[FIC] Love Sick for beef_wonder3
Gift type: Fanfic
Title: Love Sick
Author: baba_o_reily
Recipient: beef_wonder3
Rating: PG
Warnings: Abuse of Disney tropes
Spoilers: None particularly. I’m calling this a casefic-ish AU. Sam’s got all his working bits, if you catch my meaning.
Wordcount: 3000
Summary: Dean is love sick, literally sick with love, and only his true love can cure it. Sam, on the other hand, is having a very strange day.
Author notes: This was really fun to write. I almost never write from Sam’s POV, so to do so was a nice little flight of fancy. Hope you enjoy it!
Sam realizes abstractly, climbing as he still is out of a dreamless sleep, that it’s the sound of the toilet flushing that wakes him up. His eyes slowly slide open, and he turns to see the empty bed next to him. There’s a disgusting heaving sound from the bathroom and he knows there’s zero chance of him getting back to sleep.
“Dude,” he calls, throwing back the blankets and sitting up. “I told you there was something suspicious about those fish tacos.”
A ragged, “Bite me,” echoes against the porcelain of the bowl. Another flush, a quick on off of the sink and Dean’s pathetically shuffling out of the bathroom.
“Feel better?” asks Sam, somewhere between a laugh and a scowl and a look of worry. He knows Dean’s catalogued his faces. He thinks he’s making number four mixed with a little bit of seventeen.
“Peachy,” says Dean with a grimace, hands curled around his stomach.
They’re in Joplin, Missouri on a case: a bunch of graves have been dug up at the Peacechurch Cemetery, the bodies disappearing only to be found later, missing chunks.
The town’s medical examiner slash veterinarian had been more than happy to let Agents Dickinson and Harris take a look at the corpses, grimacing at the impressions that looked a hell of a lot like human bite marks.
“What’re we thinking?” Sam had said as soon as the short, balding Dr. Peters had waddled his way out of the room.
“Gotta be a ghoul,” Dean had answered, poking at one of the bite marks with the end of a pencil. “It’s the only thing I can think of that just can’t resist cracking open a cold one.”
A disgusted Sam had agreed. All that was left was finding the damn thing, which was much easier said than done. A daylong search had turned up nothing, so now it’s back to the cemetery to see what they can dig up-so to speak-any clues that might lead them to wherever this thing was holed up.
Sam makes sure to pack an extra couple of magazines in the pocket of his jacket, surreptitiously scratching at the place were his fake dead brother and Adam’s fake dead mother had done their hack and slash routine in order to get at the sweet, sweet Sam juice pumping through his veins. That is not an experience he’s eager to repeat.
He’s just packed up all the gear, while Dean just stands around, leaning heavily against the wall, when his pocket starts to ring. The caller ID on his phone flashes “Castiel.”
“Hey,” Sam says.
“Where are you?” says Cas. Almost three years out of the holy penthouse and he still can’t figure out how to address someone on the phone. Sam should really be used to it by now.
“The Daniel Boone Motor Court, in Joplin…”
Sam barely finishes when there’s a feathery whoosh and Cas is standing in the middle of their room. No sooner does he touch down than Dean is bolting to the bathroom, presumably to go blow more chunks.
“So what’s up?” Sam asks.
“I received word of angelic activity. Someone’s been following you.”
“Are you serious?” says Sam, running a hand through his hair, because apparently he has the worst luck in the world. “Any idea who?”
But Cas doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares at the bathroom door and frowns. “He’s unwell.”
“Food poisoning,” says Sam, shrugging. “He’ll get over it. He’ll be a pain in the ass in the mean time, but he’ll get over it. Now come on. Share with the class. If we’ve got mooks following us, we gotta know who.”
There’s more heaving from the bathroom, then the dull thudding noise of a body hitting tile, and Sam knows that that can’t be good. He’s literally a half second away from checking it out, but Cas beats him to it, breezing past before he gets the chance to move, rushing into the bathroom and hoisting Dean up, throwing an arm around his waist and hauling him over to his bed.
Sam sees now how ashen Dean’s ordinarily pale skin has become, the sheen of a thin film of sweat covering his face.
“He’s burning up,” Sam says, putting the back of his hand on Dean’s forehead. “Any chance you can mojo him back to health?”
Cas touches Dean’s face lightly with two fingers and… Nothing happens. He tries again. Still nothing.
“This isn’t right,” says Cas, poking Dean’s head more vigorously, and at this Dean stirs with a grumble. He opens one eye slowly, recoiling almost instantly when the light hits it and rolls over onto his side in the fetal position.
Dean has always been a big baby when it comes to getting sick. Sam remembers when he was fourteen and Dean was seventeen and he had had to spoon feed him tomato and rice soup because Dean had a bad cold. Not that this in any way affected the functionality of Dean’s arms, which Sam had, of course, reminded him.
But even Sam can see from the way the shivers wrack Dean’s turned back that something’s actually wrong this time.
“Why can’t you heal him?” Sam asks. “Don’t tell me you’re batteries are dry.”
Cas doesn’t answer, instead turning to jab two fingers into Sam’s sternum. An electric jolt shoots through Sam’s chest, and he can’t help the yelp of mingled pain and surprise that escapes.
“No,” says Cas a little tersely. “Apparently, this is not a problem with me.”
“So what gives?” Sam can here the little edge of panic creeping into his voice.
“If I knew the answer, I doubt very much that we’d be having this discussion.”
“Girls!” says Dean turning to look over his shoulder and glare at them. “You’re both pretty. Now shut up.” He turns back around and curls in on himself. Sam’s phone rings again and Dean throws a pillow over his head with a groan.
It’s a number Sam doesn’t recognize, so he answers with a suspicious, “Hello?”
“Agent Harris?” says the voice on the other end. “Doctor Peters.”
“Oh,” says Sam clearing his throat. “Yes, Doctor Peters. What can I do for you?”
“We got another call about a body today. I thought you’d like to come take a look.”
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose because this day is just getting better and better. “Of course,” he says. Maybe if he can track and kill this ghoul, the knot of worry at his brother’s pathetic form will unclench, as obvious a sublimation as that is. “I’ll meet you at your office.”
He turns to Castiel who sits gingerly at the edge of the bed, looking for all intents and purposes like he wants nothing more than to bust out of his meat suit for a little while, still so awkward as he is in his inherited skin. Sam wonders fleetingly if that’s the celestial version of nudism.
“Cas, I need you to look after Dean,” Sam says, making up his mind. “Just…” he sighs, putting his hands on his hips. “Make sure nothing happens to him, okay? “
“I don’t need a babysitter,” says Dean, lifting the pillow off his head to be heard. His stomach groans in protest.
“If he gets worse, give me a call,” says Sam to Cas, completely ignoring his idiot brother. He starts walking toward the door, stops, then turns, picking up the trashcan and setting it next to Dean’s bed.
When he arrives at Doctor Peters’ office, he’s greeted with the man’s rotund backside, the good doctor’s front half buried in what Sam realizes with mingled disgust and amusement is an organ refrigerator. The office itself looks like the kind of room Sam thinks he would have loved as a ten year old. He’d been pretty into animals at the time and had begged his Dad to get him a subscription to Zoo Books, considering the fact that they had no permanent address to be a minor detail. Doctor Peters’ walls are covered in posters of both animal and human anatomy, framing the six diplomas that hang behind the desk upon which sits an enormous bowl of jelly beans. Sam clears his throat and the man emerges squinty eyed holding a large piece of chocolate cake, which he shoves quickly out of sight.
“Agent Harris,” he says, quickly wiping frosting off his face. “Where’s Agent Dickinson?”
“He’s…following up on another lead,” says Sam. He sits quietly for a few seconds as Doctor Peters just stares at him. “So there’s another body?”
“What? Oh! Yes,” says the doctor as if just remembering. “Come with me.”
The whole visit is a gigantic waste of time, and Sam is no nearer finding the ghoul than he was when he left Dean in his fortress of solitude. He feels guilty about leaving Cas to take care of him, but Sam figures that if a fourteen year old can take care of Dean, so can the will of God. Or whoever, since he’s not really sure what’s what any more.
When he opens the door to the hotel room, he’s not surprised to see Dean still curled up on his side staring dazedly at the TV, which is, of course, playing Dr. Sexy. He stops short, however, when he sees a slight stirring behind his brother’s back, a flash of a tan, and he only knows one person so ill-versed in bed usage to leave his coat on.
“Uh…” he says, because when it comes to walking in on Dean mid-coitus, he’s a pro, but in this situation he’s really not sure on the proper etiquette.
“Sam,” says Cas, his voice as excited as it ever gets, which to be fair still makes him sound like a Vulcan. “I discovered that physical contact stops the disgorgement.”
Sam really wishes he had anything to say to that other than, “Oh.” Not that he’s particularly surprised by this turn of events. Hell, he’s not blind, and for as much as Dean says he knows everything about Sam, Sam knows just as much about Dean. That’s one of the consequences of being together 24/7 for the better part of both of their lives. But the power of love making people well is something that even he recognizes as a myth. Of that he’s at least eighty-five percent sure.
“I thought you said your mojo wasn’t working,” Sam says, deciding it best to leave what will inevitably be an exceptionally awkward conversation for a later time.
“It isn’t,” said Cas. “Watch.” And no sooner does he get off the bed, just barely out of the splash zone, than Dean is bending over the trashcan and puking his guts out.
The beginnings of a very serious headache are starting to curl around the backs of Sam’s eyes.
“Any luck finding the ghoul?” Dean asks, dragging himself back into bed. Sam knows that tone.
“No,” says Sam cautiously. “And its not like we can go interview families, because all the bodies that were dug up are too old to have any descendents in town.
“And this is why you’re the second best hunter in the family,” says Dean attempting to swing his legs out of bed, immediately gripping his forehead in pain.
“Whoa, hang on there, Rambo,” says Sam. “You’re not going anywhere. How are you gonna get a clear head shot if you can barely walk two steps without yacking everywhere?”
As if right on cue, Dean’s body contracts a little in a dry heave, but he puts up a hand and groans. “Cas,” he says. “Come back here and give me some more of that healing touch.”
But Cas isn’t there. In fact Sam’s not sure when he zapped out of there, but looking around it’s just him and Dean, until there’s a quiet fluttering behind him.
“There’s no ghoul in this town,” says Cas about six inches behind Sam who definitely does not jump in surprise.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I thought I made my meaning exceptionally clear,” says Cas. “There is no ghoul in this town.”
“Well then what the Hell is it?” says Dean.
Sam thinks for a second then has a distinct sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh crap.”
He looks straight into Dean’s eyes willing him to understand. Dean’s eyes widen and he moans in frustration. “Aw, come on,” he says, before submitting to a coughing fit.
It only takes Sam five minutes to reach the good doctor’s office, enough time to realize what an idiot he is for missing the signs not once, but twice and get sufficiently pissed off. He does not wait to be admitted into the office, but breezes into the autopsy bay, angry pet owners with their animals yelling after him about cutting in line.
“Put him back to normal,” says Sam training his gun on the stunned target that stands before him. “Now. Fix it.” He shakes a sweaty hank of hair out of his face. “Or I start shooting.”
“Please!” says Doctor Peters turning, his face full of fear. “Please don’t hurt me! I don’t have any money!”
“Save it,” says Sam. “It didn’t work last time, it’s not working this time.
“But it was fun while it lasted,” says the doctor as his skin shifts and slips and he’s suddenly much taller, much thinner, his jowls shrinking into a thin pointed face split with a grin. “Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long. I mean the candy and the name. I actually thought that was overdoing it. Might’ve given me away. Lucky for me you’re an idiot.”
“What do you want, Gabriel?” says Sam ignoring the slight.
“I can’t have a little fun any more?” Gabriel says, quirking an eyebrow. “I’m just shaking things up, Sammy boy. Stirring the pot. Not my fault if you can’t hang.”
“Shut up,” says Sam, puling back the hammer. “Just tell me how to fix him.”
“Or what?” Gabriel says sharply. “You’ll shoot me? I’d like to see you try.”
Sam can feel his finger itching on the trigger, waiting to squeeze it gently back, but he can’t bring himself to pull.
“That’s what I thought,” says Gabriel smiling.
“At least tell me why?” Sam says, keeping his gun trained high. “What could you possibly be getting out of this?”
Gabriel sighs dramatically and crosses his arms. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Your brother. My brother. The looks, the sighs, the utter teen romance of it all. It’s pathetic.”
At this, Sam actually lowers his gun. He thinks there’s a very definite possibility that he’s hallucinating. “So you’re trying to like…hook them up?” he ventures, desperately trying to keep up even though he’s absolutely positive he fell through a rift in the space-time continuum and is now in the Twilight Zone.
“Well someone had to,” says Gabriel looking at his fingernails as if they are far more interesting than anything Sam is saying.
“And the vomiting?” says Sam, his gun hanging loose in his hand at his side.
“Trust me,” Gabriel says. “If ever there were just desserts.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m serious, amigo, if I had to watch them pussyfooting around each other for a second longer, I was gonna hurl. Only seemed fair.” His shrug seems, in that moment, so insanely human, that Sam almost forgets that, with a thought, Gabriel could delete him from existence. He can’t help it if he kind of wants to laugh.
“Wow,” he says, smirking, one of his eyebrows making the steady climb up his forehead, threatening to merge with his hairline. “That’s almost nice of you.”
“Can it, Sasquatch,” says Gabriel.
“Just…” Sam is slowly losing patience. “Tell me what to do.”
Gabriel just gives him a quirk of the lips. “You’d think you’d never read a fairytale before.”
With that all too familiar whoosh of feathers he’s gone. The dick.
But at least Sam’s got a game plan now. He runs to the local library, literally runs as it’s only a block away, and pulls every fairytale book he can find off the shelves. He tabs through them all, fables and myths, Aesop, Anderson, and Grimm.
Dean’s gonna kill him.
“I know how to fix you,” says Sam as he enters the room, this time to find Cas sitting on the floor, Dean’s hand entangled in his hair. Dean it seems has fallen asleep. It’s just too perfect.
“Get up,” he says, kicking Dean’s foot hard. Cas gives Sam a look that puts to shame even the sternest of mothers as Dean slowly wakes. But Sam pays them no mind, instead throwing himself into one of the chairs at their tiny kitchen table and opening his laptop. He finds the video almost immediately.
“Here,” he says, turning his computer around.
The video starts and Dean scoffs. “Watching cartoons is gonna make me feel better?”
“Dude, just shut up and watch,” says Sam.
The scene finishes playing. The song ends, the dwarves cry, Snow White wakes up.
“Get it?” he asks to the room at large, earning him two matching sets of confused looks.
“We are going to have a very hard time procuring that many woodland creatures for this particular spell,” says Cas sagely. “And I don’t know where one goes to find seven small men.”
“It’s not a spell,” says Sam. “Not really.” He looks over at Dean whose humiliated blushing has surpassed red and gone to magenta.
Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“You mean to tell me…” Dean stops to clear his throat. “That I gotta get a kiss from my…” He stumbles over the words. “True love, and I’ll get well?”
“That seems to be the general gist of it, yeah,” says Sam.
“And…how am I supposed to know who that is?” Dean says.
Sam none too subtly flicks his eyes over to Cas, who wears a look of confusion like he’s still hung up on the whole seven dwarves thing, then up to Dean’s hand which is still in Cas’s hair. Dean surreptitiously tries to withdraw it.
“Come on, what am I thirteen?” says Dean, scowling.
“Slap on the Bonnie Bell,” says Sam.
Dean sighs heavily. “Sexual healing from an angel. My lucky day.” He props himself up in bed, pulls up on the lapel of Cas’s trench coat, and yanks his face in none too gently for the kiss to end all kisses.
As he watches his brother sucking face with an angel with all the gusto of a fairytale princess, Sam Winchester thinks this is definitely going to go down as one of the weirdest days of his life.
Title: Love Sick
Author: baba_o_reily
Recipient: beef_wonder3
Rating: PG
Warnings: Abuse of Disney tropes
Spoilers: None particularly. I’m calling this a casefic-ish AU. Sam’s got all his working bits, if you catch my meaning.
Wordcount: 3000
Summary: Dean is love sick, literally sick with love, and only his true love can cure it. Sam, on the other hand, is having a very strange day.
Author notes: This was really fun to write. I almost never write from Sam’s POV, so to do so was a nice little flight of fancy. Hope you enjoy it!
Sam realizes abstractly, climbing as he still is out of a dreamless sleep, that it’s the sound of the toilet flushing that wakes him up. His eyes slowly slide open, and he turns to see the empty bed next to him. There’s a disgusting heaving sound from the bathroom and he knows there’s zero chance of him getting back to sleep.
“Dude,” he calls, throwing back the blankets and sitting up. “I told you there was something suspicious about those fish tacos.”
A ragged, “Bite me,” echoes against the porcelain of the bowl. Another flush, a quick on off of the sink and Dean’s pathetically shuffling out of the bathroom.
“Feel better?” asks Sam, somewhere between a laugh and a scowl and a look of worry. He knows Dean’s catalogued his faces. He thinks he’s making number four mixed with a little bit of seventeen.
“Peachy,” says Dean with a grimace, hands curled around his stomach.
They’re in Joplin, Missouri on a case: a bunch of graves have been dug up at the Peacechurch Cemetery, the bodies disappearing only to be found later, missing chunks.
The town’s medical examiner slash veterinarian had been more than happy to let Agents Dickinson and Harris take a look at the corpses, grimacing at the impressions that looked a hell of a lot like human bite marks.
“What’re we thinking?” Sam had said as soon as the short, balding Dr. Peters had waddled his way out of the room.
“Gotta be a ghoul,” Dean had answered, poking at one of the bite marks with the end of a pencil. “It’s the only thing I can think of that just can’t resist cracking open a cold one.”
A disgusted Sam had agreed. All that was left was finding the damn thing, which was much easier said than done. A daylong search had turned up nothing, so now it’s back to the cemetery to see what they can dig up-so to speak-any clues that might lead them to wherever this thing was holed up.
Sam makes sure to pack an extra couple of magazines in the pocket of his jacket, surreptitiously scratching at the place were his fake dead brother and Adam’s fake dead mother had done their hack and slash routine in order to get at the sweet, sweet Sam juice pumping through his veins. That is not an experience he’s eager to repeat.
He’s just packed up all the gear, while Dean just stands around, leaning heavily against the wall, when his pocket starts to ring. The caller ID on his phone flashes “Castiel.”
“Hey,” Sam says.
“Where are you?” says Cas. Almost three years out of the holy penthouse and he still can’t figure out how to address someone on the phone. Sam should really be used to it by now.
“The Daniel Boone Motor Court, in Joplin…”
Sam barely finishes when there’s a feathery whoosh and Cas is standing in the middle of their room. No sooner does he touch down than Dean is bolting to the bathroom, presumably to go blow more chunks.
“So what’s up?” Sam asks.
“I received word of angelic activity. Someone’s been following you.”
“Are you serious?” says Sam, running a hand through his hair, because apparently he has the worst luck in the world. “Any idea who?”
But Cas doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares at the bathroom door and frowns. “He’s unwell.”
“Food poisoning,” says Sam, shrugging. “He’ll get over it. He’ll be a pain in the ass in the mean time, but he’ll get over it. Now come on. Share with the class. If we’ve got mooks following us, we gotta know who.”
There’s more heaving from the bathroom, then the dull thudding noise of a body hitting tile, and Sam knows that that can’t be good. He’s literally a half second away from checking it out, but Cas beats him to it, breezing past before he gets the chance to move, rushing into the bathroom and hoisting Dean up, throwing an arm around his waist and hauling him over to his bed.
Sam sees now how ashen Dean’s ordinarily pale skin has become, the sheen of a thin film of sweat covering his face.
“He’s burning up,” Sam says, putting the back of his hand on Dean’s forehead. “Any chance you can mojo him back to health?”
Cas touches Dean’s face lightly with two fingers and… Nothing happens. He tries again. Still nothing.
“This isn’t right,” says Cas, poking Dean’s head more vigorously, and at this Dean stirs with a grumble. He opens one eye slowly, recoiling almost instantly when the light hits it and rolls over onto his side in the fetal position.
Dean has always been a big baby when it comes to getting sick. Sam remembers when he was fourteen and Dean was seventeen and he had had to spoon feed him tomato and rice soup because Dean had a bad cold. Not that this in any way affected the functionality of Dean’s arms, which Sam had, of course, reminded him.
But even Sam can see from the way the shivers wrack Dean’s turned back that something’s actually wrong this time.
“Why can’t you heal him?” Sam asks. “Don’t tell me you’re batteries are dry.”
Cas doesn’t answer, instead turning to jab two fingers into Sam’s sternum. An electric jolt shoots through Sam’s chest, and he can’t help the yelp of mingled pain and surprise that escapes.
“No,” says Cas a little tersely. “Apparently, this is not a problem with me.”
“So what gives?” Sam can here the little edge of panic creeping into his voice.
“If I knew the answer, I doubt very much that we’d be having this discussion.”
“Girls!” says Dean turning to look over his shoulder and glare at them. “You’re both pretty. Now shut up.” He turns back around and curls in on himself. Sam’s phone rings again and Dean throws a pillow over his head with a groan.
It’s a number Sam doesn’t recognize, so he answers with a suspicious, “Hello?”
“Agent Harris?” says the voice on the other end. “Doctor Peters.”
“Oh,” says Sam clearing his throat. “Yes, Doctor Peters. What can I do for you?”
“We got another call about a body today. I thought you’d like to come take a look.”
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose because this day is just getting better and better. “Of course,” he says. Maybe if he can track and kill this ghoul, the knot of worry at his brother’s pathetic form will unclench, as obvious a sublimation as that is. “I’ll meet you at your office.”
He turns to Castiel who sits gingerly at the edge of the bed, looking for all intents and purposes like he wants nothing more than to bust out of his meat suit for a little while, still so awkward as he is in his inherited skin. Sam wonders fleetingly if that’s the celestial version of nudism.
“Cas, I need you to look after Dean,” Sam says, making up his mind. “Just…” he sighs, putting his hands on his hips. “Make sure nothing happens to him, okay? “
“I don’t need a babysitter,” says Dean, lifting the pillow off his head to be heard. His stomach groans in protest.
“If he gets worse, give me a call,” says Sam to Cas, completely ignoring his idiot brother. He starts walking toward the door, stops, then turns, picking up the trashcan and setting it next to Dean’s bed.
When he arrives at Doctor Peters’ office, he’s greeted with the man’s rotund backside, the good doctor’s front half buried in what Sam realizes with mingled disgust and amusement is an organ refrigerator. The office itself looks like the kind of room Sam thinks he would have loved as a ten year old. He’d been pretty into animals at the time and had begged his Dad to get him a subscription to Zoo Books, considering the fact that they had no permanent address to be a minor detail. Doctor Peters’ walls are covered in posters of both animal and human anatomy, framing the six diplomas that hang behind the desk upon which sits an enormous bowl of jelly beans. Sam clears his throat and the man emerges squinty eyed holding a large piece of chocolate cake, which he shoves quickly out of sight.
“Agent Harris,” he says, quickly wiping frosting off his face. “Where’s Agent Dickinson?”
“He’s…following up on another lead,” says Sam. He sits quietly for a few seconds as Doctor Peters just stares at him. “So there’s another body?”
“What? Oh! Yes,” says the doctor as if just remembering. “Come with me.”
The whole visit is a gigantic waste of time, and Sam is no nearer finding the ghoul than he was when he left Dean in his fortress of solitude. He feels guilty about leaving Cas to take care of him, but Sam figures that if a fourteen year old can take care of Dean, so can the will of God. Or whoever, since he’s not really sure what’s what any more.
When he opens the door to the hotel room, he’s not surprised to see Dean still curled up on his side staring dazedly at the TV, which is, of course, playing Dr. Sexy. He stops short, however, when he sees a slight stirring behind his brother’s back, a flash of a tan, and he only knows one person so ill-versed in bed usage to leave his coat on.
“Uh…” he says, because when it comes to walking in on Dean mid-coitus, he’s a pro, but in this situation he’s really not sure on the proper etiquette.
“Sam,” says Cas, his voice as excited as it ever gets, which to be fair still makes him sound like a Vulcan. “I discovered that physical contact stops the disgorgement.”
Sam really wishes he had anything to say to that other than, “Oh.” Not that he’s particularly surprised by this turn of events. Hell, he’s not blind, and for as much as Dean says he knows everything about Sam, Sam knows just as much about Dean. That’s one of the consequences of being together 24/7 for the better part of both of their lives. But the power of love making people well is something that even he recognizes as a myth. Of that he’s at least eighty-five percent sure.
“I thought you said your mojo wasn’t working,” Sam says, deciding it best to leave what will inevitably be an exceptionally awkward conversation for a later time.
“It isn’t,” said Cas. “Watch.” And no sooner does he get off the bed, just barely out of the splash zone, than Dean is bending over the trashcan and puking his guts out.
The beginnings of a very serious headache are starting to curl around the backs of Sam’s eyes.
“Any luck finding the ghoul?” Dean asks, dragging himself back into bed. Sam knows that tone.
“No,” says Sam cautiously. “And its not like we can go interview families, because all the bodies that were dug up are too old to have any descendents in town.
“And this is why you’re the second best hunter in the family,” says Dean attempting to swing his legs out of bed, immediately gripping his forehead in pain.
“Whoa, hang on there, Rambo,” says Sam. “You’re not going anywhere. How are you gonna get a clear head shot if you can barely walk two steps without yacking everywhere?”
As if right on cue, Dean’s body contracts a little in a dry heave, but he puts up a hand and groans. “Cas,” he says. “Come back here and give me some more of that healing touch.”
But Cas isn’t there. In fact Sam’s not sure when he zapped out of there, but looking around it’s just him and Dean, until there’s a quiet fluttering behind him.
“There’s no ghoul in this town,” says Cas about six inches behind Sam who definitely does not jump in surprise.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I thought I made my meaning exceptionally clear,” says Cas. “There is no ghoul in this town.”
“Well then what the Hell is it?” says Dean.
Sam thinks for a second then has a distinct sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh crap.”
He looks straight into Dean’s eyes willing him to understand. Dean’s eyes widen and he moans in frustration. “Aw, come on,” he says, before submitting to a coughing fit.
It only takes Sam five minutes to reach the good doctor’s office, enough time to realize what an idiot he is for missing the signs not once, but twice and get sufficiently pissed off. He does not wait to be admitted into the office, but breezes into the autopsy bay, angry pet owners with their animals yelling after him about cutting in line.
“Put him back to normal,” says Sam training his gun on the stunned target that stands before him. “Now. Fix it.” He shakes a sweaty hank of hair out of his face. “Or I start shooting.”
“Please!” says Doctor Peters turning, his face full of fear. “Please don’t hurt me! I don’t have any money!”
“Save it,” says Sam. “It didn’t work last time, it’s not working this time.
“But it was fun while it lasted,” says the doctor as his skin shifts and slips and he’s suddenly much taller, much thinner, his jowls shrinking into a thin pointed face split with a grin. “Honestly, I’m surprised it took you this long. I mean the candy and the name. I actually thought that was overdoing it. Might’ve given me away. Lucky for me you’re an idiot.”
“What do you want, Gabriel?” says Sam ignoring the slight.
“I can’t have a little fun any more?” Gabriel says, quirking an eyebrow. “I’m just shaking things up, Sammy boy. Stirring the pot. Not my fault if you can’t hang.”
“Shut up,” says Sam, puling back the hammer. “Just tell me how to fix him.”
“Or what?” Gabriel says sharply. “You’ll shoot me? I’d like to see you try.”
Sam can feel his finger itching on the trigger, waiting to squeeze it gently back, but he can’t bring himself to pull.
“That’s what I thought,” says Gabriel smiling.
“At least tell me why?” Sam says, keeping his gun trained high. “What could you possibly be getting out of this?”
Gabriel sighs dramatically and crosses his arms. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed. Your brother. My brother. The looks, the sighs, the utter teen romance of it all. It’s pathetic.”
At this, Sam actually lowers his gun. He thinks there’s a very definite possibility that he’s hallucinating. “So you’re trying to like…hook them up?” he ventures, desperately trying to keep up even though he’s absolutely positive he fell through a rift in the space-time continuum and is now in the Twilight Zone.
“Well someone had to,” says Gabriel looking at his fingernails as if they are far more interesting than anything Sam is saying.
“And the vomiting?” says Sam, his gun hanging loose in his hand at his side.
“Trust me,” Gabriel says. “If ever there were just desserts.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m serious, amigo, if I had to watch them pussyfooting around each other for a second longer, I was gonna hurl. Only seemed fair.” His shrug seems, in that moment, so insanely human, that Sam almost forgets that, with a thought, Gabriel could delete him from existence. He can’t help it if he kind of wants to laugh.
“Wow,” he says, smirking, one of his eyebrows making the steady climb up his forehead, threatening to merge with his hairline. “That’s almost nice of you.”
“Can it, Sasquatch,” says Gabriel.
“Just…” Sam is slowly losing patience. “Tell me what to do.”
Gabriel just gives him a quirk of the lips. “You’d think you’d never read a fairytale before.”
With that all too familiar whoosh of feathers he’s gone. The dick.
But at least Sam’s got a game plan now. He runs to the local library, literally runs as it’s only a block away, and pulls every fairytale book he can find off the shelves. He tabs through them all, fables and myths, Aesop, Anderson, and Grimm.
Dean’s gonna kill him.
“I know how to fix you,” says Sam as he enters the room, this time to find Cas sitting on the floor, Dean’s hand entangled in his hair. Dean it seems has fallen asleep. It’s just too perfect.
“Get up,” he says, kicking Dean’s foot hard. Cas gives Sam a look that puts to shame even the sternest of mothers as Dean slowly wakes. But Sam pays them no mind, instead throwing himself into one of the chairs at their tiny kitchen table and opening his laptop. He finds the video almost immediately.
“Here,” he says, turning his computer around.
The video starts and Dean scoffs. “Watching cartoons is gonna make me feel better?”
“Dude, just shut up and watch,” says Sam.
The scene finishes playing. The song ends, the dwarves cry, Snow White wakes up.
“Get it?” he asks to the room at large, earning him two matching sets of confused looks.
“We are going to have a very hard time procuring that many woodland creatures for this particular spell,” says Cas sagely. “And I don’t know where one goes to find seven small men.”
“It’s not a spell,” says Sam. “Not really.” He looks over at Dean whose humiliated blushing has surpassed red and gone to magenta.
Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“You mean to tell me…” Dean stops to clear his throat. “That I gotta get a kiss from my…” He stumbles over the words. “True love, and I’ll get well?”
“That seems to be the general gist of it, yeah,” says Sam.
“And…how am I supposed to know who that is?” Dean says.
Sam none too subtly flicks his eyes over to Cas, who wears a look of confusion like he’s still hung up on the whole seven dwarves thing, then up to Dean’s hand which is still in Cas’s hair. Dean surreptitiously tries to withdraw it.
“Come on, what am I thirteen?” says Dean, scowling.
“Slap on the Bonnie Bell,” says Sam.
Dean sighs heavily. “Sexual healing from an angel. My lucky day.” He props himself up in bed, pulls up on the lapel of Cas’s trench coat, and yanks his face in none too gently for the kiss to end all kisses.
As he watches his brother sucking face with an angel with all the gusto of a fairytale princess, Sam Winchester thinks this is definitely going to go down as one of the weirdest days of his life.