"Put me out of my misery," Sam groaned, so far past the point of caring whether or not he was being annoying. He felt like broiled shit, quivering limbs and throbbing skull and a nose so clogged it felt like it'd always been that way, and there was nothing he could do about that fact at this point besides lament it. "Sam, come on. Every damn day, you put up with insane, death-defying crap without complaining once, but catch a cold and you're pissing and moaning like it's the third apocalypse." Dean replaced Sam's fifth emptied box of tissues on the nightstand with a fresh one, flicking Sam on the shoulder while he did so.
"Ugh. Y'know, I think I'd rather face the Devil again than have to deal with this for another minute."
"Bullshit," came Dean's cheerful reply, and Sam seriously envied the lack of congestion in his voice. He grabbed another handful of tissues and sopped up the never-ending mess streaming from his nose, cringing as a spike of sharp pain interrupted what had previously been a steady, pounding headache. He tossed the wad of used tissues into the wastebasket to the right of his bed, heedless of his still-dripping nose, and laid back down, drawing his blankets tightly over his face.
"You'll suffocate like that, mouth-breather."
"Good. Couldn't ask for a better way to go." Dean yanked the ends of the blankets away from Sam's face and tucked them firmly down around him. "God, so high-maintenance. I don't think you were this much of a baby when you were eight."
Sam threw an arm over his face and exhaled, loud and wet, through his mouth. "Think I'm gonna vomit."
"No, you're not. You've got a common cold, not the fucking swine flu."
Sam gripped his stomach threateningly, and Dean looked anxious despite himself. "Dude, I'm not gonna tell you twice. It's just nausea."
"Yeah, well. Don't blame me if I get nauseous all over your shoes."
Dean just laughed and sat on the side of Sam's bed, mattress dipping with his weight. He reached out and ruffled Sam's sweaty hair, hand catching in the tangles. It was pretty gross. "Does his stuffed-up highness need me to sing him a lullaby?" Sam tried for a frown, but the muscles in his face shied away from the effort. "Dean, shouldn't you be getting back to the library? You said you'd get going, like, an hour ago. Can't expect poor Kevin to shoulder all the work." Dean busied himself with readjusting Sam's cold compress before answering.
"I'll let Kev take the afternoon off. Case'll still be there tomorrow, right?"
"I don't think Kevin even knows what free time is anymore," Sam muttered grimly, before the rest of Dean's statement caught up with him. "Wait, what. You can't just put off a case until later! People's lives are at stake; you can't conveniently forget that when it suits you." Sam felt like he was possibly being too much of a repetitive nag, but his throat felt drier than a Wendigo's flaking backside and he couldn't breathe unless it was through his mouth like a fish, so, whatever. He felt entitled to at least some moralistic griping.
"Shut up, Sam, I know. Jesus. You haven't been this bitchy in years; it's actually kind of refreshing."
Sam sat up in bed, making the compress fall off his forehead with a wet plop. "Missing the point. This thing is almost definitely taking victims as we speak. We should work. I should work." He deflated at Dean's disapproving glare, flopping back onto his pillows with a pointed sniff.
"Okay, you should work. So. Get the hell out. I'm not so useless that I can't wipe up my own snot." He gestured limply at the door to his room, but was prevented from saying anything else by a very poorly-timed bout of coughing and hacking.
"Fuck," he wheezed when it was over, eyes streaming. "Almost feels like I'm doing the trials all over again." He'd said it without thinking, meaning it as nothing more than an offhand quip, but when he saw Dean's drawn face he realized it had hit a little too close to home. He reached for his brother before deciding that his hands were unhygienic and disgusting, opting to poke him with his leg instead.
"Hey, man, I'm sorry. Shouldn't've joked about that." Dean waved away his concern with a clipped, "Don't worry about it". "Really, this's a cake walk compared to the trials." Sam winced almost before he'd spoken the sentence.
"Wow, I think infirmity makes me crass. Shutting up now." He burrowed under the covers once more and drew them up to his chin sheepishly.
"No, Sam, it's fine. It is, but…you gotta let me take care of you for once. The case, we don't have a single lead on it. Odds are we wouldn't have gotten there in time either way, but I mean, if it bothers you so much, I'll set up some interviews for tomorrow morning." Sam nodded very hesitantly, still unsettled by the notion that, though they had a job in town that was undoubtedly their kind of gig, they weren't immediately jumping into it. After he'd turned the thought over a few times, considering it, something else Dean had said prickled in his chest.
"Take care of me 'for once'? Don't give me that, Dean; you've been taking care of me your entire life." Sam broke off and coughed wetly into his fist. Dean sat him up for the hundredth time and rubbed his back soothingly while he coughed, watching him with an odd expression on his face.
"What," Sam's voice rasped after he'd slumped back down with an irritated shove at Dean's arms. "Nothing, nothing. I…I'm just amazed you can still say that after…everything that's happened."
Sam raised his eyebrows, surprised and somewhat disheartened by this uncharacteristic bit of honesty. "Well, yeah. It's the truth, isn't it? It's always been the truth."
Dean gave him a quick nod and looked away. Sam knew Dean's guilty face like the back of his hand, and he wished he could clap him on the back and reassure him that everything in the past was just that: in the past, dust in the wind, water under the bridge. But, of course, they never voiced this crap to each other if either of them could help it.
Dean stood up and said, "I'm gonna go slice you some oranges. That's a thing, right? Vitamin C for a cold?"
Sam cleared his phlegmy throat. "Uh, clinical evidence doesn't really support—"
"Oh my god," Dean blurted, but he was smiling anyway. "Cram it. If I wanna feed you oranges, I'm gonna feed you oranges."
"Good luck finding any. My last grocery run was two weeks ago, and everyone else in this house would rather eat fried shoe leather than produce."
"You've got a point. Huh. Charlie crashed here last night; think she'd drop by the store if I asked her to?"
Sam recalled Charlie's tendency to spend entire nights on the internet and sleep until half past noon the following day.
"Maybe if you paid her. A lot. On second thought…no."
"Kevin, maybe?"
"Kid's a short step away from being a walking corpse. We should start compensating him for what we put him through."
Dean changed the subject. "Alright, oranges are a no-go. I'll make soup."
He mussed Sam's hair again before leaving his bedside, just to bug him. Still, as Sam began to doze off, he thought way back to the first time he'd gotten the stomach flu when he was ten, and was grateful that, two decades later, the important things hadn't changed at all.
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