Archive of Our Own

Back in high school, Dean had this girlfriend who had a cat, Pouncey. Well, chances were he'd had more than one girlfriend with cats, but this one girl, Kelly, her cat was a piece of work. Big old tomcat despite the cringe-inducing fact that it hadn't seen its balls in over ten years, fond of prowling the streets and coming home with dead chipmunks and new tatters in his ears. It liked to sit on the railing along the front of the porch of Kelly's house and glare at Dean as he climbed the steps to her conveniently-parentless house, and when Dean left that cat was always curled up on the hood of the Impala, little goddamn paw prints going down the window.



Anyway, the cat was kind of badass and annoying at the same time, but then it died. Kelly had cried into Dean's shoulder, her sweater-covered breasts rubbing against Dean's chest, and told him that the cat's kidneys had failed, that they'd had to put him to sleep. She sniffled, wiped her nose and explained that the vet had said that dialysis was an option (For a cat?, Dean had wondered.) but that poor Pouncey wasn't cut out for it. He'd raised hell every time they took him to the vet as it was, and he wasn't the kind of cat who would want to drag out his last days trapped inside with vets and needles and drugs. So they made it fast, put the poor bastard out of his misery.



Dean had rubbed Kelly's back, letting his hand slip down over the curve of her ass as often as possible, and told her it was the right thing to do without even really thinking about it. Now, seven years later, Dean found himself thinking about it all the goddamn time. Because, you know, some days he wouldn't mind that kind of mercy pointed in his direction. He wouldn't do it himself, wouldn't leave Dad that way, make him go to California and tell Sam that his big brother hadn't been able to take the heat. He wouldn't.



But still, he wished that somebody would look at him and realize that Dean Winchester was not the kind of guy who was cut out for being tied down to a dialysis machine.



~~~

Dean had the flu when Sam left for Stanford. Or he thought it was the flu, but it just kept hanging on, hanging on. Then he thought maybe it was in his head; maybe missing Sam made him hurt that much, made his muscles burn, his chest ache to take a deep breath, his stomach sour and sick. He could feel his father's eyes on him sometimes, but they had work to do. Dad would toss him the bottle of K-Mart brand ibuprofen and nod his head at the door. Time to get a move on.

When things got scary, it happened fast. Dean was standing over the toilet for the eighth time that day, trying to remember when he might've been stupid enough not to use a condom, where he might've picked something up, when he could slip around Dad to get to a clinic for some antibiotics, trying to think around the fog in his brain that never seemed to part all the way anymore except for in the heart of a hunt. Then there was pain--sharp, deep inside--and he fell to his knees as his stomach twisted. He was trying to throw up and trying to breathe, couldn't quite manage either of them but he kicked back, one booted foot knocking against the thin plasterboard wall.

Then Dad was shouldering through the bathroom door, his face a worried thunder through the clouds in Dean's head. Dean felt his father's hands tight on his arms, the hard floor cold against his back, and then he couldn't breathe at all and there was nothing.

He woke up in the hospital with more things hooked up to him than he could possibly name and a headache that made him wish he could be unconscious again. Kidney failure, the doctor told him. Turns out one of his kidneys had never worked right, probably never since he was born, but the other one had always carried the load well enough that there wasn't any reason for anybody to notice. They couldn't really say what happened--maybe he got hurt, though Dean didn't remember taking any kidney shots. Maybe some random infection had come through, decided to eat through Dean's one good kidney just to make a point.

Dean thought maybe his kidney had just gotten tired, tired of being alone, tired of pulling all the weight while the other one slacked off, fucked off for maybe 22 years. Either way, it didn't matter. He'd have to get dialysis, pump his blood through a machine to do all the heavy lifting his kidney couldn't manage anymore. And the pills and all the shit he wouldn't be allowed to eat anymore, like he was 93 years old. The doctor put him on a transplant list, but she said that once he was stabilized he wasn't sick enough to be anywhere near the top, might not find a new kidney for years. Years. Dean didn't want to think about what "sick enough" would be like.

So, when he was discharged Dean got a shiny new Medicaid card and a portable dialysis machine that could be carried around in the car like some kind of fucked up passenger. He and Dad stayed in town just long enough to learn how to use it, to get in a good routine, and then it was back to life on the road, business as usual. Well, as much as possible.

Every other day, Dean had to spend hours hooked up to his machine, his new best friend and ball-and-chain all rolled up in one. It was worse if Dad was around when he did it, worse to have to see John Winchester feeling helpless when there was nothing either one of them could do about it, so Dean stayed on his own most of the time, got a little bit addicted to reality TV, not that he'd admit that to anybody. Most of the time he was feeling better than he had right before he got diagnosed--his head clear, his body not hurting so much--so he was okay to hunt, even if he felt his father babying him, protecting him on hunts in a way he hadn't since Dean was still in school.

Months went by, and everything became routine. Dad kept on his case about taking his meds and vitamins, glared at him every time Dean even tried to slip a strip of bacon in his mouth, made sure all his equipment was clean every day, packed up every time they moved on. And it all started to feel so normal, even if it was a crappy, pain in the ass version of normal, that when everything fell apart again it was almost a surprise.

~~~

Dean could remember waking up to a fierce ache in his back, worse than anything inflicted on him by any saggy motel mattress and heat burning through him. He thought about fire in the sky, flames billowing from one tree to the next, smoke rising up into his lungs. He felt flashes of cool touch his skin and then cold air across his body, everything rippling like his whole body was a lake in the middle of a winter storm. He heard his father talking to him from underwater, and he listened out for Sam but there was only quiet.

He woke up for a minute in the hospital, not awake enough to do anything more than open his eyes, but he saw his father sitting next to his bed, his body bent over a putty gray lunch tray in his lap, his eyes looking back and forth between his journal and some old book. Dean let his eyes close, listened to the scratch of pen against paper, fell back to sleep. When he woke up again, the only thing sitting on that chair was a note.

It wasn't like Dean didn't understand. The infection was bad, the home dialysis not working the way it should, his blood counts looking like shit, and Dean wasn't getting out of the hospital in the next couple days or anything. Still, it sucked, and if Dean turned away from the chipper little nurse's aid and the bland-faced shrink who came in later, he didn't think anybody could blame him. If he wasn't going to hunt, wasn't going to be useful to anybody in any damn way, then he was just going to sleep.

The nurses left him alone as much as they could, and there was nobody else. Just Dean, penned up inside his human-size kennel wishing there was any kind of way out.

The phone at his bedside rang, but Dean didn't bother to answer it, probably a call for whatever poor bastard used to be in the room before Dean. It rang again when he was in the twilight of half-asleep, half-awake and he dreamed that he picked up the phone. He felt his fingers wrap around the hard plastic, the weight of it in his hand, the cold touch of it against his ear. He heard his father on the other end, talking about something, a hunt, and as Dean struggled to formulate a reply the phone rang again.

The unexpected sound was enough to startle him all the way awake, his hand actually reaching out for the receiver this time, and he answered before he remembered that he didn't want to talk to anybody. "'lo."

"Dean." The voice on the other end of the line was calm, familiar, not John Winchester. "This is Jim Murphy."

"Pastor Jim." Dean rolled over as best he could, holding the phone to his ear. "Hey."

"Your father asked me to give you a call, check up on you. He said he was unable to get through to you earlier, and he expects he'll be away from good reception and landlines for a few days."

"Oh. He's okay?"

"He's fine. How are you feeling?"

"Like crap, you know, par for the course. Whatever, you don't need to worry about me."

Pastor Jim was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "Have you spoken to Sam?"

"What do you think?" Pastor Jim didn't reply, and Dean sighed. "No. He doesn't have time for this."

"I think you should call your brother."

Dean yawned, feeling exhausted for all that he'd been awake for maybe ten minutes. He seriously didn't want Sam to ever see him so weak.

"I'll let you get back to sleep, but I'll call again tomorrow."

"'kay. Thanks." Dean looked at the empty chair next to him and fell back to sleep.

~~~

Another couple of days passed the same way--hooked up to the big hospital dialysis machine, hooked up to antibiotics, everything measured and tested. Despite it all, he still felt like crap, weighed down by exhaustion with waves of sickness that washed over him and back like the shallow, foamy water that pushed out to the edge of the tidal line. Pastor Jim called every day, and Dad called once, his voice tight like he was angry, like he was hiding something. Dean wanted to know, and he didn't want to know, and he slept.

When he opened his eyes, his first thought was that Dad was there. The curve of the back was right, but as Dean's vision cleared he saw that the rest of the shape was all wrong. Too lanky, too young, shagging hair hanging over his fingers where he had his head in his hands. It couldn't-- Dean shifted in bed, trying to get the leverage to sit up, and Sam lifted his head.

"Sam." Dean stared at his brother, inexplicably just a couple feet away. "The fuck're you doing here?"

"Dad came and got me."

That fact dropped like a rock into the room, into Dean's stomach. "Yeah, right. So, where is he?"

"Back at the motel asleep. He drove the last twenty hours pretty much straight." Sam rolled his eyes. "Wouldn't let me drive because I hadn't driven for the last two years."

"You always were a nervous nelly, riding the brakes."

"Seriously, Dean, why didn't you call me before it got this bad?"

Dean looked down at the white blanket on his legs, picked at one of the neverending threads coming off of it. "Wasn't your problem."

"Screw you, Dean." Sam's words were more tired than angry and he shook his head. "You know, I did a bunch of reading on the way here. Seems like a living transplant from a sibling has the best chance of working, not to mention we could've done it a year ago, kept you from getting this sick in the first place."

"No," Dean snapped. "No fucking way."

Sam stood up fast, looming over Dean's bed. "Yes. Fucking. Way!"

And Sam looked huge from that angle, sure as hell taller and broader than the stringbean who'd slipped off down the road to the bus station. Dean felt wasted, too thin, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to see it anymore. The mattress dipped as Sam sat down next to Dean's feet. "Here's the thing," Sam said after a moment, his voice quieter now, calm. "Right now, my kidneys are working at 100%, and you're at maybe 10%, right?"

Dean nodded his head, just a slight dip of his chin. It seriously sucked, having to admit to his little brother that he was failing, falling apart at the seams.

"But we can beat those numbers. I give you a kidney, and we can both be close enough to 100% to not notice any difference. That adds up to a hell of a lot more than 110% between us. You can't argue that."

Dean opened his eyes and looked at Sam, sitting there on the end of the bed the way he had when Dean broke his arm ten years ago. "What it adds up to is me taking something away from you. I can't do that."

Sam frowned, and Dean let his eyes slip closed again. "You know, when most kids leave for college, they're desperate to leave home, to just get away. And that's normal, okay? They don't plan on being gone forever, they just want to leave." Sam shifted on the bed, let silence settle in the room for a minute. "I think you're that for me. I needed to get away, but I never wanted us to be out of each other's lives forever, man. So that's what I'm worried about you taking away from me." Sam sighed audibly. "Asshole."

Dean felt himself sinking back into sleep, but he forced his eyes open long enough to look Sam in the eye. "I'll think 'bout it."

"Thank you," Sam said, and his hand squeezing on Dean's ankle was the last thing he noticed until he woke up again.

~~~

The next morning, Dean picked his way through his tasteless excuse for a breakfast while his father sat next to him reading the paper. Dean tried not to look at him too much, tried not to notice how many glances were coming over the top of that newspaper. Finally, he couldn't stomach any more of the silence or the food.

"You shouldn't've brought him."

"You wanted me to wait to go see Sammy until I had to tell him you were dead?"

"It's not that bad."

Dad shook the paper hard, folded it up. Didn't speak.

"Anyway, it's going to kill him if he doesn't match."

"Oh, he's a match. Sam wouldn't leave Palo Alto without getting blood drawn, had the lab forward the results here so that they'd know if you matched or not by the time we got here. The tests are all good: he's healthy, he's a match. He showed me the research, son, and he wants to do this."

"What do you think?"

"What do I think?" Dad shook his head and stood up, walking a few steps away from Dean's bed. "I think this is fucking up your plan for what you want."

"The fuck?"

"You just want this to be over." Dad circled around, coming up close to the bed again, his shoulders tight around his neck. "You think I can't tell? I know you're not stupid enough to think this is going to just go away. You want it all over, and Sam offering you a shiny new kidney is fucking with your timeline."

"I--" Dean didn't know how to argue, didn't hardly know how to talk. Tears burned behind his eyes and he bit his lip hard.

"Just think about it." Dad stood in front of the door, one hand on the knob. "For god's sake, Dean, getting Sam's kidney might not make everything the way it was before, but it would be one hell of a gift. Your brother'll be here in an hour or so; think about what you're going to tell him."

An hour later, Dean clicked off a random episode of Road Rules when Sam walked through the door. "So, little brother, I heard that even your blood is copying after mine."

Sam looked nonplussed for a moment and then smiled uneasily. "Yeah, I'm lame like that."

"And I'm guessing that you've already gone to the trouble of figuring out who the best transplant surgeon is in this place?"

Sam's smile trembled a little and then grew wider. "Yeah, I'm lame like that, too."

"I think you should call up Dr. Frankenstein then, maybe see if we can get an appointment."

Then Sam's arms were around him tight, and Dean didn't even care that it hurt. He held on hard to the back of Sam's shirt and reminded himself that a change was almost like an end but sometimes better. Sometimes way, way better.

"Only the Phoenix rises and does not descend.
And everything changes.
And nothing is truly lost."
--Neil Gaiman, The Wake