Dean 3.0

Rain, he decides, arrives in many different ways. There is the faint, dripping, one-drop-per-foot kind of rain; and rude spitting rain, a faint spray that is not at first noticeable until, you know, wet here; and hard splats like bird poop that make noise when they hit your head and shoulders; plus the annoying mist that coats your face and tickles your eyeballs.

And there is storm-cell rain, the sudden arrival of tidal waves of water, but vertical rather than horizontal because rain does, after all, fall down, not sideways. Storm-cell rain because storm cells move around, tricky little bastards that open up the floodgates in one specific area, usually where you are, or are soon going to be, because, you know, roads.

And then he blinks into his bowl of cinnamon-topped oatmeal and wonders what the hell he's thinking about rain for. He's inside the bunker, where it doesn't rain; and it's not raining outdoors, either.

And metaphors? Metaphors? He is not Metaphor Man. That title belongs to a certain younger brother.

But there is a storm cell over his head, and he thinks maybe, maybe, it's about ready to pee all over him.

"Crap," he mutters. "Metaphors. I am Metaphor Man." He scowls across the breakfast table. "Dammit, you're rubbing off on me."

Sam, who has finished his massive bowl of Lucky Charms, is lazily attacking the morning paper's crossword puzzle. With a pen.

Dean attempts a quick calculation, but quick does not appear to be in his repertoire today. So he counts fingers in his head, finds the correct number. "What's a seven-letter word for metaphor?"

"Analogy," Sam replies absently, inking letters into squares.

Of course Sam knows that. It's a kneejerk reaction with him. It's like splitting the atom: answers just explode from him.

"Is it raining?" Dean asks.

Sam is reading the next challenge question. "It wasn't when I went out for the paper this morning."

And that's another thing. The bunker, being a secret lair, does not take delivery of mail, packages, or even the newspaper. Because then someone would know where it is, if not exactly what it is—several someones, actually; and that unfortunately includes pizza delivery droids—and so every morning Sam or Dean runs out to the closest convenience store to grab a paper.

Sam literally runs. Dean drives.

Dean has noted that the papers are all online, now, so no need to get a real one, but Sam pointed out that it was pretty hard to do a crossword puzzle on a computer screen.

"You just type in the letters, don't you?" Dean asked. He couldn't be certain, because he'd never even looked at the crossword puzzle, on paper or online, but it made sense. If you could type text, you could type text into little squares.

"I don't want to," Sam told him. "I want to write in the letters. It's traditional."

"In ink."

"Yes, in ink. It's no intellectual challenge if you use pencil and can erase the wrong letters. The point is to figure out the right word and then write it down."

"I would erase," Dean declared. "That's what erasers are for."

So now, as he does every morning, Sam is writing letters into little boxes on newsprint. In ink.

Dean has very clear memories of a young Sam in the back seat of the Impala with actual crossword puzzle booklets, since Dad kept the paper for himself most mornings, though he was known to hand Dean the sports section and Sam the comics and puzzles page if something else caught his interest. In those days Sam used a pencil, and now and then he actually erased a letter with a sound of severe annoyance and self-derision, until he learned that making this sound led to Dean crowing delight that Sammy got it wrong; and then at some point Sammy became Sam and stopped getting it wrong.

The storm cell hovering over Dean's head opens up, and the deluge engulfs from head to toes. He can feel it. One minute he's fine, and the next he is not. The wave of illness sprints through his body, like Usain Bolt.

Dean plants an elbow against the table, cups the side of his skull in broad fingers, and blinks woozily at blue ink letters. They are upside down, however, and he can't read the words. Not even if he closes one eye and squints.

"Crap on toast," he mutters. "Crappy crap on really crappy toast."

Sam isn't paying attention, but of course he hears even as his nerd brain considers and discards various words. "Grape jam," he says. "Preferably. Or strawberry." Then dimples flash in satisfaction as he enters the final letter in a box to complete the final word. "Occam's Razor. Hah. That double 'c' trips up a lot of people." He drops the pen, pushes the paper aside, stretches spine and prodigiously long arms, then meets his brother's eyes. Then his arms drop abruptly and the smile disappears as concern overtakes his expression. "Dude, you look terrible."

Dean agrees. "Crap on toast."

"Are you sick?"

Dean wobbles a nod against the palm of his hand. "Pretty sure."

"You were fine last night."

"I was fine when I made breakfast," Dean says, "all of, oh, fifteen minutes ago." He brings his other arm up to the table surface, spreads both elbows, and rests his forehead against stacked hands. "Storm cell. The heavens opened."

"What? You're talking to the table."

He did not lift his head. "I'm speaking in metaphors, Sammy. I must be dying."

"Dude, you're mumbling into wood. I can't understand a thing you're saying."

Dean shrugs. He doesn't want to lift his head to clarify his words, because he's not sure what might come out of his mouth. "Maybe if I used a pencil." Finally he raises his head just enough to clear his mouth of hands. "I guess I could erase."

Sam's expression is one of a little sympathy mixed with a far greater portion of dawning amusement. "Dude, you should go back to bed. You know how you get when you're sick."

Dean grunts.

"Go put on your jammies and crawl beneath the covers."

Yes, Sam is definitely amused. His tone, Dean thinks, is verging on laughter. Maybe even gleeful laughter.

"I'm in my jammies. In the dead guy robe, too." Because he was. These days, in the bunker, he showers after breakfast instead of before, because they're not going out to eat as they do when they're on the road staying in cheap motels. He has the luxury of remaining in his sleep tee and scrub bottoms while dining, if he so chooses, or even all freaking day.

"Do you need help?" Sam asks.

Dean slowly rocks head against hands in negation.

After a minute, or maybe an hour, he hears a wooden chair scrape against tile, and a moment later a hand closes over his left shoulder. "Come on, bro. Let me help. You're not making any progress on your own."

"—can do it," Dean mutters, heaving himself upright in the chair. The first collection of hacking coughs—horrible to the point of pukiness—bursts from his mouth.

Sam's tone is a little annoyed, and a lot resigned. "So, now that you've likely infected all of Kansas, I'm assuming I'll come down with it in a few days."

Dean, who has belatedly pressed a sleeved forearm against his mouth to block germy emissions, feels a faint pang of regret. It's true that when he gets sick, Sam gets sick. It was that way when they were kids, and it hasn't abated in adulthood. Constant close quarters. The only high point is that Dean only rarely got sick then, and almost never does now. It takes a whole army of germs to knock out the hard-nosed Dean Winchester Defenders of Immunity.

When the hacking dies enough for him to speak, Dean rasps, "Maybe we should have stayed in different hemispheres."

"Like that worked so well." Sam claps him twice on the top of his shoulder. "Come on. Let's go. I'll check the medicine cabinet, see what we've got. If I have to, I'll hit up a drugstore."

"All that stuff doesn't work," Dean frets, pressing himself up from his chair because Sam has now clamped a hand around his biceps and is about to drag him to his feet. "You know that. I just stay sick, until I'm not."

"It works," Sam counters. "It just doesn't work as fast as you'd like it to. I mean, you think it should all be over in five minutes, instead of five days."

Dean thinks that's the stupidest thing he's heard in a long time, and he tells his brother so. Because who wouldn't rather be over an illness in five minutes?

Sam punctuates each word with a poke in the spine. "Walk. Bed. Sleep."

Dean suspects that if he doesn't start walking, Sam will likely push him from behind, because he's done it before. Or drag him. Or do a weird hipcheck to knock him into motion. So he takes a few steps, muttering that he doesn't need orders, thank you very much, because nobody is the boss of him, and then his cell ringtone sounds from the table. Dean pauses, starts to turn sluggishly.

"Keep walking," Sam instructs, and does indeed give him a push. "I'll get it."

"Callin' for me," Dean reminds him. "My phone."

"I'm a big boy now, Dean. I can take a message for you. Just go to bed. I'll check on you in a minute, tell you what it's about."

As Sam takes the call, Dean makes his way down the corridor toward his room. A pitstop to relieve himself in the big communal bathroom delays his trip, where a weary squint into the mirror confirms that not only does he feel like crap on toast, but does indeed resemble it as well. He rubs briefly at stubble, thinking about the double-c'ed Occam's Razor-thing Sam had mentioned.

"Weird to name your razor," Dean tells his pale-lipped, white-as-bone reflection. "A car, yeah."

And then he's off into a bout of coughing that leaves him weak, shaky, and miserable. He drags open the medicine cabinet, which mocks him with its naked shelves—they tend to leave a first aid duffel packed, rather than filling cabinets with various bottles—and shuts it again. Well, let Sam check the duffel. Dean can take half a bottle of analgesics, suck down enough cough syrup to sleep—though, come to think if it, he could probably replace cough syrup with whisky and get the same effect. Drunks drink cough syrup for the alcohol content. Dean has the real stuff on hand, if Sam will bring him the bottle.

Probably Sam won't.

He slipper-shuffles into the corridor, tying the robe belt more tightly, and nearly runs into his fast-striding brother.

Sam halts, staring at him with knitted brows. "Why aren't you in bed yet? Jesus, Dean, you look like death warmed over."

Dean leans a shoulder against the wall and tries for a nonchalant posture when in fact the wall provides a desperately-needed support structure for a wobbly body. "Takin' a piss. That allowed?" He pantomimes a phone with thumb and little finger and holds it to his face. "Who was it?"

"Jody. Status report on the girls. Wanted one on us." Sam shrugs. "Just catching up. Girls are fine, she's fine, everything's fine. Well, except for you." Sam hooks a thumb in a gesture indicating the direction of Dean's room. "Move it, Joe Btfsplk."

"Who?"

"Joe Btfsplk. The character from the Li'l Abner comic strip. You know, the guy who walked around with a perpetual rain cloud over his head. "

Dean stares at his brother. "His last name is pronounced like someone blowing a raspberry?"

"It denotes bad luck. He's a jinx. Now, do you want to walk to bed on your own, or be physically forced?"

"I'm a jinx?"

"Well, it's true Joe jinxed other people," Sam concedes, "and you're more likely to be jinxed, so maybe it's not entirely appropriate. But bed is currently very appropriate, and if you don't get it in you'll end up wandering the halls." He closes a big hand around Dean's right biceps. "You know how you get when you're sick."

"No, Sam, I don't, because I'm sick when I'm sick. You don't know what you're like when you're sick because you're sick."

Now Sam's amused, which isn't fair. "But everyone one else knows what you're like when you're sick. Now, you tend to go one direction or the other. Sick Dean 1.0 is kind of like a lost, miserable, whimpering puppy, while Sick Dean 2.0 is cranky, pissy, and petulant. I'm not fond of either one, though 1.0 is generally more bearable than 2.0. That 2.0 can be a real son of a bitch."

Since Sam is now dragging him down the corridor, Dean opts for cranky, pissy, and petulant. "Well, you're a whole mess of versions."

"Of course I am. I am a complex, layered, complicated, fascinating individual."

"Asshat."

"That, too. It's genetic." Sam propels him through the door into his room. "So, do you want me to take your slippers and robe from you? Turn back the covers? Or can you get into bed on your own?"

"Asshat."

Sam merely nods. "Learned it from my big brother."

Sighing, Dean strips out of the dead guy's robe and dumps it onto a desk chair, kicks off his slippers, yanks back the covers on the neatly-made bed. Crawls in, tries to get comfortable, scowls up at his brother. It's bad enough that Sam is taller than he is anyway, but when he's standing at Dean's bedside he just flat looms. "Stop looming."

"Ah," Sam says. "I guess it's 2.0. Okay, get some sleep. In a while I'll bring some soup or something, get some fluids in you."

"Whisky."

"No booze. It dehydrates you."

"Sick Dean 2.0 wants whisky."

"When 2.0 can take me in his current condition, I'll rethink the whisky."

Dean considers that. "Cough syrup, then."

Sam's brows jump skyward. "You want to take cough syrup? You?"

Dean fakes a hacking sound, swallows heavily and croaks, "I need it."

Sam looks thoughtful.

"I'm changing to 1.0," Dean points out, sniffing piteously. "You like him better."

"Let me see what we've got." Sam turns toward the doorway. Once there, he turns back briefly. "You know, they make versions without alcohol these days."

Dean reverts to 2.0 and offers his brother a one-fingered salute.

In dreams, Dean is usually a bystander rather than a participant, and for that he is grateful. He's a participant in real life weird situations all too often, and just hanging around watching weird stuff in his dreams seems like a good way to go. But admittedly this one is weirder than most, because Sam's imaginary friend Sully, he of the rainbow suspenders, is waltzing with a significantly oversized teddy bear whining about a cruel, cruel world.

Waltzing.

And the musicians playing the waltz are Jimi Hendrix, Barry Manilow, Eric Clapton, and Yanni.

Then Sully morphs into a wendigo, and the teddy bear into a Leviathan, and Dream Dean decides being sick is torture because who wants to dream about that bullshit with that soundtrack?

The wendigo turns to Dream Dean and says, in Sam's voice, 'I lost my shoe.'

Real Dean wakes up and blinks into his sheet-covered mattress, realizing he's face down, pillowless, and trapped in twisted bedclothes. "Weird shit," he mutters, closes his eyes again, and feels around for his pillow, hoping to snag it and pull it under his head again without actually having to move any other portion of his aching body.

"Dean, wake up. I lost my shoe."

Dean's one-handed, flailing search has not discovered his pillow. "I'm sick. Find it yourself."

"I have it," Sam says, sounding baffled. "Dean?"

Dean finally sorts it all out in his muddled head. Sam isn't saying he lost his shoe. He's saying "I have soup." Which Dean figures out because he can smell it. In fact, he smells that smell.

He lurches up onto one elbow, coughs hard enough to shake the narrow bed, leans his forehead into the mattress for a moment, then starts to wrangle himself onto his side so he can look at his brother.

Which he does manage, and he sees his brother, who is smiling broadly enough to display those deep dimples that strip ten years away from him. But despite the enticing odor, Sam has no soup.

Because their mother has the soup.

She is standing in front of Sam holding a big mug in both hands. "Tomato Rice." She is smiling all the way into her eyes. "You wanted it whenever you were sick."

He looks to his brother. "You called her?" His voice is ragged. "Just because I'm sick?"

Sam shakes his head, still smiling. "It wasn't Jody on the phone."

"I called," their mother explains. "I was in Lawrence. Wanted to see my boys." She comes forward then, makes a one-handed gesture. "Scoot up, sweetie. You can't drink soup while lying down, or you'll spill it all over. Do you know how many times I told you that?"

Silent, Dean scoots up, settles against the wall. She gestures again, a flick of fingers, and he moves over so she can sit down, settle her back against the wall. Her shoulder is below his, but not by much; Mary Winchester is a tall woman. She leans into him a little, offers him the mug, which he takes. Then swings her legs up onto the bed and crosses booted ankles so they are sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.

"This was easier when you were smaller," she says wryly, "but I think I can manage." And she hitches her left arm up and around, cradles his neck in the crook of her elbow, threads stroking fingers into his hair. "Drink it all, sweetie. You'll feel better."

Sam's expression is unlike any Dean's ever seen. There is a fleeting wisp of sadness, a minute trace of wistfulness, both coupled with deep affection. "Now that's something new. Dean 3.0."

Dean quirks a brow. "What's the 3.0?"

Sam says, "My big brother . . . at peace with himself."

Dean swallows heavily.

"There's more soup in the kitchen," his mother notes, still stoking his hair. "When Sam told me you were sick, I picked up a couple of those giant cans."

But Dean 3.0 doesn't think he needs more.

Because at this moment, he has it all.

~ end ~