on the bright side, there isn't a bright side - 15
Dean is not in a very good mood with Cas at the moment.
Well, actually he’s not in a very good mood in general. It’s just one of those days. But Cas is really pushing his buttons and it kind of seems like he’s doing it on purpose, so most of his bitterness is directed towards his roommate. Which, of course, is doing tons to help the situation.
They’re somewhere in Washington, and it’s raining. Not that they’re planning a picnic or something outdoors-y like that, and Dean’s sure as hell not worried about ruining his hair or whatever, but it’s been pissing rain all day and everything is soggy and humid and miserable. So that didn’t exactly start the day off right for him, nor has its refusal to lessen done anything for his spirits; on top of which Dean is not a particularly patient guy, and Cas has been impossibly slow about absolutely everything today. He had to be dragged out of bed, he took so long getting ready Dean was forced to watch nearly a whole episode of Pokemon while waiting (it was morning and that was the only thing on, okay?), he sat in morose silence through every single one of the interviews they went through today-not that interviews tend to go any better when he participates, exactly the opposite in fact, but he just sat there the whole time exuding self-pity and it was annoying-and now this. Sitting in this grungy (even by their standards) diner, picking half-heartedly at his meal.
“Are you almost done?” Dean snaps finally, sick and tired of sitting around waiting. He finished his own dinner ages ago and there are about a million things he’d rather be doing than being here watching Cas progress through the plate of food in front of him with such painful lethargy.
Cas gives him an offended stare and doesn’t deign to respond. He prods the bun of his burger with one long finger, looking almost like he’s about to pick it up and take another goddamned bite but then losing interest again.
“What the hell’s your problem, man? We’ve got a frigging shifter brigade to hunt. Hurry up and finish.” He drums his fingers on the table in an irritating rhythm that has Sam, who has long since given up on the conversation and resorted to staring disinterestedly out the window at the rain-soaked parking lot, turning to glare at them. You can really just feel the love emanating round this table right now. God.
Eventually Cas pushes his plate away from him and announces, “I’m not hungry,” and looking back, this should have been a sign as big as those gigantic Hollywood letters that SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG HERE. Cas not hungry? Okay, fine. It happens. Whatever. Cas not hungry for burgers, even burgers as shitty as these? Zachariah ought to turn up any second to bodily cram Michael’s essence into Dean, because this is the biggest fucking clue the world’s ending that Dean’s ever seen. Though of course, Dean being Dean, it completely goes over his head at the time.
Dean rolls his eyes-couldn’t he have mentioned that sooner? Like maybe, fifteen minutes ago? And yeah, maybe they’re not super likely to go out looking for shifters this late in the day or in this downpour, but he’s pissed off and when he’s pissed off his arguments make even less sense than usual. “Great, well, can we go now?”
“There is a pain in my abdomen,” Cas says, eyeing Dean resentfully. Clearly he’s not impressed with the fact that it’s taken everyone so long to notice, though how either of them was supposed to be able to tell Cas was on his fucking period or whatever Dean has no idea.
“What, like you feel sick?” asks Sam.
Nonononono. Cas can’t be sick. Dean will literally gouge his own eyes out with a plastic spoon rather than have to deal with that again. Fuck. If Cas has the flu or something, he is so fucking moving in with Sam.
“No, it just hurts.”
“It might be a bug. I don’t know. Maybe something you ate.” And now Sam and Dean are exchanging uneasy glances, since aside from Sam’s vegetable obsession they’ve pretty much all been eating the same food lately. Even if it is a bug it’s probably nothing serious but still, being sick sucks, especially when everyone you know is sick as well so there’s really no one to baby you. “We can pick up some Pepto-Bismol on the way home, I saw a drugstore… somewhere…”
Oh, so they’re just going to drive around the city until they find a pharmacy, by which time it will be even darker than it is already what with all the rain clouds and they’ll probably be lost-all with a potentially-going-to-puke-at-some-point Cas as a passenger? Not fucking likely. “Whoa, whoa,” Dean cuts in hurriedly. “I don’t want him in my car if he’s going to hurl. No way.”
Sam makes the mistake of saying, “For God’s sake, Dean, it’s just a car,” which leads to several minutes of pointless bickering (pointless because Dean knows Sam will just never understand the special relationship he has with his car no matter how many clever laptop/salad/bad country music analogies Dean uses) while Cas mopes in the background with his arms crossed over his stomach like he thinks the discomfort is an indication that his internal organs are about to fall out. And then, just to improve his already fantastic mood, Dean somehow finds himself saddled with the task of walking Cas back to the motel while Sam goes off in the Impala to find a bottle of nasty pink medicine that probably won’t even help anyways.
They’re both soaked within a minute of leaving the diner, water squelching unpleasantly in Dean’s boots as he trudges down the sidewalk. Beside him Cas is still clutching his stomach and with the rain flattening down his hair and dripping off the tip of his nose he looks even more pathetic than he did inside. If he were a proper boyfriend, or even just a proper friend, he would probably wrap an arm around Cas’s shoulder and say something comfortingly sympathetic; but since he’s an asshole who won’t even let his sick best friend ride in his car it just irritates him even further and he says, “What, so now you’re pregnant or something?”
“That is an anatomical impossibility, Dean,” Cas points out peevishly.
“Your mom is an anatomical impossibility.”
“You are being both illogical and rude.”
Dean makes a face at him, though thankfully it’s too dark for Cas to catch it. He’d hate to lose the reputation for maturity he’s spent so many years cultivating.
Sam’s already back by the time they return, which is so fucking frustrating because it means they definitely could have skipped getting drenched without having to worry about Cas ruining his baby’s upholstery. Dean snatches the bottle his brother hands him wordlessly, ignoring the goddamned superior expression on Sam’s face as he pointedly wipes the water Dean’s managed to drip on him off on his (dry) jacket. Then Dean drags Cas into their room, chucks him a towel, and forcibly administers the medicine-Cas is honestly just like a child when it comes to being sick, and Dean should know because he was the one in charge of looking after most of Sam’s various ailments when they were kids. Luckily there are a few tricks he’s discovered recently, ones that he couldn’t exactly have used on Sam all those years ago, and so a disgruntled Cas finds himself confronted with several mouthfuls of the disgusting syrup mid hand-job.
Since he’s not a total bastard Dean always carries through, of course, because while using sex to get Cas to take his medicine may be playing unfair leaving a guy hanging like that is downright cruel; but this time it’s Cas who’s pushing him away with an air of great betrayal (you’d think he’d have learned after the first five times, but nooo) and also great crankiness. “I just want to sleep,” he complains.
“Fine by me,” Dean snaps (even though it’s not, because his dick was just getting interested and now he’s going to have to take care of it himself). He’s pretty sure Cas doesn’t even hear him, considering the remarkable speed with which he manages to yank the covers over his head. He’s kind of tempted to turn on porn on the motel’s shitty TV set and crank the volume just to get back at Cas for being annoying today; but that’s mean, and Cas is sick, and he knows he’s not exactly being the most understanding friend in the first place. He contemplates going to bug Sam for a while, then decides his bad mood really doesn’t need to be inflicted on anyone else. Better just to write off the rest of the evening and try again tomorrow. It’s been one of those days that ought to be forgotten rather than drawn out.
So relative silence descends on their room, aside from the murmur of the TV (not playing porn, as it happens) and presumably Dean’s heartbeat and breathing and stuff that Cas with his whole super-human perception thingy might be able to pick up on if he weren’t asleep, until around 11:30 when Dean finds himself dozing off halfway through an episode of Bones (yeah, yeah, procedural cop show, but he’s too busy fantasizing about a three-way with the forensic lady and the FBI guy to care much about the plot).
He gets into bed without realizing his hair is somehow still wet, and as a result spends several horrified minutes wondering what the fuck happened to his pillow-the perfect end to a perfect day, right? And then he has this weird dream where the forensic lady from that show is licking his ear, which might be sexy except when he turns around she’s transformed into Zachariah, and he’s back in that office where he was Dean Wesson with those stupid suspenders and he’s running down halls that are for some reason lined with an assortment of watercolour portraits of Paris Hilton, looking for a shovel because Sam and Cas are getting married and he really needs to give Sam the shovel before they say their vows-
-and then, thank god, he wakes up.
For a moment he simply lies there, staring at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck his brain thought it was doing. Like, actually. In what possible way does any of that make even the slightest-
Then it occurs to him that something actually woke him up, so he rolls over onto his side, from which position he can see two things. One, the clock on the table between his and Cas’s beds is flashing 1:03 a.m. (that is, until about thirty seconds later when a sudden ominous buzz and the disappearance of the numbers altogether indicates the storm still raging outside has knocked the power out). Two, Cas is crouched on the floor where he seems to have fallen out of bed, hunched over in pain and saying in this weird whisper-y shout thing, “Dean Dean Dean Dean wake up Dean please wake up it hurts it hurts it hurts-”
Maybe Dean’s still half asleep, but even he can tell something is actually, legitimately, this-can’t-be-cured-by-Pepto-Bismol wrong. He’s out of bed in a matter of seconds, kneeling beside Cas to ask urgently, “What is it, what’s wrong?” Which is kind of a dumb question because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s wrong, what he really wants to know is why it’s wrong and how to fix but obviously Cas can’t tell him that or they wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.
“Do something do something make it stop-”
“Okay, okay, I’ll just-I’ll get Sam, okay?” He tries to stand up, only to find Cas’s fingers dug uncomfortably into his shoulder in a death grip that prevents him from leaving. As gently as he can, which is not particularly gentle considering he’s kind of freaking out right now, he pries himself free, giving Cas’s hand what’s supposed to be a comforting squeeze as he lets him sink back to floor. “Just-don’t die for, like, two minutes. I’ll be right back. Just hang on.”
Sam answers the insistent pounding at his door in his underwear, scowling sleepily at his brother (who, by the way, is not only also in his underwear but is now soaking wet again from running across the parking lot as well, so clearly this night is just turning out generally awesome).
“Hey,” says Dean, giving him a strained smile. “So, you know how we haven’t been to the hospital in a while?”
Sam’s second opinion is basically the same as Dean’s vague yet inauspicious first opinion and therefore not of particular help, but it takes a joint effort to get the doubled-over Cas out of the room and into the back seat of the Impala, with the added bonus that the power-outage makes navigating their way out of the darkened room a super-fun obstacle course. Fifteen even more super-fun minutes of trying to find the nearest hospital in a strange town at night in the pouring rain with half the traffic lights blown out later and the Winchesters are hauling Cas into the ER, ignoring the receptionist’s disapproving stares at the puddles of water forming around them as they attempt to explain what’s wrong. And then, of course, since someone’s always dying somewhere and Cas isn’t gushing blood or holding any severed limbs in place and therefore has been designated one of the “not-as-emergency emergency patients”, they get to go drip on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room while they wait for a doctor. Cas has his head buried in Dean’s shoulder, Dean’s got his arm around Cas because it just has to be done, and Sam’s got this weird expression that’s a cross between being worried about Cas and squealing in excitement over how Dean’s kind of cuddling Cas right now, so apparently despite Dean’s big heart-to-heart with his brother the other night Sam is still holding out for a wedding before the end of the world.
Eventually a nurse comes to take Cas away, and although his friend shoots him a pleading look as he leaves all Dean can say is, “Sorry, Cas, we can’t come with. We’ll come see you as soon as the doctor lets us, I promise.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sam adds. Cas does not look reassured.
Then they wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Sam goes to get them coffee. They drink it, then wait some more.
Dean suggests they play I Spy to pass the time. Sam says, “Okay, I spy a really stupid idea.”
Dean sulks.
Sam tries not to stare at the guy with fork stuck in his hand sitting across from them.
More waiting.
Dean’s eyelids are beginning to itch with tiredness despite the coffee when another nurse comes over to talk to them. “Are you the ones who came in with Castiel Novak?” he asks.
Right, that’s the other problem. Dean just said the first thing that popped into his head when the receptionist asked for a name, which for some reason happened to be Novak rather than Winchester even though Winchester would have been a lot easier to deal with. Though afterwards Sam pointed out it was actually okay, because if the hospital staff took Cas as Dean and Sam’s brother they might have started asking about the family’s medical history, and while they’re generally fine with making backstories up off the top of their heads this seems like a case where that might not be such a great idea since they still don’t know what’s wrong with Cas. Whatever Sam says it still seems fucking stupid to Dean, and even though he knows it was probably just from being too tired and too stressed and doesn’t actually mean anything he feels like an asshole for not automatically sharing his name with Cas who may or may not be seriously ill and/or dying.
Anyways, they nod and then the nurse asks, “Which one of you is Dean?”
“Me,” says Dean.
“And you’re his…?”
Oh yeah, the whole visitation rights thing. They’re supposed to be immediate family. Why didn’t he say Winchester, why, they could have been brothers instead of-
Dean glances at Sam, who stares inscrutably back. “Hus…band?” Dean suggests uncertainly.
He can practically sense how hard it is for Sam to resist the urge to start jumping up and down in delight. Fucking fantastic-he’s never going to live this down.
The nurse raises his eyebrows, which is kind of unsurprising since that was basically the sketchiest answer Dean’s ever given to anything and he’s suddenly very aware of something that isn’t normally an issue, namely the lack of a wedding ring on his left hand. But it’s late (or actually just early by now, and sadly not even that early) and other than the Winchesters it’s pretty clear that Cas is on his own, and if Dean knows Cas-and he thinks he kind of does, by now-Cas probably hasn’t shut up asking to see Dean and Sam, so the guy just shrugs and says, “Okay, well, follow me.”
“What about… can my brother…”
“For now, sure. If anyone else shows up, siblings or parents or whatever, he’ll have to leave.”
“Oh, they won’t,” says Dean. And then, for no particular reason other than he hasn’t had close to enough sleep and he’s clearly out to make as big a fool of himself as possible tonight, he adds, “They’re all still in Russia.”
He’s about ninety-nine percent sure Jimmy Novak isn’t Russian. At all. Cas definitely isn’t, unless Heaven is secretly in Russia, in which case God has some serious explaining to do.
The nurse doesn’t seem to care too much about this, though, except for the fact that Dean and Sam are the only people who’re going to be with Cas tonight, so they go down a bunch of too-clean hallways wearing dumb stickers on their shirts that say CDU 3 and cleaning their hands self-consciously every time the nurse does until Dean’s pretty sure the top layer of his skin has been replaced with Purell. Then they’re squeezing through a room crowded with curtained beds with vague instructions about where they’re supposed to find Dean’s supposed husband, and Dean’s not sure about Sam but he’s already starting to get that claustrophobic helpless hospital feeling that’s had him and his brother stitching up their own wounds for years. It’s like out there they can save people, they can kill monsters and stop imminent death, but there’s no way to stop sickness or a fatal injury except sometimes medicine, which Dean isn’t a whole lot of good with because he never went to school and too often it doesn’t seem to do anything anyhow.
He sees a big number 3 on the sign above one of the curtained beds and tugs it open, but he fails to notice that it isn’t CDU 3 it’s something-else-3 and so ends up staring at an emaciated sleeping old man for a second before tugging the curtain hurriedly closed. It’s just a second, it’s an honest mistake, the man isn’t even awake to see it; Dean still kind of cringes, though, feeling like he’s just horribly invaded someone’s privacy, and drops back to lurk behind Sam until his brother finds the right place.
And then finally there’s Cas, propped up in bed somehow succeeding in looking both woozy and anxious, and his face clears as soon as he sees the Winchesters. It seems like a bit of an overreaction to Dean until he realizes how rarely Cas has actually been away from them, and how much he still doesn’t know about how to pass as a human very well or do human things like deal with health insurance. There’s a doctor with him, a dark middle-aged woman checking things off on a clipboard who reminds Dean unnervingly of the terrifying principal of the school he went to for a couple months when he was nine.
“How you feeling, Cas?” Dean asks, sidling up to his bed as casually as he can without looking like he’s trying to keep his distance from the doctor (this is so stupid, he’s fought demons and spirits and horrible monsters since forever and this is just a woman, a frigging doctor, and besides it’s not even the same person, she can’t put you in detention, you’re a fucking adult, Dean).
Cas gives him a Look. It’s a crazy mash-up of pain and fear and frustration and annoyance at being asked such a stupid question and relief that at least Dean’s here being stupid again, and Dean’s not exactly sure whether Cas wants him to do something cute and couple-y or just piss off; but Cas’s hand slips out from under the sheet to grab Dean’s own, hanging below the bed where neither the doctor nor Sam can see from the other side, which he figures is a pretty clear message. It ought to be romantic, like maybe now that Cas is in the hospital freaking out they’ll both be hit by a sudden realization of how much they are actually madly in love and can’t live without each other and want to spend every second of the rest of their (probably very short) lives kissing on the beach at sunset etc. etc., but mostly it just seems like someone who’s fucking terrified trying to hold on to basically the only thing that’s familiar to him right now. Which is a lot starker and a lot more desperate and also somehow a lot more complicated than just plain old falling in love.
Meanwhile Sam is shaking hands with the woman in the white jacket, who introduces herself in a no-nonsense voice (she even sounds like Dean’s old principal, shit) as, “Dr. Nguyen, Castiel’s doctor, and you are…?”
“Sam Winchester,” says Sam, shaking her hand. “Uh. Cas is married to my brother.” He seems to be trying with questionable success to stop himself from grinning like an idiot as he says it, with the result that his mouth does a weird spasm-type thing that he has to turn away from Dr. Nguyen to hide. Dean makes an effort not to roll his eyes.
“Right.” She turns to stare down Dean, and Dean’s stomach lurches sickeningly as if he’s back in Mrs. Wickham’s office waiting to be told she’s going to call his dad, which isn’t so bad, and to be given one of his principal’s infamous lectures, which is. “Well, as I was telling your husband”-it shouldn’t be strange to hear someone say that, not after he’s introduced them as a couple himself, but it is, it fucking is-“while he’s stable at the moment, he’s going to need surgery as soon as can be managed.”
“I… what? Why?” Dean blurts out.
She fixes him with a stare that says I wasn’t finished, for which he immediately regrets interrupting. “He needs a fairly urgent appendectomy. We should be able to perform it in a few hours.”
This time Dean stays silent, partly scared she’s still not finished and partly fighting off the feeling he needs to raise his hand if he wants to say something and partly in a state of mild shock, and Cas is too busy looking terrified and crushing the bones in Dean’s hand to say anything, and so it’s Sam who manages to keep himself together enough to ask dubiously, “Is that, um, you know, safe? I mean he hasn’t really had a lot of medical work done before and…”
“I’ve already examined him, and aside from his appendix Castiel seems perfectly healthy. There is of course some level of risk in any surgical procedure, but compared to the risk of not having the surgery there’s really very little to worry about.”
Okay. Okay. So, in not very long someone is going to come put Cas under and remove his appendix.
Okay.
Basically, they’re willingly letting Cas be knocked out. And then willingly letting someone rip out one of his organs.
Except no, it’s not like that at all. That sounds like a case, like the immortal doctor who kept stealing bits of people to keep himself alive back before Dean went to Hell. This is not a case. This is so far from being a case it’s practically a… an anti-case. Because if there is one definite truth in becoming a hunter it’s that you can kiss your boring, normal life goodbye, because nothing is ever going to be normal again; and yet here they are, after fighting vamps and spirits and gods and demons and all that fun stuff. In the hospital, a normal couple with one normal brother here in the middle of the night because Cas’s stomach was hurting, waiting for Dean’s “husband” to get a pretty damn normal surgery as surgeries go. Back in the waiting room Dean and Sam were exchanging theories, considering spells and cursed objects and supernatural infections (neither voiced the thought that it might be some sort of new strain of the Croatoan virus, but the possibility weighed heavily on both), and now this doctor is saying that it’s just the human body being a human body. When was the last time that happened? When was the last time they had to worry about taxes, mortgages, leaking roofs, travel insurance, exasperating ancient relatives, flu shots, appendicitis?
Never, that’s when. Not since Dean was four, anyways, and then his parents worried about all of that stuff for him. And maybe for a few hours, a few days, when that djinn took Dean down or when both he and Sam were plunged into that artificial office world. But basically never. So this, as strange as it may seem, is actually something of a vacation for them. A luxury. For once all they have to worry about is Cas getting some surgery that will probably leave him one-hundred-percent okay at the end. No million-to-one chances of survival, no fate-of-the-world hinging on this.
“You can stay with him for the time being,” says Dr. Nguyen, who is already checking her clipboard for her next patient. “One of the nurses will come fetch him when it’s time. Any questions?”
“No, I think we’re-”
“Will it hurt?” Cas asks quietly.
And even though he’s got stubble and a deep voice and he’s fucked Dean so hard Dean almost blacked out and he’s burned demons right out of their human shells with barely a second glance, right now-in bed wearing a hospital gown, clutching Dean’s hand and asking that question in a tone that says he’s really worried about the answer but pretending it’s not a big deal-Cas looks like a child. Like a second little brother, like Dean really is nine years old again and Cas just scraped his knee up pretty bad so now Dean has to put antiseptic on, and he’s trying to convince Cas it’s not going to hurt at all even though that shit stings like hell-fire, easily twice as bad as whatever the initial injury was.
Dr. Nguyen’s face softens slightly in a smile, until she looks more like someone’s mother than Dean’s old hard-ass principal. “You’ll be asleep the whole time,” she promises. “You’ll have an excellent anesthesiologist who’ll make sure you don’t feel a thing until the surgeon’s finished. There will probably be some pain afterwards, but we’ll give you some painkillers and with enough rest you’ll be good as new in no time.”
Cas nods. And then it’s just the three of them. Well, just the three of them along with all the other patients and their visitors currently occupying the ward. Hospitals would probably not make the top ten on Dean’s list of good places to go to have a private conversation.
“I don’t want to,” says Cas.
“I know, buddy.” Dean realizes he’s been rubbing his thumb absently in circles over the back of Cas’s hand and he should stop, he really should, but even though Sam’s been saying as much for ages it’s just starting to click now that maybe it’s not all about him. “But trust me, you’ve seen way worse running with me and Sam.”
Cas nods again, though he doesn’t seem particularly comforted. And it just gets worse over the next hour, right up to the same nurse from before arriving with another assistant to take Cas up to the operating room, at which point Sam proves himself once again to be a fucking asshole about his ability to understand Dean and Cas better than they understand themselves and says, “Dean’ll be here when you wake up, Cas. You’ll be fine.”
“You know,” Sam says once they’re back in the waiting room and Dean is once again sulking, this time because Sam made him look romantic and stupid with someone who isn’t even his husband, “You and Cas…”
“Oh my God, Sam, if you don’t shut up about me and Cas I am literally going to throw myself out this window.”
Sam glances at the nearby window. “That’s okay, we’re only on the main floor. Go for it.”
“Fuck you,” says Dean, which is just about as witty as his comebacks get after sleeping only one hour out of the previous twenty-four.
“Look, I’m not trying to trivialize anything you said before, and I totally get how you could never, ever have a normal relationship with anyone and probably I couldn’t either, anymore, because either they wise up and get out while they still can or they don’t and they die and either way you end up on your own again. But for the longest time I’ve kind of felt like you and Cas have had this weird sort of long-distance dating thing going, pretty much ever since you met actually, and it’s definitely not normal and neither of you are at all normal, I mean you guys don’t even like ice cream sandwiches or Lost or anything not to mention being mixed up in all this Apocalypse stuff, but maybe that’s why this could actually work. What I got from what you told me is that you don’t want to feel too much for him, not that you don’t feel too much for him. Kind of the opposite, really. And Cas isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, at least not any sooner than the rest of us.”
Dean spends a few confusing moments trying to figure out when eating ice cream sandwiches and watching Lost became the standards for “normal” human behaviour, finally throwing in the metaphorical towel in face of the mystery that is Sam’s mind and saying flatly, “So, what, you want me to go buy an engagement ring while we’re waiting, or something?”
“No, that’s stupid.”
“I know.”
“None of the stores would be open yet.”
“Exac-wait, no, that’s not-”
“I’m just saying,” Sam says, plowing onward with determination. “I’m just saying, it’s all good, you know? Like, you don’t have to go out on dates or hold hands all the time or run off to New York to get married or anything. You don’t have to “make it official”. But you don’t have to not do that stuff either, just because someone might take it the wrong way or the right way or whatever and then you’d get all insecure. It’s not about putting a label on, right? Maybe it would be harder if you had a normal job and neighbours and friends and all that stuff, but for what we’ve got going it works as well as anything else.”
Dean opens his mouth, then closes it again because he has no fucking clue what to say in response to that. So after a while of Sam looking at him expectantly and him looking blankly back, he finally settles for, “Huh.”
Continue...
Well, actually he’s not in a very good mood in general. It’s just one of those days. But Cas is really pushing his buttons and it kind of seems like he’s doing it on purpose, so most of his bitterness is directed towards his roommate. Which, of course, is doing tons to help the situation.
They’re somewhere in Washington, and it’s raining. Not that they’re planning a picnic or something outdoors-y like that, and Dean’s sure as hell not worried about ruining his hair or whatever, but it’s been pissing rain all day and everything is soggy and humid and miserable. So that didn’t exactly start the day off right for him, nor has its refusal to lessen done anything for his spirits; on top of which Dean is not a particularly patient guy, and Cas has been impossibly slow about absolutely everything today. He had to be dragged out of bed, he took so long getting ready Dean was forced to watch nearly a whole episode of Pokemon while waiting (it was morning and that was the only thing on, okay?), he sat in morose silence through every single one of the interviews they went through today-not that interviews tend to go any better when he participates, exactly the opposite in fact, but he just sat there the whole time exuding self-pity and it was annoying-and now this. Sitting in this grungy (even by their standards) diner, picking half-heartedly at his meal.
“Are you almost done?” Dean snaps finally, sick and tired of sitting around waiting. He finished his own dinner ages ago and there are about a million things he’d rather be doing than being here watching Cas progress through the plate of food in front of him with such painful lethargy.
Cas gives him an offended stare and doesn’t deign to respond. He prods the bun of his burger with one long finger, looking almost like he’s about to pick it up and take another goddamned bite but then losing interest again.
“What the hell’s your problem, man? We’ve got a frigging shifter brigade to hunt. Hurry up and finish.” He drums his fingers on the table in an irritating rhythm that has Sam, who has long since given up on the conversation and resorted to staring disinterestedly out the window at the rain-soaked parking lot, turning to glare at them. You can really just feel the love emanating round this table right now. God.
Eventually Cas pushes his plate away from him and announces, “I’m not hungry,” and looking back, this should have been a sign as big as those gigantic Hollywood letters that SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG HERE. Cas not hungry? Okay, fine. It happens. Whatever. Cas not hungry for burgers, even burgers as shitty as these? Zachariah ought to turn up any second to bodily cram Michael’s essence into Dean, because this is the biggest fucking clue the world’s ending that Dean’s ever seen. Though of course, Dean being Dean, it completely goes over his head at the time.
Dean rolls his eyes-couldn’t he have mentioned that sooner? Like maybe, fifteen minutes ago? And yeah, maybe they’re not super likely to go out looking for shifters this late in the day or in this downpour, but he’s pissed off and when he’s pissed off his arguments make even less sense than usual. “Great, well, can we go now?”
“There is a pain in my abdomen,” Cas says, eyeing Dean resentfully. Clearly he’s not impressed with the fact that it’s taken everyone so long to notice, though how either of them was supposed to be able to tell Cas was on his fucking period or whatever Dean has no idea.
“What, like you feel sick?” asks Sam.
Nonononono. Cas can’t be sick. Dean will literally gouge his own eyes out with a plastic spoon rather than have to deal with that again. Fuck. If Cas has the flu or something, he is so fucking moving in with Sam.
“No, it just hurts.”
“It might be a bug. I don’t know. Maybe something you ate.” And now Sam and Dean are exchanging uneasy glances, since aside from Sam’s vegetable obsession they’ve pretty much all been eating the same food lately. Even if it is a bug it’s probably nothing serious but still, being sick sucks, especially when everyone you know is sick as well so there’s really no one to baby you. “We can pick up some Pepto-Bismol on the way home, I saw a drugstore… somewhere…”
Oh, so they’re just going to drive around the city until they find a pharmacy, by which time it will be even darker than it is already what with all the rain clouds and they’ll probably be lost-all with a potentially-going-to-puke-at-some-point Cas as a passenger? Not fucking likely. “Whoa, whoa,” Dean cuts in hurriedly. “I don’t want him in my car if he’s going to hurl. No way.”
Sam makes the mistake of saying, “For God’s sake, Dean, it’s just a car,” which leads to several minutes of pointless bickering (pointless because Dean knows Sam will just never understand the special relationship he has with his car no matter how many clever laptop/salad/bad country music analogies Dean uses) while Cas mopes in the background with his arms crossed over his stomach like he thinks the discomfort is an indication that his internal organs are about to fall out. And then, just to improve his already fantastic mood, Dean somehow finds himself saddled with the task of walking Cas back to the motel while Sam goes off in the Impala to find a bottle of nasty pink medicine that probably won’t even help anyways.
They’re both soaked within a minute of leaving the diner, water squelching unpleasantly in Dean’s boots as he trudges down the sidewalk. Beside him Cas is still clutching his stomach and with the rain flattening down his hair and dripping off the tip of his nose he looks even more pathetic than he did inside. If he were a proper boyfriend, or even just a proper friend, he would probably wrap an arm around Cas’s shoulder and say something comfortingly sympathetic; but since he’s an asshole who won’t even let his sick best friend ride in his car it just irritates him even further and he says, “What, so now you’re pregnant or something?”
“That is an anatomical impossibility, Dean,” Cas points out peevishly.
“Your mom is an anatomical impossibility.”
“You are being both illogical and rude.”
Dean makes a face at him, though thankfully it’s too dark for Cas to catch it. He’d hate to lose the reputation for maturity he’s spent so many years cultivating.
Sam’s already back by the time they return, which is so fucking frustrating because it means they definitely could have skipped getting drenched without having to worry about Cas ruining his baby’s upholstery. Dean snatches the bottle his brother hands him wordlessly, ignoring the goddamned superior expression on Sam’s face as he pointedly wipes the water Dean’s managed to drip on him off on his (dry) jacket. Then Dean drags Cas into their room, chucks him a towel, and forcibly administers the medicine-Cas is honestly just like a child when it comes to being sick, and Dean should know because he was the one in charge of looking after most of Sam’s various ailments when they were kids. Luckily there are a few tricks he’s discovered recently, ones that he couldn’t exactly have used on Sam all those years ago, and so a disgruntled Cas finds himself confronted with several mouthfuls of the disgusting syrup mid hand-job.
Since he’s not a total bastard Dean always carries through, of course, because while using sex to get Cas to take his medicine may be playing unfair leaving a guy hanging like that is downright cruel; but this time it’s Cas who’s pushing him away with an air of great betrayal (you’d think he’d have learned after the first five times, but nooo) and also great crankiness. “I just want to sleep,” he complains.
“Fine by me,” Dean snaps (even though it’s not, because his dick was just getting interested and now he’s going to have to take care of it himself). He’s pretty sure Cas doesn’t even hear him, considering the remarkable speed with which he manages to yank the covers over his head. He’s kind of tempted to turn on porn on the motel’s shitty TV set and crank the volume just to get back at Cas for being annoying today; but that’s mean, and Cas is sick, and he knows he’s not exactly being the most understanding friend in the first place. He contemplates going to bug Sam for a while, then decides his bad mood really doesn’t need to be inflicted on anyone else. Better just to write off the rest of the evening and try again tomorrow. It’s been one of those days that ought to be forgotten rather than drawn out.
So relative silence descends on their room, aside from the murmur of the TV (not playing porn, as it happens) and presumably Dean’s heartbeat and breathing and stuff that Cas with his whole super-human perception thingy might be able to pick up on if he weren’t asleep, until around 11:30 when Dean finds himself dozing off halfway through an episode of Bones (yeah, yeah, procedural cop show, but he’s too busy fantasizing about a three-way with the forensic lady and the FBI guy to care much about the plot).
He gets into bed without realizing his hair is somehow still wet, and as a result spends several horrified minutes wondering what the fuck happened to his pillow-the perfect end to a perfect day, right? And then he has this weird dream where the forensic lady from that show is licking his ear, which might be sexy except when he turns around she’s transformed into Zachariah, and he’s back in that office where he was Dean Wesson with those stupid suspenders and he’s running down halls that are for some reason lined with an assortment of watercolour portraits of Paris Hilton, looking for a shovel because Sam and Cas are getting married and he really needs to give Sam the shovel before they say their vows-
-and then, thank god, he wakes up.
For a moment he simply lies there, staring at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck his brain thought it was doing. Like, actually. In what possible way does any of that make even the slightest-
Then it occurs to him that something actually woke him up, so he rolls over onto his side, from which position he can see two things. One, the clock on the table between his and Cas’s beds is flashing 1:03 a.m. (that is, until about thirty seconds later when a sudden ominous buzz and the disappearance of the numbers altogether indicates the storm still raging outside has knocked the power out). Two, Cas is crouched on the floor where he seems to have fallen out of bed, hunched over in pain and saying in this weird whisper-y shout thing, “Dean Dean Dean Dean wake up Dean please wake up it hurts it hurts it hurts-”
Maybe Dean’s still half asleep, but even he can tell something is actually, legitimately, this-can’t-be-cured-by-Pepto-Bismol wrong. He’s out of bed in a matter of seconds, kneeling beside Cas to ask urgently, “What is it, what’s wrong?” Which is kind of a dumb question because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s wrong, what he really wants to know is why it’s wrong and how to fix but obviously Cas can’t tell him that or they wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.
“Do something do something make it stop-”
“Okay, okay, I’ll just-I’ll get Sam, okay?” He tries to stand up, only to find Cas’s fingers dug uncomfortably into his shoulder in a death grip that prevents him from leaving. As gently as he can, which is not particularly gentle considering he’s kind of freaking out right now, he pries himself free, giving Cas’s hand what’s supposed to be a comforting squeeze as he lets him sink back to floor. “Just-don’t die for, like, two minutes. I’ll be right back. Just hang on.”
Sam answers the insistent pounding at his door in his underwear, scowling sleepily at his brother (who, by the way, is not only also in his underwear but is now soaking wet again from running across the parking lot as well, so clearly this night is just turning out generally awesome).
“Hey,” says Dean, giving him a strained smile. “So, you know how we haven’t been to the hospital in a while?”
Sam’s second opinion is basically the same as Dean’s vague yet inauspicious first opinion and therefore not of particular help, but it takes a joint effort to get the doubled-over Cas out of the room and into the back seat of the Impala, with the added bonus that the power-outage makes navigating their way out of the darkened room a super-fun obstacle course. Fifteen even more super-fun minutes of trying to find the nearest hospital in a strange town at night in the pouring rain with half the traffic lights blown out later and the Winchesters are hauling Cas into the ER, ignoring the receptionist’s disapproving stares at the puddles of water forming around them as they attempt to explain what’s wrong. And then, of course, since someone’s always dying somewhere and Cas isn’t gushing blood or holding any severed limbs in place and therefore has been designated one of the “not-as-emergency emergency patients”, they get to go drip on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room while they wait for a doctor. Cas has his head buried in Dean’s shoulder, Dean’s got his arm around Cas because it just has to be done, and Sam’s got this weird expression that’s a cross between being worried about Cas and squealing in excitement over how Dean’s kind of cuddling Cas right now, so apparently despite Dean’s big heart-to-heart with his brother the other night Sam is still holding out for a wedding before the end of the world.
Eventually a nurse comes to take Cas away, and although his friend shoots him a pleading look as he leaves all Dean can say is, “Sorry, Cas, we can’t come with. We’ll come see you as soon as the doctor lets us, I promise.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sam adds. Cas does not look reassured.
Then they wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Sam goes to get them coffee. They drink it, then wait some more.
Dean suggests they play I Spy to pass the time. Sam says, “Okay, I spy a really stupid idea.”
Dean sulks.
Sam tries not to stare at the guy with fork stuck in his hand sitting across from them.
More waiting.
Dean’s eyelids are beginning to itch with tiredness despite the coffee when another nurse comes over to talk to them. “Are you the ones who came in with Castiel Novak?” he asks.
Right, that’s the other problem. Dean just said the first thing that popped into his head when the receptionist asked for a name, which for some reason happened to be Novak rather than Winchester even though Winchester would have been a lot easier to deal with. Though afterwards Sam pointed out it was actually okay, because if the hospital staff took Cas as Dean and Sam’s brother they might have started asking about the family’s medical history, and while they’re generally fine with making backstories up off the top of their heads this seems like a case where that might not be such a great idea since they still don’t know what’s wrong with Cas. Whatever Sam says it still seems fucking stupid to Dean, and even though he knows it was probably just from being too tired and too stressed and doesn’t actually mean anything he feels like an asshole for not automatically sharing his name with Cas who may or may not be seriously ill and/or dying.
Anyways, they nod and then the nurse asks, “Which one of you is Dean?”
“Me,” says Dean.
“And you’re his…?”
Oh yeah, the whole visitation rights thing. They’re supposed to be immediate family. Why didn’t he say Winchester, why, they could have been brothers instead of-
Dean glances at Sam, who stares inscrutably back. “Hus…band?” Dean suggests uncertainly.
He can practically sense how hard it is for Sam to resist the urge to start jumping up and down in delight. Fucking fantastic-he’s never going to live this down.
The nurse raises his eyebrows, which is kind of unsurprising since that was basically the sketchiest answer Dean’s ever given to anything and he’s suddenly very aware of something that isn’t normally an issue, namely the lack of a wedding ring on his left hand. But it’s late (or actually just early by now, and sadly not even that early) and other than the Winchesters it’s pretty clear that Cas is on his own, and if Dean knows Cas-and he thinks he kind of does, by now-Cas probably hasn’t shut up asking to see Dean and Sam, so the guy just shrugs and says, “Okay, well, follow me.”
“What about… can my brother…”
“For now, sure. If anyone else shows up, siblings or parents or whatever, he’ll have to leave.”
“Oh, they won’t,” says Dean. And then, for no particular reason other than he hasn’t had close to enough sleep and he’s clearly out to make as big a fool of himself as possible tonight, he adds, “They’re all still in Russia.”
He’s about ninety-nine percent sure Jimmy Novak isn’t Russian. At all. Cas definitely isn’t, unless Heaven is secretly in Russia, in which case God has some serious explaining to do.
The nurse doesn’t seem to care too much about this, though, except for the fact that Dean and Sam are the only people who’re going to be with Cas tonight, so they go down a bunch of too-clean hallways wearing dumb stickers on their shirts that say CDU 3 and cleaning their hands self-consciously every time the nurse does until Dean’s pretty sure the top layer of his skin has been replaced with Purell. Then they’re squeezing through a room crowded with curtained beds with vague instructions about where they’re supposed to find Dean’s supposed husband, and Dean’s not sure about Sam but he’s already starting to get that claustrophobic helpless hospital feeling that’s had him and his brother stitching up their own wounds for years. It’s like out there they can save people, they can kill monsters and stop imminent death, but there’s no way to stop sickness or a fatal injury except sometimes medicine, which Dean isn’t a whole lot of good with because he never went to school and too often it doesn’t seem to do anything anyhow.
He sees a big number 3 on the sign above one of the curtained beds and tugs it open, but he fails to notice that it isn’t CDU 3 it’s something-else-3 and so ends up staring at an emaciated sleeping old man for a second before tugging the curtain hurriedly closed. It’s just a second, it’s an honest mistake, the man isn’t even awake to see it; Dean still kind of cringes, though, feeling like he’s just horribly invaded someone’s privacy, and drops back to lurk behind Sam until his brother finds the right place.
And then finally there’s Cas, propped up in bed somehow succeeding in looking both woozy and anxious, and his face clears as soon as he sees the Winchesters. It seems like a bit of an overreaction to Dean until he realizes how rarely Cas has actually been away from them, and how much he still doesn’t know about how to pass as a human very well or do human things like deal with health insurance. There’s a doctor with him, a dark middle-aged woman checking things off on a clipboard who reminds Dean unnervingly of the terrifying principal of the school he went to for a couple months when he was nine.
“How you feeling, Cas?” Dean asks, sidling up to his bed as casually as he can without looking like he’s trying to keep his distance from the doctor (this is so stupid, he’s fought demons and spirits and horrible monsters since forever and this is just a woman, a frigging doctor, and besides it’s not even the same person, she can’t put you in detention, you’re a fucking adult, Dean).
Cas gives him a Look. It’s a crazy mash-up of pain and fear and frustration and annoyance at being asked such a stupid question and relief that at least Dean’s here being stupid again, and Dean’s not exactly sure whether Cas wants him to do something cute and couple-y or just piss off; but Cas’s hand slips out from under the sheet to grab Dean’s own, hanging below the bed where neither the doctor nor Sam can see from the other side, which he figures is a pretty clear message. It ought to be romantic, like maybe now that Cas is in the hospital freaking out they’ll both be hit by a sudden realization of how much they are actually madly in love and can’t live without each other and want to spend every second of the rest of their (probably very short) lives kissing on the beach at sunset etc. etc., but mostly it just seems like someone who’s fucking terrified trying to hold on to basically the only thing that’s familiar to him right now. Which is a lot starker and a lot more desperate and also somehow a lot more complicated than just plain old falling in love.
Meanwhile Sam is shaking hands with the woman in the white jacket, who introduces herself in a no-nonsense voice (she even sounds like Dean’s old principal, shit) as, “Dr. Nguyen, Castiel’s doctor, and you are…?”
“Sam Winchester,” says Sam, shaking her hand. “Uh. Cas is married to my brother.” He seems to be trying with questionable success to stop himself from grinning like an idiot as he says it, with the result that his mouth does a weird spasm-type thing that he has to turn away from Dr. Nguyen to hide. Dean makes an effort not to roll his eyes.
“Right.” She turns to stare down Dean, and Dean’s stomach lurches sickeningly as if he’s back in Mrs. Wickham’s office waiting to be told she’s going to call his dad, which isn’t so bad, and to be given one of his principal’s infamous lectures, which is. “Well, as I was telling your husband”-it shouldn’t be strange to hear someone say that, not after he’s introduced them as a couple himself, but it is, it fucking is-“while he’s stable at the moment, he’s going to need surgery as soon as can be managed.”
“I… what? Why?” Dean blurts out.
She fixes him with a stare that says I wasn’t finished, for which he immediately regrets interrupting. “He needs a fairly urgent appendectomy. We should be able to perform it in a few hours.”
This time Dean stays silent, partly scared she’s still not finished and partly fighting off the feeling he needs to raise his hand if he wants to say something and partly in a state of mild shock, and Cas is too busy looking terrified and crushing the bones in Dean’s hand to say anything, and so it’s Sam who manages to keep himself together enough to ask dubiously, “Is that, um, you know, safe? I mean he hasn’t really had a lot of medical work done before and…”
“I’ve already examined him, and aside from his appendix Castiel seems perfectly healthy. There is of course some level of risk in any surgical procedure, but compared to the risk of not having the surgery there’s really very little to worry about.”
Okay. Okay. So, in not very long someone is going to come put Cas under and remove his appendix.
Okay.
Basically, they’re willingly letting Cas be knocked out. And then willingly letting someone rip out one of his organs.
Except no, it’s not like that at all. That sounds like a case, like the immortal doctor who kept stealing bits of people to keep himself alive back before Dean went to Hell. This is not a case. This is so far from being a case it’s practically a… an anti-case. Because if there is one definite truth in becoming a hunter it’s that you can kiss your boring, normal life goodbye, because nothing is ever going to be normal again; and yet here they are, after fighting vamps and spirits and gods and demons and all that fun stuff. In the hospital, a normal couple with one normal brother here in the middle of the night because Cas’s stomach was hurting, waiting for Dean’s “husband” to get a pretty damn normal surgery as surgeries go. Back in the waiting room Dean and Sam were exchanging theories, considering spells and cursed objects and supernatural infections (neither voiced the thought that it might be some sort of new strain of the Croatoan virus, but the possibility weighed heavily on both), and now this doctor is saying that it’s just the human body being a human body. When was the last time that happened? When was the last time they had to worry about taxes, mortgages, leaking roofs, travel insurance, exasperating ancient relatives, flu shots, appendicitis?
Never, that’s when. Not since Dean was four, anyways, and then his parents worried about all of that stuff for him. And maybe for a few hours, a few days, when that djinn took Dean down or when both he and Sam were plunged into that artificial office world. But basically never. So this, as strange as it may seem, is actually something of a vacation for them. A luxury. For once all they have to worry about is Cas getting some surgery that will probably leave him one-hundred-percent okay at the end. No million-to-one chances of survival, no fate-of-the-world hinging on this.
“You can stay with him for the time being,” says Dr. Nguyen, who is already checking her clipboard for her next patient. “One of the nurses will come fetch him when it’s time. Any questions?”
“No, I think we’re-”
“Will it hurt?” Cas asks quietly.
And even though he’s got stubble and a deep voice and he’s fucked Dean so hard Dean almost blacked out and he’s burned demons right out of their human shells with barely a second glance, right now-in bed wearing a hospital gown, clutching Dean’s hand and asking that question in a tone that says he’s really worried about the answer but pretending it’s not a big deal-Cas looks like a child. Like a second little brother, like Dean really is nine years old again and Cas just scraped his knee up pretty bad so now Dean has to put antiseptic on, and he’s trying to convince Cas it’s not going to hurt at all even though that shit stings like hell-fire, easily twice as bad as whatever the initial injury was.
Dr. Nguyen’s face softens slightly in a smile, until she looks more like someone’s mother than Dean’s old hard-ass principal. “You’ll be asleep the whole time,” she promises. “You’ll have an excellent anesthesiologist who’ll make sure you don’t feel a thing until the surgeon’s finished. There will probably be some pain afterwards, but we’ll give you some painkillers and with enough rest you’ll be good as new in no time.”
Cas nods. And then it’s just the three of them. Well, just the three of them along with all the other patients and their visitors currently occupying the ward. Hospitals would probably not make the top ten on Dean’s list of good places to go to have a private conversation.
“I don’t want to,” says Cas.
“I know, buddy.” Dean realizes he’s been rubbing his thumb absently in circles over the back of Cas’s hand and he should stop, he really should, but even though Sam’s been saying as much for ages it’s just starting to click now that maybe it’s not all about him. “But trust me, you’ve seen way worse running with me and Sam.”
Cas nods again, though he doesn’t seem particularly comforted. And it just gets worse over the next hour, right up to the same nurse from before arriving with another assistant to take Cas up to the operating room, at which point Sam proves himself once again to be a fucking asshole about his ability to understand Dean and Cas better than they understand themselves and says, “Dean’ll be here when you wake up, Cas. You’ll be fine.”
“You know,” Sam says once they’re back in the waiting room and Dean is once again sulking, this time because Sam made him look romantic and stupid with someone who isn’t even his husband, “You and Cas…”
“Oh my God, Sam, if you don’t shut up about me and Cas I am literally going to throw myself out this window.”
Sam glances at the nearby window. “That’s okay, we’re only on the main floor. Go for it.”
“Fuck you,” says Dean, which is just about as witty as his comebacks get after sleeping only one hour out of the previous twenty-four.
“Look, I’m not trying to trivialize anything you said before, and I totally get how you could never, ever have a normal relationship with anyone and probably I couldn’t either, anymore, because either they wise up and get out while they still can or they don’t and they die and either way you end up on your own again. But for the longest time I’ve kind of felt like you and Cas have had this weird sort of long-distance dating thing going, pretty much ever since you met actually, and it’s definitely not normal and neither of you are at all normal, I mean you guys don’t even like ice cream sandwiches or Lost or anything not to mention being mixed up in all this Apocalypse stuff, but maybe that’s why this could actually work. What I got from what you told me is that you don’t want to feel too much for him, not that you don’t feel too much for him. Kind of the opposite, really. And Cas isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, at least not any sooner than the rest of us.”
Dean spends a few confusing moments trying to figure out when eating ice cream sandwiches and watching Lost became the standards for “normal” human behaviour, finally throwing in the metaphorical towel in face of the mystery that is Sam’s mind and saying flatly, “So, what, you want me to go buy an engagement ring while we’re waiting, or something?”
“No, that’s stupid.”
“I know.”
“None of the stores would be open yet.”
“Exac-wait, no, that’s not-”
“I’m just saying,” Sam says, plowing onward with determination. “I’m just saying, it’s all good, you know? Like, you don’t have to go out on dates or hold hands all the time or run off to New York to get married or anything. You don’t have to “make it official”. But you don’t have to not do that stuff either, just because someone might take it the wrong way or the right way or whatever and then you’d get all insecure. It’s not about putting a label on, right? Maybe it would be harder if you had a normal job and neighbours and friends and all that stuff, but for what we’ve got going it works as well as anything else.”
Dean opens his mouth, then closes it again because he has no fucking clue what to say in response to that. So after a while of Sam looking at him expectantly and him looking blankly back, he finally settles for, “Huh.”
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