Sarasota (SPN, Jack)

[lillian]

I keep getting distracted by plot bunnies but I have not forgotten all my multipart fics!! Enjoy some (oblivious) Dadstiel.

Sarasota
Set between 14x3 and 14x6, after Castiel tells Jack he'll take him on a case. 

Jack muffles a cough into his arm. They’ve been on the road for two days, steadily moving south, and the air is thickening. There’s a ghost causing mayhem on the site of the old Ringling Circus, and Castiel and Jack are on the case. They arrive at the motel after dark, and decide to get started in the morning.

Jack looks out at the water, listening to the cicadas. The air that blows off the bay is hot and wet, but wraps around him like a soft blanket. If he’s being honest, it warms the slight chill he’s been feeling for a few days. 

He doesn’t always feel ill. He hasn’t coughed up blood more than once or twice in the past week. He hasn’t been feverish or exhausted, either. He told Cas he had a cold, and luckily, it appeared to everyone that he did.

Sam was concerned that Jack hadn’t gotten over his cold in the two weeks since Castiel had offered to take him on a case. Therefore, it had been fourteen days of Jack slowly wearing Sam and Dean down and appealing to their humanness. 

I read online that sometimes a cough can linger up to a month after a cold.

You work when you’re sick all the time. 

People are getting hurt and dying out there and you’re keeping me home because I have the sniffles!
 

He’d finally won. And now he and Cas were on a hunt in Florida. 

Now that the excitement was wearing off, though, Jack was beginning to feel a little worse. His dry, tickly cough had moved down into his chest, which was beginning to ache, and his residual stuffiness was turning into full-blown snotty congestion. He was shivering, sneezing, and running out of excuses. 

Luckily, Castiel was not known for his observation skills. Jack had become very good at hiding the deepness of his cough by not coughing too hard, although this meant he constantly felt an itchy, achy discomfort in his chest. He pinched his nose when he sneezed and only blew his nose in the bathroom. Sam definitely would have called him out by now, and Dean might have made a comment about him sounding “croaky” or “stuffed-up,” but Cas believed the “I'm human” excuse and gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, who was a human and who was an angel at the moment? 

He takes a breath through his nose with a small snort. The humid air feels good on his irritated airways, even as he shivers. 

“Jack?” Castiel calls from the hotel parking lot. Jack hadn’t realized he’d drifted away from the truck and onto the wet grass near the water. 

“Coming!”

Jack hurries back to the hotel as Cas unlocks the door. A rush of cold air greets them, and Jack suppresses a shiver. He’d gratefully shed his jacket as they entered Louisiana, and enjoyed the feeling of wearing a t-shirt in October. 

Cas, still in his trench coat, shakes his head. “I’ll never understand why humans in America keep their living spaces so cold.” 

The air in the room is just as humid as the outside, and the chill is damp against Jack’s bare skin. “You might want to get your hoodie from the truck,” Castiel calls over his shoulder as he walks further into the room, turning on lights as he goes. 

“Okay,” Jack says, taking the opportunity to muffle a chesty cough into his cupped hands as he walks back to the truck. He grabs his duffle bag and his hoodie, sniffles to clear his nose, and heads back inside. 

Castiel is investigating the bathroom, a habit he picked up from Dean. Then he takes out Jack’s leftovers from dinner and puts them in the mini fridge. Jack smiles slightly, watching Cas do these human things. He knows they’re just for him. 

The A/C whirrs, a cold blast of air hitting him in the back. He shivers. Suddenly, a tickle sparks up in his nose and he jerks forward with a pinched off sneeze. It’s silent except for a small congested squelch.

“God bless you.” 

Jack looks up to see Castiel watching him with soft eyes. “Thank you.” 

“I’ll see if I can figure out how to turn off the air conditioning. In the meantime, you should put on your hoodie,” Cas says kindly. 

Jack blows out a silent sigh of relief, and pulls his hoodie over his head. 

___

They got in late, so it’s only an hour or so before Jack brushes his teeth and crawls into bed. He flips through the TV channels as Castiel reads at the small desk on the other side of the room. Finally, he lands on some sitcom he’s seen before. He sips water from the cup on the bedside table and settles into the blankets. 

“Goodnight, Jack. Sleep well.” Castiel says, hearing the rustling. 

“Goodnight, Cas.” 

Jack’s eyes slowly get heavy as he tries to follow the storyline of the sitcom. He yawns a few times, and finally lets his eyes close, just for a second. 
__

When he opens them again, the TV is off, and so are all the lights. He can see the outline of Cas, still at the desk, in the glow of a computer screen. His water cup is refilled. He rolls over, wondering what woke him, when a burning feeling in his chest begins to choke him. He breathes deeply and tries to concentrate on something else. The deep breaths through his nose spark the mostly dormant itch in his sinuses, and he finds himself suddenly fighting a very insistent urge to sneeze. 

Not sneezing is one thing he hasn’t been able to figure out how to do in his short time on earth. If he has to, he almost always does. He can make it silent, sometimes, but he’s never able to completely fight back the feeling, no matter how hard he tries. 

He hitches silently, burying his face in the covers. He can feel the heavy congestion in his chest and head, so he knows that he won’t be able to make this one completely silent. It’ll probably be too strong. 

“nngxt!” It’s quiet, but it doesn’t satisfy the tickle. “ngxxt’shhu!” The whispered exhale of breath at the end is definitely louder than it should be.

Castiel’s chair squeaks. Jack’s breath hitches again. 

“NXT’chh!” Son of a bitch. 

“Jack?” Cas pokes his head around the divider separating the beds from the rest of the room, lit softly by the light of the computer screen. “Was that you?” 

No, he wants to say, but that doesn’t seem like it would be a very good lie. He sniffles softly to clear his nose before he answers. 

“I’m okay, I just sneezed.” 

“Well, then… God bless you.” There’s an awkward beat of silence before he asks, “are you warm enough?”

Jack nods, then remembers that it’s dark. “Yes,” he says. His nose is running a little bit, and he sniffles again without thinking about it. 

Castiel goes into the bathroom and returns with a box of tissues. 

Jack reaches over and turns on the light, then promptly sneezes. 

“ITSCHiew!” It’s uncovered and messy, and he quickly cups a hand over his nose and mouth. Cas sits on the bed and holds out the box of tissues. He looks slightly amused. All his dads know that bright light makes Jack sneeze, and they don’t mind making fun of him for it.

“God bless you,” he says. 

“Thanks.” Jack takes a tissue, blows softly, and wipes his nose. He isn’t completely cleared up, but he doesn’t want to alert Cas to how congested he is. 

Castiel holds his hand out for the crumpled tissue. Jack starts to give it to him, then remembers that Sam told him it’s not polite to get your snot on people. And germs. He plucks another tissue and wraps it around his used one, then hands it to Cas. 

Castiel smiles his small, amused smile. “You are picking up on their social graces much better than I did.”

“Sam lectures me if I don’t.”

Cas pats his knee. “Well I won’t lecture you. Get some rest, we have a big day tomorrow.” 

Jack grins, warm excitement replacing the chilly, achy feeling in his chest. He burrows back into the covers, and Cas turns out the light, leaving the tissue box on the bedside table. 

He muffles a few coughs into the pillow. Castiel stays at his computer, and Jack has to assume that he’s just used to hearing him cough by now. He falls asleep, thinking of the case they’re going to start on in the morning.
 

~fin~

Edited July 22, 2023 by lillian

[secret19]

Looooooooooooovvvvvveeeee this!!

[lillian]

33 minutes ago, secret19 said:

Looooooooooooovvvvvveeeee this!!

I'm so glad!!

[secret19]

I know I’ve been begging for an update on the Sam and Dean fic but genuinely any time your user appears makes my day. 🙃

[lillian]

19 minutes ago, secret19 said:

I know I’ve been begging for an update on the Sam and Dean fic but genuinely any time your user appears makes my day. 🙃

It's coming! I promise! I'm stuck with trying to come up with a hunt to be honest

[Wolfwings22]

I get so excited when I see that you’ve updated or wrote another SPN story. I can’t wait for more!

[lillian]

2 hours ago, Wolfwings22 said:

I get so excited when I see that you’ve updated or wrote another SPN story. I can’t wait for more!

Omg thank you!! I’ve been going back through your stories and really enjoying them!!

[lillian]

Two things I am unable to do 1. leave a one-shot alone 2. not make it angsty

this last part features helicopter dads, foreshadowing to the "divorce arc," and a whole lotta miserable, snotty Jack  it's also kinda all over the place so forgive me! shameless plug, I also wrote a sick fic on ao3 about Dean taking Jack for a drive when he has a bad cough. It's only coughing and no sneezing so I'm not posting it here, but check it out if you wanna! It's creatively titled "Drive." 

Enjoy!

 

Ring. Ring. Riiiiing. 

Castiel mutters a word he learned from Dean and quickly silences his phone before answering. 

“Hello, Sam.” 

How’s Jack? I know you looked him over and said he was good, and Dean thinks… I can’t help but be worried about him. 

“I think he’s alright, Sam. He just has a cold.”

But he’s been sick for two weeks now—

“I’ve been driving across the country with him sitting next to me. I can assure you that it’s only a cold.”

Even as Castiel says it, he feels a pang of doubt. Jack was trying very hard to hide what seemed to Cas like a normal human cold. He didn’t understand why Jack was making himself more uncomfortable by choking back coughs and stifling his sneezes. 

How do you know? Is he still coughing?

Cas sighs internally and begins a run-down of Jack’s symptoms. 

“His cough sounds more like an irritated throat than anything. He’s been sneezing quite a bit, but that’s because the motel room is too cold for him, I think.”

He needs to—

“Yes, Sam,” Castiel says, rolling his eyes. “He’s already in bed getting warm.”. 

He hears the bed covers rustle again, a congested “nnng’cht!” and then the pitiful sound of someone trying to blow their nose without making any noise. “nngxt–KSH! nk’shhuu!” More tissues being drawn. Muffled coughing again. “hegk’shhheh!”

Castiel sighs. Jack clearly won't be getting much sleep tonight. 

…and sometimes you just don’t pay attention to human things …Cas? I want to talk to him. 

He’d almost forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation. 

“Cas?” the soft, croaky voice pulls his attention away again. 

“One moment, Sam.” He sets the phone on the desk, ignoring Sam’s worried response. 

He crosses the room in two strides and finds Jack curled up in bed with a handful of tissues held close to his face. 

“hegxTCH!”

“God bless you.” He usually didn’t bother with such an odd human nicety. God did not care if someone sneezed. With Jack, though, it was an automatic response, pulled out of him by concern and a newfound tenderness. 

“Tha’g you…” Jack hitches again and pitches into the tissues with an itchy-sounding “TISCHew!” He groans and rubs his nose through the tissues, and Castiel’s heart breaks. He sinks down onto the bed and reaches to run a hand through Jack’s hair. 

“Oh bless you.” With his angelic senses, he can hear Sam still yelling for him through the phone. He ignores him. “What do you need, Jack?” 

“I’b… I’b ndot feeli’g well.” Jack sniffles, wiping his nose with the soggy tissues. 

“I know,” Cas says softly. 

“I was feeli’g better, hondest, but ndow I feel really sick.”

Castiel frowns and feels Jack’s forehead. “You’re a little warm.” He hands him some more tissues. “Here, you need to blow your nose.” Jack takes the tissues and blows without comment on being treated like a child. Castiel’s frown deepens. Jack takes in a shaky breath and curls into the blankets, trembling with a few deep, chesty coughs. Castiel puts an urgent hand on his back. Suddenly, he wants some help with his ailing nephilim. 

Cas! Are you there?!

“Jack?” 

He looks up, glassy-eyed and winded. 

“Sam wants to talk to you.” 

Jack’s face lights up, then quickly falls into an almost guilty expression. 

“No, that’s okay.” 

“I’ll tell him you’re asleep.” Cas gets up to do just that. 

“Wait... lying is wrong. I should talk to him.” 

Castiel sighs again. 

—

“Hey,” Jack croaks into the phone. Cas cringes, imagining the look of horror on Sam’s face. Jack sounds quite ill in the way that colds present themselves— raspy, congested, and miserably tired. Of course Sam, not bearing witness to all the chatter and excitement in between the sneezes and coughs, would, in the vernacular of his particular humans, “freak out.”

You sound awful. 

“Thadk you.” The threadbare sarcasm is an appeal for his health. He pulls the phone away from his ear and scrunches his nose with the biggest sniffle he can manage. He snorts from his congestion and coughs into the blanket, tamping it down before the forced exhales deepen their reach and stir up something in his chest. His lungs feel heavy and wheezy, and he’s pretty sure tonight will be one of those nights where the tissues come up bloody. How the hell will he hide that in this small hotel room? 

Oh Jack...

There’s a muffled side conversation that Jack checks out of while he tries to ease the breathless feeling building in his chest without audibly wheezing. That sound, he’d learned quickly, got immediate attention. He feels a tickle start to buzz in the back of his nose. His breath hitches silently, and he pinches his nose, rubbing his septum gently. 

Dean’s voice snaps him to attention. 

You’re still coughin’. It’s not a question. You said you were feelin’ better. Cas said you were feelin’ better.

He was, but now he’s not. How does he say that to Dean? Cas is proud of him and just as excited as he is, plus confident that he can keep Jack safe, but Sam and Dean are happiest when Jack is on relative lockdown in the bunker, unwell or healthy. 

“I... umm…” the light ticklish feathers of a building sneeze travel down his nose and brush his nostrils. “I... ihhhhh…” he tries to fight it while Dean launches into a lecture. “ISHH!” 

“Bless you, Jack,” Cas says softly from his perch on the edge of the bed.

Cas is lying out his ass. You both are. You are definitely not okay.

— 

Dean is waiting in the library, a tumbler of whiskey on the table in front of him, when Jack and Cas come down the bunker stairs. 

“Sam’s getting supplies,” he says by way of greeting. “Way to get the kid back to us in one piece, Cas.” 

Cas’ mouth tightens into a firm line. 

“I was giving him a chance, Dean. He deserves to get out and do something once and awhile.”

“Sure, when he’s not trying to catch pneumonia.”

“I just have a cold,” Jack says stuffily, readjusting his duffel bag on his shoulder. When Dean glares at him, he looks at his shoes. 

“You just became human. You’re pushing yourself instead of frigging listening to your body.” 

“And when have you ever listened to your body, Dean?” Cas’ eyes are blue fire. “How many times have you pushed yourself way too far? Who always has to take care of you afterwards?”

Jack is beginning to feel like this conversation is not really about him. 

He edges towards the corridor, walking carefully on his toes. He makes it about four feet down the hall before the ever-present stuffy tingle in his swollen sinuses flares into an insistent tickle. 

“Hih!” He bites his tongue. “hyehh..” the hitching breaths have a wheezy edge to them, and trip the achy itch in his chest. He chokes and coughs, deep and full. The tickle in his nose surges in response. He has no choice but to give in. 

“EHHHUU!” It comes straight from his chest, with none of the usual stilted attempts to strangle the sound. Still, the air forced through his sinuses pushes out a good deal of snot from his nose and he cups his hands over his face. The soft nudge of palm against flaring damp nostrils calls up another. 

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dean grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around. Cas is close behind. 

“Dean.” 

“What Cas?” 

“nnnGXTCHHH!!” It echoes off the tile walls as it splutters into Jack’s hands, tented prayer-like over his nose. 

No one says “bless you,” even though the sneeze sounded miserable and both of them had fussed over less. Barely repressed anger and resentment fill the hallway, pushing Jack further towards his room.  

Dean and Cas stare each other down. Jack sniffles, trying to think of something to say to excuse a quick departure. Cas is white with anger and Dean’s hands are in fists. Jack wipes his nose on his sleeve. 

“I’b goi’g to.. I ndeed to.. hh.. I ndeed to go blow by nd-nhh! hnNGXZTCH!! ughh…" he sniffles thickly "ndose..”

Cas and Dean still look like they’re deciding who should swing first. Dean sort of nods in his direction, but Cas only has eyes for Dean. Angry, bitter, resentful eyes. 

Jack shoulders his duffel bag and quickly tip-toes, sniffling, towards his room. 

—-

If he thought he’d be able to get some rest, he was mistaken. As he’s about to turn off the light and close his aching eyes, there’s a knock at his door. 

“What?” he calls irritably. 

“Jack? Can I come in?” 

Jack groans softly and presses his face into his pillow. 

“Sure.” 

The door squeaks softly as Cas lets himself in. 

“I wanted to apologize.” 

Jack cracks open an eye and looks up at Cas hovering near the bed. He looks like he’s about to sit down but hesitates. 

“For what.” His voice is flat and heavy. 

“For—” 

He’s interrupted when Jack muffles a few coughs into his pillow. He props himself up on an elbow, reaching for the tissue box as his eyes flood with tears. “hehhhhh!” It rushes him before he can grab one, so he clamps a hand over his face instead. 

“h’ETXSH!” 

Cas is at the bed in an instant, giving him a handful of tissues. 

“God bless you. I’m sorry, I should let you rest.” 

“It’s okay, I don’t thi - ihhh…! thidk—” Jack jerks forward into the tissues, soaking them with a wrenching “k’SHHHeww!” He blows his nose, stuffy and thick, and coughs. “I dod’d thidk I’ll be able to sleep.” 

Castiel gestures awkwardly to the bed. “Can I…?” Jack nods, blowing his nose again with a congested honk. 

“Jack… I, ah, I let my own feelings get in the way of looking after you back there.” Cas stares at his hands. “I was angry and–” 

“It’s okay.” Jack looks at him with tired eyes. “I u’dersta’d.” 

“No, it wasn’t right,” Cas protests. “You needed me and I was preoccupied with–” 

Jack reaches for the tissue box and situates it next to his pillow for easy access. He scoots down in the bed and pulls the covers up to his chin. “I cad take care of byself.” 

Cas smiles sadly. He runs a hand through Jack’s hair, maybe more for his own comfort. 

“Yes, you can.” He stands and gathers up the little piles of used tissues from the bed and nightstand. 

“Cas! Gerbs!” 

“I’m an angel, Jack. Dean brings out a lot of human emotions in me but that doesn’t mean I can catch your cold.” 

“Wait!”

Cas tosses the tissues in the trash can beside the bed, and something inside catches his eye. Something red. 

He whips around to stare at Jack, eyes wide. 

“I… I cad explai’d…” 

“Dean!” Cas yells, almost running out the door. 

-now fin- 

Edited July 28, 2023 by lillian

[secret19]

Hi Lillian! Any ideas for a case for the Sam and Dean stifle fic? (one of my favorites of all time)

Also I can’t find you on Ao3.  I want to make sure I’ve read any and all of your writing. Is their a link you can post? 

[lillian]

22 minutes ago, secret19 said:

Hi Lillian! Any ideas for a case for the Sam and Dean stifle fic? (one of my favorites of all time)

Also I can’t find you on Ao3.  I want to make sure I’ve read any and all of your writing. Is their a link you can post? 

Hi! I have the middle part for the stifle fic written (featuring our concerned and oblivious angel), but I'm having to watch some earlier seasons to get inspo for the hunt with John. 

Here's a link! https://archiveofourown.org/works/48886132

[Wolfwings22]

The angst and tension in this fic was amazing and I totally felt for Jack being caught in the middle. Both care for Jack so much but have so opposite ways of trying to show it. Amazing as always!