembered the time on the microwave when he'd removed the bowl of soup earlier. That had been fifteen minutes ago. "At least fifteen minutes," Sam ventured shakily, "But I don't know how long he was like that before I found him," he admitted guiltily. I knew his fever was too high. I should've checked on him sooner.
"Has he been ill?" The woman questioned, prepping a hypodermic needle in order to administer some type of injection.
"Yeah," Sam said. "He picked up the chicken pox; first started showing symptoms about three days ago."
"Has he ever had the chicken pox before?"
Sam nodded, "We both had 'em when we were kids."
"He's your brother, then?" The woman deduced.
"Yes, ma'am," Sam mumbled, feeling overwhelmed as he watched Dean's pale face contort with pain and exertion.
"What's his name?" She asked succinctly.
"Dean," Sam replied, and anticipating the next question, "He's twenty-seven. And he's allergic to penicillin."
"And you are?"
"Sam," he said, though he felt like Sammy just then.
The woman's professional demeanor faded momentarily as she put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Well, Sam, I'm Donna and this is my partner Jeffrey. We're gonna do everything we can to help your brother." Turning to the needle in her hand, she lifted it and tapped it a few times before squirting a small amount of liquid out to remove any air bubbles. "I'm giving Dean an anti-convulsant drug to hopefully stop the seizure so that we can better assess his condition."
Sam nodded slowly. "Do you have any idea what could be causing this?" He asked hesitantly.
Jeffrey answered as Donna concentrated on administering the injection and trying to read Dean's vitals. "Probably the fever. I'm reading 104 in the ear canal. Could also be complications from the chicken pox. The virus behaves differently in some individuals. We just have to get him safely to the hospital and let the doctors do the diagnosing."
Within a few minutes the seizure seemed to stop, and the paramedics quickly maneuvered Dean onto a gurney and headed out to the ambulance. Sam quickly fumbled around, grabbing Dean's clothes, their cell phones, and, at the last moment, remembered to take Dean's wallet.
There were already several neighbors gathering on the front lawn when the paramedics and Sam made it out to the porch. Sam didn't acknowledge any of them as he pushed toward the ambulance. He was about to climb inside beside his brother, desperate to stay close, when Donna held out her hand. "Sorry, Sam, our insurance doesn't allow us to take riders. You'll have to follow behind." She leaned forward and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "And it would probably be best if you got one of these nice people to give you a ride, Son. You don't look like you're in any condition to drive."
Sam stumbled back, confused and exhausted. He wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. Surely she wasn't telling him that he couldn't be with his brother? Dean needed him. He was about to protest when a strong hand settled on his shoulder from behind.
"I'll drive you," an unfamiliar voice offered.
Sam nodded without turning around, and watched in disbelief as the ambulance door slammed shut and the sirens began to wail. He felt himself being led to a waiting vehicle as the ambulance spun out of the driveway. He was pushed into a car that he didn't recognize and felt it start into motion, his eyes still locked on the back of the medical transport. As the car pulled out in pursuit, it ran over the curb and Sam's head struck the window, shocking him out of his confused haze.
He looked over at the vehicle's driver, a fiftyish looking man with a graying mustache and a portly build. The man saw his confused expression. "I'm Dr. George, Dean's Econ professor. I was concerned about your brother after he didn't answer a single question on the exam I gave the other day, and then, when he wasn't in class today, I decided to drop by and see if he was all right." Seeing Sam's expression of suspicious disbelief, he added, "It's not something I usually do, but I drive down this street all the time, recognized the car in front of the house, so I knew he lived here. Besides, you're brother's not just any student. But I'm sure you know that."
Sam couldn't help the amused smirk that twisted the corners of his mouth. The cuts in his lips protested and turned the grin into more of a grimace. "Yeah. Dean does have a way of making his presence known and missed." Sam could just imagine Dean's smart mouth in a classroom, especially a lecture hall filled with blushing girls.
"Well, that he does," the professor agreed. "But he's also one of the best students I've ever had. I don't know how he does it. I swear most of the time he's making eyes at the girls in the front row, but he's always right on his game. Usually knows the answers to my questions before I even ask. I'm really surprised he didn't go to a four year college instead of tech school."
Sam's smirk had turned to amused skepticism, laced with pride. "Well, family stuff came up. He never got to go. But to tell you the truth," Sam offered, "Dean never really showed any interest in school. He's only doing it now because I asked him to."
Dr. George frowned, pulling into the ambulance bay of the hospital. "That's a real shame. Your brother has a mind like a steel trap. I hope he's all right."
"Me, too," Sam said, his expression changing back to worried. "I'm Sam," he offered, realizing that he hadn't introduced himself. The car stopped behind the ambulance. "Thanks for the ride."
"No problem, Sam. Would you like me to come in and sit with you? I don't have another class today."
Sam just shook his head. "No. It's been just me and Dean for a long time, now. I'm kinda getting used to this gig. And, well, he'd probably die of embarrassment if he knew you were here. Ruins his whole image, you know."
The professor chuckled knowingly. "I get that about him," he said. Then he fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. "At least let me give you money for a cab ride home," George offered. "I know how tight money is for students these days."
Sam raised his hand to refuse, but took the money anyway. He understood that it was the professor's way of helping the only way he could. "Thanks," he said, genuinely grateful, then he slid out and hurried to catch up with the paramedics.
XXX
Nearly an hour later, Sam still hadn't heard anything from the doctors about his brother's condition, and he was beginning to wish he'd allowed the professor to stay. It was true that he'd gotten pretty good at hanging around hospital waiting rooms, but that didn't mean it got any easier. He just couldn't help but think he was somehow to blame for what had happened.
Finally, a doctor emerged from the Emergency Care Center and seemed to focus his attention on Sam. The younger brother stood up hastily, forgetting that he was sometimes intimidating at his full height, and apologized with his eyes as the doctor stepped back in surprise.
"Are you treating my brother?" Sam asked. "Is he okay? What's going on? No one will tell me anything, and it's been almost an hour." He realized he was rambling and probably looked have crazed with worry, so he stood down, took a deep breath and continued. "I'm sorry. It's just. . .I thought it was just chicken pox, you know?"
The doctor picked up on the guilty inflections in Sam's voice. "Are you Sam, then?" The doctor asked.
Sam nodded. "Dean's my brother. What's wrong with him?"
"Sam, I'm Dr. Grant, and I want very much to help your brother, but I need to get some more information from you," the man stated, trying to soothe Sam's concern by looking calmly into his eyes.
"You mean you don't know what's wrong with him?" Sam asked, his heart pounding in panic.
"Sit down, please, Son," the doctor said, taking a seat himself as he did so. He turned to face Sam as the younger brother took a chair beside him. "Dean does have what appears to be the chicken pox. As for what caused the seizure, we can't be certain yet. It could just be that his fever spiked. . ."
Sam sensed his hesitation, "Or what?" He probed.
"Or it could be any number of rare complications that sometimes occur with this virus," the doctor explained.
"Complications?" Sam asked. "Everybody gets the chicken pox, right? I've never heard of any complications."
"There are some, but like I said, they're rare," Grant said. "Occasionally, the varicella virus can cause pneumonia or encephalitis. However, this usually only occurs in very young children or patients with compromised immunity due to some other underlying factor," he pontificated. "I need you to tell me everything you know about your brother's medical history. We're doing blood tests and a lumbar tap to find out what the immediate problem is, but if there is an underlying factor that we don't know about, we need to know sooner rather than later."
Medical history as in massive heart attacks caused by electrocution? Or dozens of gaping wounds stitched by family members instead of doctors? Or how about half a dozen concussions and at least three serious gunshot wounds? And does rock salt cause permanent damage, cuz he may have caught a chest full of that on at least one occasion?
Sam dropped his gaze, shielding his eyes from the doctor's as he tried to decide, based on his own knowledge of medicine, what he could safely tell the man that would help. Finally he just shook his head, "There's nothing I can think of that would make him more susceptible to the kind of complications you mentioned," he said at last. "In fact, like I told the EMT's, Dean's already had the chicken pox, so I figured he'd only get a mild case this time."
The statement hung in the air momentarily, and something occurred to Sam that he hadn't allowed himself to consider before. "But I was away at college for four years," he muttered softly. "I didn't really keep in touch. If something happened to him then. . .I probably wouldn't know about it." Probably wasn't the word for it. Sam knew that anything that might have happened while he was at Stanford would have never been mentioned. Even if someone had tried to call him at the time, he wouldn't have answered. A sick feeling of dread began to creep over him. God, please let this just be a fever.
The doctor looked defeated for a moment. He'd really been hoping for some answers. "Well, if we do find an infection like pneumonia or encephalitis, we are going to have to give Dean antibiotics. His chart says that he's allergic to penicillin. Is he sensitive to anything else that you know of?"
Sam started to shake his head, then remembered that Dean had a MedicAlert card in his wallet. When they were younger and Dean had nearly died after being given penicillin by a doctor who hadn't known about the allergy, Dad had insisted that Dean get one of those bracelets to wear. Dean had hated the thing with a passion and constantly found ways to lose it. Finally, some techies had figured out a way to encode that kind of information onto a card that could be swiped and read like a credit card. Sam had seen Dean give it to doctors on other occasions, but hadn't remembered it himself until now.
Feeling sheepish fishing through Dean's wallet, Sam finally managed to find the card. "Here, anything he's allergic to should be on here. Dad always made sure he kept that thing updated," Sam said, only momentarily saddened at the thought of his dead father.
"That's perfect," Dr. Grant said. "At least it's something. Why don’t you come with me while I find out what the database has on file."
Sam nodded and jumped up, not willing to let the man out of his sight, being that he was the only one who knew what was going on with Dean. The doctor led him to a desk, and they both waited patiently while the card was processed.
Sam didn't want to admit it, but the whole process made him nervous. He bit at his fingernails and fidgeted on his feet. Somehow, the situation was too much like trying to pass a scammed credit card, and no matter how many times he'd done that, Sam had never been able to keep the butterflies out of his stomach while waiting for the approval to come through.
After several minutes of twitchiness, Sam nearly jumped as the printer started running beside him. The doctor leaned over to read the printout as it came out of the device, and his face scowled in concern. Sam glanced at it himself, and was surprised to see that there appeared to be a lot more than penicillin on the list. He hoped the amount of ink on the page was just the equivalent of doctor speak; mostly extraneous and unintelligible.
Dr. Grant looked at the feedout, his expression changing gradually from one of curiosity to one of dawning realization. Grim realization at that. "I think we have a problem here," he said finally. "It seems Dean's sensitive to quite a large number of drugs."
"Yeah, I guess, but now that you know, then you can make sure you don't give him any of those, right?" Sam asked. Wasn't that the whole purpose of having the card in the first place?
"Yes, that's true," the doctor granted. "But these are all chemotherapy drugs. The only way he'd know that he has a sensitivity to any of these chemicals would be for him to have undergone cancer treatment in the past. And as much as I hate for you to find out like this, a relapse of cancer could certainly be the cause of Dean's current condition."
XXX
No heroic measures! I'll give him friggin' heroic measures!
Sam's jaw clenched so tightly that his head pounded with the strain, and for the first time in months, his headache was really a welcome distraction. His eyes narrowed in determination and rage. The poor black dog had no idea what it was in for as Sam crept silently through the brush toward where the creature lay feasting on the carcass of what had probably been someone's pet.
Sam slunk in a predatory stance that was not his own. It was Dean's. The younger brother knew it all too well from years of following just one step behind his elder, confidently shielded by Dean's invisible brotherly cone of protection. Sam subconsciously mimicked that stealthy, lithe grace down to the carefully coordinated twitch of each and every individual muscle fiber. He was the hunter now, the lone gunman, the point man, not just the flank anymore.
Though he moved silently and agilely through the thicket, he was screaming so loudly that he was certain the leaves themselves trembled in response. He had enough pent up rage and fear inside him from the previous three days' events that every cell in his body quivered erratically.
Sam's initial shock and anger at discovering that Dean had kept the big "C" a secret from him all this time had burned off quickly. He'd been too busy with the details, the complications, the friggin' red tape that had invariably added insult to injury, as they had at every other such instance in their short lives.
Dr. Grant, upon realizing that Sam had not known about his brother's previous battle with cancer had immediately clammed up, fearing he had already breached patient confidentiality by revealing his findings. Of course, being that Sam and Dean were now business partners as well as brothers, Sam had quickly gotten the doc off the hook.
A few phone calls confirmed that Sam had been given Power of Attorney over his brother's affairs, including medical emergencies. Dean also had Power of Attorney over Sam's. They'd both felt a little odd filing the contracts at the time, since they'd spent their entire lives ducking the system and flying under the radar, but they had a fledgling company to protect now, and really, they should have done it a long time ago.
It was a good thing they had done it, too, because Dean had been unconscious, primarily due to sedation for the last three days, and was unable to make any decisions for himself regarding treatment. The chicken pox, as it turned out, was really shingles, same virus, different manifestation. The condition was excruciatingly painful because it focalized in nerve fibers. The pain, combined with the fact that Dean's seizure, most likely caused by his fever, had severely taxed his entire central nervous system, had warranted the sedation. There was little else that could be done to ease his suffering for the time being, and Sam had suffered silently beside his fallen brother day and night.
Lymphoma. The cancer had made Dean's immunity to the chicken pox virus nearly null, which is why it had hit him so hard. God, I should've known. They should've friggin' told me! Not that I made myself available to hear it.
Already in an advanced stage. Why the hell didn't we know something was wrong? Because we're freaks, that's why. All the symptoms, night sweats, weakness, fatigue, every last thing on the list was something they each battled daily in one form or another. When were they ever not just coming back from some sort of injury or demonic influence? We should've had checkups once in awhile. Hell, Dean should've known that he needed to see a doctor regularly to catch any signs of relapse. Stupid, stubborn, son of . . .And that was as far as that train of thought ever went, because one look at Dean's pale, drawn features as the older brother lay deathly still in that carefully sterilized hospital room just made Sam want to. . .
Dammit! I can't believe this! Things were just starting to come together for us, and now this!
It hadn't taken Sam long to discover the details of his brother's previous battle with cancer. Every time one of them needed medical attention, John had always insisted that the records be sent to their "family doctor." Said doctor was actually their Dad's friend Joshua who was actually a doctor of something. Sam never could remember exactly what obscure degree the crazy old coot held. The medical information had always been available. Sam could have found out about this long ago, but who ever looked at his own medical files, or his brother's for that matter?
It had turned out that Dean had been diagnosed not long after Sam had gone to Stanford. Hell, he probably already had it when I left. I was so damned worried about getting the hell out that I didn't even notice he was sick. I bet he would've noticed if I had been sick.
As far as Sam could tell, the doctors had tried several types of treatment that first time Dean was ill. None of them had worked. Dean and his freaky, messed up immune system had nearly died from the chemotherapy. Several different chemicals had been tried, but each time they had proven more toxic to Dean than to the cancer. Radiation had stopped being an option once the lymphoma had spread.
In fact, all of the medical records in the file Sam had scoured meticulously suggested that Dean's cancer had been terminal that first time. Yet, somehow, he'd been in remission for over three years. Sam wasn't especially surprised. He'd said it himself, the Winchesters knew things that doctors didn't know. The reason for Dean's first recovery from the cancer most likely had something supernatural at the root of it. All they could do, for the time being, was wait for Dean to wake up and tell them what had caused that first remission.
They'd have to allow him to recover from the shingles before they could start treatment, anyway. So, for now it was a waiting game, and Sam was going insane with nothing but his own thoughts to accompany him in his vigil.
In his heart, Sam had forgiven Dean for not telling him this one dark secret. Well, forgiven was probably not the right word for it. What he actually felt was complete inability to hold a grudge against his brother while Dean was lying there looking so helpless and vulnerable.
That didn't keep Sam from wanting to put a fist through a wall every time he allowed himself to leave the hospital room, however. For the first two days, he'd managed to stifle that urge and keep his anger at bay. But, having entirely too much time on his hands with nothing to do but worry, had caused Sam to dig a little deeper into his brother's medical file, and the last thing he found there had sent him over the edge.
Storming into the ICU and pummeling his unconscious brother to a bloody pulp not being a viable option at the moment, Sam had stalked angrily out of the hospital in search of something else to unleash his rage upon. Poor black dog had been on their list of "baddies worth taking out, but not an immediate threat to humans" for weeks. Sam had chosen the target based on its known proximity to the hospital, but he'd mentally noted that a black dog was a pretty good money earner since it was one of the few things they hunted that didn't completely disappear when they killed it. A black dog skull and paws would bring in thousands through one of their private buyers, and now there were medical bills to think about.
Do not resuscitate, my ass! Selfish bastard! Damn good thing that the Do Not Resuscitate order filed by Dean Berkowitz after his heart attack cannot be tied to Johnathan Dean, or I'd have to kill him myself. Sam was fuming. Only the fact that his brother's current alias was not bound to the confounded DNR order gave him enough control over his emotions to allow him to maintain his cover until he was in position to make his move.
He crept ever closer to the unwary quarry. The black dog was making so much noise tearing at the flesh of its latest meal that it would never be able to appreciate the painstaking care Sam took in executing his sneak attack. Sam himself could not appreciate the hunt at the moment, because his body moved on instinct alone while his mind warred with another enemy entirely.
No heroic measures! I can't believe he did that! After everything I did to bring him back in the first place. . .
Part Two
