Um… Hey, so this is definitely not my first fanfiction, but it is the first I've posted to this site. Um… so yeah.
The prompt came from when I was reading a book… and I read the phrase Demon Pox. So I'm not using the disease in quite the way it was used in the books, it's more like a minor skin disease here. Okay, so the idea is that you get demon pox by sleeping with a demon, and who do we know has slept with a demon?
Basically Sam has Demon Pox and Dean is stuck with a sick Sam. He calls for help. Established Sabriel and Destiel, though you don't really see a lot (any) of it. Non-cannon sort of AU. Not really set at any time in particular, but after season 6. Does this count as a crossover if I'm only using a prompt/inspiration from another fandom/book but nothing else? Eh. *shrugs*
There was a loud bang and a string of expletives which erupted from the bathroom, followed by a very annoyed Sam locking the door in an overly dramatic fashion. Dean sniggered. There was something off about Sammy lately, he thought. Couldn't be too bad, but he supposed he should go and check it out anyway. Sam was still loudly cursing as the older Winchester brother pounded on the bathroom door.
"Sammy! Sammy! You okay in there?" he called through the door.
"No! Go away Dean." A weak voice replied. That definitely wasn't like the Sam he knew. Sam would at least put up some sort of fight before admitting there was something wrong with him.
"Sammy, if there's something wrong, y'know I can help you." Dean sounded worried now.
"No!" the urgency in his voice startled Dean. He established the facts: Sam was not okay, he was admitting that there was something wrong, he had locked himself in the bathroom and was cursing and seemingly destroying the place, and he did not want Dean to come in to the bathroom. Dean was definitely getting in to the bathroom.
"Sammy, if you don't open this door now, I'm gonna break it down." Dean threatened.
"No! No! I don't know if it's contagious or not. Stay away. Get help, get something. I don't know, but don't come in." Sam sounded panicked by that point; almost hyperventilating. He was breathing very heavily. Another string of cursing came from behind the door.
"Sam, it's okay, I'll get help." But Dean had never felt more helpless in his life. Oh god, Dean thought, someone had to be able to help him. Someone had to know what to do. But if Sam didn't know then how was he supposed to know. How were any human doctors meant to know, because Dean assumed Sam wouldn't be locking himself in the bathroom if it was a human disease; how would he even have contracted an infectious human disease? Maybe he should call Cas? Or… maybe it was something normal, and it was something really obscure. Wasn't there a website for that? He supposed he could just search up the symptoms.
"Sammy, give me a sec. I'm gonna go get your laptop, then you tell me what symptoms you have." Dean yelled through the door.
"Uh huh." Sam sounded weaker than before. Dean hurried to Sam's bag, digging through until he found Sam's laptop. Dragging a chair over to the bathroom door, he called out to Sam, feeling like a damn therapist, but not caring enough at that point.
"Hey, so what're you feeling?"
"Uh. There're these lumps all over me, and they're like the size of golf balls. They're red and… squishy? And Oh god, Dean, they're throbbing. They're throbbing! My arms feel… weird." The sentence dropped off after that, and Dean heard a thump on the floor, which sounded just about like what Sam dropping to the floor would sound like. Shit.
Time for plan B: call the angel. Dean put the laptop on the dresser, and closed his eyes, bowing his head he prayed to Cas, to come and help him. He honestly hoped that Cas would come this time, if he knew the extent of Sam's illness. He and Cas hadn't been on the best of terms lately, as they had just got into a major fight over some stupid thing, and he was just hoping that Cas would be listening.
He was surprised, when he heard the sound of wings, and even more surprised to find who the wings belonged to. Instead of Cas, there was Gabriel, standing in front of him, a worried expression on his face. Startled as he was, Dean knew Sam and Gabriel did share a 'profound bond' as it was so delicately put. Basically the dickbag angel was screwing his brother. But, then again, after Ruby, Dean would prefer anyone, as long as Sam didn't go sleep with the devil whore, as Dean called her.
"Apologies for the unexpected arrival, Cas was… otherwise indisposed." Dean nodded, only managing to add,
"Fix him," brokenly, to Gabriel, who proceeded to teleport to the other side of the door.
In the bathroom, Sam lay slumped, with his head resting against the shower curtain, and the rest of his substantial body taking up all the rest of the meagre space in the bathroom. When Gabriel flashed into the bathroom, he had to stand in the shower, to avoid stepping on Sam. He tilted his head, looking at the unconscious man, blisters covering every visible portion of skin. He had seen it before, and he didn't like it. Demon Pox.
To get Demon Pox, the person had to sleep with a demon, and if it wasn't bad enough that his boyfriend had slept with a demon, Sam had to coat himself in the blood of the demon's vessel at the time, to get rid of it. Basically, Sam had to find the vessel of the demon he slept with, and bathe in their blood. First, though, they had to establish exactly who Sam had slept with.
Teleporting back out to the main room, Gabriel approached Dean, hoping he knew about any extra-curricular demons Sam was doing.
"Hey, Dean-o!" he put on false cheer, "So, you wana tell me if Sam knows, say, any demons?"
"Demons?" Dean snapped up from his perch on the end of the bed. "Demons did this to my brother?"
"Whoa, there Dean-o, no need to get hasty about that." Gabriel put his hands up to settle Dean, but all that did was rile him up further. He continued, "I mean, I'm all for killing me a few demons, but this is one particular demon." Dean frowned.
"Well, the only demon we know now, is Crowley, and, of course, he hasn't been near Sam in a while. Does Lucifer count?" Dean was dangerously close to snapping and lashing out at the nearest warm body, so Gabriel took a step back, putting his hands on Dean's shoulders.
"Stop. Listen." Dean nodded, subserviently, and Gabriel continued, satisfied. "What I mean is has Sam..." he was having a hard time getting this out, but it was for Sam's good. That, plus he was going to enjoy killing the bitch who slept with his Samsquatch. Gabriel sighed, "Has Sam slept with any demons?" Dean looked taken aback at this.
"That's how he got whatever that is? No. not since Ruby. Or, at least not that I know of." He looked worriedly at Gabriel. Sam had gone into a deep rut when he met Ruby, drinking demon blood and generally making bad decisions. He hoped there was no relapse of that. He was going to have to have a long talk with Sam after this, if he did go back.
"Oh," Gabriel replied. An eyebrow was raised at him. "Well, if Sam has slept with this demon, Ruby, then he could have had a delayed reaction, and the demon blood he consumed wouldn't have helped. You see, this can lie dormant for years without the person knowing they're even sick. People usually exhibit signs somewhere along the three to five year mark, maybe after one and a half to two years if it's severe – and it would be, considering the amount of demon blood he drank in that time. It would have only heightened his reaction time to the Demon Pox."
"Demon Pox? That's what this is?" it sounds so… lame." Dean finally said. "Honestly, it sounds so normal." Then a thought occurred to him. "Is it curable?"
"Yes, and no."
"Stop being so fucking cryptic and tell me." Dean sighed, patience wearing thin.
"Okay, so if we know who this… Ruby possessed, then we can get her blood and douse Sam in it."
"My brother has to bathe in demon blood? Demon blood." Dean enunciated each word carefully, making sure what he was hearing was correct. "Wasn't that what got him into this mess in the first place?"
"Well, yes, but him drinking demon blood made him highly receptive to demon viruses, because it made him part demon, himself, whereas him bathing in demon blood will cure him of the Demon Pox." Gabriel smiled, wonkily. Dean nodded slowly, to himself, trying to understand the whole concept.
"Okay," he said, resolutely, after about a minute. "Get the bitch and bleed her dry."
"Just need one thing from you, though." Dean nodded, wondering what else he could give the omniscient angel. "Who was the person she was possessing. It's the vessel who retains some of the essence of the demon not necessarily the demon who can provide the cure.
"Great, well her vessel is probably six feet under by now. We disposed of everything, all the corpses, from the night Lucifer rose." Dean groaned into his hands. But a smile overcame Gabriel's face. He knew where to look, now.
"Not to worry, Dean-o! I'll have her back here in a sec." with that, he flashed out of the room, reappearing moments later, hauling the seemingly freshly-dead corpse of the woman Ruby was possessing. "Now help me get this in there, and don't worry, it's not contagious."
"H-how?" Dean managed to stammer out. Gabriel dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
"Just a bit of minor time travel; don't worry. Nobody'll miss her, and I'll put the drained corpse right back where I found it." Dean shrugged, if it'd get his brother back to normal then he was willing to try. Together, they lugged the corpse into the bathroom, slitting the still-warm neck, and hanging her to drip into the plugged bathtub. Getting Sam in would be another feat, with him being possibly double the weight of Ruby's Jane Doe corpse.
Dean grabbed his feet, while Gabriel took his upper half, and they both dragged the still unconscious, formidable giant into the bathtub.
"Don't worry, Samsquatch, we'll make it better." Gabriel whispered into his ear. The tub was almost half full with Ruby's blood, but Sam's mass evened the level so it was filled nearly ¾ of the way. The blood nearly covered him, but Ruby's vessel was almost dry. They were going to have to roll him over to coat him in it. At that point, Gabriel decided it would be easier if they weren't lugging around an extra kilo or so of clothes, so with a snap of his fingers, Sam was dressed only in boxers. This startled Dean, who was previously carrying Sam by his shoed feet, and suddenly found himself with a pair of bare feet in his hands.
"Turn him over," Gabriel commanded, and Dean numbly complied. He could see that the lumps on Sam's back were deflating, but wherever the blood had not touched was still covered in the so aptly named Demon Pox.
"Leave him in there. He'll get better." Gabriel said, looking at Dean, who immediately took the chance to dump his brother's feet into the tub, and leave the bathroom, muttering something about gross demon diseases. Gabriel smiled, and followed the irritable Winchester out into the main room. "Call me back when you want some clean-up, but otherwise, there's a war I'll need to be attending to." With that, he vanished, leaving a stunned looking Dean sitting on the edge of his bed, and Sam in a tub of demon blood.
"Fucking angels." Dean muttered, and got up to get a beer out of the fridge. He had earned one, hadn't he? That was the moment that, a disoriented Sam decided to stumble out of the bathroom, covered in blood.
"What happened? Why is Ruby hanging above me in the bath, and more importantly, where did all my clothes go?" Dean just chuckled at the confused tone, and called out to Gabriel, again.