SPN Fic: Hibernating
Title: Hibernating
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Rating: G
Word-count: 1541
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Not mine; just hunting Kripke's fictional deer.
Summary: Written for this prompt by the lovelymad_server at ariadnes_string's Running Hot II Fever!Fic Comment-Fic Meme: When Dean gets high fevers, he sometimes hides underneath his bed like a wounded animal, and sleeps. Sam always monitors him but lets him be. Cas shows up during one such episode and is like "?" and Sam says, "oh yeah, no he's good," but then Cas coaxes Dean out somehow and tucks him in properly and Sam is like, "I got schooled."
The first time it happens, they're squatting in an empty house on the edge of Denver, waiting for a blizzard to blow over so they can get at the nest of vampires up near Laramie. Dean, who's been wearing extra layers for the last hundred miles and wiping his runny nose all over the Impala's seats, promptly installs himself on the naked bed in the upstairs master bedroom, collecting every shirt and jacket from their various duffel bags and draping them over himself in a kind of makeshift quilt until he looks like a murder victim abandoned in a pile of dirty laundry. Sam lets him shiver there while he finishes unpacking the Impala (already there's a good eight inches of snow drifting along the short path between the car and the door). When he comes back, Dean's gone.
He's about to panic when he hears a sneeze erupt from under the bed. Looking down, he can see a bare foot poking out, twitching slightly.
Well, that's new.
He crouches down cautiously, not sure what to expect: usually when he kneels down to look under a bed, it's for something a little more sinister and a little less contagious. Tipping his head to the side, he squints through the darkness to make out Dean's pale face, his teeth chattering and his eyes screwed resolutely shut.
“Dude?”
Dean doesn't answer, just squeezes in tighter on himself. Sam notices he's brought most of his laundry pile with him, bunched awkwardly around him like newspaper packed around china.
“You wanna tell me what you're doing?” he asks.
“Hibernating,” Dean informs him seriously, not opening his eyes.
And really, Sam doesn't wanna argue with him. Instead, he curls up on the floor across the room, a couple of empty duffel bags folded under his head, and falls asleep with one eye cracked open at his shivering, hibernating brother.
They sleep that way - Sam in the corner, Dean crammed under the bed with half their wardrobe - until the fever and the blizzard break together, letting them wander cautiously out into a brilliant, snow-softened world.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The second time, they've dropped in for a night at the Roadhouse while Dean's still healing from a gunshot wound courtesy of a certain Pasadena shapeshifter with an over-eager trigger finger. Some time during the night, Sam hears him thrashing up out of the covers, knees hitting the floor hard as he topples over the side of the bed.
“You okay?” he asks, but Dean doesn't seem to be answering calls right now. Groaning, Sam drags himself up in time to see his brother disappearing behind the trailing blankets. After a few moments of shuffling noises, there's silence.
“Dean.”
“Nnnhh?”
“You can't sleep under the bed.”
Dean, by the snores that begin issuing from the darkness, evidently disagrees. So Sam scoots out of bed, spends the night hunched up against the bedpost, leaning over every once in a while to check that Dean hasn't suffocated himself in the weird makeshift cave he's retreated into.
Jo finds them that way the next morning, and Dean comes down to breakfast with the ridges of the floorboard pressed bright red into his pale cheek.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
They're both fighting a nasty flu in a hotel outside Bangor one night when he wakes up with the impression that someone's trying to break into the room. When he finishes coughing, clearing his chest painfully out and gulping from the flimsy styrofoam cup on the bedside table, he listens for the noise again.
It takes him a minute to realize what it is. Dean's on the floor, trying to burrow underneath the bed. There's a small, bewildered sound of frustration as he shoves at the comforter straying off the sweaty mattress, thumping an outraged fist against the hard, impenetrable baseboard.
“Give it up, dude,” Sam croaks to him through the darkness. “They built it to discourage freaks like you.”
“Shut up,” Dean's voice comes from the floor, tired and miserable and thick with sleep and mucus.
“Just go to bed.” And after a few moments, he hears Dean clamber back up onto the surface again.
Sleep drags him back into weird dreams, and they ride out the fever together.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bobby doesn't understand it any more than Sam does, and he doesn't have any interest in messing with Dean's weird instincts, either, though he does drag Dean out from under the bed long enough to at least put an old rug down on the floor. Sam, for his part, is actually getting used to it by this time.
Cas, it turns out, is another story.
“Dean is sleeping underneath a bed upstairs.”
Sam jumps at the angel's voice, and nearly drops the jar of peanut butter he's holding. He turns around, and Castiel is standing in the doorway, his head cocked to the side in puzzlement.
“Have I misunderstood the function of beds?”
“No,” Sam tells him, turning back to his half-finished sandwich, “that'd be Dean.”
“But Dean sleeps on top of beds. I've seen him.” Cas's unblinking gaze grows more intense, his expression more mystified. “Why is he underneath it, Sam?”
“Because he's sick.” Cas thinks that one over for a minute while Sam spreads jelly across the sandwich.
“I fail to see the connection between illness and the misuse of basic furniture,” Castiel decides.
“Join the club,” Sam tells him as he bites into the sandwich. “He gets weird when he's running a fever. He'll be fine.”
“If Dean is ill, he should be kept warm and comfortable,” Cas objects. “That is the correct way of caring for a human in poor health.”
Sam shrugs. “I think it makes him feel better.”
“He'll feel better,” Castiel insists, “if he's kept comfortable. I would have thought you, of all people, would realize that,” he observes serenely.
And before Sam can open his mouth to argue, he's talking to empty space.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He hears the voices from the bedroom as he climbs the stairs, slowly growing more distinct.
“Dean.”
“Go screw yourself.”
“That would be impractical.”
“You'll find a way.”
“Sam tells me you find it soothing to take refuge beneath furniture when suffering from fever.”
“Cas, I'm sleeping.”
“That is the purpose for which beds are intended.”
“Go away.”
“Enough foolishness, Dean. Come out from under there.”
There's no response.
But when Sam reaches the doorway, Dean's crawled out from under the bed and is letting Cas push him down under the covers, scratching irritably at the side of his face that's been pressed against Bobby's rough carpet. Cas places a hand against Dean's flushed cheek, testing Sam's brother like water. He glances up at Sam, his blue eyes clear and even.
“His skin is heated. He'll require medication; I don't know what kind it is.” The order's implied, and Sam finds himself hurrying to the bathroom to grab the Tylenol that Dean was supposed to be taking but apparently hasn't bothered with.
When he comes back, Cas has seated himself on the bed, preventing Dean from any second thoughts about the wisdom of sleeping out in the open. He takes the bottle from Sam without a word and studies the instructions minutely, his brows draw into a grave scowl. After a few moments, he opens the bottle carefully and tips out the precise dosage, handing the pills to Dean along with a cup of water. Dean scowls a little, but basically just swallows the drugs without complaint and gives the cup back to Cas, snuggling deeper into the pillows as he closes his eyes.
Sam wants to tell himself that it's some angel mojo, some heavenly power that's persuaded Dean to cooperate for once and act like a rational adult. After all, if talking was all it took, he would have convinced his brother to sleep in the bed years ago instead of watching him curl up underneath like a wild dog. He doesn't want to admit it took an angel to show him how to handle his own brother.
But it's Cas who stays perched on the edge of the bed until Dean starts heaving deep, guttural snores. It's Cas who keeps touching a curious hand to Dean's face, as if to see whether or not he'll leave a mark to match the one on his shoulder. It's Cas who waits patiently, without sleep or speech, until the fever dies and Dean rolls over to yawn and stretch, cursing at the unexpected weight of angel on top of the covers.
And it's Sam, in the end, who's left feeling like a bit of an idiot, because Cas was right. He - of all people - should have known.