Title: In Sanguinem
Summary: An ardent fan of the Supernatural books with a knack for fanfiction casts a spell to make her 'Hurt-Sam' stories come to life. Needless to say, the boys are not amused. Season 15. Hurt/Comfort. Hurt!Sam. Protective!Dean.
Warnings: Rated K for bad language, injury, blood loss, disease, threats, spoilers for everything up to season 15.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show or the art. The idea for this was taken from a prompt for an Oh!Sam Comment Fic Meme.
"He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side." -Emily Giffin,Love the One You're With
It started out relatively small in the beginning.
They were on the run from a vampire when Sam tripped over his own legs, the forward momentum carrying him a few feet over the harsh ground, dirt and stones and gnarled tree roots scraping his knees to hell and back.
Dean turned to see what had caused the tumble, his hands clutching his gun poised high and ready to blast a few silver rounds into the ugly blood sucker who'd chased them through the woods for the past ten minutes. His frantic eyes flew around to look for the threat, but Dean quickly realized that there was no imminent danger. Just Sam on the ground, looking stunned as he stared at the bloody scrapes and cuts on his fingers.
"Get up!" Dean's breath punched out of his chest as he careened around and grabbed his brother by the lapels of his jacket, roughly yanking him to his feet and shoving him forward. "C'mon, c'mon! Let's go!"
Later, with the blood-sucker dead and both of them checked into a motel room, Dean pulled the med kit out of his duffle and steered Sam over to sit on the closed toilet lid.
"It's like you're freaking four again," Dean muttered, pulling an alcohol wipe and a tube of Neosporin from their kit. He crouched down before his brother, joints and sore muscles protesting at the movement. "Minus the Spiderman Band-Aid and the tears, that is."
Sam bowed his head, allowing his hair to fall into his eyes. He was quiet while Dean went to work, cutting the blood-flecked jeans away to expose the shallow wounds on his knees. "Just say it, Dean."
"Say what?"
"I slowed us down tonight. First I let him get the drop on me and then—" Sam huffed out a frustrated breath, gesturing down at himself. "And then this."
Dean locked his jaw, purposefully keeping his mouth shut as he started cleaning the dirt and the embedded pebble stones from Sam's knees like he used to do when they were still children. "So you weren't quite at your best today." He shrugged, uncapping the Neosporin and applying it to Sam's knees and palms with gentle care before wrapping them in clean gauze. "No sense beating yourself up about it."
Ever since their latest showdown with Chuck, Sam's head hadn't really been in the game. The kid was still reeling from the revelation that God was, in fact, capricious and that he took pleasure from seeing them suffer. And Dean got it, he really did. Hell, he was still struggling to wrap his head around everything that had happened, from Chuck having essentially upended their entire lives, to the impending Apocalypse he kick-started, to the fact that 'free will' had pretty much always just been an illusion. Oh and let's not forget about the whole 'destroying other galaxies' thing. But he also liked to think that they weren't just puppets on a string for Chuck to play with, and that none of their sacrifices or choices in life were worthless.
For the last month, Dean had been trying to make his brother understand that Chuck only had as much power over them as they were willing to give him. But Sam had always had issues with freedom of choice and this whole thing had hit him much harder than he was willing to admit.
"In our line of work, 'not being at your best' pretty much equals death." Sam eventually broke the silence and there was something so utterly vulnerable in his voice, that it made Dean halt his movements and blink for a second. "I could have gotten us both killed today."
"Sam." Dean sent his brother a glare at the blatant exaggeration. He didn't like anyone trash-talking his brother and that included Sam, too. "Look, man. I know what's happening with Chuck is a lot to process. But—"
"But what, Dean?" Sam cut him off.
Dean sat back on his haunches, pressing his lips together as he stared up at his brother's eyes, the same eyes that had wanted answers from Dean all his life.
"I know this is a lot to process, even for us. And I know what he did to us, hell, what that bastard's still doing to us, is messed up. But you can't let that shit eat you up, alright? I need you to see this thing through with me, Sammy. All the way to the end."
Sam tried to look away, avoiding eye contact.
"Hey," Dean snapped at him, his eyes turning desperate now, pleading with Sam not to give up this close to the end. "You with me or not?"
Sam looked miserable and young in the fluorescent light of the motel bathroom, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a tired expression on his face. It took a beat or two for him to react, but then his upper lip stiffened and some of the fire sparked in back to life in his eyes.
"I'm with you."
I'm always with you.
All the way to the end.
"Okay, good." Dean relaxed somewhat at the soft admission, at the reassurance that Sam trusted in him – in them – to figure this out. He put their med supplies back into the kit, trying not to think about Chuck sitting behind his laptop somewhere, cracking his knuckles over the keyboard over having written yet another successful chick-flick-moment between them.
oOo
The next time something happened, was two states over in Omaha, Nebraska.
Face-planting into the ground was one thing, and then there was getting sick. Like, legitimately, tomato-rice-soup-warranting kinda sick. It started with a few barely concealed coughs in between questioning witnesses and – because Sam never did things halfway – ended with him sporting a fever of 105 within a few hours of crossing the city limits.
Technically, Dean shouldn't even have noticed.
Sure, Sam was a giant dork who didn't know how to put one foot in front of the other and his skin had been scraped badly enough to require the first-aid-kit just a couple of days ago, but it wasn't like the kid was missing a limb or something.
No hourly check-ups required.
But because Dean was Dean, he couldn't help but check on the kid at 3:14 AM on his way to take a leak, only to notice that Sam's cheeks were oddly flushed, his ridiculously floppy bangs matted to his forehead with sweat.
"Sam?" Dean rasped as he crossed over to the side of Sam's bed, one hand immediately going up to feel his forehead. Even in sleep, Sam leaned into the touch, the discomfort easing ever-so-slightly from his expression.
His forehead felt like a hot poker against Dean's hand.
"Sam, hey, wake up," he said, his voice climbing up with urgency, giving his brother's shoulder a shake.
Sam's eyes were glassy and his gaze vacant when he blinked them open. He looked confused as he glanced around himself, his cheeks flushed an unnaturally bright shade of red. Then he suddenly jolted up in bed as though hunter-instincts were belatedly kicking in, eyes wide and panicked as they flew around the room, one hand going beneath his pillow, probably to look for some sort of weapon to defend himself with.
"Hey, hey. Easy. 's just me." Dean put up his hands, not wanting to startle his distraught little brother any more.
Sam looked as though he was trying hard to control the way the world tilted around him, threatening to throw him off his precarious position on the edge of the dingy motel bed. He grabbed hold of the edge of the mattress, fingers digging into the ratty thing as though it was the only thing anchoring him to the planet.
Dean caught him by the elbows just as he started sliding off the bed, wholly unbalanced in the aftermath of his sudden awakening. "Woah, woah— what are you—"
With no sort of warning, Sam suddenly just went pliant against Dean, kinda collapsing face-first against his brother's chest. "Okay, okay… I got you," Dean muttered under his breath, heart hammering wildly in his chest.
Sam's face nuzzled close to Dean's neck, just like he was – indeed – four years old again and wanting for his big brother to take the pain away and quite frankly, to see the kid go from feverish, to uncoordinated to damn near unconscious in a span of thirty seconds was freaking Dean out to no end.
"Okay, it's okay," Dean muttered, trying to pull back just far enough to get a good look at Sam's face. His brother's head lolled a little when he shifted his shoulder out from beneath it and Dean cursed as his hand shot out to support the back of Sam's head. "Don't you make me call an ambulance, here, Sam…"
Sam didn't stir.
"Sammy?" Dean gave his unresponsive brother a rough shake, worry making his voice gruff and demanding, kinda like their dad's voice sounded when he got into drill sergeant mode. "Sam!"
"D'n?" Sam's eyes flickered open and managed to focus on him for all but a second, one of his giant hands clumsily reaching up to Dean's chest as though he was trying to reassure himself that Dean was really there and not just a figment of his illusion. His words were slurred when he finally managed to get them out. "'s it time to check ou' yet?"
"No. It's in the middle of the night and you're burning up," Dean explained, trying not to let on how much this whole thing worried him. "We need to get you cooled down. Think you can walk?"
Sam smiled in a drunken way, teeth and dimples and all and Dean's worry skyrocketed when his brother stabbed his digit finger into Dean's chest with a chuckle that bordered on lunatic. He got that way sometimes when he was drugged up to the gills or drunk off his ass. Neither of which was the case right now. "D'n. Ye taught me how t' w-walk."
"Damn straight. How about you give me a demo?" Dean swallowed past the growing lump in his throat and looped one of Sam's arms around his own shoulder. He grimaced at having to support most of Sam's weight, as well as at the heat radiating off of Sam's entire body (seriously, the kid was like a goddamn furnace) and then staggered when Sam did not cooperate at all, his legs just giving out beneath him at the first forward step.
"G'nna b-be sick," Sam mumbled, one of his overly large paws grabbing a clumsy fistful of Dean's shirt as if to try and stop him from moving.
"Alright," Dean grunted out through gritted teeth, carrying the brunt of his brother's weight with Sam doing very little in forms of help. "Just a couple more steps, okay? Try to hold on."
"'s bad for th' uph'lstry…" Sam snorted and then his eyes kinda rolled up in his head and whatever little control of his body he might have possessed just drained out of him in one go.
Dean watched in horror as his brother went completely lax in his hold, his scraped and bandaged knees hitting the ground yet again and his body doubling forward like a sack of potatoes as he slipped from Dean's grip.
Dean had about a split-second to panic before he kick-started into motion. He hurriedly crouched down and checked his brother's pulse before he wormed an arm under Sam's knees and around his back and lifted him clear off the ground with a grunt that was really more like a cry of pain. His joints were cracking, every muscle in his body protesting and straining because despite the obvious evidence speaking for itself, his brother was no longer the four-year-old toddler his stupid dimples and endearing nature might have Dean believe. He was a goddamn giant and under normal circumstances Dean wouldn't have been able to lift him bridal-style, but maybe this was some kind of freak-adrenaline thing you saw in the movies.
Whatever it was, Dean managed to half-carry, half-drag his brother over into the tiny motel bathroom and sit him down against the closed toilet lid. "Sam?" Dean grabbed the side of his brother's flushed face and tried to ignore the scalding heat radiating from him. He gave Sam a few light slaps to the cheek, trying to rouse his brother but Sam's head just lolled back, his arms flopping lifelessly to the side. "Sammy? SAM! C'mon, damnit, wake up!" When none of his previous attempts seemed to work, Dean let out a string of curses and then back-handed Sam hard across his unsuspecting face. He hit him hard enough to leave a ghostly-pale imprint of his hand in his wake and somewhere deep down, Dean felt torn up with guilt at the sight, but if Sam didn't snap out of it right the fuck now, Dean was going to have to call an ambulance and he'd really, really rather not spend the night dealing with skeptical nurses and busted insurance (a nice little memento from the time Chuck took their heroes' luck away) and breaking his sick, unresponsive little brother out of a supervised hospital ward without anybody noticing.
"Wha…" Sam blinked, his eyelashes fluttering weakly and Dean was close enough to tears he was so relieved for a sign of responsiveness from his brother.
"D'n?" Sam asked again, muddled confusion in his glassy eyes. "What—" he cut himself off on a groan and Dean quickly lifted him off the toilet and to the ground, recognizing the change in his brother's expression for what it was. The sudden change in altitude was the final straw to make Sam's stomach flip. He groaned, body jack-knifing forward as his hands shot out to grip the toilet bowl for support and Dean had just enough time to swipe a hand through Sam's sweaty bangs (which – by the way – gross) to keep his stupidly long mop of curls out of his face before Sam started retching. He heaved and gagged for what felt like eternity and Dean grimaced, turning his face away as far as possible without losing sight of his little brother in the process. By the end of it, Sam was dry heaving with nothing left to throw up but bile and spittle. His whole freaking body was shaking and Dean put a palm on his brother's quivering back, rubbing small circles of comfort into him until Sam collapsed, totally exhausted against the shower stall behind him. Dean flushed the toilet and turned the sink on before running a washcloth beneath the stream of water.
Sam looked absolutely miserable as he leaned against the shower stall, pale and sweaty and still feverish, but his eyes – though glassy – sought out Dean and there was recognition there when their gazes locked. Dean crouched down beside Sam and swiped the cool cloth across Sam's face, cleaning the sweat from his forehead and the sick from his mouth. "You gonna tell me what the hell just happened?"
Sam took a deep breath, eyes fluttering closed in exhaustion and then opening again. He nodded his head with a hum. "Don't know," he rasped, then shifted his jaw a little in discomfort. "Th'nk 'm sick."
"You think?" Dean said, dumping the soiled cloth in the bathroom sink with a tiny roll of his eyes. Like… thanks a lot there, Captain Obvious. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming down with something, man? You're lucky I woke up or you'd probably be toast by now."
"I…" Sam swallowed and closed his eyes, utterly spent from having passed out and gotten slapped and burning up and… losing pretty much everything he'd eaten in the past 24 hours. "Wasn't feelin' bad last night." Sam lifted a shoulder. "I'd have told ye."
Dean contemplated that for a moment and then nodded slowly, satisfied with Sam's answer but still worried… and confused. Because symptoms like this didn't just fucking pop up out of nowhere. There was a strict protocol for both of them with warning signs that they were getting sick. Like the way Sam got short-tempered and moody when he came down with the flu or something and the way Dean would talk less and go to bed early when he wasn't feeling good. They both knew exactly which signs to look out for. So this sudden fever of no origin was disconcerting to say the least.
"Alright, big guy." Dean sighed, shoving the thought away. "How about we get you off the floor, drugged and back to bed?"
"Sounds good," Sam murmured and this time when Dean helped him up, there was a bit more strength in Sam's legs, which meant the task of getting him moving became a whole lot easier.
"D'd ye carry me?" Sam asked with a frown, his brain probably trying to come up with how he ended up in the bathroom after losing consciousness.
Dean was thankful for the way Sam was propped up against him because that meant he didn't see the faint blush rising to his cheeks. He'd rather not let Sammy know that he had a freak-adrenaline rush like a protective mama bear after the dork decided to faint on him. "Damn right, I did," he said, playing it cool. "Almost pulled my freaking back out carrying your heavy ass around."
Sam snorted, a small, weary smile tugging on his lips. He knew.
"Ye' think it's the flu?" Sam asked him groggily, once they had reached the end of Sam's bed.
"I don't know," Dean sighed as he gently lowered his brother to the mattress and swiping his hand over his forehead to check his brother's temperature once again. He was still burning up. "I'll go get the meds, just… lie back down, alright?"
After a couple of Advil, a half bottle of water and a few more muttered words between them, Sam eventually fell back into a feverish sleep. Dean sat down on the edge of his own bed and sighed, settling in for a long night of keeping watch.
Sure, it could be the flu. Or it could be someone – something – messing with them.
Whatever it was, Dean would figure it out.
oOo
The next morning, Sam seemed a lot more coherent. The fever had gone down and Sam's appetite was back up, so Dean took it as a sign that things were slowly going back to normal. The kid's palms and knees were still scraped from the unlucky swan dive he took and he was still a bit wobbly on his feet when he got up too quickly - probably drowsy from the fever-reducing meds Dean had made him take- but other than that Dean figured they were ready to get back on the road.
Or at least, that was until Sam slipped in the shower.
"Sam? Sammy?" Dean called out after hearing an unusual squeak followed by a dull thud from behind the closed bathroom door. He was up and across the room in the span of a second, slamming his knuckles against the wood with the force of an embarking thunderstorm. "SAM! So help me god, if you don't answer me in one second—"
"Dean!" Sam cried out and there was just about enough of a painful edge to his tone that Dean knew something was seriously wrong. "I think I need some help."
Under different circumstances Dean would have asked if Sam was decent, first. But after what happened the past week, with the weird fever-fainting incident, Dean wasn't taking any chances. Not even for the sake of privacy.
Dean yanked the door open, looking down on his brother, who was entangled in a pile of brightly-colored plastic on the floor. It took Dean a moment to realize that the multi-colored plastic his brother was wrapped in, was the motel's shower curtain that Sam had obviously taken down with him.
Sam just lay there sprawled out on the dirty tiles with his hair dripping soapy water into his eyes and squinting up at Dean with a mix of embarrassment and confusion on his face.
"Okay, stay where you are, I need to get my phone—" Dean dead-panned but the amused spark in his eyes vanished as quickly as it had come when Sam made a little sound in the back of his throat, something between a gasp and a whine. Something Dean never, ever wanted to hear again coming out of his brother's mouth again because it sounded like a wounded fox in a trap or something, waiting for the inevitable to happen.
"Dean. This isn't funny," Sam choked out, trying to move his leg and then hissing, his face torn into a pained grimace at the slightest move. "I think I broke my ankle. Tried getting up, but I can't."
"You've got to be kidding me," Dean let out, giving Sam an incredulous look. "First you trip over your legs in the woods damn near making us both vampire chow, then you come down with the 'fever of no origin' and now this? A broken ankle, Sam? Seriously?"
"Just help me up, okay?" Sam complained with a pointed glare.
Dean still couldn't believe this had fucking happened.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"I think I hit my shoulder pretty hard on the way down," Sam admitted quietly.
Dean bit back a sigh of frustration.
Freaking great.
Stepping around his brother, Dean reached into the shower to shut off the by-now-cold water. Then he turned back around and tried his best not to meet Sam's eyes as he helped to disentangle him from the damn plastic tarp and handed him a towel to cover himself with. Once Sam was decent, he gave his brother's body a slow once-over, trying to gauge the damage before he moved him. If Sam had hurt his ribs or – god forbid – his spine, trying to lift him up would only do more damage.
Eventually, after running probing finger over his brother's shoulder, neck, back and ribcage, Dean gave Sam a look and a subtle nod of reassurance. Just like Sam had predicted… no bones poking into organs, no concussion from the looks of it, no bleeding lacerations on his head or anything else potentially life threatening. Just the damn ankle that was angled weirdly to the side. And that shoulder he'd have to take a look at when Sam was in an upright position.
"I'm gonna try to lift you up, okay? Try not to put any weight on your ankle."
Dean pulled Sam to his feet, or at least onto the one foot that wasn't possibly broken, but Sam, being the tall, lanky, muscular guy that he was, made the task of lifting him on a slippery ground almost impossible. Especially when it became evident that Sam had likely dislocated his shoulder and Dean could just grab both his arms to lift him up.
"You didn't just hit your shoulder 'pretty hard', you dislocated it, you moron." Dean hissed, his annoyance and worry coming off harsher than he intended. They hadn't been able to go on a hunt in close to a week now while their phone blew up with messages from friends and fellow hunters who were literally fighting 'the End' of the world. And here Sam was, breaking his bones in the damn shower like a baby giraffe who hadn't quite learned how to use those gangly legs for walking.
Dean sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward before helping Sam into a sitting position against the shower wall.
"Alright, the shoulder I can help with, but the ankle we're gonna need a doctor for. You want me to put the shoulder back in now or wait until we're at the hospital?"
Dean was decent enough at medical first-aid, but they didn't exactly have an x-ray at the motel to check whether the bone was fractured.
"You do it," Sam said, giving a nod as if to reassure himself that that was the right choice.
"Okay, take a deep breath. On three," Dean murmured, splaying an expert palm against Sam's shoulder to steady his brother while his free hand hovered behind his shoulder. "Ready – 1, 2…" Dean didn't wait until '3' before he applied pressure and pushed the bone back into its socket in one, well-trained, expert move. Sam jerked against him with a howl of pain, his muscles spasming with the excruciating agony that flared his nerve-endings and Dean squeezed his eyes shut, wincing in sympathy. He cradled Sam close, pulling him in against himself by the crook of his shower-damp neck, waiting for his brother to relax against him and cupping the back of Sam's dripping-wet mop of hair until his scream tampered off into harsh, ragged pants of air and violent shudders. "Okay, you're good, you're good. It's over."
"Fuck," Sam panted and Dean patted his back in sympathy, giving him time.
"I know," Dean nodded, reassuring his brother. They'd both had their shoulders dislocated multiple times before and Dean knew the kind of pain that came with this particular injury. It was torture. Just plain awful. And Dean hated being the one to put his brother through this, but he also knew that delaying the inevitable only ended up making things worse. "You're okay."
After a minute or two, when Sam had caught his breath, a look of relief flooded Sam's features. Dean stood back, one hand still lingering against Sam's neck as he studied his brother's features smooth out and that was a good sign – dislocations were meant to feel instantaneously better once things had popped back into place.
"Better?"
"Yeah," Sam panted, sounding out of breath, still. Sniffing, his lashes clotted with tears and god, Dean fucking hated to see his brother in pain. He squeezed Sam's shoulder in sympathy, wishing he could somehow trade places with him and take all of that pain away.
A flutter of wind right next to them had them both look up in surprise and there was Cas, trench-coat and wild-hair and a solemn expression on his face in the middle of their less-than-commonplace situation with one of them naked and injured and the other, well, being his usual, mother-henning, overprotective self.
"Cas?" Dean asked incredulously. "What are you—"
"Sam's in distress," Cas explained matter-of-factly.
Dean eyes him incredulously, his gaze narrowing as anger welled up inside his chest. "Now you choose to listen to our prayers? What about the Wendigo hunt in Michigan or the Crocotta we hunted in Daytona? You haven't answered our calls in months and now you suddenly pop in to—"
"I'm not here to fight with you, Dean," Cas sighed. He took a step closer, two fingers held out in front of him before he briefly touched them to the side of Sam's face. There was a bright light and a gasp from Sam and by the time Cas stepped away from them, Sam could bend his foot and roll his shoulder as though nothing happened.
"Thanks," Sam said in a demure tone, looking more than a little stunned by having all of his bones and joints back in place in the span of a freaking second. His eyes didn't hold the same shimmer of pain they still held a moment ago, and Dean wanted to be angry at Cas, he really, really did, but it was kinda hard when the angel had swooped in to do what Dean couldn't - take away Sam's pain with a snap of his fucking fingers.
Even so, Dean got back to his feet, rounding in on the angel with a sneer on his face. "Alright, you listen to me, I know we had our disagreement back at that cemetery, but you can't just drop in and out of our lives however you see fit—"
"I have to go, Dean. I'll see you both very soon."
Just when Dean was about to and lay down the law with their friend, the angel disappeared into thin air, leaving Sam and Dean to stare dumbfounded at the spot the angel had been standing in just a second ago.
"Did he just—"
"Looks like," Sam sighed and climbed back to his feet, testing his ankle and his shoulder once more just to make sure everything was working as it should be.
Dean had another moment of quiet seething, breath punching out of his chest and heart going a mile a minute in his chest, before he forced his fingers to uncurl by his sides. He gave Sam an assessing once-over, making sure he hadn't missed any life-threatening injuries and then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Okay, talk to me, Sam. What is this, huh? Another case of the damn rabbit's foot? Some kind of voodoo priest holding a grudge against you? What?"
"I don't know," Sam said with a small shrug, tightening the towel that was wrapped around his waist as he stepped out, toward the open duffle on his bed.
"I mean you've always been kinda clumsy, but breaking bones in the shower? Fainting?" Dean pulled a face at the memory. "That's a bit dramatic, don't you think. Even for you."
"I honestly don't know, Dean. Maybe it's just a streak of bad luck."
Sam just rubbed the back of his neck, looking confused and just as clueless as Dean and Dean washed both his hands over his face in frustration. "Alright, let's talk about this when you're dressed and ready to blow this Popsicle stand. I'm not going to spend another night at this motel with you, man. Who knows what might happen."
"Dean," Sam lightly scolded, rolling his eyes at his brother, but Dean wasn't having it. Their lives were too weird to take a streak of luck for a simple coincidence. Besides, Sam might have been an adorable klutz when he was thirteen and growing into his limbs but he hadn't been this clumsy in all his adulthood and Dean was almost 90 percent sure that they were dealing with something supernatural at this point.
"You need help getting dressed?"
Sam huffed out a snort and then, when Dean just continued to hover in the doorway with a straight expression on his face, his eyes turned wide and he threw Dean a glare. "Jesus, Dean. I got it handled from here, alright?"
"Alright. Just try to not break anything in the process." Dean gave Sam a hard look for emphasis.
"I'll try," Sam groused and Dean passed him by, grabbing his keys from the rickety table next to the door.
"When you're done, I'm checking our room for a damn hex bag. The car too… this is starting to get ridiculous."
oOo
They didn't find a hex bag anywhere, the EMF proving to be just as useless in finding the source of Sam's recently acquired bad luck, so they decided to book it and leave Nebraska in the rearview mirror.
"I don't know man, it doesn't make any sense to me." Dean said, while throttling the steering wheel and pushing the gas pedal. "What would Chuck get out of dislocating your damn shoulder? I mean the guy's freaking God with a capital 'G'. All he needs to do is snap his fingers and we go 'poof'."
"I don't think he wants to kill us, Dean," Sam said, resting his forehead against the cool window glass. "Think about it. We're the main characters of his favorite story. If he kills us off, the story's kind of over."
"So what, he fries your brain with a fever on the principle of things?"
Sam sighed. "Maybe he does it for dramatic effect. Or he wants to keep us distracted from trying to find a way to kill him. Dean… there could be a million reasons."
"I'm not convinced."
"Dean." Sam persisted. "You realize that everything we do or say, I mean even just us sitting here right now, having this conversation – ALL of what's currently happening – is Chuck's doing. I mean you said it yourself, dude, he's capital 'G' God. The guy's literally making this stuff up as he goes."
Dean rolled his eyes, never liking it when Sam threw his own words back at him. "Okay, so let's assume you're right and he is behind all of this. What are we gonna do to break out of it?"
"We keep fighting. We keep going on hunts."
"With a fever of 105?"
"If that's what it takes, yes, Dean. Okay? I think he's only doing this to keep us from hunting, so we're just gonna have to keep hunting. Look… Jodie's place isn't too far from here, right? How about we drive there, wind down and pick up a new case?"
Dean was quiet for a few miles, jaw muscle clenching and unclenching as he mulled the thought over. Eventually he let out a breath he'd been holding for too long and eased off the gas a little.
"Alright," Dean said in a clipped voice. "But the second – and I mean the second – I feel like you're not up for it, you're not going."
"Dean—"
"This isn't up for discussion, Sam."
"Alright," Sam sighed, unhappy about Dean's conditions, but still agreeing with them if it meant they could put the argument to rest. He stared out of the window for the next ten minutes or so, absent-mindedly scratching on his lower arm. Dean glanced over a couple of times, each time finding his brother picking at his own skin – whether Sam realized it or not.
"Is that a rash?" Dean eventually asked, a frown furrowing his forehead.
Sam glanced down as though he hadn't even noticed the blotchiness of his own skin. He rolled up the sleeve of his flannel to expose small raised bumps with flat red spots that were partly joined together as they spread from his wrist up the length of his arm, covering almost all of the exposed skin.
"Oh no," Sam muttered.
oOo
It took them about 5 hours to Sioux Falls and by the time Dean pulled into the Sheriff's driveway, Sam was barely responsive. Jody was waiting for them on her porch, jogging down the stairs to the Impala when Dean pulled into her driveway.
"Measles. Really, Dean?" she asked with a hint of accusation in her tone as she rounded the car to the passenger door that Sam was leaning heavily against, his breath fogging up the window glass. "Never would have taken you for the anti-vaxxer type."
"Yeah, well," Dean said, getting out of the car. "We didn't exactly grow up in an environment where vaccines were a priority."
Jody nodded. "How bad is it?"
"I don't know." Dean rounded the rear of the car to join Jody on the other side. "I couldn't risk bringing him to a hospita. His skin is all blotchy and reddened and he's been sleeping almost all the way through the ride here… his temperature is up again, as well."
He looked up when he noticed the girls standing on the porch, Alex wrapped in a loosely knit sweater that practically dwarfed her and Claire with her messy blond hair cascading down her shoulders, always a bit bolder than her adopted sister and already approaching the Impala. "What's wrong with him?"
"Nothing," Jody said before Dean could answer. "Both of you, back inside."
"But—"
"I said inside," Jody cut Claire off with a stern look and to both of their surprise Claire actually listened to her for once, snapping her mouth shut with a miffed expression on her face and then hesitantly retreating back inside.
"Are the girls—"
"They are vaccinated," Jody said, seemingly reading Dean's thoughts. "But it's late and I don't want them to see Sam like this." Jody swallowed. "No sense in worrying them."
Dean felt his entire earlier aggravation whoosh out of him at the reassuring smile Jody gave him, at the kindness in her tone and eyes, her genuine love for them was practically oozing off of her. She was worried for Sam. Because she cared about him. And she didn't want the girls to see Sam reduced to… someone who could barely keep himself on his feet because Sam was tall and broad shouldered and strong and capable. He was one of the best damn hunters alive and Jody knew that. She knew him well enough to realize that he wouldn't want to be a burden on any of them and he sure as hell wouldn't want for the girls to worry… or to see him get dragged across the lawn and inside the house in a situation of vulnerability.
Dean hoped he could convey how much it meant that someone understood them so well outside of… well, them. He gave Jody a long, intense stare and then steeled himself with a slow intake of air. "You'll need to give me a hand with him," he said, opening the door and leaning in to wrap one of Sam's arms around his own shoulder. "I won't be able to carry him by myself."
"Yeah, not exactly a lightweight, your brother," Jody smiled softly after watching Dean struggling with a pair of gangly, uncooperative arms. "How long has he been like this?" she asked as she settled in on Sam's other side, snaking her head underneath Sam's right shoulder.
"Not sure," Dean said and then bit back a curse as he lifted Sam out of the Impala's seat. He took most of Sam's weight, not wanting for Jody to carry too much of their precious cargo, but she was a much needed support as Sam swayed and mumbled something unintelligible between them.
"Easy Sammy," Dean responded softly to his brother's gibberish, soothing his brother on mere instinct. Then he turned toward Jody with a concerned frown. "He started scratching his forearm shortly after we left the motel room, but that was… that was hours ago."
"You're gonna hate me for saying this," Jody voice came out strained from helping with Sam's dead-weight. She readjusted her grip on Sam's arm around her shoulder as they slowly made their way across the yard to the house. "But screw the damn upholstery, Dean."
Dean was inclined to agree, a small smile tugging on his lips despite the overall crappiness of the situation.
"Hey," he said in a strained voice, shooting Jody a look that was more playful than chiding. "Watch it."
Then, after a minute or so of struggling to juggle Sam's weight between them, Dean added. "He was running a fever high enough for him to start frying his brain. I just hit the gas and hightailed it here after calling you."
Sam chose that moment to lift his head up for a split-second, his feet dragging heavily across the floor as he tried to get his own body back under control. He lost his balance and damn near caused all three of them to fall in the process, but Dean managed to catch himself and yank Sam back up by the back of his jacket. "Easy, Sam. 's just me and Jody."
"Sheriff M'lls?" Sam asked, squinting over at Jodie with fever-bright eyes. Dean couldn't help but grimace at the sound of Sam slurring his words together, at the sight of him so out of it - even worse than he had been a couple of days ago in that motel bathroom. His eyes were bloodshot. "I…" Sam licked his parched lips, swallowed forcibly a few times as though he was going to be sick. "Where—"
"You're safe," Dean soothed, tightening his hold on the kid almost subconsciously as they started their slow ascend up the stairs to Jody's house. It felt like a good half an hour until they had finally maneuvered Sam's overgrown body over to the couch in Jody's living room and by then the girls had somehow disregarded Jody's earlier instructions and made their way back to see what had caused the nightly commotion. So much for them not seeing Sam in a vulnerable state… well, fuck it. Dean had other worries right now than what two teenage girls thought about his brother. And Sam… well, Sam would probably be out of it to remember any of this even happened.
"Well, don't just stand there, if you're gonna be here for this you might as well make yourselves useful, girls." Jody sniped. "Go get me the thermometer from the bathroom. And Tylenol, lots of it. Bottle of water and a stack of towels."
Dean thought that Jody might have just randomly listed a few things to keep the girls occupied, but he didn't care. His full attention was on his brother, whose face was scrunched up in discomfort and pain. The skin that was visible beneath his shirt and flannel was covered in angry red blotches. The kid was a mess with his hair tousled and curlier than usual because of all the sweat and his cheeks flushed from the fever and his shirt basically soaked through. He let out a soft moan, shifting on the sofa and Dean's arm reached out in an instinctive soccer-mom move to keep him from rolling off the furniture.
"Hey, Dean?" Jody asked him.
"Yeah."
"When was the last time you've had a full night's sleep?"
Dean snorted.
"That's what I thought," Jody said, reaching out to grasp Dean's shoulder and squeezing it lightly. "You know what I'm gonna tell you."
Dean actually had to think about whether or not to justify that with an answer. "And you know my answer."
Jody sighed and released Dean's shoulder with a nod of her head. While she only wanted what was best for them, she also knew that there was a snowball's chance in hell for Dean to go take a shower or eat dinner or - god forbid - take an actual nap while Sam was burning up with a fever somewhere out of his reach.
The girls returned with the supplies and Jody proceeded to take Sam's temperature, all four of them patiently waiting for the signal to see how badly Sam was fairing in his combat against the measles.
"What happened?" Alex asked gingerly, her arms crossed awkwardly in front of her chest.
"Is he going to make it?" Claire cut in, her voice equally meek for once, probably out of fear of the answer.
"Of course, he will," Jody said, shooting Claire a disapproving glance. She pulled the thermometer away, glancing at the tiny screen and then shooting Dean a concerned look. "105.9. It's not even that bad. I mean, it's not good. But it's… it's manageable. Right?"
She looked up at Dean expectantly and what had turned out as a failed attempt at a pep talk for Dean, was now a query for reassurance that Sam was going to make it through whatever the hell all of this was.
Dean looked at her, then back down at his brother and just blinked.
He hadn't been able to find a hex bag anywhere.
And if this was Chucks doing… what was the goddamn purpose in all of this?
Surely, this couldn't just be their usual streak of 'Winchester' luck. There had to be another explanation for what was happening.
"Dean?" Claire asked on Jody's behalf when Dean stared off into space, totally lost in his trail of thoughts. He jerked back to the here and now with a snap of his head and a startled look in his eyes.
"I'll spend the night down here with him."
oOo
There was no treatment for the measles. Once you had it, you pretty much had to allow the virus to run its course, which basically meant that all they could do for Sam in the state he was in, was hooking him up to a saline drip, give him a couple of fever reducing pills and hope for the best.
Dean had tried praying to Castiel pretty much as soon as Jody and the girls had left to go to bed, but that winged bastard hadn't answered Dean's prayers this time, probably too caught up in his own angel business to even notice Dean's calls for help in the midst of everything that was happening around them.
"Hey," a voice had Dean's head snapping up in confusion. He had had his chin dipped to his chest, head bowed reverently in prayer and arms folded and… well that wasn't exactly a position he had wanted to get caught in by anyone, least of all by Claire. The teenage girl was still in her pajamas, hair pulled up in a loose ponytail and she stood there barefoot, a mug of coffee in her hands.
Dean tried to play it cool, pulling his hands apart as though they didn't both know what he'd been doing a moment ago. "It's early. What are you doing up?"
Claire ignored his question and took a few steps closer before taking a sip of her warm beverage. "Jody said there's no signs of him having pneumonia, which is good considering that usually goes hand in hand with measles… she also said his fever was down to 103,9 when she last checked on you, so that's good, right?"
Dean didn't answer her, not really seeing a need to when the kid had already discussed all the details with Jody, anyway. And not owing the teenage girl an explanation regarding Sam's health.
Claire sat down on the couch beside Sam's feet. "First the flu, then the broken ankle and now this… You think something is after him, don't you?"
Dean's reaction was instantaneous. This was his brother. This was Sam.
He wasn't going to let anyone interfere with this, least of all a teenage girl who had only just started dabbling in the hunting life.
"Maybe it's a spell," Claire blabbered on excitedly, not even noticing the way Dean's shoulders tensed with every passing second, with every word she spoke. "Could be a hex bag, or—"
"Stop it," Dean snapped at her before he could stop himself and his tone had an edge to it, an edge made of steel and fire. His jaw was locked hard, the cords standing out beneath the skin on his neck and Claire's face fell, the excited glint slowly bleeding out of her features where it had sparked to life a few seconds ago. "Just stop, okay? This isn't some case you can stick your case into. This is so far out of your reach, out of your experience that it wouldn't even pay off to start explaining it to you. He's my brother. My responsibility. I'll take care of him. It's what I've done all my goddamn life."
Claire just watched him for the longest of moments, long enough for Dean to feel his skin prickle with unease.
But luckily she seemed to have nothing more to say when they both suddenly got interrupted by a soft moan and rustling of sheets coming from the couch. Sure enough, a pair of fever-bright, hazel eyes peered over at them from over the fluffy blanket Jody had wrapped Sam up with.
"Hey, Sammy," Dean's voice turned from agitated to gentle in the span of a second and before he could help himself he had leaned forward in his creaky chair next to the couch and run his calloused hand through Sam's dark curls, careful to avoid the red blotches that had appeared on his forehead and along his hairline. "Hey, kiddo. You back with me, yet?" Dean asked softly, lowering his hand to squeeze his little brother's blanket-covered arm in reassurance. "Sam?"
Sam's eyes fluttered closed at the touch and he hummed out some sort of response, his expression smoothing back out into serenity as sleep and exhaustion took him back out. And then he was gone again, lying utterly still against the pillows, the only sign that he was still alive being the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
Dean hung his head in frustration, his hands still lingering on his brother's arm.
Next to them, Claire set her mug down on the coffee table and leaned forward, almost as if to share a secret with Dean. "See, this is exactly what I was talking about. The way you are with him when he gets hurt, it's… special."
"Claire," Dean let out through grit teeth, his voice low with how hard he was trying not to snap at her. "I don't even know what you're talking about."
"You know, those freaks who post stories about you and him online? They have it all figured out…" she gave a smug little twitch of her lips, glancing from Dean to Sam and back at Dean. "They write stories about you two, you know? Alternative realities, romance bullshit. A lot of it's just downright weird if you ask me… but most of them got one thing right about you."
Dean frowned, not following the turn this conversation had suddenly taken. People writing stories about them online? She couldn't possibly mean….
"You really do lose your shit when Sam's hurt."
Dean's frown deepened as something started to dawn on him.
"I get it," Claire babbled on. "I'm protective of the people I care about. But with you it's this entire trope, you know. People just go nuts over the whole tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold thing. They love how much he means to you. And vice versa."
"Claire," Dean said her name very carefully, slowly, as though he was afraid to break a spell or something. "Where did you find those stories?"
Claire rolled her eyes. "There's like a million of them. Donna is really into that stuff."
"And there are particular ones, about Sam getting hurt?" Dean questioned, barely able to wrap his head around the fact that apparently - on top of Chuck Shirley's entire novel series having been published online for everyone and their neighbor's dogs' enjoyment - now there were also crazy fans, who wanted to add to the Winchesters overall misery and hurt them some more. You know, just to cover all the diseases and injuries Chuck might have left out in between Hell and Purgatory and hundreds of brutal deaths and losses.
Dean couldn't fucking believe it.
Claire gnawed on her lower lip, glancing back down at Sam almost sheepishly, suddenly realizing that Dean probably wasn't all too keen to hear about this on top of having to deal with a sick little brother.
She gathered her cup and then got up from the couch. "Anyway, I'm not really reading them. Just browsed through a couple to see what the hype is all about."
"Claire, wait—"
"Sorry, I brought it up," Claire said, turning her back on Dean and making a move toward the door. Dean caught her wrist, holding her in place and Claire turned around to look at him, wide-eyed now.
"You need to show me those websites," Dean said, shooting a worried glance down at his sick little brother. "I think I might have an idea of what's going on."
oOo
In the end, by enlisting the help of Jodie, Alex, Claire and Donna (because Dean would have never managed to read through so many stories about them being Cowboys and Warriors and Emo Skater Boys without losing his mind in the process) they managed to find a writer names 'SammyGirlForever' who had very recently written a total of four stories, each one of them eerily similar to what had happened to him and Sam in the past couple of weeks. She was a thirty-something-year-old Med-Student with a love for Starwars and Doctor Who and – apparently – Chuck Shirley's novels called 'SUPERNATURAL' and while Dean read her very-detailed, disturbingly-vivid description of sweat pearls glistening on Sam's pectoral muscles from the fever his body was 'on fire' with, he made a special vow to give this torturous woman a taste of her own medicine.
In the end, Jodie and Donna decided to take care of the problem for him.
It wasn't so much the fact that Dean didn't want to take care of it himself, as the fact that he didn't trust himself to not do something rash with the woman who had purposefully put his little brother through hell these past days and weeks. She had hurt him for kicks. She had damn near killed him. And for what? An online readership of sickos who liked to see them suffer?
"She wants you both to know that she's sorry," Jody explained in a kind voice, once she returned to find the Winchesters pretty much where she'd left them a couple of days ago, attached by the hip (as usual) with a box of half-finished pizza on her couch table, a Transformers movie playing on mute on the TV and Claire and Alex fighting over which program to watch next. All four of them looked up at her in a mix of relief and surprise and Dean was the first one to get up, crossing the distance over to her.
"Did you—"
"I put the fear of god in her," Jody winked at him. "Knowing that's what you'd have done." She took off her Sherriff's jacket and badge, as well as her holster, turning to send a glance over at Sam, whose skin now barely showed last remnants of the blotchy rash he was sporting before she had left. The fever seemed to be gone and he was stable on his own legs again, which was a relief.
Jody smiled and pulled the tall man in against her chest, clutching two fistfuls of his shirt and squeezing her eyes shut at the feeling of Sam tall and healthy against her. Back to his old self, with Dean lingering just an arms width away, always close, always protecting.
"Thank you, Jody." Sam squeezed her back. "For everything."
"That's what I'm here for," Jody said, patting his shoulder and pulling back. She allowed for her hands to linger a moment longer on the taller man's shoulders, even as her gaze wandered over to Dean, who looked a little worse for wear still, despite the worst of the imminent danger to have passed.
"We made her burn all of her stories along with every single novel she possessed. Oh and Donna took all of her artifacts, candles and ingredients to perform the spell. She wasn't a professional, barely even knew a thing about witch craft," Donna shook her head somewhat incredulously. "The fact that the spell worked at all given how little knowledge she had regarding black magic is mind-boggling."
"How reassuring," Dean muttered grumpily, still seemingly unhappy with him not being able to get any sort of revenge for what this bitch- uhm witch had done to his brother. "Did you tell her that if she ever tried anything like this again—"
"Trust me, I made it pretty clear that the next time she pulls anything like this, even Sam won't be able to hold you back from coming after her." Jody shook her head almost wistfully. "Poor girl's probably gonna spend the rest of her life living in fear that you might hunt her down."
"Yeah, well," Dean snorted, rolling his neck a little. "She should have thought that before she messed with us."
"Dean…" Sam sighed, sending his brother a look that was half-annoyance and half-affection. "These fans… they're just excited."
"Excited about killing us?" Dean asked.
"It's kinda like with Becky… they don't want to hurt us on purpose, they just…" Sam shrugged.
While the brothers bickered, Jody exchanged a knowing smile with her adopted daughters across the room. They had all read enough of these stories trying to find whoever was doing this to Sam to know a thing or two about supernatural fanfiction. And well, while some of the stories were a little… extreme, most of them were just exploring the bond these two brothers shared. They weren't just about the 'hurting' and 'suffering' but the aftercare, the affection, the intimacy and codependency and the love these two so obviously shared.
So in their own way, they kept the characters alive by spinning their own tales about them, endlessly exploring the intricate bond the Winchesters shared. Endlessly pushing them to their boundaries, making them hurt and grieve and worry and patch each other up again – and comforting and caring and crying and – sacrificing themselves over and over again for their respective other half.
"They just what?" Dean asked his brother.
"They just don't want your story to end," Jody finished on Sam's behalf. She wrapped one arm around Dean's waist and one around Sam's before steering the boys back toward the living room.
All stories had to end one day.
But Jody hoped – like all these fans out there – that the day where she would have to say goodbye to her boys wouldn't come for a while.
And that the day where they had to say goodbye to each other wouldn't come at all.
The End.
A/N: I don't usually do this, but Mary Leal if you are reading this - this story goes out to you! You absolutely honor me and I just wanted to thank you for sharing your kind words - they really mean a lot to me! I get a bit upset with the directions the show is taking sometimes, but at the end of the day, I will always love the show for giving us the epic love story of the Winchester brothers. It's gonna be hard to say goodbye to these characters after so many years, but I want to remind you all (especially in these hard times) that the boys' story will forever live on within us, no matter how the series ends. Please stay safe out there, take care of yourselves. I love you guys!