It's Not Serious

Every morning, for certain particular values of 'morning' that included 'a few hours after going to sleep', Dean Winchester woke up asking himself the same questions: Where does it hurt? How much does it hurt? You getting up, today?

Almost without fail, the answer to the last one was 'Obviously, you pussy.' He got up. He always got up and smacked that slightly-delirious smile on his face. Not getting up was reserved for those days when no amount of pushing harder would raise his body from whatever he'd fallen asleep on, 'cause if he was in that shape, chances are it wasn't a bed. Sometimes he'd worry he might not make it, and then he'd discover a new level of running hard. He'd find the next gear and put his ass in motion.

And every once in a great while he'd make horrendous noises or hang on to the wall a bit, and Sammy would be right there to hold him up, if he wasn't careful. Be right there to ask him why the fuck he did this to himself. And the answer was the same as it had always been.

"Somebody's gotta do it, Sammy, and I look good doin' it."

And sure as fuck, this was one of those mornings. "You look like shit, Dean. I mean it. Sit down before you fall down."

"You just don't appreciate my manly charms."

"I'm going to kick you in your manly charms, if that's what it takes to get you back in that bed."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Bet me." And there was the bitchface.

"It's a couple of cracked ribs, okay? I slept on them funny. It's not serious."

"Punctured. Lung." The bitchface persisted. Dean was curious as hell how any man could look like his brother did making that face, at once sickeningly caring, but pissed enough to kick his ass.

"It's not broken broken. Shit, Sammy, I'm not stupid."

"Dean, how many times have we been dead? We finished the job. We're nowhere near the limit on these cards. Just sit the fuck down and let me go get breakfast. If Garth calls, you tell him to give it to someone else. You are not going anywhere until you're not green."

"I am not green."

Sam whipped out his phone and took a picture, before flipping the screen around. "Green. You're green. And you look a little whiffy. Would you please sit down?"

Dean squinted at the screen. Yeah, that … could technically be considered a very pale green. He didn't look so good in that shade, and sure as hell not with all that sweat rolling down his face. He sighed and his eyes flicked to the wall, just not to look back at his brother. 'Whiffy'. Yeah, if he saw Sam looking like this, he'd probably have said worse than just 'whiffy'. He did kind of look like he might puke on his shoes and fall down. But, that was the awesome thing about being him. None of that was entirely relevant. Dean Winchester: Badass Motherfucker.

He swallowed hard and looked up at Sam. "Yeah, sure, Samantha. You want a day off, we'll take a day off."

"Great. Yes, Dean. I want to take a day off. Let's."

He frequently forgot quite how terrifying his sasquatch not-so-little brother could actually get, and then he found himself in situations like these, with his neck craned back at some unspeakable angle, staring straight up into those blazing eyes that loomed over him. He really wasn't that short. Really. He was kinda tall. He was pretty sure Sam was standing on his toes to get that tall. Still worked.

"Go get breakfast, bitch." Dean did not wheeze or gasp as he crammed his hand into the pocket of his jeans to get the keys, despite the shooting pain down his side that wrapped around his chest like thick, heavy fingers, but a thin, sick sound slipped out as he slapped them into Sam's hand.

"I will be right back, and I don't want to see you doing anything more strenuous than watching PayPerView, when I come through that door."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch…"

Which earned him another bitchface, before the door slammed behind his brother. Finally actually alone, Dean laid back down, legs spread across the corner of the bed, feet on the floor, and tried to work his way out of the jeans he didn't bother taking off, the night before. 'Slow breaths,' he reminded himself, tugging carefully at the cloth, trying not to flex his chest. This was what he got for buying jeans that fit, for a change. He used the shitty poly-cotton comforter for an extra hand. Over the hips, stand up (which hurt substantially more than he remembered), and let them fall. He was eternally grateful for his lack of clean underwear when the jeans finally hit the floor.

He was also belatedly grateful that he was, for some reason, not wearing shoes. Things were a little fuzzy around the time they came back in, the night before. He was sure there was no way he'd gotten his own boots off. That was even more horrible than jeans that fit.

And then the answer came to him. "Sammy," he sighed, rubbing his face and heading for the shower. He could at least wash the reek of gasoline fire off himself, before he tried to eat. Green. It was probably just that lingering stench of gasoline.

Avoiding the sight of himself in the mirror, he squatted, instead of bending to turn on the shower, and then spent a good twenty minutes just leaning on the wall, letting the hot water wash over him. The patter against his skin was dizzing, electrifying, a hundred kinds of sickening, and a dozen kinds of erotic, and his body just refused to deal with any of it. This was maybe a little worse than he'd thought. A little. A touch. Still nothing serious, he insisted, as he gritted his teeth against the way the world distorted through the hail of droplets.

'Dehydration?' something in the back of his mind suggested, and he cupped his hands before his mouth, whispering incoherent prayers about not falling down, as the pain rolled down his back and the water poured into his mouth. That was it. Had to be. Felt better as soon as he started swallowing. And then the thick mineral taste caught up with him and his stomach rolled.

"No, no, no." The word rolled out along every breath, as his breathing slowed and his palms flattened against the wall behind him. Dean Winchester: Badass Motherfucker. It was like that weird high that happens when you've been living on nothing but coffee and fried pies, and your last memory of sleep was something that maybe happened in Southern California, and you're now in the middle of Iowa, and there've been three jobs between then and now. That settled him a little. Too much caffeine. Burn it off and pass out. Yeah. Sure.

The nausea didn't pass so much as he stopped recognising it, and somewhere in there, he managed to turn off the shower and get out of it, but he'd be damned if that stayed with him. Cheap motel bathrobe. That he could feel in his hand, and he pulled it on as carefully as possible, tying it around his waist and stumbling back out to the bed. Lying down sounded like an extremely good idea, but he'd have to sit up to eat, when Sam got back, which would be in … soon. He thought. Ish. He decided thinking made him dizzy and grabbed every pillow in the room, piling them onto his bed, so he could lean back, without too much hideous pain. Trying out the pile, though, it needed a few shirts crammed into it for stability and angle. Sam's shirts, of course. They were bigger. It took less of them. And there. That was it. He was not getting up unless his ass caught fire. Was he getting up, today? Yep. Already did. Tick. Done. So done.

With that thought, he turned on the television and found the most spectacularly bizarre porn he could, without having to put on something gay. Five bucks for Midget Buttsex Ninjas? Done. Because Sam was such a bitch, that's why.

And that's how Sam found him, ten minutes later — passed out, sitting up against a pile of pillows and laundry, wearing nothing but a poorly-closed bathrobe, with 'Midget Buttsex Ninjas' playing in the background. That, perhaps, did not go according to plan, but it would be hours before he knew.

Sam checked to make sure his brother was still breathing, and then sat down to eat his own breakfast, knowing damn well Dean probably wouldn't be getting up tomorrow, either. Sometimes, you just gotta sleep it off, and Dean and sleep were not nearly as closely acquainted as they needed to be. And, for all this would involve days of Dean pissing and moaning non-stop, Sam found himself oddly okay with that. It was the price of a couple days off. He had some sleep he meant to be getting, too.