Rhinovirus

[27jj]

Again with the spammage I’m pretty positive I haven’t posted this here yet…Anywho. Have some sick!Dean

::: ::: :::

Dean is coming out of the shower when Sam walks into the motel room, coffee and newspaper in hand. A gust of wind blows through the room before Sam can shut the door, raising goosebumps on Dean’s bare arms. Parts of Sam’s jacket have splotches of water and his hair is damp, like he got caught in the rain. Dean shivers and grabs a change of clothes before heading into the bathroom to change.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Sam is setting the newspaper on the table as he folds himself into one of the tiny metal chairs. He slides Dean’s coffee across the table and brushes his hair back from his face.

“Looking for another hunt?” Dean asks, nodding at the newspaper as he gratefully accepts the caffeine.

“Actually,” Sam answers, “I was thinking we could stick around for another week. Maybe make some cash while we’re here.” He says it nonchalantly, like they can afford to stay in one place for another week, and Dean frowns.

“We can’t exactly fill out more credit card applications right now, Sam. We have to lay low.”

“I found a way to make some quick money,” Sam replies, pulling a brochure from the middle of the newspaper and setting it in front of Dean. “No real names, no applications. One week.”

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam before pulling the brochure closer. His expression changes from curious to amused as he reads, and he looks up at Sam with a small laugh.

“Where the hell do you even find this stuff, Sam?”

“Shut up. Do you want to do it or not?”

Dean takes a long drink of his coffee, eyes going to the brochure once more.

“Hell, we’ve done stranger things,” he finally says, and Sam takes it as a yes.

::: ::: :::

They pull up at the hotel just as it starts to rain hard. They’re late, ten minutes after the check-in time is supposed to have ended, but the lobby is empty and the receptionist points them down the hall. A sign with the words ‘clinical trial’ directs them to a small ballroom full of chairs. A woman sits at a plastic folding table near the entrance, and she looks up as Sam and Dean enter.

“Hi,” Sam greets her, giving the woman a warm smile. “We’re here for the, uh, common cold clinic?”

“Alright-y then,” she responds happily, and her voice is much higher than Sam expects. She’s pulling out papers from various folders, nodding enthusiastically as she introduces herself. “I’m Brenda. Welcome to our clinical trial on the common cold.” She draws out the last two words, and Sam and Dean exchange an amused glance.

“We’ll be performing phase three of our trial,” she continues, “which means we’ve already determined a dosage range of medication and its side effects. What we’ll be looking for this week is your symptoms, and the effect of the medication as a treatment of the common cold.”

“Sounds like a blast,” Dean says, raising his eyebrows at Sam, and Brenda nods again like they’re about to go on a ride at Disneyland.

“Alright-y then. I’ll have you both sign a consent form and then we’ll send you over to the next room for a check-up.”

“A check up?” Dean asks.

“To make sure you’re nice and healthy,” Brenda clarifies, rifling through yet another folder for consent forms.

“Make sure we’re healthy so we can get sick,” Dean mumbles, and Sam elbows him hard. They quickly sign the forms before sliding them back across the table. Brenda picks them up and gives Sam and Dean a bright smile.

“Alright-y then.”

After getting checked over, they go into a third room, one that reminds Dean of a school nurse’s office. A young, blonde woman wearing pink scrubs greets them, and Dean turns on the charm immediately, not that it’s ever off.

“Hey there, Miranda,” he smiles, reading the woman’s nametag. “I’m Dean, this is my brother Sam.”

“Nice to meet you,” she say, batting her eyelashes and looking back and forth between them. She starts pulling on a pair of latex gloves, holds up a small, clear bottle.

“Who wants to go first?”

::: ::: :::

They make their way up to their room, which is actually a suite with two rooms connected by a bathroom, and it’s a considerable step up from the places where they normally stay. It’s in the middle of the hallway on the third floor, which is not their ideal location, but neither of them mind too much when they see the accommodations.

“We should do this more often,” Dean says, lying back on Sam’s bed while Sam sets his bags down and pulls out his laptop.

“See if you’re saying that when you get sick,” Sam snorts.

“If I get sick.”

“What?”

“I read the pamphlet. We still get paid even if we’re immune, which means that some people don’t get sick.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve got a kick-ass immune system. I never get sick.”

“Dean, there’s like, a three percent chance you won’t get sick,” Sam replies, rolling his eyes. He shrugs out of his jacket, turns around and throws it over the back of a chair, and when he looks back at Dean he finds his brother looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“Wanna make a bet?”

“Get out of my room.”

::: ::: :::

When Dean’s alarm clock goes off the next morning, he knows immediately that Sam was right.

The second he opens his eyes, he’s closing them again as his nose tingles and a sneeze steals his breath. He sits up, eyes watering and nose running, and to his relief he finds not one but two boxes of Kleenex on the nightstand that he hadn’t noticed the day before.

He’s blowing his nose when Sam walks in, hair damp, looking way too cheerful.

“You aren’t sick?” Dean asks in disbelief, glaring when Sam shakes his head sheepishly.

“Guess I’m immune.”

“Why am I sick?” Dean groans, falling back onto his pillows.

“Did you forget about the rhinovirus they sprayed up your nose, or is all the snot getting in the way of your brain working?”

“I mean,” Dean says, cringing at the congestion in his voice. “Why me and not you? Not fair,” he mumbles. He rubs his nose hard, already annoyed with the unfamiliar, constant irritation in his sinuses. His throat is a little sore too, but it’s nothing compared to the itchy, stuffy congestion in his nose.

Sam checks his watch, then stands and tosses his brother’s duffle bag onto the bed.

“Get dressed. We’re late for our first check-in.”

::: ::: :::

They gather in the room where they first signed up with about a half a dozen other people who are participating in the study. Sam and Dean grab the two seats closest to the door while Miranda, the nurse who administered the rhinovirus to them yesterday, starts passing out clipboards.

“We’ll have you do a self evaluation every morning and every night,” she tells the group. “In addition, we will evaluate your symptoms in person every day.”

Sam looks over his clipboard while Dean tries to blow his nose without drawing too much attention to himself. This sets him off coughing, but it goes unnoticed in the roomful of sick people.

“What is this?” Dean asks finally, glaring down at the paper in front of him. “Rate your symptoms?”

“I’ll help you,” Sam says, snatching the clipboard out of Dean’s hands. He starts reading as Dean sniffles and half-heartedly tries to take it back. “Please rate your symptoms on the following scale: zero is absent, one is mild, two is moderate, and three is severe.”

“What number is annoying?” Dean grumbles, sniffling again.

“Okay, first symptom. Sneezing.” Sam looks over at his brother, and almost bursts into laughter at the expression on his face. Dean fights with the sneeze for all of five seconds before he’s forced to give in to the inevitable, and it echoes loudly throughout the room.

“So, sneezing. Three?”

“Shut up.”

“Nasal discharge…one.”

“How do you know?”

“Nasal obstruction, three. Sore throat,” Sam looks over, sees Dean swallow, then wince slightly. “One, maybe two. Cough, two. Do you have a headache?”

“Give me that,” Dean growls, yanking the clipboard out of Sam’s hands.

“So, yes,” Sam says under his breath, and Dean punches his shoulder hard.

Dean finishes filling out his form by himself, and then he’s given a dose of medicine along with all of the other participants. After he swallows down the pills, he glares pointedly at Sam, coughs into his elbow, and trudges up to his warm, five-star, Sam-free room to sleep.

::: ::: :::

On the third day of the clinic, Dean wakes up to the sound of the shower running in their mutual bathroom. He’s exhausted, and he feels crappy, not that he’d ever admit it out loud. He drags himself out of bed and fills out his symptom self-evaluation form, then crawls straight back into bed. He can hardly remember the last time either of them was sick, but having a cold, it turns out, is exhausting.

The second time he wakes up, someone is standing over him.

“Wha’?” He bolts upright, one hand sliding under his pillow for his knife even as he directs a sneeze into his sleeve.

“Whoa, hey. It’s just me,” Sam says, holding up his hands. “How are you doing?”

Dean only grunts in response, and he sneezes again when Sam turns on the light. He sniffles, pinches the bridge of his nose, and feels the bed dip on his right side as Sam plops down next to him.

“You hungry?” Sam asks him. “I’m going to head down and get some breakfast.

Dean slowly reaches for the Kleenex box, his fingers presses tightly against his nose to suppress the next sneeze. His fingers fumble at the box for a few seconds before he looks over to see that the box is empty. Sam is messing around with his phone, checking the time or something, so he quickly drags his sleeve under his nose and sniffs hard. He’s so congested it almost hurts. He coughs and clears his throat, but it does nothing to relieve the tickle in his throat.

“I can bring you back something, if you want?”

He looks over, sees Sam’s forehead wrinkled with concern, and shakes his head before shoving his brother off of the bed.

“I’ll come with you.”

::: ::: :::

There’s a buffet in the hotel, but to Sam’s surprise Dean skips the food entirely and barely makes it through a cup of coffee.

“Not hungry?” He asks Dean in mock disbelief, but all he gets is a glare and a kick to the shin.

“Don’t kick me,” Sam protests, jolting the leg of Dean’s chair with his shoe. “So much for your kick-ass immune system, huh?”

“I’ll kick your ass,” Dean mutters, pulling a crumpled Kleenex from his pocket. He scrunches up his nose, jams the Kleenex under his flaring nostrils in time to catch a set of sneezes.

Sam finishes eating while Dean does his best not to sneeze again, all the while ignoring everything Sam says. Afterwards, Dean has to go get his symptoms recorded by one of the nurses, so Sam heads back up to his room while Dean makes his way to the makeshift nurse’s office.

“Hi, Dean,” Miranda greets him warmly as he shuffles into the room. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

He sinks into a chair with a cough that he muffles into the crook of his arm.

“And how are we feeling today?” Miranda picks up her clipboard, and Dean grins at her.

“Just peachy, sweetheart.” His voice cracks noticeably on the last word, and he feels his face heat up. Miranda smiles, then picks up her pen.

“Let’s go through your symptoms then. You remember the drill,” she encourages, and Dean clears his throat.

“Uh, sore throat and congestion, moderate,” he starts, not meeting her eyes. He sniffles, rubs his nose hard before adding, “Sneezing too. Everything else is mild.”

“Okay,” Miranda answers, marking down the information. She pulls out a thermometer and walks over, puts it in his ear, and when it beeps she checks the reading and clucks her tongue.

“Looks like you’ve got a bit of a temp,” she tells him. “It’s normal, but I’m going to add some Tylenol to your dose today and see if we can bring that down.”

Miranda checks his throat and glands, and then hands him his medicine. He tries not to wince as he swallows it down.

::: ::: :::

“I’m bored.”

Sam’s on his back on Dean’s bed, his head at the end while his feet are propped up by the headboard.

“I wish we had a hunt or something.”

Dean, who’s sitting in a chair across the room, snorts, then pays for it with a long coughing fit.

“We could have had a hunt, but you wanted to do this,” Dean says when he catches his breath. He blows his nose on a Kleenex he snagged from downstairs, and when he’s done he tosses the used tissue at Sam. It lands square on Sam’s chest, and Sam sits up with a startled gasp.

“Hey! That’s disgusting, Dean,” he yelps, brushing the Kleenex off of his shirt.

Dean buries his head in his arms and laughs, the sound muffled and giddy-sounding.

“Maybe it’s good, because of the rain,” Dean says, and Sam raises an eyebrow.

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s raining. We would have had to dig graves in the rain or something, and then you would have gotten sick anyway,” Dean says, lifting his head and rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “It makes…it makes perfect sense.”

Dean’s words are slightly slurred, tired and delirious sounding. Sam narrows his eyes at Dean, sees him shivering slightly, even though he’s wearing about ten layers of clothing. Dean’s face is flushed, spots of color high on his cheeks to match the redness around the edges of his nostrils.

“Do you have a fever or something?” Sam stands, crosses the room to where Dean’s sitting, and studies his brother. He reaches a hand out toward Dean’s forehead, but Dean smacks his arm away.

“Only hot nurses are allowed to say anything about my body temperature, Sammy,” he grumbles hoarsely.

Sam rolls his eyes before turning around. He goes into his room, and Dean closes his eyes with a sigh. He’s surprised when Sam returns a minute later, plastic grocery bag in one hand and a box of Kleenex tucked under his other arm.

“I noticed you were out,” he says, tossing the Kleenex into Dean’s lap. Dean looks down at the box with a small sniffle, but Sam’s still talking to him.

“I don’t know if you’re allowed, because of the trial and all, but…” Sam ducks his head, holds out the plastic sack, and Dean takes it slowly. There’s a bag of throat lozenges inside, and he pulls one out, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth. He stares at the wrapper dazedly.

“When did you get these?” He asks, sniffling as the eucalyptus from the lozenge works its way into his nose. “I thought we’re not allowed to leave the hotel?”

“I snuck out,” Sam shrugs casually.

Dean yawns, then sneezes, and as he blows his nose Sam moves toward his own room again.

“I’ll let you take your nap,” he grins, and he ducks out of the way of an airborne box of Kleenex to the sound of another loud sneeze.

::: ::: :::

Dean’s fever doesn’t get any higher, but it leaves him hot one minute and cold the next for about a day before it finally breaks. He spends most of the rest of the week curled up under the blankets, fending off Sam’s teasing and concern with various threats and well-aimed wads of used Kleenex. By the end of the week, he’s on the mend, and when the clinic is done he’s completely over his cold.

“Finally,” Dean sighs. “Let’s get outta here.” He draws in a deep breath through his nose, grinning.

Since neither of them had really unpacked any of their stuff, it doesn’t take long for them to get their things out to the Impala. They toss their bags into the trunk, and Dean pauses outside of the door to pull his wallet out of his pocket. He slides in behind the wheel and looks over at Sam, who’s already in the passenger seat.

“Well, that sucked ass,” Dean says, but as he counts the money his face lights but. “But totally worth it.”

“Really?” Sam asks, eyebrows raised. “You were miserable the entire week.”

“Dude. We made some cash, the nurses were hot, and you,” he points at Sam. “You did not get sick. Overall, definitely worth it.”

Sam makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, and Dean looks back over at him and sees his grinning wide.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Sam shakes his head, still smiling. “It’s just touching that you were concerned about me getting sick,” he continues, barely containing his laughter.

“Fine,” Dean says, frowning. “See if I care the next time you do get sick.” He pulls a newspaper from between them, smacks Sam in the shoulder with it.

“Look for our next hunt, bitch.” He tosses the newspaper in Sam’s lap and turns up the music loud, but not loud enough that he doesn’t hear Sam’s reply.

“Jerk.”

::: ::: :::

[Pinky's Pal]

Great story I always enjoyed sneezey Dean.

Good job

[ichixshiro14]

This is just perfect! I could totally see this happening

[obsessed]

Are they hiring any nurses? ;]

aha this is lovely!

[Zwee]

Ohhhh, this is adorable! Dean is so worried about his little brother getting sick. I love it. I laughed when Sam was answering the numbers for Dean and he got annoyed. It was great. As always, so in-character. Aw, and Sam sneaking out to get stuff for his sick brother. That's really cute. You're great.

[27jj]

Great story I always enjoyed sneezey Dean.

Good job

Thank you!!! Sneezy!Dean is pretty yummy

This is just perfect! I could totally see this happening

Hee, now IF ONLY it would happen in an episode, eh? Thank you for reading!!

Are they hiring any nurses? ;]

aha this is lovely!

Lol Thank youuuu!!

Ohhhh, this is adorable! Dean is so worried about his little brother getting sick. I love it. I laughed when Sam was answering the numbers for Dean and he got annoyed. It was great. As always, so in-character. Aw, and Sam sneaking out to get stuff for his sick brother. That's really cute. You're great.

Aww, thanks so much!! You're rather great yourself:)

[iluvsneezes]

Another awesome story!

[VividBubbles!]

Oooh oooh oooh! You should do one like right after this one where Sam gets sick and at first Dean tells him to suck it up and goes out for some pie or a bar or something and when he comes back he finds Sam all shivery and really hot with fever and he feels guilty and then helps Sammy get all better! Great story! Update soon!

BYE!

[27jj]

Another awesome story!

Thank you!! I'm happy you liked it:)

Oooh oooh oooh! You should do one like right after this one where Sam gets sick and at first Dean tells him to suck it up and goes out for some pie or a bar or something and when he comes back he finds Sam all shivery and really hot with fever and he feels guilty and then helps Sammy get all better! Great story! Update soon!

BYE!

Ahh, that is such a great idea! Like, Sam doesn't get sick from the clinic but then he does afterward. Dean would surely find that amusing I shall have to think about writing this.

Thank you for reading!!

[Foxfire]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Dean being all snarky! And a caring Sam is so AWWWWWW

[27jj]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Dean being all snarky! And a caring Sam is so AWWWWWW

Noo, thank YOU! So glad you enjoyed it!

[sneezysammy345]

Sammy should have gotten sick after dean, but this is awesome too. Awesome fic.