A CHILL IN THE AIR
Chapter 7
It's not just pissed faeries that the Winchesters need to beware of ...
xxxxx
"DEAN."
"C'mon man," Sam begged, gently shaking his brother's limp body; you can't do this, not now, not now we've fixed you."
Dean slumped bonelessly in Sam's arms; icy cold, silent and terrifyingly unresponsive. Sam choked back a sob as Dean's arm dropped limply out of his lap onto the bed. He could feel panic boiling up within him; he couldn't even be sure whether the pounding thrum he could feel across Dean's chest through his own shaking fingertips was Dean's heartbeat or his own racing pulse.
Bobby stood over them helplessly, clutching his cap to his chest like a comfort blanket; "I'll get a doctor," he croaked, flinging the door open and disappearing out into the corridor as fast as Sam had ever seen him move.
"Dude," Sam murmured forlornly, "c'mon man, it's your birthday in two days; I was gonna buy you a great big apple pie for your birthday. You don't wanna miss out on that, do you?"
He cradled Dean's head against his shoulder, "C'mon man, it's Jack Frost; you aren't gonna let yourself get beaten by some stupid asshat faierie, are you?"
"Please," he whispered; "please Dean, you can't go. Who's going to look after my great geeky ass if I haven't got my badass big brother to do the job?"
He was repaid by deafening, heartbreaking, lifeless silence.
Sam closed his eyes, and clenched his teeth, trying to stem the tears which threatened to spill. "Can't let you see me crying," he hissed weakly, gathering Dean tighter into his arms; "when you wake up, I'd never hear the last of it."
xxxxx
Time stood still.
It had only been a moment, but it could just as easily have been ten years, when Sam suddenly became aware of something warm and moist huffing quietly against the crook of his neck.
"Dean?"
He was rewarded with a muffled groan; the sweetest music he had ever heard.
"Dude?" he gasped, breathless with excitement, pulling back to look at Dean's parchment white face.
Dean blinked up at him blearily, and Sam didn't care that his own face was stained with tears of joy. The green eyes slowly drifted back into focus and latched onto Sam's face.
"Hey Dean," Sam gulped; "it's good to see you man; you really had me going there you jerk."
Blinking vacantly, Dean swallowed with great effort, his grey lips moved slowly as if he was attempting to speak.
"S'okay dude, take it easy," Sam soothed, slowly releasing his grip on Dean and carefully leaning him back into his pillows. He listened patiently until eventually Dean managed to form the words that had been playing silently on his bloodless lips since he awoke.
"A-apple pie?"
Sam stared incredulous. For a moment he didn't know whether to laugh or pull a bitchface.
"Apple pie?" He scraped a hand through his hair; "you've been at death's door for two days, Bobby's moved heaven and earth and crossed the country to find a cure, and all you can think of is apple pie?"
Dean stared at him, frowning as his hazy mind little by little coalesced into some degree of awareness.
There was a long, silent pause between the two men.
"So, is there apple pie or isn't there?"
Sam snorted out a quiet laugh and busied himself tucking the bedclothes up around Dean, plumping pillows and generally fussing. "Soon bro'," he reassured; "just not yet, gotta get you well first."
Dean huffed quietly. "m'good," he paused for a moment before succumbing to a little shudder; "feelin' okay."
Sam noted with unspoken delight that Dean's voice already sounded undeniably stronger and clearer than when he awoke, and relief poured down on him like an April shower.
"Oh Jeez, Dean," Sam sighed, wiping his wet face; "I really thought I was going to lose you."
Dean rolled his eyes; "gonn' grow ovaries one day."
Sam discreetly scanned his brother's body. There was definitely a warm glow colouring Dean's cheeks, a soft, pink plushness to his previously grey and chapped lips, his bloodless fingernails had regained their natural pink tinge. Thinking back to what he and Bobby had done, he thought of Dean as the first flower of spring; crumpled and withered, helpless against the cold, but opening it's colourful radiant face to the sun's first beautiful warm rays.
His smile stretched into a grin at the thought of Dean as a daffodil. "Whatever dude," he chuckled.
"Probably already got them," Dean snorted.
xxxxx
Sam decided to take the opportunity of the brothers' time alone to apprise Dean of his deadly brush with Winter and it's faerie facilitator. Dean needed to know, if not just to satisfy his own curiosity, but to prevent him opening his smart mouth at the wrong time again. Sam had no idea how long this 'springtime shield' lasted, and the last thing Sam wanted was for the brothers to find out they'd got some kind of faerie fatwah hanging over their heads. They had enough supernatural fuglies that hated their guts already, without adding another to the list.
He'd just opened his mouth to speak when the door burst open.
They both looked up with a start as Bobby came crashing back into the room dragging a slightly alarmed-looking medic behind him.
"There he is," Bobby gasped; "he's …"
Bobby's voice tailed off.
"He's awake!"
Dean stared up the older man's pallid face, the sheen of fear-driven perspiration across his brow and at his astounded gape, registering something between relief and shock.
"Hey Bobby," he smiled, giving a little wave.
The doctor glanced back warily at Bobby before heading for Dean; "why, you're looking better there," he observed cheerfully.
Sam glanced across at Bobby who was still panting from his hi-octane circumnavigation of the hospital searching for help. Bobby returned his glance.
"Yeah, feel, uh, okay I guess," Dean replied in the blank manner he reserved for doctors, officers of the law and other figures of authority, especially the ones who weren't female and pretty. "Why the hell am I in here?"
"Well, Dean, I'm Doctor Halliwell and that's what I intend to find out." Without another word, Halliwell went to work, pulling a thermometer from his breast pocket and slipping it between his patient's lips before he had a chance to object. As he waited for the mercury to do its work, the good doctor picked up Dean's wrist and measured his pulse.
Sam, Bobby and Dean all watched Halliwell's brow furrow quizzically as he stared at the thermometer.
"Your temperature is normal," he muttered, scratching his head in puzzlement; "I just don't understand this."
Dean folded his arms, "good, that makes two of us!" He glared up at Sam.
Halliwell turned to Sam; "what happened?" he enquired.
Sam shrugged with a weak grin, "I don't know, he jus' kinda got better," he lied weakly. He was desperate to explain to Dean the story behind his hospitalisation before Dean took it upon himself to beat it out of Sam, but so far the opportunity just hadn't presented itself; he guessed that 'he-was-cursed-by-Jack-Frost-and-then-we-bottled- springtime-and-gave-it-to him-to-drink' would be the sort of explanation that would earn him a one-way trip to the psyche ward.
The doctor scratched his head again and turned to Bobby, then back to Dean; "I've never seen anything like this, your condition was a complete mystery, and now this; a total recovery. I'd call it a miracle if I believed in them!"
Sam could see where this was heading. The doctor's face was alight like a child with a new toy; the chance to discover an entirely new condition. This was his Warholesque fifteen minutes of fame.
"We'll run some more tests," the Doctor gasped in breathless excitement; "I'll get a MRI scan lined up, and we'll take some more bloods, oh … and get you fixed up on an ECG, and then we'll take it from there." He smiled broadly as he reached for the door; "don't worry Dean, we'll figure this out if it's the last thing we do."
The three men watched as Doctor Halliwell scampered out of the room, almost slamming his white coat in the door in his excited glee.
Dean stared up at Sam and Bobby.
"What rattled his cage?"
Sam shrugged with a weak smile.
"I think you did dude."
Bobby chuckled to himself; "guess he's never seen a supernatural illness before."
Sam reached down and laid a palm over Dean's reassuringly warm forehead, getting his hand swatted away for his trouble.
"What do you remember?"
Dean sighed, "I remember feelin' like I was comin' down with something, but I dunno, it seems to have passed; feel fine now."
"Well, you've certainly made Doctor Halliwell's day," Sam smiled, "you'll get him written up in the Lancet!"
"Screw that," Dean announced. Kicking the blanket off, he wriggled out from underneath it, ignoring disapproving stares from Sam and Bobby.
"What?" he asked, "I ain't sitting here, waitin' for Doctor Frankenstein there to come back an' freakin' vivisect me, jus' so he can get an entirely new friggin' disease named after him."
"Bu-but Dean," Sam stammered, "you don't know if you're fit enough."
"Fit as a bull, snapped Dean, hopping down off the bed.
"Give me some clothes, I'm bustin' out of here," Dean demanded, turning and leaning over the nightstand to pick up a stray pair of socks. Both Sam and Bobby recoiled in unison as his bare ass peeked through the gaping back of his lavender grey hospital gown. All things considered, although Sam would much rather not have been put in the position to see it in the first place, he was delighted to see it was pink and perky, rather like the rest of Dean.
Sam and Bobby exchanged glances and shrugged in resignation. Normal service, it seemed, was well and truly resumed.
xxxxx
The three men crept furtively through the hospital. Bobby and Sam walking either side of Dean who, wearing Bobby's cap pulled down over his face, and Sam's massive overshirt with the collar pulled up around his face, together with the T shirt and sweats he had been wearing when Sam brought him in, huddled between the two figures doing his best to be invisible.
It seemed like they walked forever through a maze of soulless corridors in increasingly revolting shades of beige trying to find the way out of the place, hoping against hope that they wouldn't run into Doctor 'Nobel Prize for Medicine' Halliwell.
It was only as they settled into the back of a taxi, secure and relieved in the knowledge that the road had finally been opened, that they were able to smile at the thought of Halliwell returning to the room and discovering his personal pension plan had gone over the wall.
The taxi pulled up in the freezing slush outside the motel only moments later and the three men trudged through the largely undisturbed snow, past the forlorn hulk of the snow covered Impala, back to the room which stood exactly as Sam had left it; bedclothes in disarray, a bath full of cold water and the musk of his sweat hanging heavy in the air.
Bobby and Dean sat themselves on the beds while Sam headed straight for the kitchenette, and a hefty infusion of caffeine.
xxxxx
"So are you gonna tell me what happened or am I gonna keep askin?" Dean demanded over the top of his steaming mug.
Sam knew he could spill the truth here; there were no civilians about who had the power to cart them off to the nearest funny farm. Sam's mouth twitched into a smile at the thought of Halliwell mourning the loss of his life's work before it had even begun.
"You were really sick bro', I thought you were going to die," Sam began.
"Yeah, I woke up in hospital," Dean snapped; "I guessed I wasn't on scout camp; what in hell happened?"
Sam sighed and gave a weak smile in Bobby's direction.
"Well, basically dude, you got your ass royally kicked by a faerie."
xxxxx
tbc