Title: Here's What You Would Have Won!

Author: Supernoodle.

Disclaimer: As always, sadly, I only own the order that the words are written in.

Challenge Phrase: Dean has a fever.

Word Count: 2000 and a bit – This one is allowed to be over.

Fellow Players: See the E/O Challenge community for all the current players. We are legion :-)

A/N: Very, stupidly late and for that I'm sorry, but sadly, having not won £85 million on the Euromillions Lottery Jackpot, I still have to work full time and it's kind of sucking the life out of me at the moment, along with all the creative juices that are usually zipping round my bloodstream. So anyhoo, here is some feverish Dean, written especially for Mad Server. Hope you had a great birthday all those weeks ago and that you enjoyed all the stories written in your honour.

Dean stumbled for the third time on shaky legs that were barely holding him up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with one hand and pulling his jacket closed around him with the other as he trudged through the foggy, moonlit graveyard behind Sam.

It was like being on a set from some Hammer horror flick, only the graves were real, and so was the barely decomposed body they'd just dug up to salt and burn and Dean had almost lost his dinner at the smell of the rotting, burning flesh. The corpses they usually dug up tended to be on the crispier side and normally caught like tinder, but not tonight's juicy sucker. William Jenkins was barely four months dead and the sight that greeted them when Sam prised open the casket with the edge of the shovel was not a pretty one.

Man, that was a lot of worms...

"You alright, Dean?" Sam's voice called out from the fog, snapping Dean out of his thoughts and he looked up to see his brother staring at him with that look on his face - the mixture of concern and impatience that signalled the beginning of Sam's unbearable mother-henning. Sam had been bugging him all day, asking him if he was okay, if he wanted anything, if he was going to be up for the dig tonight and Dean had avoided the subject as best he could. So what if he was a little on the shivery side, and so what if the half dozen aspirin he'd crunched down with breakfast and lunch hadn't done anything to stop the headache that was clustering at the base of his skull - and so what if he'd had to stop digging halfway through and sit down before he fell down. They were on a job; he didn't have time to be sick. People's lives were at stake.

"Dean?" Sam's voice called again, and Dean opened his mouth to tell Sam for the millionth time that he was FINE, when suddenly everything went kind of Kaleidoscopic.

Oh, this isn't good. He thought briefly to himself as nausea rolled in his stomach and his legs turned to jelly beneath him. And crap, his head was beginning to hurt like a sonovabitch. It would all have been okay had he not got stuck out in the rain for hours the night before. He'd left Sam to stake out the home of the victim, see if anything funny had been going on at the old digs, and he'd spent the night roaming around the local cemeteries like some freakin' Burke and Hare wannabe, looking for Jenkins' grave. By the time he'd found it, he was soaked through to the skin and cold right to the bone. The tepid shower back at the room had done nothing to ease his aching muscles and the few hours sleep he'd managed to catch hadn't left him feeling particularly rested either.

Worms... Freakin' worms in his eye sockets...

Rubbing at his eyes, Dean stumbled forwards, his foot catching the edge of one of the grave markers and he went down on one knee – and Man, he didn't feel good. Not good at all. The headache was now a thumping pain right across his forehead and he bent forwards, gritting his teeth against the sudden dull agony.

Worms in my head, eating away at my brains... Inside my guts...

Sam called his name again but he couldn't answer. They were in his throat now, crawling up his nose, down into his lungs and he could feel bile burning up his throat and as he collapsed forwards onto the wet grass, he felt like screaming but his mouth was full of grave dirt.

-o-

Sam frowned as he watched Dean sleep fitfully as he sat on the edge of his bed. He'd known that Dean was sick – his brother had tried to shrug it off, but it was obvious. He'd been white as a sheet all afternoon, chewing down painkillers and knuckling the space between his brows when he thought Sam wasn't looking – plus he'd been far too quiet. Sam knew from experience that it could go one of two ways with his brother: Irritable Dean usually signalled that he was coming down with something not too serious, but quite Dean usually meant that he was feeling pretty lousy and Sam knew to keep his eyes open.

Dean didn't get sick very often, neither of them did really, but when he did go down, he tended to go down hard and that, coupled with his infuriatingly lacking sense of self-preservation, Sam had seen his brother run himself into the ground more times that he would like. And this was one of those times – literally. Sam had been heading towards Dean the moment he dropped to his knees, but he'd passed out face first into the dirt before he'd had a chance to reach him.

He'd managed to rouse Dean enough to half walk, half carry him back to the Impala, bundling him into the back seat without complaint, where he'd sat glassy eyed and unnervingly silent, sipping water from the canteen that Sam had shoved into his shaking hands. Then grabbing the blanket they usually kept in the trunk, Sam wrapped it round his brother's shoulders. It smelled of gas and gun oil and had more than one bloodstain on it, and Sam kept meaning to take it to the laundrette the next time they went, but it was better than nothing. By the time Sam had schlepped all their gear back to the car, Dean had slipped down onto his side and stayed that way, silent and shivering, all the way back to the motel.

Reaching over to the bedside table, Sam grabbed the basin of water and washcloths that he'd got from the bathroom before sitting down. Dean was covered in mud and grave dirt and there was a small cut on his left cheek from where he'd hit the deck, but Sam knew he wasn't going to be able to get him into the shower to clean him up. He'd just about managed to wrestle him out of his jacket and over shirt as Dean wavered drunkenly on his feet, before putting him to bed, waiting until Dean was asleep before pulling off his boots, socks and jeans - all the time feeling the worrying heat coming off his brother's trembling body.

"You're an idiot, Dean. You should have sat this one out." He murmured, wringing out one of the washcloths and gently wiping the dirt off of his brother's face, stopping to feel his forehead with the back of his hand. Dean had a fever all right, and Sam wondered if he shouldn't have taken his brother to the ER instead on bringing him back to the motel.

Dean was always so strong, so... tough. And between that and his natural optimism, Sam always had a hard job believing that Dean would never be anything but okay. After the accident with the stun gun, Sam hadn't doubted once that he would find a way to save him. After the crash, despite the ventilator and the doctor reeling off the list of critical injuries that Dean had sustained, Sam hadn't really believed that his brother wouldn't pull through – as far as Sam was concerned, Dean not pulling through was not an option.

Even up until ten minutes before the clock struck twelve all those months ago, Sam had somehow believed that they would find a way – find some way to get Dean out of his deal and it was disbelief as much as grief that had Sam sobbing into his brother's bloody, torn body when he hadn't.

Not having Dean around was something that Sam couldn't deal with and when he'd buried Dean in that pine box in the forest, he'd buried a part of himself with him – a bit that he knew he'd get back some day, because he knew, knew, that somehow, Dean would come back, that he would be okay.

Only, lately, he wasn't sure that Dean was as all right as he seemed to be. On the surface, his brother hadn't changed – other than the Angel's hand-print on his shoulder and the disappearance of all his old scars, and he was as loud and annoying and over-protective as he'd ever been. It was only when Sam looked deeper that he saw the façade beginning to crumble.

Dean swore up and down that he didn't remember hell, and maybe he didn't – maybe he had been granted that small mercy. But Sam had been all too ready to believe him, because the alternative was just too horrifying to contemplate.

When he'd got the worst of the dirt off, Sam got up and went to the bathroom, and picking up the last clean cloth, he ran it under the cold tap, and wringing it out a little, then went back to his brother, placing it gently on Dean's brow.

Dean flinched at the cold and opened his eyes, blinking up at Sam but not really seeing him and he groaned, bringing a shaking hand up to his head.

"Hey? Hey? Dean - you with me?" Sam called, trying to get Dean to focus, just for a moment and Dean's eyes slid tiredly round until they found Sam's. "Hey Dean. You okay?"

"Sammy." Dean murmured in reply as his eyes closed again. "Think I got the flu."

"No kidding." Sam replied, chuckling at the understatement. "You want anything? You want a drink? Couple of aspirin?"

Dean shook his head. "Jus wanna sleep."

"Sure thing, Dean." Sam replied and pulled the blankets up over Dean's shoulders. "Feel better, okay."

-o-

Sam woke in the grey dawn light to the sound of his brother calling his name. And rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he dragged himself out of his bed and padded over to Dean's. The blankets were on the floor, and Dean had himself tangled up in the sheets, kicking and writhing against them, breath hitching and choking out something feverishly that Sam couldn't quite make out. Something that sounded like worms?

"Hey Dean, wake-up. You're dreaming." He called gently, quickly feeling his brother's temperature with a hand to his cheek. Dean was still too warm for his liking, his t-shirt was damp with sweat, and Sam shook his brother's arm gently until red-rimmed eyes cracked open. It took a few moments before they clouded with recognition, then Dean groaned, wrapping his arms around his head.

"What time is it?" came a croaky, muffled voice from underneath.

Sam glanced at his watch and stifled a yawn. "It's ten to five in the morning."

Dean took a deep breath and let out a shaky sigh. "I don't think I can get up yet, Sammy. Don't feel so good."

Sam smiled. "Dude, you don't have to get up yet. Relax. You're sick. You can spend all day in bed if you want, okay. I only woke you up cuz you were having a nightmare or something. You were talking in your sleep."

Dean took a moment to absorb what Sam told him, then dropped one of his arms and peered drowsily up at his brother. "There were worms – "

Sam frowned in confusion. Worms? What the hell was Dean talking about?

"In the coffin." Dean continued, letting his eyes slip shut. And then the penny dropped. Dean was talking about the salt n' burn - Jenkins' corpse. Gross, yes – but they had both seen worse and Sam wondered what had got Dean so bothered that he was having nightmares-

"They were in my coffin." Dean murmured. "In my eyes."

And Sam's blood ran cold as he realised what Dean was talking about.

Jenkins had been dead four months – the same length of time that Dean had been dead. The same length of time he'd been in his own coffin.

How could he have been so stupid?

When he'd cracked open that coffin lid, he'd basically shown Dean what his body would have looked like had Castiel not rescued him from hell. And Thriller video reject didn't even come close.

- And behind door three: Here's what you would have won!

"Dean – I'm so sorry. I should have thought... You shouldn't have had to see that."

"S'ok, Sammy." Dean replied, his breathing evening out as sleep took him under again. "M'not dead anymore. They're gone now."