Title: Wisdom doesn't come with the teeth...
Author:marlowe78
Rating: G
Characters: Dean, Sam
Word count: 1.444
Spoilers: nothing, I think. Set somewhere in the later seasons
Warnings:Language, some violence, hurt!dean, toothache

Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine. All imagination.

Summary: You wouldn't wish toothache on your worst enemy. Well, your worst human enemy.

It started with a wince in Connecticut .

Just a small one, a minimal stop in the motion of Dean's jaws. Nothing much, and Sam didn't even register it consciously. Dean stopped and started a lot of things during the day.

But somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain, the stop must have snatched a place in his brain, because the next wince in upstate New York registered clearly, a sudden stop, a frown, food being moved from one cheek to the other, more chewing. And talking. With a full mouth.

After that, Sam watched for it. And it wasn't hard to spot now, the winces getting more and more frequent. Dean didn't chew on his left side at all then, and yupp, that was familiar

"Which one?"

"Which one what, Sam?" They were sitting in a diner, coffee in front of them and Dean was waiting for it to cool. Right. Because Dean liked the diner-brew tepid now... "Please tell me you ain't talkin' about which waitress I prefer, man."

Predictably, Sam looked. One of them was round-about sixty with weird, yellow hair and the other looked to be mid-thirty but her hair was stringy and purple and she wouldn't stop chewing gum even when she talked with a customer. Ugh.

"Which tooth is it, dumbass."

"What which tooth?"

"That aches. Don't try bullshitting me, you got a toothache since at least Connecticut."

"Dunno whatcha talking 'bout," Dean murmured into his mug. Sam sighed, giving up for now. He knew Dean's hatred for dentists - Demons, Sam, I tell ya. They're demons!- and he wouldn't be able to talk him into letting his teeth checked until the hurt reached unbearable.

It got pretty close in Pennsylvania. Dean didn't sleep and kept pressing his hand against his jaw whenever he thought Sam wasn't looking, but since they were on a berserker-hunt in the woods, there was no use forcing the issue. He figured Dean would be agreeable once they got back to civilization, a good plan that was foiled by the berserker. He'd pushed his brother against a rock so hard that he twisted and broke his wrist and two fingers, and the pain-meds he got together with the cast made everything happy and pink and bright.

Dean's words, not Sam's.

Those meds held until Kentucky, where Dean refused to eat anything that was either chewable or hot. Or sweet. Or cold. He actually lived off luke-warm coffee, water and, of course, alcohol for a week. Except he'd exchanged the whiskey for vodka, but that was just details.

Sam worried, of course he did. Not only was his brother in a piss-poor mood, he also started to show the strains of pain and hunger, and while Sam liked the state of denial much more than the state of, say, New Jersey, he wouldn't want to live there at the cost of Dean.

"Go to the dentist, jerk," he growled at him, receiving a glare. "Dean, I mean it. This is getting seriously out of hand!"

"It'll be fine, Sam, just lemme alone."

"Right, because when in our whole lives did toothache disappear on its own, huh?"

"It will, man. Just wait, it'll be fine. 'm not letting someone stranger poke around in my mouth with sharp instruments!"

And while that wasn't the worst motto to have, admittedly, in this case it was just plain stupid. But Dean had stuck his toes in and he wouldn't budge, so nothing short of knocking him out and carrying him to the nearest dental-clinic would get him there. And that would look suspicious.

Sam was pretty close to doing it anyway.

In Illinois, Dean was a wreck. He didn't sleep, didn't eat and would only drink under a barrage of whines and whimpers that would make a hard-core trucker break into tears. And Sam had enough.

They'd hunted a ghost and a poltergeist since the berserker, and he'd had to do all the work, not just the digging and running and shooting. No, he'd had to research, talk, lie and deceive because his stupid brother wasn't able to open his mouth, or carry a thought longer than a second.

"I give you one last chance, Dean, and if you say it'll get better on its own, I'm gonna knock you out and drag you to the dentist, you got me?"

Dean whimpered and, to Sam's surprise and deep worry, nodded.

It was ten at night, though, and the regular dentists were not an option. Sam looked up the nearest dental ambulance, found one only two blocks from the motel – a coincidence, he tried unsuccessfully to explain. Didn't matter much anyway, he didn't mind if his brother believed him. He grabbed his wallet and a few fake insurance-cards, then shoved his brother out to the car.

It was only a few feet from the parking-lot to the entrance. Anyone could walk a few feet, right? And anyone would be able to walk the few feet and not get into trouble, right?

Yeah. Shows how much a Winchester counted as 'anyone'...

Because Dean, in his new-found desire to let some stranger poke in his mouth, opened his car-door too hard, banging it against the car next to theirs. And because Luck was a bitch, the owner of said car had been just on his way back, and said owner was a guy as big as Sam, just double in width.

"Hey, fucker, watch out. Asshole!"

Dean, in pain and miserable, opened his mouth to reply but Sam beat him to it. "Sorry, man, we were just in a hurry. Just...check for damage and we'll pay for anything, okay? Don't want no trouble."

"If there's so much as a scratch on my Betsy..."

Dean giggled. He giggled! The guy who called his car "baby" and mothered her – it! - like it were a living being giggled over a stupid name a guy the size of a truck had given his car.

"Dean..."

"You got something to say, fucker?" Truck-dude was in Dean's face, pushing his meaty finger at him and fuck, Sam knew this would end badly. He slid over the trunk of their borrowed car to break up the brewing fight and sadly got his face between Dean's face and truck-dude's fist.

It hurt, it ached, it wasn't anything new but it also distracted him enough for his stupid, jerky, overprotective idiot of a brother to jump right at truck-dude and the fight was on.

Of course it didn't last long. Truck-dude dusted himself off after a well-aimed punch at Dean's midriff, then, because he was just as much of an asshole, kicked at him when he was bending over. Sam heard himself yell, felt the guy be forced away as if it weren't his own hands doing it and heard him crash into his precious Betsy. He didn't see him slumping to the ground, because his whole focus was on Dean's limp form on the ground, face-first in a puddle of blood.

"Dean!"

He went to his knees next to Dean, reaching out to touch, feel for a pulse because this much blood couldn't in any universe be good. It made him want to puke in relieve when Dean groaned, then tried to raise his head and Sam sunk onto his ass, slumping into himself because his brother did not get himself killed in a parking-lot.

The same brother actually managed to get to his own knees and Sam stood, grabbed under his arm and helped him to his feet. Dean was spitting blood out of his mouth, there was blood all over his shirt, and to add one more gruesome thing to Sam's nightmares, Dean turned around, looked up and stared at him with wide, pain-filled eyes.

Blood ran down his lower jaw, smearing his neck and his face, spread up over his nose and on one of his cheekbones even from lying in it when it had puddled underneath him. He looked worse than any vampire Sam'd ever seen, and the blood kept running. Once more, Dean spit out, then looked right into Sam's eyes... and grinned.

He grinned!

It looked even more horrible, freaky and wrong, but Dean still grinned, showing his crimson teeth. He held his hand under his mouth, letting blood-clods slide from his tongue into his palm and held it out to Sam, a lumpy whitish-red clump prone in the middle. He was smiling triumphantly.

"Shee? Dol' ya, i'sh gonna ged bedder on ish own!"

~fin