Title: Chipping Away

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.

Summary: Not only did it get worse….

A/N: I'm exhausted. If you like it, if you want more, say so, so I can bring this bitch home. I love all of you for your enthusiastic response to this story. I never expected it to be received like that, now I can't decide whether to end when I planned or let it go on a little longer. Thanks again to Alone Dreaming for your hand smacking, I owe you a killing.

Sam could hear Dean coughing from the kitchen but didn't hear the front door open. He jerked around though when it slammed shut. The glass he was holding fell to the floor and broke, water and shards splashing across his shoes. Shit, he thought, shaking the glass off of his foot. His face tightened when he saw his father's stern form, clothes and hair wet from the rain.

John stopped short when he saw Sam. Sam straightened back up from reaching for the broken bits of glass and brushed his hair out of his eyes. John's stare was challenging as he walked to the table putting a small sack down with a clink of bottles banging together. Neither spoke. If silence could make a sound it would have been roaring through the room.

Sam felt his earlier anger rise up again but fought it down. Right now there were more important things to worry with. Dean's coughing had lessened some, but Sam still wanted to get him that water and have their Dad look at him.

"Dad, "he began. "We gotta talk -"

John interrupted him. "Didn't we already do this?" he said in a hard voice. "It didn't work so well before it seems to me." His manner was cold. If he had been drinking he hadn't had much. His eyes were too angry. To Sam it seemed that lately, when those dark eyes turned to him they were always angry.

"Dad, it's about Dean – " Sam said, trying to get his father's attention. What had happened before, at least for the moment, didn't matter.

John frowned, looking around. Dean's car had been outside. "Where is Dean…?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Sam snapped. "He's sick! He's running a pretty good fever and I think something's really wrong with him….." He stopped as John turned toward the bedroom. The sudden clear sound of Dean gagging came down the hall. John glanced back at Sam and then turned and walked quickly towards their bedroom.

The soft light from the table lamp made it hard to see. John stepped through the door and flipped on the overhead light, calling the room into glaring brightness. Dean lay curled on his side, chest heaving as he breathed raggedly and loudly through his mouth. His eyes were closed and his fists were pressed to his chest.

"Dean…" John said softly, moving toward him. Dean did not acknowledge his father's presence. John's boot suddenly slipped on the floor by the bed and he barely stopped himself from falling. Looking down he saw he had slipped in one of several small red tinged puddles on the floor. His eyes darted to Dean's face. His lips were flecked with more red and where they weren't red, they were blue.

John knelt by the bed and cupped Dean's face in his calloused hands, shaking him. "Dean!" he barked. Dean's eyelids fluttered but didn't open. "Dean, wake up!" John shouted, pulling Dean's limp body up and shaking him again. Dean's head rolled loosely, but his eyes finally opened, fever bright.

He weakly raised a hand to his father's face. "Dad?" he gasped. "My chest…..hurts…..can't breathe…." His eyelids slid down again.

John grabbed Dean's hand and looked at his fingernails, the beds were also tinged with blue. "Shit!" he snarled. He turned his head to the door. "Sam! Get some blankets and get in here! NOW!" he thundered. He pulled Dean's body up on the bed. John could feel the heat from Dean's fever roll into him as he cradled Dean against him. What in God's name had happened?

"You can breathe, son" he said firmly into Dean's ear. Dean jerked against him, choking. "Shallow breaths, Dean, shallow." He said in the same firm voice. He shifted Dean on the bed so that he was sitting up, leaning forward and hit him sharply between the shoulder blades with the flat of his hand.

Dean cried out and started gagging again. John hit him again then twice more and Dean started coughing up some of the congestion in his lungs.

Sam had leapt to his feet from picking up the glass and raced back to the bedroom where Dean lay. Sam stopped when he saw Dean's face and the bloody splatters on the bed clothes. "Dean!" Dean's fingers were digging into John's shoulder as he coughed helplessly, but his breath was coming slightly easier. Tear streaks stained his face.

"Come on, Sam! We've got to get him to the hospital! He isn't getting enough oxygen!" John's sharp orders pushed Sam to action.

"Yes, sir!" he grabbed the blankets Dean had kicked onto the floor a short time earlier. He couldn't understand how Dean could have gotten so bad so fast.Guilt stabbed him as he realized Dean probably had been that bad before but Sam hadn't seen it because of his own need to include Dean in his secret. He'd fucking done it again. He raced into his father's room and grabbed the blanket from his bed.

John slipped his arms under Dean's shoulders and knees and lifted him from the bed. Dean moaned softly and continued coughing. His head fell back and his arms hung loosely. Dean wasn't fat by any means but he was solid muscle and not a child. John marveled at the strength that came when you had to have it. He turned to the door as Sam came back in with his armload of blankets, numbly waiting for orders.

"Move his head so he can breath easier, " John demanded, hearing the change in Dean's labored breath as his head hung limply. Sam shifted Dean's head to rest on John's shoulder and draped a blanket over him, making sure to cover his head and bare feet. "Get his keys. We're taking the Impala." John said as left the room with Dean.

Sam grabbed Dean's jacket off the floor and grubbed in the pockets until he found the keys. To save time he jerked Dean's jacket on and ran after his father out the front door to Dean's car.

The rain was still falling but had changed to sharp drops rather than the soft mist from before and the air was colder. Sam ran to the car and unlocked it. His hands were shaking and he cursed the time it took to get the key in the lock.

"Get in the back," John said. Sam crawled in the backseat and reached out as John leaned in with Dean. Dean's clothes and skin were sweat slicked but he was starting to shake with chills. Sam slid back against the door pulling Deans body with him and settling Dean between his legs, hands gripped around his chest. He could feel how Dean was struggling to breathe, his head rolling against Sam's shoulder. John adjusted the two blankets over Dean's legs and Sam pulled them the rest of the way up. John glanced at Sam, who nodded. John jumped into the driver's seat, gunned the car into life and shot out of the yard in a spray of mud.

Dean was shaking uncontrollably and the heat radiating off of him was making Sam break out in a sweat too. His own heart racing, Sam pressed his chin into Dean's wet hair and convulsively squeezed the part of Dean's arm he could reach. Dean's breathing was loud in the car and the sound of it scared Sam.

"He didn't…didn't mean to…" Dean mumbled suddenly, reaching toward the front seat.

Sam caught his arm and pulled it back under the blanket. "Ssshhh…it's ok, Dean. Lie still. It's ok." Sam was unconsciously rocking his body in an effort to keep Dean calm.

"What the hell happened, Sam?" John demanded finally, looking back at Sam in the rearview mirror. "Dean was fine when he came home. He was okay when I left—"

Sam barked a short laugh. "He wasn't even in the house when you left. He'd been outside standing in the friggin' rain for an hour! How would you know how he was?" Sam's voice rose and fell, full of contempt, for whom he didn't know.. "Christ, Dad, I guess he's been sick all day. Neither one of us even spoke to him when he got home, so why would we notice something like that? We were to busy screaming at each other again." Sam bit his lip and stared out the window. Lights blurred past the window as they sped through the darkness. He wondered how fast his father was actually going. Town was only 15 miles away but the roads weren't the best, especially when rain slicked.

"Standing out in the rain? What the fuck are you talking about? It's freezing outside!" John's eyes in the mirror wanted an answer and Sam didn't have the nerve to deny him.

"Haven't you noticed that every time we get into it anymore, Dean disappears?" Sam snorted. He closed his eyes and laughed. "When you left, I tried to find him. He'd gone outside right after we started to fight. I told him to come in and he wouldn't…." Sam felt his eyes burn at the memory of his words to Dean.

"Why not?" John said in a softer voice. He slowed down when the car hit a pot hole and water geysered the windshield. They'd be at the hospital in less than 10 minutes.

"I said…I said something. God, I didn't mean it, but I so angry. Dean told me he'd rather stand outside in the rain and freeze than listen to you and me fighting again. That we never noticed when he was gone anyway." Sam's voice broke. "He said he was tired of being caught in the middle. That he was just…. tired of it. That we never listened to what we were really saying to each other so what was the point of fighting." Sam hit the back of the seat with his fist. "Shit!" he spat. Dean jerked, breath rattling in his throat. He looked up at Sam briefly but Sam knew Dean wasn't seeing him.

"He's sick because of us, Dad!" Sam said. "We pushed him to this! We're so damn busy trying to prove who's right and who's wrong we can't see what it's doing to Dean! He'd do anything for either of us and all we can do is try to force him to take sides! We're tearing him apart every time we do it! If we don't figure something out there's not gonna be anything left of him!" Sam clutched at Dean's arm and pressed his mouth into Dean's hair.

John watched the two young men in the mirror. Dear God, was Sam was right? He thought about the blazing arguments he and Sam had been having more and more often. Escalating in tone, subject and violence. John hated fighting with Sam, but, dammit, what was he supposed to do? Let Sam just go off like it didn't matter--- like his family didn't matter? John felt his anger rising again and fought it down. This wasn't the time and certainly not the place.

His eyes were haunted by the reality of Sam's words and the knowledge made him physically ill. They had both been trying to force Dean to choose, unconsciously perhaps, but doing it none the less. It was as though Dean's strength would add power to each of them. And Dean did make them stronger but only when he was allowed to support and protect them both. Trying to make him pick one over the other--no wonder Dean had reached a breaking point. John felt a sick responsibility for this settle on his shoulders. He always assumed, since Dean rarely complained and never argued, that everything was ok with him. If he had a problem he griped about it, they sorted it out and that was that. It hurt and scared him that Dean would do such a thing, endanger himself even unintentionally, because of John and Sam's incessant battling.

Dean was obviously deathly ill. If anything happened to him it would be as if John himself had put a gun to Dean's head and pulled the trigger.

"Dad, I don't think he's breathing!" Sam's panicked voice shot through John's brain. Sam was shaking Dean roughly. "C'mon, Dean! Breathe!" he yelled.

The lights of the hospital flashed up ahead and the Impala's tires screeched to a sudden halt in the turn into the emergency drive. John was out of the car before it had rocked back and into the emergency room, yelling to anyone for a doctor and a gurney.

"My son is dying!"

Opinions, anyone? Anyone? I could use some review hits…really really.