It's the Stars That Lie: October 7

As you wish.

—Day 65—

Dean emerges from the depths of unconsciousness to the definition of life lived on what feels like a mattress-shaped frying pan, complete with a fucking ton of blankets piled on top for sweating to death purposes. Vaguely, he wonders if this is what it feels like to be a grilled cheese sandwich, assuming he isn’t actually one.

His first efforts fail so spectacularly he almost wonders if he imagined them. Dropping his head back onto the pillow, he tries to remember a distant time—weeks ago, a lifetime, whatever—when this could be solved by the ability to kick the goddamn blankets off. “Jesus.”

“He was right—God, that’s annoying.” Blinking a few times to adjust to the lack of light—survey says it’s pretty goddamn late—he’s not disappointed at all that it’s Vera who appears in his line of sight, a suggestion of a smile on her face as she absently pulls her hair back, winding the twists into a loose ponytail as she starts toward the bathroom. “Hey Dean. Give me a minute, okay?”

When she comes back, she’s carrying a full glass of water, a clean towel, and a wet cloth, setting the first carefully on the bedside table. “How you feeling?”

Like shit, he wants to tell her, but that would take up valuable kicking the fucking blankets off energy he can’t afford to waste on stating the goddamn obvious. Gritting his teeth against the shock of pain from his still-healing ankle and annoyance for his still fucking useless right arm, he readies himself for a third attempt when Vera belatedly realizes what the problem is, efficiently stripping off the blankets and piling them at the foot of the bed before sitting down beside him and reaching for the wet cloth.

“Headache or nausea?” she asks as she gently wipes his face with slow, careful movements before setting it aside. He shakes his head, trying not to moan in sheer relief at the wash of cool air over his sweaty body. “Light okay?”

When he nods, there’s a click as she flips on the lamp on the bedside table, looking him over with sharp brown eyes before taking out a digital thermometer from the drawer and removing the cover.

“Open up,” she says, and with a sigh, Dean obeys; the last time he argued, she listed all the alternate locations she could use in order of preference, which by now he knows isn’t an idle threat, especially since Cas treats her suggestions like Holy Freaking Writ.

At the rapid beeping sound, she takes it back, nodding before looking him over, and her slightly satisfied look telling him he’s apparently doing great for being life endingly exhausted and recently baking in his own sweat.

“Ninety-nine point one, good job,” she tells him, setting it on the metal tray on the far side of the bedside table he’s come to categorize as the place she and Cas put anything that needs to be sterilized before use. Which seems to be everything. “Sorry about that,” she says, indicating the blankets as she gets his chart from the drawer and makes some notes. “You were getting pretty bad chills this evening. I brought you some water. You up for it?”

To his own surprise, he’s able to almost sit up on his own with Vera bracing him, which ups her satisfied look by an order of magnitude as she steadies him, arranging the pillows and picking up the glass.

“So—”

“Dean Winchester,” he tells her, dragging out each syllable for maximum sarcastic impact. “2014. Palin. Kansas. Two plus two is four. It’s day ten of ‘how is this my life.’ Anything else, Nurse Ratched?”

“Someone’s feeling their oats,” she remarks, pausing to wait as he fumbles his left hand around the glass along with hers, just to prove he can. It’s kind of awesome, even if he’s pretty sure it’s the glass holding up his hand and not the other way around. Still, no time like the present to work on that ‘using his left’ thing. “My grandmother used to say that, no idea. Think you can drink it all?”

Even if he wasn’t thirsty, his mouth tastes like shit. “Oh yeah.”

Vera watches him, not even pretending to be casual about it, pulling back halfway through and waiting for him to nod before giving him the rest. Another surprise: he’s still wiped by the time he’s done, but not as much, and he’s getting closer to normal drinking sizes.

“Excellent,” she says, getting her chart again and making another note before glancing up at his half-full IV. “Your fever spiked late this evening after dinner, nothing serious, and it looks like—no promises here—you can start solid food at the two week mark. We’ll go slow, but the sooner we can get you eating regularly, the better.” Warming the stethoscope in her hand, she slides it under his scrub top, which is all he wears these days. Easy in, easy out, easy to throw away, he guesses, though he wishes they came in more colors than ‘seventies-era motel room yellow’ and ‘eye-searing teal’. Sometimes Cas mixes and matches them, which he assumes is his punishment for almost dying because even the blind couldn’t think those go together without passive-aggressive hostility being a factor. “You know the drill—”

“Deep breathes,” he agrees sourly, trying not to think about what she’s hearing in there as she moves to his back, then asks him for regular breaths. It feels like forever, always does, and when she’s done, it’s another eternity while she updates his chart. When she’s done, he glances at the heart monitor and then at her, raising an eyebrow. At some point, he’s gonna have to deal with that. “Well?”

“At the two week mark, we’ll take you off,” she says, surprising him. “I’m only a practitioner nurse, and I know just enough to err on the side of overkill. But from what I can tell, there’s no permanent damage.”

“What?” That’s—really not what he expected to hear. “You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be when I’m not a cardiologist and I’m doing this in a cabin instead of a hospital,” she answers, draping the stethoscope around her neck. “Without a full medical history—and a doctor in front of my name—I can only guess and work from observation, but by now, I would have found any severe damage, and there’s not even a murmur.”

Dean nods slowly, still trying to take that in. “My heart stopped twice.”

“I was there,” she reminds him, cocking her head. “We’ll take it slow, but honestly, I’m not too worried; I just want a full two weeks of stats before I take you off it. I wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t sure.”

“Right.” Nodding, he clears his throat. “So—”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll be running laps and fighting demons anytime soon,” she says, raising her eyebrows in reproof; she’s terrifyingly good with that look. “Your reward for surviving is an immune system shot to hell and back, and right now, it can’t handle a secondary infection. Lucky for you, I haven’t left the cabin or interacted with anyone directly but Cas since the first week of the fever, and Cas is a dead zone for infection. Dies on contact, actually. I’ve been here too long; these days when I’m in a bad mood, I imagine demon-shaped bacteria screaming in despair as they die when his immune system stabs them to death or something.” She shakes her head ruefully, a grin playing around the corners of her mouth. “Anyway, that doesn’t mean we can afford not to be careful.”

Like Cas, she looks better, too; the lines around her eyes are absent, mouth less thin, warming more easily in a smile, the ashen quality of her skin is almost gone, and he’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the bounce to her step. Cas can hide just about anything he doesn’t want seen; Dean could be ten seconds from dying and Cas would still be able to calmly tell him he’ll be fine without a single tell to the contrary. Vera’s a pro and it shows, but after living with Cas, pretty much anyone else is a semi-open book, or at least a book in a human language he can actually eventually read. She thinks he’s getting better, she’s sure of it, sure enough that she’s giving him openings to ask questions because she not only has answers, she likes the ones she’ll be giving.

“No margin for error,” he tells her, which makes her smile widen. “I remember.”

“And your memory’s fine so far,” she agrees. “Short term is about what I’d expect considering how much you’re sleeping and with the intermittent fevers, and your retention is fine. Your long term’s got some spots, which you already know about, but don’t be alarmed if you find more of them. Also, not a neurologist, but—”

“Not a lot I can do about it,” Dean finishes for her. He won’t say there’s anything about this that’s not shitty, but he’s gotta admit the potential usefulness of ‘because fever’ when he doesn’t remember something that Dean Winchester should. “Anything else?”

Tucking the chart back in the drawer, she glances at the door briefly. “Okay, Cas has me on the clock here, so I don’t have a lot of time.”

He doesn’t brighten even a little at that. “It’s late, tell him to get some sleep.”

“Cas likes visual proof you aren’t dying, and unlike you, I don’t get to play the pathetic card when he’s in a bad mood,” she points out, ignoring his outraged expression. “Oh please, don’t even. I’ve seen you doing it, and he falls for it every goddamn time.”

He ignores that in the spirit of not wanting to piss off the person who controls his IV line. “What’s going on?” Vera’s expression flickers; oh, that’s not a good sign. “What happened?”

She hesitates. “He’s reading my medical texts.”

For some reason, he suddenly feels a sense of foreboding. “Okay?”

“All of them. Cover to cover,” she explains. “Let me give you some context: you know what the first thing a medical student does when they know just enough to understand the words they’re reading?”

Dean shakes his head, upgrading to ‘alarmed’ on the strength of Vera’s pitiless stare.

“This afternoon was three hours—three hours—of Cas methodically panicking in alphabetical order—alphabetical order—about all the possible complications that may or may not occur from a hypothetical secondary infection that you don’t have, and a list of all the possible infections you could conceivably get in order of severity, communicability, potential to mutate unexpectedly, and mortality rate when I pointed out—twice—that there was no secondary infection.”

“Oh God.”

“I’m going to kill him,” she says calmly. “I’m sure I’ll be sorry later, but—”

“Alphabetical order, yeah.”

“Cas doesn’t get sick, and has infinite knowledge, a perfect memory, and nothing to do but take patrol reports and watch you sleep if you’re not awake to keep him entertained,” she continues with fragile composure. “He’s inventing a whole new plane of hypochondria by proxy and sterilized the entire kitchen three times today, and Dean, even I don’t know why. I hid my books, but it’s a small cabin and that’s not gonna last long, and I can’t do anything about infinite knowledge.”

“So he needs something to do, right.” Vera nods firmly. “So what do I—”

“Thanks for asking,” she answers brightly, and he realizes belatedly that he’s been had. “Find him something to do, Dean.”

“I’m really sick—”

“You ever want that catheter out?”

More than he wants to live, to be honest. “I’m on it.”

“I thought you’d see it my way,” she answers in satisfaction as she gets to his feet. “Be right back.”

Dean’s still hating her silently when Cas appears as she opens the door, glaring with unfocused hostility at something (her, the door, the wall, life). “Hey, I was just about to get you,” she says, then looks back at Dean with a smirk. “Give us a minute, okay?”

Half-closing the door makes it a little harder to hear, but he gets Vera saying, “He’s fine, much better than earlier. How do you always know when he wakes up, anyway?”

“Punishment for my sins.” When the door opens again, Cas stalks to the bed, staring down at Dean like he’s not performing to expectations, and at this point, he suspects it’s just to fuck with him. “You have to stop doing this.”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Vera says from the doorway, sounding amused. “Modern medicine’s stumped, but your disapproval of biology should make it rethink the error of its ways any day now.”

“Go away,” Cas says as he reaches to pull the nearby chair closer and drops into it like standing is for losers, eyes flickering to the IV before they turn on Vera and narrow. “Is there something else?”

“Per our deal,” she reminds him. “You get him when he’s awake.”

“You would make an exemplary Crossroad demon,” Cas tells her sincerely. “Remind me to write you a letter of recommendation to Crowley if you decide on it as a future career.”

Dean looks at Cas in fascination. “You make worse deals than I do.”

“Have fun,” Vera says with a cheerful wave, shutting the door behind her with relish and leaving Dean the sole beneficiary of Cas’s glare. It would probably help if he could stop grinning, but he’s not sure that’s possible, especially when the glare’s coming out from behind a mess of too-long bangs that he has to push out of the way every so often.

Cas manages to keep it up for a few moments longer before he finally gives up on anything resembling upright, slumping disconsolately into the overstuffed seat and swinging a leg over one arm of the chair, heel beating a lazy rhythm against the side before he decides to remember Dean’s lying right in front of him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, giving the impression that he hopes the answer is very bad and therefore worth dragging his ass all the way in here to observe it.

“Pretty good,” Dean answers with all the good cheer he can summon; sure, he’s exhausted, but Cas is a dick and that’s what’s important here. “You?”

“I could be suffering in Hell right now,” he muses, and maybe Dean’s reading ‘regret’ into his voice, but no, he’s really not. “I assume that would be worse.”

Dean reminds himself firmly not to laugh.

“Nothing new to report from earlier today. It’s eleven-fifteen at night on the ninth day since your miraculous awakening. I’m being told you’re getting better, but your propensity to abruptly become feverish without warning makes me doubt your commitment to returning to good health.”

“I try to time it so it won’t annoy you,” Dean tells him solemnly. “Fucking biology: what can you do? I’ll do better, pinky swear.”

Cas glares at him, like he wants to tell Dean just what he can do with biology, in alphabetical order even.

“Everyone in the camp is—well, hungover or attempting to be, since apparently every night is now ‘celebrate your slow and endless recovery’ night.” Dean watches, fascinated, as Cas’s heel hits the side of the chair just a hair too lightly to rip through the thin fabric. “I suppose I can’t object if they continue to perform their duties to my satisfaction, such as they are.”

Remembering what Vera told him, he almost sighs. Honestly, if he wasn’t sleeping most of his days away, he would’ve seen that coming a mile away, because when Cas admitted to him that he didn’t like idleness, the only surprise there was that Cas would think he’d be surprised.

“Mow the lawn.”

Cas slow-blinks his certainty that Dean’s insane. “What?”

“Cas, there are weeds taller than some of the cabins and we have cables for the generators going right through ‘em. Hell, replace the cables while you’re at it before we all die in a fire, literally.” This is actually a really good idea. “Nothing’s going on? Manual labor never hurt anyone. Keep ‘em from getting soft.”

Cas nods tentative agreement. “Because of the fire hazard.”

“Yeah. Actually, no.” He tries to think how to put this, considering both their frame of reference on what constitutes normal living conditions, but what do you know, he actually has some opinions about this. “Joe’s roof is about to fall in, no lie, I have no idea why it hasn’t yet, and his solution is for him and Kamal to sleep in the kitchen. Jane’s cabin doesn’t have running water anywhere but the toilet, so she goes to Amanda and Vera’s to shower and get water for coffee, and Mark and Frank have water but don’t have a working toilet, which is the weirdest symmetry ever. Half the cabins don’t have a working stove and are doomed to the mess even when Zack’s cooking and that’s gotta be grounds for murder, since he can’t cook. We have generators in the garage that just need some spare parts to get running, but instead, we’re running the entire camp off six and live with the random lack of lights and hot water, and it’s not like we don’t have the fuel. Why?”

“Is that a trick question?” Cas asks warily.

“Until I got here you didn’t have a working stove or fridge and seemed surprised that a kitchen wasn’t for alcohol storage,” Dean says. “Which makes sense; this is you and it’s not like you know better. What’s everyone else’s excuse? Was it always like this?”

Cas looks at him blankly. “The flora was shorter, I think.”

Yeah, he should have guessed. “Cas, I lived most of my life in motels that charged by the hour or my goddamn car, and I still know this is a shitty way to live.”

“We had other priorities,” Cas says, starting to look annoyed. “In case you’ve forgotten, we were trying—”

“—to save the world, I get that. It’s just—” Dean gestures vaguely. “You go fight, come back, sleep, keep up your training, and that’s it?”

“There’s also sex…” Cas trails off, searching Dean’s face intently. “It bothers you?”

“Yeah, it does,” he admits, frustrated with his inability to explain. “Hell if I know why, though.”

What he noticed as an invisible observer he filed away as someone else’s (this Dean’s, Cas’s) responsibility and forgot, even after the responsibility technically became his. He’ll cut himself a little slack before the fever—teaching Cas to do dishes and cook and clean up after himself while all the time hearing a phantom Sam laughing at him in his head was kind of distracting, not to mention learning about Chitaqua and everything—but now, he’s got all the time he needs to think, and he’s been doing just that.

“Even with the excess toilet paper we now possess,” Cas says slowly, “I still have no desire to revisit the brief periods that latrines were necessary.”

Dean blinks in horror. “You’ve really had to use latrines?”

“I didn’t, but Bobby supervised the repairs on my cabin, as well as Dean’s and several of the others, which noticeably, have never had problems with their running water or roofs.” Cas’s gaze flickers to Dean and away, but it’s enough to catch a glimpse of—something. “Now that I think about it, this would be an excellent use of everyone’s time.”

Dean nods and feeling ambitious, starts to roll casually on his side before he remembers his ankle and manages to jolt it and his right arm badly enough to make him gasp, a cold sweat breaking across his forehead. Before he can make his frantic panting look less like panting, Cas is there, one hand on his shoulder and easing him back.

“Do you need—”

“I’m fine.” He’d probably be more convincing if each word wasn’t being ground out between clenched teeth, but what he’d need to take to deal with the pain would knock him out so fast he wouldn’t know he was asleep until the next time he woke up, disoriented and exhausted and panicking as he struggled to remember not just what happened or where he is, but his own goddamn name.

No matter how Vera looked today, she checks his reflexes, his memory, listens to not just his answers, but the words he uses and how fast he can give them. His heart stopped at least twice during a fever that ran high enough that they got a goddamn industrial icemaker working when medication and cool baths failed to bring it down, and the fading remains of water stains on the floor show him exactly where the tub was located. He was ready today to hear what kind of restrictions he’d have to live with, because every goddamn day, all those tests, all those notes, Vera’s rare expression of surprise when he catches her unaware, are all about the brain damage she was sure he would have when—if—he woke up.

No matter what they tell him, he can’t help but wonder if next time he wakes up, he won’t remember anything at all; next time that there’s a fever, it won’t drop back down; next time his heart stops, Vera won’t be able to get it started. No one walks away from a fever like that almost untouched without a fucking miracle, and there aren’t any of those anymore.

He can feel Cas looking at him, but he keeps his gaze stubbornly fixed on the ceiling, the wall, anywhere else, because Vera didn’t need to tell him he’s Cas’s one and only hobby these days. Cas’s powers of attention are epic, and when you’re the entire focus of them, you know it. He won’t even pretend that bothers him anymore, but it can be pretty goddamn inconvenient when it comes to hiding anything.

“Vera says not to tax your energy too much, as you have none,” Cas says casually, still seated on the edge of the bed, and a quick glance confirms Cas is equally fascinated with the lack of view of the night outside the window. “I could review the latest reports with you, or simply summarize: nothing is happening. However, if you wish, I can read you Phil’s, which now includes a rudimentary system of chapters and occasional digressions into his feelings during key portions of his patrol duties.”

Dean forgets to avoid Cas’s gaze, looking at him incredulously. “About how he wants you to bang him until he can’t walk? Why aren’t you getting this?”

“If he wanted to have sex, he would have asked,” Cas answers with the maddening logic of someone who lost his virginity in a goddamn militia camp and has no idea people who think every day could be their last have streamlined the process of getting laid beyond all recognition. He’s tried, but Cas genuinely doesn’t comprehend a world in which people sometimes have to invest in drinks and small talk before anyone gets to cop a feel, much less any orgasm-related action. “Besides, this was more—something about the sun in glory cruelly stealing the moon for itself when it could have any star in the heavens. He seemed very bitter about it.”

Okay, gotta give Cas that one. “Was he high?”

“No, I asked after the meeting,” Cas assures him, still looking bewildered. “I verified the weather as well. It’s been overcast with a thirty-five percent chance of rain all this week.”

Dean makes a mental note to eventually read it for himself, when even the idea of reading doesn’t make him want to die. “Better or worse than the hippo porn?”

“It’s called ‘Journey to the…’—”

“He fucking hippos yet?” he asks curiously, surprised to realize he misses Cas’s semi-regular updates on hippofucker’s progress down the Nile, where apparently everyone is both drop dead gorgeous and offers sexual favors, and every hippo encounter is rife with a growing sense of uncomfortable sexual tension. He gets why Cas was getting nervous; that’s a lot of weirdly charged hippo encounters for one person.

“I—no, not yet.” He hesitates. “I’ve been distracted by other—events.”

Dean almost dying of a fever, yeah, that’d be distracting. “Sorry?”

“It wasn’t you,” Cas corrects him with a shake of his head. “I stopped reading it before you became ill so I could start translating it into English. I meant to give it to you when I reached the point I stopped, but I was going to ask Kamal to review it first, as modern English isn’t my native tongue.”

“You’re translating hippo porn for me?” What do you say to that, Dean thinks blankly; thank you just doesn’t cut it, somehow.

“Yes,” Cas confirms after a noticeable delay, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining that Cas is bracing himself for something, though what, he has no idea. “I thought—you seemed to find it interesting. You’re under no obligation to read it, of course, I simply—had some free time and needed something to do to pass the…time.”

“Can I see it?” Dean asks impulsively. “Uh, I mean—if you have it around somewhere.”

Looking dubious, Cas nods and gets to his feet. “As you wish.”

He watches Cas vanish out the door, coming back with one of the goddamn spiral notebooks and the original text, giving Dean another uncertain look before seating himself on the edge of the bed again. Setting aside the book, he opens the spiral, and Dean can just make out the neat lines of Cas’s print, mark-outs and corrections everywhere in every color under the sun.

“It may not be—”

Dean pats the mattress on his other side hopefully. “Read it to me.”

“What?”

“Do you know who’s fucking Kyle yet? Zoe’s incense fetish going anywhere?” Cas shakes his head in what Dean’s pretty sure is bitter regret. “Then yeah, I want to hear this. Start at the beginning and catch me up.” It hits him suddenly; Cas stopped reading while he was translating. This could be the text equivalent of watching TV together or something, which is so Cas that Dean feels himself grinning. “What are you waiting for?”

Cas rolls his eyes, murmuring, “Yes, sir,” under his breath before moving neatly over Dean’s legs in one of those effortless shifts of balance that barely disturb the mattress (or Dean’s arm, his ankle, the heart monitor, the IV, and other things currently attached to his body that he tries not to think about if he can help it). Reaching for a pillow, he stretches out beside him with a little sigh, folding the cover back and scanning the page before fixing Dean with a look just edging on uncertain. “I haven’t had a chance to edit—”

“Anytime you’re ready,” Dean interrupts, settling himself to listen and ignoring Cas rolling his eyes.

“As you wish. ‘Beyond the reaches of the Great and Holy swamp’—yes,” he interrupts, looking up with a pained expression, “he didn’t seem to know what to call the Delta, so he went with swamp, it’s—execrable, there’s no other word for it. ‘Beyond the reaches of the Great and Holy Swamp, there dwelt a fair youth of beauty indescribable’—though he does try, for the next…” He scans the page, “…six, seven stanzas. ‘Skin of well-burnished copper’—I think he meant bronze, but definitely metal, in any case. Lips of ruby—’a carbuncle gleaming like a blister swollen with new blood’—forgive me, I tried to make this sound sane. In retrospect, a pointless endeavor.”

Dean tucks his left arm under his head and gives Cas an interested look. “Youth?”

“Should I have clarified?” Cas says, flashing him a grin. “Did you expect the appearance of a maiden for our Athenian hero to rescue?”

He grins: the dick. “Keep going.”