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Richard Cox was exactly the type of 'well-off' that Dean detested – a superior, pompous young man who hadn't done a single day of honest work before accepting a position as the CEO of his grandfather's advertising agency at the age of twenty-five – but never let it be said that the man couldn't show gratitude.
And it wasn't like Dean was going to turn down a free meal, anyway.
It was just that, well, in Dean's experience, 'free meals' were something greasy and half-burnt that matronly bar-owners slapped in front of them when they'd been sitting in the corner for three hours straight, waiting for their father to finish cheating other bar-goers out of their money. At best, it was something home-cooked, like mashed potatoes and meatballs from the nearest convenience store, eaten in awkward silence with the family they'd just saved from a poltergeist, a ghost, a homicidal lawnmower, whatever.
But this? This couldn't be right. They'd come to the wrong place, Dean was sure, except for how Richard Cox the Third was there as well, leaning against his bright red sports car and waving a lazy hand to greet them, sun glinting off his white teeth, artistically highlighted beach blond curls, and Rolex.
“Dude,” Dean whispered as they got out of the car and headed to meet the businessman, “he offers to buy one of us for a week, we're outta here. This is all a bit too Pretty Woman for me.”
Sam snorted. “Just admit you're happy I made you wear the suit.”
Dean was, actually, a thought he'd never imagined he'd have. He was also very conscious of the three safety pins holding the rip in the back of his dress shirt together. It wasn't like he'd been planning to take the jacket off anytime soon, anyway, even if it was stifling hot, but maybe he should've accepted Sam's offer and borrowed one of his dress shirts, after all. Oh well, a place like this would be perfectly air-conditioned.
The restaurant was a large, magnificent building leaning far over the edge of a cliff, with a stunning view of the Pacific Ocean; sunbeams danced on its glass walls and the sports cars parked in front of it, the sign with the name of the restaurant had a worrying number of stars, and the people Dean could see sitting inside wore brands, drank brands, smoked brands and had apparently all been to a salon just this morning.
Dean had a sinking feeling that even fresh and showered and shaved, he and his cheap fake agent suit were not going to fit in.
Richard greeted them with open arms and all the warmth of a person who wanted to keep you from tipping the media on a recent ghost attack in his family manor, let alone the rather scandalous reason behind the ghost's existence (Richard Cox the First had been a total dick), and led them in. The waiter at the entrance opened the discussion with, “Good afternoon, sir. The usual, I presume?” and Dean felt dizzy. How much money did it take to be a regular in a place like this?
A lot, he found out soon enough, when they'd been seated at Cox's usual table – right next to the glass wall in the part that was hanging over the ocean – and given the menus to look over. The moment his eyes fell on the prices, Dean was overcome with a coughing fit. Sam clapped him on the back a few times, rambling on about the ocean breeze getting to his poor brother's lungs sometimes, you know, a childhood illness, while Richard eyed him with polite worry.
To avoid further embarrassment, Dean excused himself to go to the toilet, leaving Sam with instructions to order for him and mentally resigned to find a tofu salad waiting for him when he returned. Leave it to Sam to look completely at home in such an upscale environment – heck, this was probably exactly what Sam had been imagining when he'd been planning his life as a lawyer. Sure, Dean knew that Sam was just as baffled by the unexpected fanciness as he was, but he just looked like he was totally used to being baffled by unexpected fanciness and knew how to receive it. Oh right – he'd probably had some rich friends in Stanford, friends who'd liked to show off their wealth to their friends struggling by with student allowance.
By the time he got back, the waiter had come and gone, and Sam gave him a nod to say that he'd ordered for both of them and that no, he hadn't picked any of the numerous shrimp and shellfish portions they had, he wasn't an idiot. Dean grinned a little, slightly more relaxed despite himself, and for a moment just reveled in the fact that he was back in tune with his brother, enough to be able to read all that in a single nod, despite being all distracted by the posh surroundings.
Namely the fact that, “Dude, the toilets were bigger than some of the motels we've stayed at,” he had to whisper as he sat down next to his brother.
Sam just elbowed him and kept chatting with Richard – who was going on about this absolutely scandalous thing that had happened at the latest fundraiser his friend had thrown, involving a tipsy heiress and an elderly chief executive's toupee – like Dean hadn't said a word.
When the food arrived, Dean was pleasantly surprised to find crispy fries and smoked salmon half-covered by some sort of creamy sauce on his plate – or that's what it looked like to him, no matter how Sam insisted that it was something fancy with a French name. Sam had, predictably, opted for a salad, but even Dean had to admit that it looked kinda good; Richard's prawns, on the other hand, made him want to scrunch up his nose and lean as far away from the other man's plate as possible.
He didn't, though. Sammy had better be proud of his table manners.
But no matter how well-mannered he was, there was no escaping the smell, and after a while Dean found himself clearing his throat every few minutes, trying to dislodge the itch that had taken a place somewhere just beyond the reach of his tongue. His eyes felt kind a itchy, too, and a little watery; Dean was willing to bet they were getting red.
Trying to keep a pleasant smile on his face when all he wanted to do was scowl at the businessman, he shoveled more food into his mouth, hoping that swallowing would remove the itch since coughing apparently couldn't. And to think that he'd taken some antihistamine, too, just before getting out of the car, because Sam had pointed out that it was a seafood restaurant and even if Dean didn't order any shrimp, someone else would, and then people would open doors and faucets and flush toilets with shrimp-y hands, and then their family curse would make sure that Dean touched the same doorknobs and handles and rubbed his eyes or something, and then Sam would have to walk him around for the next two days because he wouldn't be able to see anything through his swollen-shut eyes.
Yeah, about time to check the expiration dates on the antihistamines.
Sam nudged him with his elbow. “Dean, you okay?”
“Huh?” Dean turned to blink at his brother and realized that he'd completely blocked out the conversation, too lost in not glaring at the half-eaten prawns on the plate across the table. “Uh, sorry. I was just – I guess my mind was still on... what, what're you looking at? Something on my face?”
Sam's eyebrows had shot up the moment he'd turned, and were currently lowering back into place to form the patented Worried, Earnest Sammy look. “Dude, your eyes are all red. What's wrong?”
Dean blinked. His eyes felt weird. Richard was shooting him odd looks. “Just got something in my eye, don't worry,” he said, going for convincing and calming and managing thin and strained. But, you know, in a kind of convincing and calming way.
He coughed.
Sam's hand shot out and grasped his shoulder, as if he were in danger of toppling over without it, and Dean knew he'd heard the same thing he had: his breath wheezing and hissing on the way in when he inhaled between coughs. This, obviously, meant that something was blocking his airways.
“Throat itching?” Sam asked in a tight voice.
Dean nodded a little, not really feeling like denying it. He was coughing and clearing his throat pretty much constantly now, and still the itch and what felt like something stuck halfway down his throat refused to budge.
“Seriously, man?” he muttered. “Just from the smell? Is it getting worse or something?”
Sam frowned and released him in order to slide Dean's plate closer and start a full autopsy on the mangled thing that had once been his supper. Richard looked disturbed.
“The smell?” the businessman asked carefully. “I assure you, this is one of the finest places in the state, and I'm afraid I can't smell anything funny...”
Damn, damn it damn it damn it! The people sitting in the tables closest to them were beginning to throw them glances over their shoulders, apparently having caught the word smell, and Dean was suddenly terribly aware of how much he did not look like a person who should be criticizing a place of this caliber.
“No, not at all,” he tried to backpedal, keeping his voice low and face down – he didn't want anyone catching the sight of him all red-eyed and struggling to breathe. “The place is wonderful – it's just, uh, that I'm a little allergic to shrimp, and,” wheeze, okay, pain in the chest, really fucking serious pain in the chest, breathe, breathe, “and I think maybe your prawns may have triggered a little --”
“Dean,” Sam hissed, like it was a swearword, and before Dean had turned back to him, he was standing and waving a waiter to their table, asking something about the chunks in the sauce on the salmon. The waiter, confused and a little intimidated by Samzilla looming over him, tense and full of anxious worry (which, Dean knew, tended to look like anger on both their faces), rattled off a list of ingredients, crème fraîche, water, salt, pepper, shrimp, and was left in the middle of his speech as Sam whirled around to stare at Dean.
Dean felt breathless and sick. The little chunks he'd taken for – he didn't even know what he'd taken them for, just that it'd tasted good – had been shrimp, chopped into tiny bits. He'd eaten most of the portion. Oh, and come to think of it, they probably fried the potatoes in the same damn oil as they did the shrimp, so there was that, too. How could he have been so stupid? Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
He cleared his throat again. Coughed. Put his hands on the table and stood up, slowly and carefully to avoid both drawing attention and making himself any dizzier. “If you'll excuse me for a moment...” he managed before Sam grabbed him by the arm and pretty much started manhandling him to the general direction of the toilets.
Which was, yeah, embarrassing as hell, caused a stunned silence to fall over their part of the restaurant and turned more heads than if Dean had started tap-dancing right there and then, but okay, his feet were a little wonky and the floor didn't seem to always be where he thought it was, so maybe Sam's tight grip on him had some advantages.
“Sorry,” he muttered when it became evident that Sam wasn't going to be apologizing for barreling into people's chairs and elbows in his haste. And wow, when he was apologizing for Sam, things were seriously bad, so Dean was probably beginning to look a little blue around the lips. “Very sorry – excuse us, oh, nothing,” wheeze, “to worry about, just a – a condition – please don't mind me...”
Sam maneuvered him into the stall closest to the door, guided him to sit on the lid and gave his face a small pat-smack hybrid that was probably meant to keep Dean conscious just as much as it was meant to be a comforting caress.
“Hey, dude – how you holding up?”
Dean groaned and slumped forward, elbows slipping on his knees when he buried his face into his shaking, sweaty hands. “Freaking humiliated, Sammy. Of... all the places?” His gut clenched. “Dude, you gotta, I think I'm gonna...”
Sam just nodded, helped him kneel on the floor and lifted the toilet lid, and, as Dean started dry-heaving, turned to glare at the waiter that had followed them like a lost puppy. “What?”
Dean could picture the poor man wringing his hands, all alarmed and scared that some random dude was going to die in his restaurant and put them in a terrible light for weeks. “I just – is he – should I call an ambulance, perhaps? Is he, uh, in need of medical attention?”
“Good idea!” Sam declared at the same time as Dean moaned a long, low Nooooo. “Do it now, the quicker they get here the better. I'm gonna – but man, I can't leave him here – where's our – Richard! Great, I was just hoping you'd come here.”
Dean closed his eyes and let his forehead rest on the arm he'd braced against the toilet seat. As if this wasn't embarrassing enough already, the pompous, pampered little brat had to come ogle at him as well. “Saaam,” he groaned, hoping that his brother would get the message and close the fucking door to let him be sick all by himself.
But the traitor had switched onto some other wavelength for now. “Listen, Richard,” Dean heard him say, all earnest and urgent seriousness, “I need to go to the car to get some medicine for Dean – he's having an allergic reaction and he could pass out any minute. I need you to stay here and look after him while I make the run, okay?”
He was dry-heaving again. Actually vomiting would have been a blessing, because that would have removed the freaking shrimp from his system, but as his luck would have it, nothing came out. His throat was closing up and black spots were dancing across his blurry vision.
“Pen,” he managed, reaching back and clutching Sam's pant leg in his fingers. “Pen, Sam.”
“Shh, Dean.” Gentle fingers pried his off the fabric, ran through his hair once, and disappeared. “On it. Hang in there, and if you lock yourself in the stall again, I'll kill you.”
Dean chuckled, or maybe hiccuped, and then he had to cough again. Sam had been seriously paranoid about that ever since that one time when Dean had managed to not only lock the door but also slump against it when he'd passed out, which made breaking in very difficult. Sam and Dad had been knocking and calling for ages, before finally managing to pick the lock and push the door open enough to move him.
“What? Pen? What pen?” Richard Cox the Third was clearly out of his depth, his voice considerably higher than usual. “What was he talking about? I – I have a pen if you need one?” He sounded like his lip was quivering. “You're not – you're not dying, are you?”
Dean managed to shake his head, still cursing his brother for leaving him here all vulnerable to the gaping idiot. His skin was burning on the inside, he was sweating and freezing at the same time, and he thought he felt tears trail down his face. “No,” he gasped between heaving. “Not pen, epipen. It's – it's medicine.”
He could hear confused chattering from the restaurant when the door opened for a short while to let someone in and cringed; awesome, now everyone knew that someone was puking their guts out in the men's room. Or, as it happened, not puking his guts out, no matter how much that would have helped.
And then Sam was there, shoving an eager but utterly unhelpful Richard aside and kneeling behind Dean, letting the plastic cover of the epipen clatter to the floor. Wrapping one arm around his waist and grounding him.
“Hey Dean, still awake. How you feeling? Managed to get anything out?”
“No,” Dean moaned, and, “sick.” His eyes kept wandering, or maybe his head just couldn't stay upright, and the world – the little tiled room that was currently his whole world – kept tilting at weird angles. His chest hurt like a bitch, and his lungs were struggling to draw in some air. He was suddenly aware that he was going to pass out in a minute or so.
“Okay,” Sam said, and Dean felt something sharp stab him in the right thigh, stab and stay there for a moment. Sam's other hand, the one that had been around him to keep him in place, reached out to rub the muscle around the point where the needle had gone in to help the adrenaline spread.
Dean felt all the fight go out of him. He'd live, after all – probably; his body was shutting down, but the adrenaline would force it to restart and keep it running for a while.
“There,” Sam murmured, leaving the epipen lying discarded on the tiled floor and resuming rubbing small circles around the needled spot, probably both to assure Dean (and himself) and to keep his blood moving, “should kick in in a moment. Penguin's called 911, they should be here soon...”
Someone cleared his throat, and it wasn't Dean, and then the waiter's voice was drifting through the mist that suddenly seemed to surround Dean. “Actually,” the man said in a slightly chilly tone, “they're here. Do you need assistance getting your friend out?”
Sam – who'd just called the man a penguin, oh God, Dean was never going to let him live that one down – made a noise somewhere between an embarrassed cough and protective growl and declined the offer, saying that he would manage just fine and demonstrating it by hauling Dean up like a particularly big rag doll, complete with the legs that twisted every single way and preferred to do so simultaneously.
Feeling like a pile of noodles (with a wriggling pile of noodles lodged in his stomach), Dean allowed his brother to pull one arm over his shoulders, wrap one of his own around Dean's achy midriff, and had almost allowed him to practically carry him out of the toilet before the need to protest registered.
“Back door?” he asked hopefully. It came out sounding like bckoor, but Sam understood.
“Ambulance is up front,” was the reply, though, so no victories there. Resigned, Dean reached up a shaky hand to clutch Sam's suit jacket, desperately hoping to make it out without faceplanting. As he'd feared, everyone in the restaurant was looking at them, following their trek, and whispering to each other. Guesses varied from food poisoning and drugs to hangovers, and reactions from Oh God, I think I'm feeling a little dizzy, too and reproachful scoffs to Did you see that big guy, ran out like a man possessed and then back with a suspicious-looking plastic thing – do you see it anywhere? Dear Lord, did you hear they found a big needle in the toilet?
So yeah, for once Dean was more than happy to play a little weak and hide his face by hanging his head and clinging to his brother, and it turned out to be the smartest thing he'd done all day when the adrenaline suddenly kicked in and made his whole body twitch and shake so badly that he would've crumbled immediately if it hadn't been for Sam supporting his weight.
Penguin held the door open for them, and the moment they were out, the paramedics, who had been unloading the stretcher from the ambulance, rushed in like a tsunami and swept Dean out of Sam's hands. Strange, grabby hands forced him to go horizontal, the sun was bright in his eyes before suddenly being blocked by the roof of the ambulance, and then an oxygen mask was blocking his attempts to ask for his brother. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably and he could hear the paramedics trying to assure someone that it was normal, that it was the adrenaline causing that, not a seizure, and then Sam's impatient voice telling them to quit stating the obvious, let him in and get healing.
Then, finally, Sam managed to bully his way into the car and crouch next to Dean to take a firm hold of his hand, and shut up, it wasn't hand-holding, it was a bone-crushing iron grip that actually hurt a little, but Dean was grateful because his own fingers refused to cooperate and because wow, pain somewhere that wasn't his chest or his stomach or – ow, now apparently also his head – was all kinds of new and wonderful.
“Hey,” Sam was saying, “hey, Dean, I'm sorry, man, I should've – I thought I picked something totally safe, so sorry this happened, but you're gonna be alright, okay? We're gonna be alright.” Dean felt a huge hand cupping his cheek, fingers running through his hair, and made a protesting sound through the oxygen mask. Sam chose to interpret it as permission to continue, and Dean was woozy enough to not try again. Woozy enough, unfortunately, to make the protesting sound again when the paramedics removed the hand from his face for better access to him, while one of them started bombarding Sam with questions.
Halfway to the hospital, Dean suddenly bolted to the side, doubled over the edge of the stretcher and just barely managed to remove the oxygen mask before finally throwing up into the paper bowl the paramedics had whipped out the instant he'd sat up. Sam was there the entire time, hand rubbing his back in slow circles and praising him like he'd just done something extremely difficult.
“Saaaam,” he groaned as he leaned back on the stretcher, letting the oxygen mask fall on his chest and trying to breathe on his own for a while. His skin was still crawling, his stomach was cramping, and he was covered in cold sweat, but he felt instantly better now that the damn food, and shrimp with it, was out of his body. On the plus side, it didn't look like he'd broken out in hives, this time. Small blessings and all that, he supposed. “Fuckin' humiliated... enough...”
“I know,” Sam agreed blithely, grinning and nodding down to where Dean's free hand had come up to clutch Sam's dress shirt like his life depended on it.
He was shaking less now, managing to stop completely every now and then before the violent tremors overruled him again, but controlling his fingers proved every bit as difficult as it had been before, and they stayed stubbornly locked onto Sam's shirt. Finally Dean just gave up and moved – twitched, really – a little closer to make the position easier on his arm. He was suddenly overwhelmingly tired, as if his body had used up all the energy it had and figured that now that it had kicked the unwanted guest out, it was entitled to rest.
Sam kept him awake until they reached the hospital, entertained him with descriptions of Penguin's indignant face or the shocked reactions of the other customers (which Dean strongly suspected were invented, because when Sam went on a full-blown superhero mode, he tended to forget that the rest of the world existed, which generally led to Sam plowing right over the poor schmucks in his attempt to save the world, the damsel, or, occasionally, Dean) and explained his clever plan to guilt-trip Richard “I Have a Pen” Cox the Third into paying for the ambulance and the hospital they really wouldn't have needed if it hadn't been for him. Dean had to put the mask back on when chuckling proved to be too much for his still blocked windpipe, but he listened, nodded, and kept his eyes on his brother even when his lids began to droop and fingers loosen their grip on him.
At the hospital, Sam was a gloomy shadow in the background while nervous nurses and doctors hooked him to several monitors and machines, gave him another shot of adrenaline and some antihistamine to replace the ones he'd lost when he'd thrown up, poked and prodded and asked him questions. Dean was overwhelmed; the few times he'd gotten hospitalized for his allergies before, he'd been treated like some drunk about to puke on their polished floor, and had usually had to wait for a good hour to be seen by an actual doctor. Either the fact that the call had come from such an upscale restaurant had fooled them into taking him for someone important, or the Great Tower of Sam looming over them was making them double their efforts, but Dean found it distracting. He was miserable and in pain, couldn't they just give him something for it and leave him be?
Apparently they could, because when Dean opened his eyes again, the room was quiet except for the steady beeping and humming of the machines, and Sam was sitting next to his bed, cradling one of his hands between his huge paws.
“Huh,” Dean tested his voice. It was low and much weaker than he would've liked, but hey, he could breathe! Which, well, probably had something to do with the oxygen mask still covering his mouth and nose, actually. But his throat didn't feel so swollen anymore, so maybe breathing wouldn't be an issue even without it.
Sam's eyes shot up when he moved his free hand to remove the mask and test the theory, but he didn't try to stop him.
His skin was damp where the mask had been, and even the ever-present smell of disinfectant that all hospitals had in common felt like the sweetest breeze of fresh air after the stuffy plastic smell of the mask. “Hey,” Dean tried again, and it came out in a raspy whisper. “I pass out?”
Sam nodded. “Two hours. Your blood-pressure took a nose-dive pretty soon after we got here. At the low end on 'normal', now, though. How you feeling?”
“Mortified. I just provided the state's crème de la crème with enough gossip material for weeks.” Dean closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath, basking in the glory of air actually reaching his lungs. “Two hours? Felt like fifteen minutes, tops.”
“Yeah, well, you slept through the boring part. With the hand-holding, and me weeping over your lifeless form.” Sam shrugged and smirked a little. Dean just grinned back, because if that was how Sam “Let's Talk About Our Feelings” Winchester wanted to say he'd been a little worried, Dean wasn't going to call him out on it.
“I'll live, then?” he asked, instead. There was still some abdominal pain, but generally he was feeling... well, honestly, too sedated to feel much pain. His body felt light and heavy at the same time.
“Yes, for now,” Sam replied, all serious face and frowny eyebrows. “I'm afraid the shrimp will still be after you, though. We'll have to keep a low profile for a while. Put Cas on shrimp alert. Maybe fake your death.”
“Nice, Sammy, kick a man when he's already humiliated enough for a decade.”
“Sorry,” Sam said, shaking his head with a small smile. “It's not funny, really. It's just – it's what you do, when I'm down, you make fun of things you should take really, really seriously, and I hate it when you do that but it always makes me feel better, so.”
Dean had to look a way at that, because Winchesters and grown men and hunters don't cry, dammit. (But still.)
After a while, he cleared his throat, relieved that he could do that normally again. “So... when do I get to leave?” He lifted his Sam-free hand; there was a tube connecting it to a bag of what appeared to be just some sort of saline solution.
“Well, the doctor said he'd like to keep you here under surveillance for the next forty-eight hours...”
“Hell no,” Dean interrupted, alarmed enough to actually feel a little more awake for a moment.
“... So I told him, 'Hell no,' and offered him four hours,” Sam finished. “He agreed on the condition that he gets to you keep you for longer if there are any setbacks and that when we leave, I'll take you straight to home and see that you rest for the next forty-eight hours, anyway.”
Dean relaxed back against the uncomfortable hospital bed. “Atta boy,” he half-whispered, half-yawned. Apparently his body had come to the conclusion that passing out didn't count as sleeping. “Though to be honest, I was ready to wave this place goodbye a week ago... not really looking forward to trying to get our room back, either.” They'd checked out already, with every intention to hit the road immediately after dining with Richard, and the motel had been bursting at seams already when they'd arrived, full of tourists.
Sam smirked a little. “Well, the Impala has always been more of a 'home' to us than any other place, right? So I figured – if you make it through the next two hours without any more episodes, that is – that I'd pack you in the car and get us back on the road, get you away from the sea and feed you bad diner food, sans shrimp, for the rest of your life.”
Dean managed a little grin. “My hero.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, “always ready to protect you from all things tiny, spineless and pink.”
“Shut up,” Dean yawned, closing his eyes and snuggling into the pillow, with every intention to spend the remaining two hours of captivity asleep. “Go get my baby from the beach.”
“Okay,” he heard Sam whisper just before he fell asleep. “But you know, I'm gonna need my hands back to do that...”
He was still there when Dean woke up almost two hours later, all innocent eyes and claiming that he hadn't been able to pry his hands out of Dean's fingers, but Dean knew a veiled 'Not gonna let you out of my eyes for the next month' when he heard one.
Besides, Dean Winchester didn't cling to anyone in his sleep.