Chapter Text
Dean’s hands held the wheel of the Impala. The familiar form of the leather handle was a comfort under his worn palms, her gentle rumble as she raced down the empty road. The moon shone bleakley on her dirty hood, the car would need to be cleaned once they got back to the bunker, she wasn’t built for the desert roads they’d trekked through, but she’d pulled through. The car deserved a good washing.
Dean filtered that thought away for another time, he was exhausted; the same could be said for Sam in the passenger seat. Just two hours into the eight hour long journey home, he was about ready to give up and pull off to the side, even if only for a few minutes.
He must be getting old, if he can't handle a short drive like this after a long few days of work then what else is there to say. Dean’s been doing this back and forth cat-and-mouse of a job his whole damn life, he can shoulder a less than half-day drive.
A witch hunt in New Mexico had called the brothers out, mid the search for amara they needed a few more wins under their belt; not that they didn't have plenty to count. But three and a half days there had pretty much called that job complete.
The small coven was no match for the seasoned hunters, they didn't even have anything on Rowena, much to the boy's surprise. Just a simple coven forming to get themselves riches and fame with the help of a little dark magic. It wasn't unusual per say, just a nuisance.
There was a small brawl on the first night, but besides that and the eventual execution of the four women it was like nothing to them. Dean was shocked to feel so bone-dead tired.
He’d even been lucky enough to catch six to seven some-odd hours of rest the few nights they were there, considering his track record that was a blessing all on its own.
Yet here he is, about to give in to the midnight call and pull over at ass-o-clock in the evening. Dean sighed, reaching for the dial to the radio and subtly raising the volume to the cassette he had been playing, an older album that had a few skips in the near-torn tape but he didn't mind.
Sam lifted his head from where it was resting against the passenger window, staring out into the darkness before turning and raising an eyebrow at his brother.
Dean only shrugged, usually he would try and keep his music low while Sam attempted to sleep, at least for a little bit until the sibling urge to mess with his younger brother kicked in, but tonight he needed the rumbling beat to thrum away just hard enough to keep his heart beating and by proxy, him awake.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean watched Sam pull up the hood of the thick hoodie he wore to cover his ears and help block out the noise; Dean frowns, it's the tail end of summer, and sure he keeps the car cool, air conditioner running smooth as a river, but Sam shouldn't be cold enough for that particular hoodie, noise cancellation or not.
Either way, he keeps driving. Dean presses his foot a little sharper against the peddle, maybe he can turn this eight-hour drive into a seven-hour one.
Scratch that, he's Dean Winchester, and he wants to get the hell home. He’ll make it seven.
-
Scratch that- He’s not making it at all.
Dean shifts in his seat for the millionth time, trying to wake his sleeping leg. In fact, it feels like the entire left side of his body has become completely numb. Pins and needles sparking along his calf and up his thigh; crawling up his side and down his arm like strangling vines, squeezing the life from the limbs.
He can handle a little bit of one-footed driving, hell that's how you're supposed to drive. But when he starts losing his grip on the wheel, its smooth handle slipping from his tingling fingers like warm butter, he draws the line.
Belatedly, and a little in defeat he pulls the car off to the side of the still-empty street, nudging Sam awake as he does so.
“Hey, switch off. ‘Can’t feel my hands.”
Sam blinks up at him, sluggishly pulling himself from sleep as Dean stares pointedly at his half-slumped figure. The younger groans, but doesn’t say a word, and moves to open the car door anyways. Dean takes this as a win.
Slowly, as if moving through mud, Dean drags himself out of the driver's seat, leaning mostly on the Impala as his legs nearly give out from under him. The awful static worming its way through his body somehow tripling.
He’s had plenty of body aches, and he’s no stranger to sleeping limbs, but this is a new kind of lack of feeling spreading through his bones like a disease. His vision blurs and his mind drifts in and out like a sketchy radio station. He stands there for just a few seconds, staring loosely at the slow-waving grass of the endless plains around them on the narrow sideroad they'd veered off to.
A few moments of silence pass, and he suddenly realizes Sam hasn’t gotten out of the car. Dean can see where his mop of a head pops out from under the roof, but otherwise, he seems to have stayed seated, half out of the open door.
He almost calls out, but his voice dies in his throat, suddenly feeling tired. More tired than before, breathing is hard; not panic-attack-hard, or not-having-enough-air-hard, but as in his lungs just won’t put in the effort to expand; they too had gone achingly numb.
The mildly dirty exterior does nothing to stop his slow slide to the floor as he all but collapses to the ground, unable to hold his own weight. Dean can’t even convince a hand to grasp desperately at his chest. He just stares into the distance, light winds pelting him feel like whispers, awkward cradles to his statuesque body.
He feels like a ghost, set outside of his own skin; he’s quietly suffocating while Sam sits unaware just a few feet away.
Why hasn’t Sam stood up? Is he also experiencing this strange out-of-body trip? Dean hopes not, then they’re both screwed. Vulnerable on this random stretch of road in the middle of the night, not that anyone knows they're there, but that's not the point!
Dean feels warm, pressed against the backseat door, dreamily listening to Baby’s distant rumble as she idles in park. Little puffs and stutters he's long since grown accustomed to over the many years he's driven and ridden in her.
It’s a distracting comfort, and Dean's fuzzy brain has already let go of his drifting concern. He could close his eyes, he’s exhausted.
The car won’t mind.
-
Sam feels heavy.
Like there is a second layer to his skin he can’t quite feel. The seams of his shirt started bothering him hours ago, grating against his arms and neck underneath the hoodie he bore.
He’d thrown it on just before Dean set the trail for home, trying to fend off the random, freezing, cold he’d been washed with after packing up the motel they’d stayed at.
A day-cold, he’d figured. A sinus infection or something, it would explain the headache he felt building, the red of his nose, and the barely there shivers starting to form. But then the crawling started. This disgusting feeling that his clothes were writhing against his body. Every gust of wind, and shift of fabric, it sent his hairs on end. Not to mention the fact that he could feel the hair brushing against said fabric creating an awful feedback loop from hell.
He’d been to hell, he knows these things.
Not even an hour into the journey he resigned to try and sleep it off. Sam curled against the passenger-side door, burying himself in his hoodie and shoving his hands in his pockets, trying to keep them warm.
The cold seemed to follow him into sleep, frosty landscapes surrounded his dreams. The snowflakes shifted and changed as they fell, sometimes forming faces of disgruntled and pained angels as they shattered to the ground.
Pelting the floor in a sudden snowstorm, a mix of feathers and ash. His brain couldn’t decide what was falling, all he knew was that he was freezing. He trudged through the packed snow beneath him, but it clung to his ankles like a vice. Trapping him here to slowly freeze to death.
The dream was in and out of focus, like it was caught between realities. One moment he's being hurled around by frigid wafts of icy air and the next he's in some random house with the windows blown in.
He can see the glass shards flying through the air in slow motion, little reflections and lines of color bounce off of them and create vivid projections against the walls of the room he stood in.
Sam is clutching his arms to his chest, soaked to the bone from the previous onslaught. Somehow he knows he’s a child here, but he’s also his usual height. He doesn’t recognize the house, or the room, or the window shattering but he can hear the glass as if it's just been broken.
The action had already been carried out but he could still hear the echo, over and over the crashing was driving him mad as colors danced around the room in flashes akin to rogue fireworks.
He could hear something else too, leaking through the window.
Music.
Dean’s music?
He raised his head up and suddenly he was half-awake in the Impala as it rumbled down the street Dean was driving down, he spared a glance at his brother, raising a brow and frowning.
God, he was still tired, and the headache had only grown in his absence from wakefulness. He needed another hour, at least, maybe ten.
Dean wasn’t looking at him, though. His older brother had simply turned up the volume, probably to help him stay awake if anything. Still, that is the exact opposite of Sam’s goal, so he tugs up the hood of his jacket to shield his ears from the blasting base and hopes he can steal a couple extra hours of rest before they pull into the bunker.
Crossing his arms and curling back up he ducks his face away from the speakers and shuts his eyes, intent on willing this blooming migraine away with sheer will and determination.
He’s back asleep in minutes, but the rest doesn’t last long before he feels a shove against his shoulder and hears the half-mumbled excuse from Dean about needing to trade off the wheel.
Great, the one time he doesn’t want to drive is the time Dean needs to skip out.
He shifts, and of course, his clothes shift with him, and that is a whole, unexpected wave of agony he just felt wash over him like the tide. It's like every single fiber is out to get him specifically. His skin feels rubbed raw, like he'd been stripped of a couple layers off the top and left to fend for himself against sandpaper.
He gasps, but he can't hear it. Actually, he can’t hear much of anything over the blinking pain that's sparking across his body. The music is muffled, and the absent-minded click of the door unlatching and swinging open is nothing as Sam simply sits, one leg half-dangling out toward the ground while the rest of him scrambles to catch up.
The world is a tilt-a-whirl and he is its unbuckled passenger.
He chokes out a call for help, hoarsely shouting his brother's name. Sam is half-convinced he's said nothing at all because he doesn’t hear anything but a half-strangled whisper. But he could feel the rush of air grate against the inside of his throat; so realistically he knew he had said something.
But there's no reply, as far as he can tell at least. Sam turns his head, ignoring the pounding in his skull and the way his hair brushed over his face like tiny knives against his cheeks. Squinting into the darkness behind him his eyes scrape over the horizon, but he can't find Dean, seeing only the open door of the Impala’s driver's side.
Sam panics, scrambling for his phone, it's in his right front pocket, and he can feel it heavy against his thigh. His trembling, still freezing, fingers grasp at it, thanking past him for placing Cas on speed dial.
The line goes through, thank God, but he can’t tell if Cas says anything.
Still he uses the last of his remaining energy to spout out their rough location and hope that Cas can figure it out from there before he collapses forward and out of the car, out cold.
-
Castiel enjoys research. He enjoys the safety of the bunker, and he especially enjoys the two combined.
What he does not enjoy is getting a panicked phone call in the middle of the night where he has to rush out and scour every side street around the midpoint from Harding County, New Mexico to Lebanon, Kansas.
He does eventually find them, spotting the bright headlights of Dean’s beloved car against the midnight dark of the unlit road they'd parked upon. Shining like a beacon of protection, warding off anything that could harm the beings in her light and functioning as a sort of radar for Castiel’s searching eyes.
But what really concerned him was the two slumped figures outside of said car.
He spots Dean first, strown out beside the car’s left backdoor, and he lands with a gentle flourish. Pressing two fingers to the man's forehead he finds he can’t heal whatever ails him. But Castiel is able to figure out a few things instantly.
One: Even though Dean’s eyes are closed he can tell his vision is suddenly impaired, and not in the way a head injury or flashing light could cause. More like a film of sorts has frosted over his irises.
Two: He is feverish, despite clearly not being sick.
Three: Something about his muscles is wrong, as though they refuse to contract at all, anywhere.
It’s then that he realizes that Dean is Barely breathing, his lungs seemingly frozen in place. That shoots a dagger of fear right into his vessel's heart as Castiel rushes to force some of his grace to expand Dean’s lungs himself, giving the man his first full breath in who knows how long.
There is undoubtedly more wrong, but with the stuttering realization that Dean had almost died from whatever was afflicting him, Castiel whips around the car, content that his grace is functioning as a form of respirator for the Dean, and rushes to find Sam.
Sam too is lying on the ground and Castiel feels an ounce of relief when he sees that Sam isn’t suffering in the same way, at least this brother is breathing on his own. But when Castiel's fingers rest against his forehead he flinches as though in great pain.
A quick diagnosis reveals that Sam is seemingly being pained by the exact opposite of his brother's symptoms. His skin is clammy and cold to the touch. His eyes are unaffected but it's like his ears were stuffed with cotton, presumably along the same line as the time over Dean’s eyes. Plus, of course, there are the muscle reactions, which seem to be over-perceiving.
It’s almost as if Sam’s nerves can’t decide what is good or neutral stimuli versus bad stimuli; they’re working overtime to receive every signal at maximum. While Dean’s nerves are hardly firing at all.
It's curious. But Castiel knows he cannot figure out what has happened to the boys here in some random desert on the side of the road, let alone cure it.
So, he grabs both men, one in each hand, and flies home.
Returning a few minutes later to grab Baby, he’d rather not be murdered by Dean should he suddenly wake up.