Remember, here in The Jimiverse, we only have happy stories, so Bobby never died, and after Singer Salvage was blown up by Godstiel's truly spectacular bout of celesto-diabolical gastroenteritis it was rebuilt bigger and better, so they will head back to Bobby's place. In this verse, they probably find the bunker nonetheless and use it occasionally, but as long as I write Jimiverse fanfics, they will always have a home at Singer Salvage.
Chapter Three
Sam glanced across to Jimi Jr, who was curled up and asleep in shotgun, then glanced in the mirror to see Dean once more wrangling the blanket that Cas had managed to dislodge in his fitful dozing.
"Okaaaaay, there ya go," Dean carefully tucked the blanket around the angel, who stared at him blearily, "Nice and cosy, so you can just sit back and…"
With a small gurgling sigh, Castiel closed his eyes and tilted to starboard until he was leaning on Dean once more, face buried in his shirt, and proceeded to snore in a congested fashion.
"… lean all over me again," finished Dean glumly. Carefully he tried to lever Cas upright, but as soon as he was more or less vertical, Cas frowned in his sleep, and slid back down the seat until he was once again sprawled against Dean's shoulder. "What is this?" he demanded as Cas snurfled and wiggled to get comfortable. "What the hell am I, a security blanket?"
"Well, you heard him," Sam shrugged and tried hard not to grin, "Sitting upright makes his head spin, and lying down makes his chest hurt."
With a calculating expression, Dean tried once more to edge Castiel, bit by bit, to lean the other way against the door and window. But to no avail; as soon as the ailing angel looked like he was settled, he'd quickly shift back to lean on Dean once more. "Fuck, he's as bad as you were as a kid. He's possibly worse, because he's bigger. Why can't he get comfortable all over you?" Dean demanded.
"I don't know!" humphed Sam, "You saw what happened; when we tried that, it didn't work, he was in serious discomfort whatever he did." He paused. "Don't get grumpy at me because he doesn't want to snuggle with me."
"Hey, we are NOT snuggling!" snapped Dean, "Okay? We are totally not snuggling. Not even manly man-snuggling. No snuggling goin' on back here, is there, Cas?"
"None at all, Dean," agreed Castiel in a muffled voice, rubbing his cheek against Dean's shirt to get comfortable.
"Right," chortled Sam. "Well then, it probably serves you right for feeding him so much NyQuil."
"Well, the snoring is marginally better than the moaning," replied Dean defensively.
"Dude, you've overdosed him!" insisted Sam.
"Crap," scoffed Dean, "I didn't give him any more than I'd use on myself."
"The prosecution rests," declared Sam grimly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Dean.
"Look, it's well established that you have a bionic liver," Sam elaborated, "Because the way you've treated it since you were fourteen, if you didn't have a superhuman liver, you'd be dead by now! Your liver can handle doses of NyQuil that would be more than sufficient to treat a mammoth with a stuffy nose!"
"Well, Cas is an angel," Dean said firmly, "And if it helps him when he's not feelin' his usual awesomely powerful celestial self, he can handle it. This is the guy who drank a liquor store, it's gonna take more than a bit of antihistamine to knock him over, right Cas?"
"I didn't stand on the fish," mumbled Castiel, without even opening his eyes, "But I think I may have left footprints in the butter, my apologies for that."
"Well," Sam went on, unable to help himself, saying as innocently as he could, "In that case, it could be because he's an angel, and you're the Righteous Man – you do share a profound bond, you know."
"Yeah, yeah," sighed Dean, grimacing as he surveyed the damp patch on his overshirt. "Jesus, much more of this snot and we'll be bonded together more than either of us would ever want. I've met grizzling three-year-olds who weren't this… excretory." He dabbed fruitlessly at Castiel's nose. "Bobby have any ideas?"
"Not yet," Sam replied, "But he knows we're coming, and he said Cas can hole up until we can figure out what the hell has happened."
"Well, I hope your research-fu comes through fast," remarked Dean, as Castiel yawned, and blinked up at him. "Hey, Cas, you should probably drink some more, gotta keep those fluids up – think you can manage?"
"Yes, I think so," Castiel croaked, painfully pushing himself up from Dean's shoulder. "I really do feel quite unwell."
"Well, this will help," Dean said, reaching for the bottle of sports drink, "We gotta keep you hydrated, what with all the, uh, leakin' that you're doing."
Castiel accepted the bottle, took a drink, and then examined it. "This beverage is blue," he noted.
"Well, yeah," Dean agreed, "Good to see that your eyes are still workin'."
"And yet the taste is clearly intended to represent that of raspberries," the angel went on, frowning.
"Gotta love that perfect combination of artificial flavourings and additives," smiled Dean.
"That does not make sense," Castiel said, clearly confused. "Why would something intended to taste like raspberries be coloured blue?"
"You'd have to ask their marketing department," Dean shrugged, "Drink up."
Castiel took another drink. "I could understand if it was supposed to be, for example, blueberries," he intoned seriously, "Although blueberries are not actually truly blue, and the juice of blueberries is only coloured purple if the skins are mashed to extract the antocyanin pigments that give the fruit its characteristic appearance."
"Uh, yeah, right," Dean nodded warily.
Castiel finished the bottle and handed it back to Dean carefully. "I think it is a strange colour to put into a drink meant to represent the flavouring of a fruit," he said seriously. "I think that a lurid bright blue colour is not appropriate to put into a drink, unless you are attempting to market a drink containing bioluminescent algae or bacteria. I think that this beverage has an entirely disturbing appearance. And I think…" he paused, as if trying to remember something important.
"Yeah, you think…?" Dean prompted.
Castiel looked at him in a slightly cross-eyed fashion. "I think that I am going to fall asleep again now," he replied seriously, gently slumping back across the seat. By the time his face was once more mashed into Dean's shirt, he was snoring gently again.
With a sigh, Dean pulled the blanket around him, and glared at the back of Sam's head, daring him to laugh.
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A number of hours, a few more bottles of weird isotonic drinks and more doses of cold & flu meds later, they arrived at the salvage yard. Bobby and Jimi's sister, Janis, came out to meet them as Dean carefully wrangled an apparently suddenly boneless Castiel out of the car.
"God's tits, son, you look like hammered shit," Bobby began without preamble.
"Hello, Bobby," rasped Castiel. "Regrettably, I do feel like something has chewed me up, digested me, excreted me, then pounded me with a very large mallet."
"Let's get the patient inside," the old Hunter directed, "And see if we can figure out what's goin' on."
"Sounds like a plan," agreed Dean, "And honestly, I'm kinda lookin' forward to changing my shirt. Come on, buddy, it's beddy-byes time for sick little angels."
Between them, Sam and Dean wrangled Castiel up the stairs and into the house, where Bobby directed them to the guest room.
"Okay, I think it's probably okay to lose the tie and maybe even the coat at this point," Dean decided. Sam stood back and smiled, watching Dean go into mother-hen mode, fluffing pillows and adjusting bedclothes whilst keeping up a stream of chatter about nothing in particular. "So you just lie here and rest, and Sam and Bobby will figure out what we gotta do to get you back on your feet again."
"Thank you, Dean," Castiel managed a very small, very wan smile. "Thank you all. I am so sorry to impose upon you like this."
"You're as good as family, boy," Bobby grunted, "So don't waste your breath apologisin', you concentrate all the energy you can muster on gettin' better."
"Yes, Bobby," Castiel managed before, once more, he began to snore.
"Have you ever heard of an angel getting, well, sick before?" asked Sam as they headed back down the stairs."
"Nope," admitted Bobby, "But I aint one to say somethin' is impossible just 'cause I aint ever seen it before. For example," he frowned at Dean, "When you were about eighteen, I would've said it was impossible to install a nativity scene hijacked from a mall on the roof of my house without me noticin' it happening."
"It's departmental policy to neither confirm nor deny," Dean replied sunnily.
"I also woulda said it was highly unlikely that baby Jesus would be cradled tenderly by the Michelin Man," Bobby continued. "I don't remember that bit from the Gospels."
"It's in Luke, I think," suggested Sam. "You know, 'And the archangel Gabriel did appear unto Bibendum and did say unto him, Greetings, blessed one, The Lord is with you, be not afraid, for you will conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Jesus, and he shall be great, and he shall be fitted with off-road steel-belted radials…'."
"Well, the Virgin Mary was bolted down, for some reason," Dean argued. "Gloria in excelsis All-Terrain Baby Jesus!"
"What I'm gettin' at here is that, just because we don't understand how somethin' can happen, that don't mean that it can't happen," Bobby clarified. "Especially when we got the evidence right there in front of us."
"Or in my case, right there on the front of my shirt," Dean added.
"So, what's the plan?" asked Sam. "Should we get him to a doctor? An actual human doctor?"
"I don't think we should rush to do anythin'," Bobby told them, "Until we can get some intel on this. Think about it," he said seriously. "First of all, he's an angel. And angel who appears to be manifestin' exactly as a sick human, true, but he is an angel. We can't take him to just any old doctor – who knows what they might find?"
"What, like, he's got two hearts, or something?" asked Dean.
Sam rolled his eyes and treated his brother to a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean). "He's a sick angel, Dean, he's not a Time Lord!"
"He's not a weeping angel, either," Dean said, "Although that hasn't stopped him leavin' me decidedly damp…"
"We don't know what a doctor might find," Bobby cut in before the conversation could degenerate into common or garden Winchester bicker, "And what awkward questions that might raise. Which is one reason to treat carefully with this. Also, this is Castiel, a Warrior of Heaven, but right now, also fillin' in for his Dad as Sheriff of Heaven. And looks to be pretty seriously incapacitated. The acting head honcho of Heaven Inc. is out of action."
He let that sink in.
"So, we gotta box clever on this one," Bobby surmised, "For now, we all get some sleep, then we hit the books, see if we can figure this out. As for Feathers, if the meds work on him, we do what we can to keep him comfortable, maybe make some chicken soup, keep the lemon drinks comin'…"
They all jumped slightly at the sound of another powerful sneeze.
"…Aaaaand wash down the walls as necessary."
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Crowley roused to a vaguely damp sensation: he was lying on his sofa, with Gedda licking anxiously at his face, and Orgle patting carefully at his hand.
"Wha… what just happened?" he asked vaguely.
"Mr Crowley, I think you might have fainted!" said Orgle, worry dripping from his voice. "You were sitting on your sofa, then you just fell right off it!"
"Nonsense," snapped Crowley, sitting up and reaching for his drink, "I'm a demon. Demons do not faint. I'll have a word with Snotty in Engineering, see if one of his underlings has been playing silly buggers with gravity again, I don't know how many times I've told them not to mess with the default settings for contextual physical properties of this plane of reality, no matter how many tantrums Duke Anghaal throws because he wants to have sex in zero-gee…"
He got to his feet, somewhat more unsteadily than he'd intended, and lost his balance, face-planting against Orgle.
"Ah, I see you've been down at the racks again," he said, muffled in the thick tangled pelt. "Helping to wind out intestines, if I'm any judge."
"I think it's good for me to keep my paw in, even if I work in Admin these days," replied Orgle. "Er, are you all right, Mr Crowley?"
"Yes, yes," Crowley replied airily, "It's been far too long since I pushed my face into a surface reminiscent of Chewbacca after he's been bathing in the entrails of his enemies, I should let myself have a bit of fun more often… er, Orgle?"
"Yes, Mr Crowley?"
"Do you think you could sort of lever me back upright again, there's a good chap."
With three of his massive arms, Orgle delicately lifted Crowley away from himself. The King of Hell came free with a slightly sticky noise, and fell backwards onto his sofa again.
"Ah, that's better." He patted at his pockets for a hankie, remembered that he'd contaminated his last one to a point where not even an imp would be prepared to handle it with asbestos gloves, and settled for wiping his face on his sleeve, since that shirt would clearly never play the piano again anyway. "Well, this is a bit of an embuggerance," he announced.
"I think you might be sick, Mr Crowley," Orgle ventured in a worried tone.
"I fear, Orgle, that you are right," sighed His Mephistophilean Majesty, coughing until Orgle felt compelled to pat him gently on the back, which to Crowley felt like being hit from behind by an angry Kodiak bear swinging a sledgehammer. "Oh, I feel truly dreadful."
"Do you think you will feel better soon?" asked Orgle in a doubtful voice. "Only, there's quite a lot in your calendar today." He turned back to tap carefully at the computer on the desk. "There's the Monthly Meeting, and your To Shred list is full, we have to go through the returns, then there's interviews for the next batch of applicants to work as cross-roads demons, and if the grapevine is anything to listen to then Dame Ghazoria's faction is plotting another attempt to overthrow you so you'll want to tear a few heads off to make your point, I cleared an hour in your schedule so you won't have to rush…"
With a tremulous groaned, Crowley fell back onto his sofa. "Orgle, mate, I couldn't deadhead a daisy right now," he moaned. "Ohhhh, I wish I was alive again, so at least I'd have the possibility of death to cheer me up…"
"What do people do when they get sick, Mr Crowley?" asked Orgle.
"Well, depending where they live, they go to get advice and treatment from a doctor, a shaman, or an old wise person, an individual with knowledge of such things," Crowley replied, "But given the apparent level of competence we've got Down Here, that really isn't going to help. No wonder we could never have a Redeemer born here to save the souls in Hell, I doubt we could find three wise men or one virgin…" With a small sad noise, he toppled sideways to the couch once more.
Hell's fiends weren't supposed to be terribly bright – Crowley privately thought of them as Hell's drummers – but Orgle was a fiend in a million, and probably the only individual in Hell besides Gedda the Hellpoodle who actually felt any regard for Crowley. His boss might not be prepared to consult anybody Hellside, but he knew for a fact that they did know an old wise person…
With his mouths set in resolute expressions, Orgle made a decision.
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Sam was poring over an old book and Dean was upstairs trying to coax Castiel into eating some tomato rice soup when Bobby answered the knock at the door.
"Hello Mr Singer! I'm so terribly sorry to bother you, but I really didn't know what else to do, and I'm so worried!"
Crowley, dangling from two of the fiend's arms, peered at him blearily, gave him a listless little wave, then honked vigorously into an expensive (and, as of that moment, terminally damaged) handkerchief.
"It's okay, Orgle," sighed the Man of Knowledge, "You better bring him in."
Well, Florence the plot bunny seems to be feasting on your reviews, so keep 'em coming! Who else do you think might get dragged into this humanitarian effort (or should that be angelitarian/demonitarian)? Shake your kale pom-poms for Florence! Because seriously, being waved around is the only thing kale is fit for, it certainly shouldn't be eaten.