Comfortable in his chair, Sam reads with a smirk on his face.

After finishing Lucifer Rising and taking a walk up and down the block—sick or not, he wasn't feeling too bad this morning, and despite his brother's insistence that he just relax, he's not about to let himself get lazy—he'd opened up Changing Channels.

He's considering taking notes for future reference.

CHANGING CHANNELS

Dean turned, glancing over his shoulder, and froze.

"It's him."

His voice was almost a whisper, eyes growing wide in awe as he stared at a dark-haired man the end of the hall.

"Who?"

"It's him," Dean repeated, still staring, his mouth twitching into a shy grin as the man in question walked toward them up the busy hall, almost in slow motion, "It's Dr. Sexy."

Sam looked at him in confusion.

It was no secret that Dean had a certain passion for TV and film—his daily speech often contained more pop-culture references than your average copy of Rolling Stone Magazine, after all—but the fact that his interests branched out from the John Winchester-approved catalogue of Acceptable Shows For Men was something he played pretty close to the chest.

Despite his earlier protests to the contrary, Dean was possibly one of the medical drama's biggest fans.

He hid it surprisingly well, considering the close quarters he and Sam lived in, but it had long ago stopped being a case of watching it because it happened to be on. Truth be told, in recent years, the show had graduated into something edging closer to an obsession comparable to his teenage fixation on Star Trek, down to the heated arguments with strangers (though now online, rather than in line at Blockbuster) over the characters, and a burning desire to attend conventions that his transient and low-funded lifestyle forced him to experience second-hand through videos on Youtube.

It had started in 2008.

Barely a month after Castiel raised him from Hell, he had been targeted by a Buruburu on a hunt in Rock Ridge, Colorado.

Even after it had been destroyed—dragged behind the Impala at the end of an iron chain until it was destroyed by it's own fear—the effects of the ghost sickness it had infected him with had lingered, and because they didn't have any other leads just yet, Dean had decided they should take a day off.

Sam wasn't difficult to convince; they were only a short drive out of Florissant, a tiny town of 104 people which boasted a massive deposit of fossilised prehistoric insects and plantlife, and while they were checking in to their motel in Rock Ridge, Dean had seen him eyeing the advertising leaflet pinned to the noticeboard.

So Sam had taken the Impala early that morning, wanting to hike through the petrified forest before the park attracted too many people, and Dean was taking advantage of the rare opportunity to do absolutely nothing.

Around noon, in the tiny room at the Bluebird Motel, he leaned back on his bed with a bowl of microwave popcorn on his lap and switched on the TV.

As he'd expected, there was nothing on, and he'd spent ten minutes flicking between stations before he'd finally settled on something featuring a sparky young woman shouting passionately about something or other as a man in a doctor's coat and a pair of cowboy boots stood guiltily in her bedroom doorway.

It was only a few seconds before the couple were tangled together, tearing at each others clothes.

"That'll do," Dean had said to himself, and dumped the remote down on the bed.

A half hour later, he was sitting up on the very edge of the mattress, leaning forward, engrossed in the story, and unable to tell whether he had a bit of a crush on the hot-tempered woman—who he now knew was Dr. Piccolo—or the man in the cowboy boots—Dr. Palmer—or, as he suspected was most likely, some confusing combination of both.

Now, standing in the busy hallway of Seattle Mercy Hospital, with Dr. Palmer striding purposefully toward them, Dean briefly entertained the idea of questioning him in private.

Sam snorts out a laugh.

He's been reading for close to forty-five minutes, and it's already proven to be a goldmine for blackmail material.

He's pretty sure he's going to be able to win every argument over where to get dinner for at least the next year with this in his arsenal.

Now, it's mid-afternoon, and his cell is ringing, and wanting to finish reading the paragraph without interruption, he carries the laptop with him as he makes his way over to the table where he left it.

Somehow, walking twelve feet indoors is less agreeable to his lungs than a half-mile outside in the dusty Kansas air, and he's coughing uncontrollably by the time he answers the call.

"You sound like crap," Dean says, and Sam laughs.

At least, he tries to; but the sound gets caught somewhere in his throat, and he walks into the bathroom to spit into the sink.

"Ugh," he says, turning the faucet and watching bloody water swirl down the drain, "Understatement."

Looking at his pallid reflection, he wipes a damp wash cloth over his face. He feels like he might keel over.

This sickness that's slowly been getting worse as the trials have gone on has a tendency to wash over him in waves, and apparently the tide has chosen this particular moment to come in.

Waiting for it to retreat doesn't get easier, no matter how many times he's dealt with it.

"But it'll pass," he says, mostly to himself.

Dean doesn't say anything, and Sam leans heavily against the sink.

"What's up?" he asks, half-wanting Dean to admit to what he's been doing all morning despite the fact that he knows he never will, just so they won't have to talk about his health, "You still at the store?"

"No. I was with Charlie."

Sam's glad he's already leaning against the sink, because he wasn't expecting that at all.

"But you knew that already," Dean adds.

He blinks at his reflection, not entirely sure where to go from here; and certainly not when his head is spinning and he's fighting off the urge to be sick.

He's tried enough times to get Dean to talk about stuff, but he's so used to being brushed off that he doesn't actually have a game plan for the actual conversation.

"Uh, yeah..."

He can feel the awkwardness already. It's almost enough to drown out his nausea. But not quite. He swallows and presses his hand against his throat.

"So, uh..." Dean flounders on the other end of the line, and Sam hears him drumming his fingers on something, "she told me what you said about... about me and Cas."

"Oh."

Sam presses the heel of his hand against his temple, trying to gather his thoughts, because this is important, and he knows he needs to say something, but his whole body is aching, and he can feel bile rising.

Bad timing, awful, awful timing, he thinks, keep it together.

"Let's just... let's not make a whole big thing of it, okay?" Dean says, and Sam recognises the tone. Dean's nervous. Worried that Sam is somehow bothered by this. Sam tries to breathe, tries to subdue the need to be sick so that he can get a whole sentence out, but before he gets a chance his non-response seems to have sent Dean into a rambly panic.

He just wishes he could open his mouth without having to worry about losing his lunch.

Sam takes another breath and closes his eyes against the bright bathroom lights. Steadies himself as much as he can.

"Literally nothing has changed," Dean goes on, "he's still gone, and even if he wasn't I don't know—"

"Dean."

Dean doesn't hear him; either that or he's so caught up in what he's saying that he doesn't want to pause.

"—what I'd even say to him. Probably nothing. I mean it's just—"

"Dean," Sam repeats, louder, and Dean stops speaking.

Over the phone, Sam hears him take in a deep breath before he answers.

"Yeah?"

"What happened to not making a whole big thing of it?"

"Wow, thanks. Real nice. It's not like I'm basically coming out to you here or anything."

"You just said—!" Sam sighs, shaking his head, trying to clear the fog of his headache, swallowing against the bile that keeps threatening to expel itself from his stomach, "forget it. I'm just saying, it's fine. Like you said, nothing's changed."

He pauses, making his way out of the bathroom toward the kitchen, desperate for something cold, something to wash the taste of blood and acid from his mouth.

"Thanks for telling me though," he says, and he hopes Dean understands how glad he is that he's finally done it. How proud he is of him. It's not something he'll ever be able to say out loud without getting glared at, so he has to take it on faith that Dean gets it.

"Just..." he pauses in the kitchen doorway, legs threatening to give out on him, and leans against the frame for a second, "I'm here if you do need to talk about stuff. I know you hate it, but it helps sometimes."

"Thanks, Sammy."

"Don't mention it."

He crosses the room, then, and opens the fridge.

Looking back out at him from the mostly empty shelves are three beers, a half block of cheddar and a three-quarters-empty bottle of what he's pretty sure is flat Sarsaparilla.

"But uh... while you're out, we're out of pretty much everything. So if you get a chance to actually go to the store...?"

"Yeah, no problem," Dean says, "we're heading back in a few."

"We?"

For a brief, mildly delirium-driven moment, Sam thinks Castiel has come back. That Dean had prayed to him, had told him how he felt, and he'd returned.

"Oh... yeah. That's what I was actually calling for. I kind of invited Charlie to move in for a while."

"Oh," Sam nods, then remembers Dean can't see him, "okay."

"That cool with you?"

"Yeah."

He can feel that familiar rasp coming back into his throat again. He clears his throat.

"I'll start clearing out—" he coughs again, the second wave hitting with slightly less intensity than the first, and leans back against the counter with closed eyes, "—one of the other rooms."

"Right," Dean says, voice laced with sarcasm, "because you're in great shape for heavy lifting. Just leave it. We'll take care of the room when we get back. Just... watch TV or something."

"Yeah," Sam says, wiping his brow, "good plan."

He lowers his phone, finally letting himself cough as much as he needs to, and sinks down onto the floor by the counter. He stays there a long time, just breathing, trying not to panic because he's getting worse, and waits for it to pass.